Gianni Infantino threatens a World Cup blackout yet Fifa is the architect of the chronic underfunding in the women’s gamePrepare the spandex: women’s football superman Gianni “I have four daughters” Infantino is here to save the day.The president of Fifa has threatened a broadcasting blackout of the Women’s World Cup in the “big five” European countries of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France, blaming bids for the broadcast rights for the tournament that he said were a “slap in the face” to the players and “all women worldwide”. Continue reading...
From bloated World Cups to dull club competitions excess is everywhere, but who will stand up against the exploitation?It’s worth asking before launching into a jeremiad where you would have stood on major disruptions of the past. Have I become the old man who yells at clouds and is simply opposed to everything new? Would I have been against professionalism, the 1925 change in the offside law, the advent of European football, the foundation of the Premier League? Is this just the conservative creep of age? Perhaps. But, equally, it’s hard to look at football and where it may be headed and not feel fearful.In some ways, football has rarely had it so good. The Premier League this season offers...
We all lose when the state, no matter how third-hand or arm’s-length, is able to engineer the silence of public figuresKeep politics out of sport. Ha, yeah. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, in what we must, if only out of a sense of convention, call the Real World, we have this: the strange and sinister developments of Friday evening in what will now come to be known as the Lineker affair.The suspension of Gary Lineker from BBC presenting duties – not Newsnight or Question Time, but the bloodless warm bath of Match of the Day – over a tweet sent on Wednesday afternoon criticising government policy on migrants is, frankly, a jaw-dropping act of political intervention. Continue reading...
The current position is unsustainable with foreign states buying clubs and taking a seat of power in the national game“It’s a fund.” There was something captivating about watching Tracey Crouch MP say these words in front of a parliamentary committee in December 2021; like the moment, six episodes in, when you realise – oh yes, of course – that your favourite character is actually a robot replicant too.Crouch was responding to the suggestion during a discussion of the fan-led review of professional men’s football that Newcastle United’s ownership is in effect an arm of the Saudi Arabian government. And it was an impressive moment in other ways, evidence of the smartness, the excellent optics, of getting someone relatable and unaffected...
Paris police attacks on Liverpool fans at the Champions League final was yet another example of the hosts’ big game failuresUefa’s report on last season’s Champions League final is impressively uncompromising. It was, it said, “through no merit of those in charge” that another Hillsborough was avoided. “The Préfecture de Police were in effect acting unilaterally to direct supporters toward an entry point that would be unable to cope with the level of demand placed upon it … several key stakeholders have not accepted responsibility for their own failures but have been quick to attribute blame to others.”The report is thorough and unsparing in criticising Uefa and the French authorities. There were supplementary factors, such as the rail strike, problems...