The coronavirus crisis has instilled a spirit of unity among football’s leaders – but the sport’s calendar has been shreddedAs Gareth Southgate put it so eloquently, this is hardly the moment for football to take centre stage. Yet after a week in which almost all of the sport’s global calendar was suspended amid the growing coronavirus pandemic, England’s manager can be forgiven for wondering if what Pelé described as the “beautiful game” will ever recover from this crisis.Thursday’s joint announcement by the Football Association, the Premier League and the EFL that the provisional date of the first weekend in April for the resumption of men’s and women’s professional football had been pushed back almost a month until “no earlier than...
As the coronavirus crisis deepened this week, it was heartening to see Uefa, Fifa and others show some leadershipCoronavirus – latest updates | See all our coronavirus coverageIn normal times, last experienced in Britain only a week ago, it might have been fanciful to imagine that in some unprecedented global crisis football’s squabbling and often self-seeking administrators would step up and behave like leaders.Of course, faced with an unthinkable pandemic they have had little other choice than to put their sport immediately on hold but as they did so it was almost weird to see them striking the right tone. Related: Premier League, EFL and WSL football will not restart before 30 April Related: Mikel John Obi: 'Players were scared....
Uefa’s desire to encourage long‑term investment instead of relying on increasing debt is workingIn the days after Manchester City were found to have seriously breached Uefa’s financial fair play rules by overstating their sponsorships from Abu Dhabi companies, some of the ensuing discussion rapidly diverted from that guilty finding to questioning the merits of FFP itself. Approved by Uefa in the 2009 season after years of wondering how to drag European football from overspending on players’ wages, FFP has since transformed top division clubs’ finances overall, and was introduced by the Premier League in 2013.City’s impatient ambitions after the great fortune of the 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour of the Abu Dhabi ruling family were based on him bankrolling mega-spending,...
The Spanish Super Cup in Jeddah and the proposed Club World Cup are just more ways of the rich becoming richerTippi Hedren sits on a bench outside the school. Behind her, crows gradually settle on a climbing frame. She smokes, distracted. By the time she finally notices a crow pass above her, it is too late. The frame, the roofs behind, the telegraph pole, the fence are laden with crows and the attack on the children cannot be averted. This is the greatest scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and it is also modern football.Every week, there comes a new detail, stat or report of an initiative. Individually they can be laughed off. What’s the Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli banging...
Increased investment from top clubs into their womens setups, TV rights and major sponsorships deals are adding to rapid growth off the fieldThe fact the Womens Super League salary cap is set to be reviewed, according to the FAs director of the professional womens game, Kelly Simmons, is a significant step in the development of a professional womens league. Were open to looking at it if the clubs think it is restrictive, said Simmons. Well have that chat with the new WSL board at some point. Its important were driving on- and off-field investment as were building the game.She added: Its just about trying to get the right balance, the right number, to ensure that everything off the pitch enables...