With ‘15 or 16 players’ cemented in coach Graham Arnold’s plans for Qatar 2022, the fight is on to be the best of the rest“I’m going to reach out to Panadol as my new sponsor because I’m going to have quite a number of headaches to fit into a 26-man squad,” Socceroos coach Graham Arnold said in the aftermath of his side’s 2-0 win over New Zealand on Sunday afternoon. Delivered with a wry smile, it was a rehearsed gag that spoke to one of the biggest challenges the 58-year-old – and every other coach heading to Qatar 2022 – will face in the coming months.Between now and 14 November, Arnold faces the mammoth task of weighing up a complex...
For 94 minutes these bruised and grieving men managed to shut out the world and throw themselves into their sportTrauma can produce a devastating clarity. It paints the world in new and shocking colours, ruthlessly strips away what matters from what doesn’t, dulls the pain with pure adrenaline and primal instinct. Car crash victims talk of calmly strolling away from a burning wreckage. Survivors of dreadful accidents often chat lucidly away to the paramedics while lying in their own blood. When pushed to extremes, humans have a limitless capacity to endure, to carry on, to do the thing that is needed.A lot of the speculation ahead of this game centred on how Ukraine’s footballers would cope with their first international...
Despite the jingoism, Gareth Southgate’s side do not have an easy group at a tournament tainted by Qatari sportswashingSome lessons, it seems, are never learned. Gareth Southgate was characteristically measured in his response to Friday’s World Cup draw but most seemed to follow Kyle Walker’s line that “you’ve got to be happy with the teams we’ve drawn”.The triumphalism was not quite as strident as before the 2010 World Cup, but if other teams really are inspired by the misunderstood ironies of Three Lions, England’s group-stage opponents are going to be raging at some of Saturday morning’s headlines. Continue reading...
As World Cup enters extended countdown real reason host nation wanted tournament in the first place has become clear“Pipes. You need them. I got them right here.” The words, there, of Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy Qatar 2022, speaking in Doha on Thursday morning.Actually that’s not correct. In fact this is a line spoken by an unnamed door‑to‑door crack cocaine salesman in the TV series The Wire, during a sequence where the Baltimore police department experiments by decriminalising drugs in an abandoned neighbourhood. Addictions reach desperation level. The city’s dealers create their own vision of entrepreneurial hell. Continue reading...
A valuable World Cup legacy would be financial support for families of migrant workers who died or were robbed of wagesThe Football Association’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, made some interesting comments in response to questions about Qatar 2022 in a parliamentary committee hearing last week. Notable among them was the claim that the migrant workers whom the FA had met during “several trips” to Qatar, as well as “the NGOs on the ground”, were unanimous that “they want the World Cup to go ahead in Qatar”.According to Bullingham, who said the FA would brief Gareth Southgate and his players on the situation before Saturday’s match with Switzerland, the top request of workers and NGOs is that the FA “keep having...