Chris spent the weekend lining up a European XI and a South American XI, and that got me thinking about Africa. What would an African XI look like, and how would they fair against their European and South American counterparts? The standard of African football gets better every year. More and more African players are [...]

Europe v South America
With the Club World Cup final this weekend, we get a chance to see who is supposedly the best club in the world. Plenty of South Americans will admit that, as they watch boatloads of elite, young South American talent make the trip northeast, European clubs have far better players in their [...]

Brazilian coach Professor Neto gave a speech in South Africa recently, arguing that for football to develop in the 2010 World Cup host nation, the word “soccer” needs to be abandoned. Apparently the 74 year old gave an impassioned speech arguing that the use of the term “football” is integral to developing a strong national [...]

Ever since 2001, UEFA have embraced the magic of the internet and asked readers of their website to vote on a Team of the Year. 2007 is nearly done with, so it’s that time again. Go to their website and vote for your first choice 11 from the shortlist of 60 players they’ve narrowed it [...]

After dangling himself in front of England for the last couple of weeks, like a donut just out of Homer Simpson’s reach (and making the English media drool accordingly) Jose Mourinho has finally himself unavailable for work yesterday afternoon. Proof indeed that the essence of being The Special One is the essence of “what if?” [...]

Ever worried about how David Beckham is going to fill that long gap between MLS seasons? Well worry no longer, seems old Golden Balls is finding all kinds of ways. There are money-spinning tours to Australia and New Zealand to go on, rancid table scraps to be auctioned and head to head Christmas ratings wars [...]

Now I love football. And I’m sure you love football. But turns out neither of us loves football quite as much as Ivica Osim. The Bosnian manager of the Japanese national team suffered a stroke while watching football at home on November 16th and had been in a coma. But he woke up last week [...]

I thought there was universal agreement this week that Kaka deserved his Ballon d’Or and that all was right in the world of football. But then along came Diego Maradona, who was and is never afraid to be different, claiming that “Rooney, Ronaldinho and Messi would have been the worthy winners.” His most interesting quote [...]

Netherlands boss Marco van Basten and his assistant John van’t Schip will be stepping down after Euro 2008. It’s been an interesting spell for the former AC Milan striker. He had no first team managerial experience when he took the Dutch job, but had spent a few years studying coaching and also some experience with [...]

For all the talk about tactics, injuries, blundering goakeepers, foreigners and plastic pitches, the one thing England players definitely need to work on is how they spend their free time. Roy Keane said as much when he labeled certain England players “big heads who are side-tracked by stuff away from football. We all know which [...]