Marcelo Bielsa may never be forgiven by Argentina fans for crashing out of the 2002 World Cup in the first round.  His Argentine team were considered favorites after winning the CONMEBOL regional qualifiers, but couldn’t get past either England or Sweden in the group stage.  In hindsight, his tactics (once praised) were dubbed too inflexible, [...]

Credit for this story goes to our much more informed readers, Andrea4m and hkfczrqi.  While doing the previews for today’s international games, I noticed that ESPN had Chile playing in two friendlies tonight against both Northern Ireland and Israel.  Silly ESPN, I thought, clearly this must be an error.  Well, actually, there was an initial 30 [...]

When Raymond Domenech leads the French team onto the field on Sunday, in their World Cup friendly versus Tunisia, he will equal Michel Hildago’s record of 75 matches in charge of Les Bleus.  But unlike Domenech, Hidalgo is a revered figure in France’s footballing history.  He led the France team of the midfield “magic square” [...]

best football skills – June 24th, 2005
I recently read up a bit on the history of YouTube and learned, that the first ever YouTube video (”Me at the Zoo“) was uploaded by founder Jawed Karimi on April 23rd, 2005. The public beta test started only a week later in May and the official launch of [...]

As Rob already reported in his previous post, FIFA just put their foot down on the issue of introducing any form of technology to help referees.
At the 124th Annual General Meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), chaired by FIFA, a decision was made to no longer pursue the development of goal-line technology – [...]

I’m guessing you’re probably tired of hearing about the whole John Terry situation by now. I know I’m beginning to be fed up of it being seemingly the only news story around.
To some extent, I have to wonder quite why such a fuss has been made – afterall it is only the armband that’s [...]

There was a time when the names Diego Armando Maradona, Carlos Bilardo and the Argentine National team were synonymous with success. The magical run to the 1986 World Cup made both men house hold names in the sport, and heroes back home.
Boy, does that seem like a life time ago.

The sad sad news today is that Ronaldo may be finished. Just when it looked as if the Brazilian legend was getting it together at Milan, he jumped to meet a cross while playing against Livorno last night and completely severed the tendon in his left knee.
It’s not 100% definitely the end, but it’s 99% [...]

Now that the Africa Cup of Nations is over, you might be wondering what’s next for World Cup Blog. How will we fill the days with no more Hosny Abd Rabou hammer strikes, Salomon Kalou slaloms or Manucho magic?
Luckily for us, there’s loads more international football on the horizon. Qualification for World Cup 2010 continues [...]

Bad news for Brand Beckham, as it seems Golden Balls’ globe trotting lifestyle is slowly but surely destroying planet earth. According to climate watchdog Carbon Trust the former England captain has both “the biggest carbon footprint in the world” and “the largest carbon footprint in human history.” Ouch. The reason for Beckham’s dirty oversized [...]