In a move that’s sooooo 2006, FIFA has come out of its cave to threaten the villagers who contribute to it being the well-fed monster that it is. Two years ago almost to the day, World Cup Blog received a cease & desist notice regarding its use in its site logo of the part of [...]

It was the worst kept secret in football over the weekend, but Carlos Alberto Parreira officially quit as South Africa coach today. The official reason is that Parreira wants to spend more time with his wife, who’s seriously ill. There’s speculation that there’s more to it, and that tension between CAP and the South Africa [...]

Two conflicting stories emerged yesterday. On one hand, The Guardian were claiming that FIFA were struggling to find anyone to insure against World Cup 2010 collapsing. They quote a spokesman for insurers Munich Re as saying “The situation is quite difficult and fluid. The problem is they need 10 stadiums and some of these are [...]

First you think, “oh yeah, what a phenomenal goal, truly highlight reel material”, which it was. After that, though, it ventures off somewhere else entirely. Kuwait’s goalkeeper gets caught out in Nevernever Land, doing who knows what, allowing Iran to take a cool two goal lead on a goal from their own half. Then another [...]

South Africa released a report outlining their World Cup expenditure today, and the bottom line is $3.7 billion. Sounds like a hefty sum, and sounds like even more in South African currency, the total being 30 billion rand (which is the 20 rand note above multiplied many many many times.)
Big big numbers.
Sports Minister Mike Stofile [...]

When World Cup qualifying resumes in Asia on March 26th, there’s arguably only one game worth watching. North Korea vs South Korea. Especially if the drama and tension on the field can match what’s been happening off the field.
The controversy so far: North Korea are the home team, but won’t allow South Korean to display [...]

Sepp Batter has been a busy boy. This week the President of FIFA (or King of Football, if you were to ask him his job title) has…
1. Re-iterated his support for playing World Cup 2010 games on artificial turf. I can see that being popular.
2. Let it be known that he genuinely believed the Premier [...]

Who’d want to be a foreign coach in the Middle East?
Yesterday it seemed that Javier Clemente had settled his differences with Iran and agreed to live in the country full time. Today we learn that Clemente agreed to no such thing. So now both Iran and Clemente are back where they started and the March [...]

The twisty turny tale of who is going to be Iran’s new coach (hopefully) twisted and turned towards some sort of conclusion today. Javier Clemente, who had previously put pen to paper only to fall out with the Iranian Football Federation over his plans to live in Spain and travel to Iran for games, has [...]

I was almost done researching and writing a post on the challenges facing new Iran coach Javier Clemente, and then he goes and gets himself fired. Thanks a lot, Javier.
(Technically he was apparently never officially hired, but all the news sources were listing him as “Iran’s new coach.” Not anymore.)
As Daryl reported last [...]