The head of South Africa’s Tourism Services Association warned that due to continuing power problems in South Africa, the country may face serious problems hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup:
South Africa’s energy crisis raises serious questions about its ability to successfully host the 2010 World Cup, the head of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association [...]
Why does Sepp Blatter think national team talent has to be ‘homegrown’? Jamie Trecker has an excellent commentary on the FIFA president’s latest comments and why restrictions on foreign players will hurt more than they help. He summarizes Blatter’s position like this:
Blatter argues that for national teams to succeed, clubs must be forced to save [...]
ÂGulati shows Ryan the door. The Times lists a number of potential candidates, though it lacks one candidate that OSG likes for the job and I couldn’t agree more. Would she clash with the USSF? Absolutely. Would that be a bad thing? Hardly. I loved her commentary in tandem with Foudy when this all blew [...]
Jamie Trecker has a new column up highlighting the recent U20 qualifying rounds for the U20 World Cup and comes to an unsurprising conclusion:
it’s pretty clear there is a big gap between what the Americans can do and what resources they have to work with. The USA racked up two big wins right enough – [...]
Greg Lalas has a new column up about the USMNT’s recent performance against Denmark and how the future of the team looks bright because of the infusion of youth:
there was the United States’ stylish 3-1 win over Denmark on Saturday. In fact, that win was so impressive and got me so jazzed about the U.S. [...]
FIFA’s president now feels that World Cup finals should not be decided on penalty kicks. Am I the only person who thinks a PSO is just fine? Sepp Blatter feels it is a tragedy:
‘When it comes to the World Cup final it is passion, and when it [...]
I swore to myself I wouldn’t post another word about ‘the headbutt’. But these aren’t my words. They’re joe’s:
even though Zidane’s headbutt was absolutely shameful, I am a huge fan of it. Bad for his legacy, great for soccer. Pardon monsieur, don’t apologize to the children. Are you kidding? Little kids love ramming their heads [...]
The World Cup was clearly a success in the US. The final match between France and Italy drew over 17 million viewers (more than Game 6 of the NBA finals) The only downside to this is we’re still likely to be stuck with Dave O’Brien for a LONG time (2014). With John Harkes heading to [...]
I really don’t think FIFA should start handing out suspensions for verbal taunting or provocation. The precedent is spooky. But the little devil on my shoulder let out a big Gilliard like BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH when I read that Materazzi had gotten suspended for 2 matches thanks to his antics in the final. I know, I know, [...]
Sorry for disappearing like that after the final! It’s been a hectic couple of weeks with limited computer access, so consider this a catchup post.
The Guardian has a new article up where Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, admits he used to dive when he played. Granted, most strikers have dived at one time or another I expect and you have to give Sepp credit for trying to cut back on diving in the World Cup. However, there is some [...]
Luis Bueno has an article up at CNNSI where he talks about the difficulties that CONCACAF nations face on the world soccer stage and also talks about they many common ’solutions’ that have been proposed to lift CONCACAF out of the world’s soccer basement.
Numerous theories abound on how to fix the region’s ails, on how [...]
I happened to notice a spike in referrals from Feedster, a RSS search engine, the other day and discovered that we were their ‘Feed of the Day’. They have been featuring soccer blogs from across the globe all during the World Cup and are very impressed with the ‘Soccersphere’:
Since the most popular sporting event in [...]
FIFA announced the Golden Ball shortlist this morning for the tournament’s outstanding player.
The shortlist has been drawn up by the FIFA Technical Study Group (TSG)
and, with only players who reached the last four considered eligible
for selection, representatives of the media will now pick from a field
comprising three Frenchmen, two Germans, four Italians and a solitary
Portuguese.
So [...]
In keeping with the "A picture is worth a thousand words" cliche…
Portuguese keeper Ricardo just misses the PK from France’s Zinedine Zidane (AFP)
Allez Les Bleus!
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