Brazil prepare to revisit the scene of 2014’s infamous defeat with their team resurgent while their rivals’ embarrassment of attacking riches is providing no remedy for a desperate dependency on Leo MessiIt has been 28 months, but finally Brazil will return to the site of their greatest trauma. Their World Cup qualifier against Argentina on Thursday will be their first game in Belo Horizonte since the 7-1 defeat to Germany in the World Cup semi-final. Nothing will ever erase that horror but a victory over Argentina would make the ghosts loom less menacingly over the Mineirão in future – particularly if it adds to the growing fear in Argentina that the country may not qualify for the next World Cup.“There’s...
One of the most ancient and grudging of rivalries will be renewed in World Cup qualifying at Wembley on Friday nightEngland and Scotland, who meet at Wembley on Friday in only the fourth competitive fixture since annual encounters were abandoned in 1989, are the two oldest international teams in the world. They have played each other more often than anyone else, took part in the first ever international fixture in Glasgow in 1872, and enjoy – if that is the word – one of the most ancient and grudging of rivalries.Or they used to. These days the Scots would rather take on the Auld Enemy in a referendum than a football match. The sad decline of Scotland as a force...
The minute-by-minute report of one the great finals featuring Carlos Alberto’s iconic goal, from the pages of And Gazza Misses The Final, a collection of World Cup MBMs by Rob Smyth and Scott MurrayCarlos Alberto’s classic goal: brick-by-brick video animationFinal, Azteca Stadium, Mexico City, Mexico, Sunday 21 June 1970 Continue reading...
How would the new Fifa president best regain some credibility for football’s ailing governing body? A root and branch reform from top to bottom, or a madcap plan to expand the World Cup to 48 teams …Some movies are so bad they kill more than themselves. Sometimes, they kill a series. As George Clooney wryly (and rightly) observed after Batman & Robin: “I think we might have killed the franchise.” Occasionally, a movie is such a disaster it kills an entire genre. The monstrous excesses of Cleopatra fatally wounded the swords‑and-sandals epic genre, and the flop of The Fall of the Roman Empire a year later finished it off so thoroughly that it didn’t return for decades. Heaven’s Gate is...
A $5,000 legal challenge over exploitation of workers building for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar pales next to the value of private flights accepted by Fifa’s presidentIn the grim scheme of things, it is the modesty of the sum that gets you. With the formal backing of the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation, a Bangladeshi man named Nadim Sharaful Alam is to sue Fifa for its alleged complicity in the mistreatment of those migrant workers in Qatar who are charged with building its World Cup venues and infrastructure. (Suggested tournament slogan: “Believe The Mirage™”.) Related: Fifa faces legal challenge over Qatar migrant workers Related: Athletes on Trump's 'locker room banter': that's not how we talk at work Continue reading...