Usual suspects are dominating a campaign that lacks tension and leaves them ill-prepared for tests that await in QatarWorld Cup qualification is getting into gear everywhere, with new Canadian heroes, potentially dramatic play-offs in Europe and Africa and a tight battle for the remaining South American slots. In Asia, however, qualification has been dull – again. Even at the halfway point of this final group stage, it was clear that the four automatic places were going to be shared among the same old names of Iran, South Korea, Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia. Since Australia joined Asia in 2006, only North Korea in 2010 have broken into that magic circle.That it has been too easy for these regional powerhouses is...
As the Qatar World Cup nears, football can learn a lesson from tennis: turning down money will make your voice heardSport is politics. There is no question about that at the beginning of the year when the Winter Olympics are taking place in Beijing and the World Cup in Qatar. You only have to open the newspaper these days. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Guardian, the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza and other quality media, which gather many voices to report on the world, deal on their sports pages with the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics by the USA, Great Britain and other countries, the “quiet diplomacy” of the International Olympic Committee and workers’ rights in Qatar.One news item received particular attention...
There are plenty of one-sided qualifiers but within them lies a reminder that football does not exist to serve the wealthyIt was the eighth goal that felt most primitive of all. All night long at the Parc des Princes, France had been flaying Kazakhstan with a baying relish that seemed to skirt the boundary between sport and ritual.Three minutes from time, with the score 7-0 and France’s passage to the World Cup long since secured, Kylian Mbappé chased after Moussa Diaby’s through pass with the Kazakh centre-half Nuraly Alip also in pursuit. Continue reading...
The switch against Albania feels significant, as the flexible formation fits England’s players, especially the full-backsPlayers may still be suffering their post-Euro hangovers, the last of the broken glass may only just have been swept up from Wembley Way, but the World Cup is already only a year and a week away. For England the lessons of the Euros are still being assessed and assimilated and yet, already, FA officials are travelling out to Qatar to scope out training bases. The final run-in has already begun.Suddenly a 5-0 win over a desperately disappointing Albania – how on earth had that side, even allowing for defensive injuries, beaten Hungary home and away? – is not just a jolly night out, a...
The England manager picked a brave starting XI against Hungary – their failure to win the game should not tempt him to revert to his more risk-averse nature“Failure is a figment of your imagination.” Kobe Bryant had a pretty good line on the importance of trial and error, on failure as the father of success, on disaster on Monday as a signpost to triumph on Friday. To be fair this is perhaps a little easier to embrace as an approach to life when you happen, by an accident of fate, to be Kobe Bryant. Or indeed when failure doesn’t involve a migraine-inducing attempt to break down B-list international opponents at a lukewarm Wembley, while a group of budget fascists riot...