“If this year’s African Cup of Nations in Angola has entered the psyche of English football fans at all, it is because of the cataclysmic effect on Chelsea’s Premier League title hopes of a month without Didier Drogba. Hull, Sunderland and Burnley, it seems, will be too good for Daniel Sturridge. The 2008 tournament ought to have been the breakthrough for its standing in Britain, with less talk of the damage done by holding the competition at an inconvenient time for the Premier League (how dare they?) and more talk about the… y’know… football.” (twohundredpercent)

Group A: African Cup of Nations 2010 Preview (Algeria, Angola, Malawi, Mali)
“The tournament preview is up, you’ve seen the African Cup of Nations 2010 match schedule, now let’s crack onto the group previews. Here is our team-by-team guide to the competition, which kicks off in Angola this weekend.” (Just Football), Group B: African Cup of Nations 2010 Preview (Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo), Group C: African Cup of Nations 2010 Preview (Benin, Egypt, Mozambique, Nigeria), Group D: African Cup of Nations 2010 Preview (Cameroon, Gabon, Tunisia, Zambia)

African Cup of Nations Guide: Angola 2010

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006)
“The relationship between football and the box in the corner of your living room is a somewhat complex one. On both the big screen, the game hasn’t particularly well served, in no small part because even all of the drama that can be mustered with the aid of a script, hundreds of actors, a bunch of actors and all the muscle that Hollywood can muster seldom matches the sheer, visceral, unscripted thrill of the match itself. Television does better. The structure and length of the television programme seems better suited to the stories that the game has to tell, and the traditional strengths of strong factual programming – well chosen archive material and outstanding research – are obviously perfect for documentary-style stories from the game’s past.” (twohundredpercent)

“Quick, who finished second at the 1990 World Cup? Who was third in 1982? Chances are you don’t know. And if you do, congratulations — only a select few would recognize such as a laudable feat. World Cups are staged to crown a champion, to determine who is the world’s best — over the span of a given month, anyway. Tournaments come and go. The winners are forever heralded, their jerseys embroidered with a star above the crest to mark the occasion. Everyone else is forgotten. Yet some of the losers are memorable for just that: losing.” (ESPN)

“Football’s January transfer window, which opened Friday, has fast come to resemble an annual shopping frenzy for Europe’s leading clubs. First implemented in the 2002/03 season, the transfer window system gives teams 12 weeks in the summer and the month of January to recruit reinforcements for their rosters. Outside of those two periods, transactions are banned.” (WSJ)