Monthly Archives: December 2013

The Perfect World Cup

“In Bahia on Friday, the draw for Brazil 2014 represents a crucial stage in the incubation period of World Cup fever. For the next six months, symptoms may include fractured metatarsals, a fixation with Brazilian hotel facilities and cravings for football nostalgia. Much like Second Season Syndrome, there is no known cure, but it is treatable. The 19 previous tournaments have each provided their own iconic moments, images and (possibly apocryphal) tales. Looking back over the competition’s history – and with logistical and ethical fears surrounding the 2014, 2018 and 2022 editions – just what would a perfect World Cup be like?” Football Clichés

Who is the best full-back in the Premier League?

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Ashley Cole
“In modern football there are increasingly few specialists, with advances in conditioning and analysis playing a pivotal role. Nowadays the majority of players are expected to be multi-fictional, able to impact a match in various phases of play. The role on the pitch that has perhaps adapted the most in this sense is that of the full-back.” ESPN

Bendtner heroics the latest surprise in Arsenal’s unlikely title charge

“Perhaps now Arsenal has to be taken seriously as a title contender. Arsene Wenger had been scathing earlier in the week of the “experts” who said his side lacked the squad to maintain their challenge, but after an 11th win in 13 league matches, it stands four points clear of the pack and, notably, 12 points clear of the champions Manchester United. A 2-0 victory over Hull City may have been little more than a procession, and is unlikely to live long in the memory, but it was significant in as much as it was achieved while resting a number of players.” SI – Jonathan Wilson

Haringey Borough FC vs Greenhouse – a visit, a match, and a conversation

“I’ve been living in the London Borough of Haringey for over four years now. Though I’ve been writing about football for only the last few months, my interest in and passion for the game has obviously been around for a lot longer. It is, therefore, with something bordering shame that I have to admit that my visit this Tuesday to Haringey Borough Football Club was my first ever. It will not be my last.” Put Niels In Goal

Fifa World Cup 2014: All you need to know about the draw

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“The 2014 Fifa World Cup takes place in Brazil, starting on 12 June and finishing on 13 July. It will be the 20th time the tournament has been held and the first to take place in Brazil since 1950, when the host nation lost to Uruguay in the final. This Friday will go some way to determining the prospects of the 32 participating nations when the draw for the group stage takes place.” BBC (Video)

Tottenham 2-2 Manchester United: Villas-Boas uses a much more cautious system

“Tottenham went ahead twice, but mistakes allowed Manchester United back into the game. Andre Villas-Boas brought back Vlad Chiriches in defence, Mousa Dembele in midfield, plus Aaron Lennon and Nacer Chadli on the flanks. David Moyes was still without Robin van Persie and Michael Carrick – Tom Cleverley partnered Phil Jones in the middle, despite the option of £27.5m signing Marouane Fellaini. There was no major theme throughout this game, aside from its openness, but there were a variety of interesting tactical points.” Zonal Marking

Tactics Board: Rooney work ethic shines through
“There are different ways to play as a lone striker and Roberto Soldado and Wayne Rooney provided a study in contrasts. The Tottenham attacker has been criticised for being a peripheral player who does not get involved enough in the build-up play. Against Manchester United he had 25 touches — three fewer than against Manchester City seven days earlier, although he was substituted with 17 minutes remaining.” ESPN

Tottenham Hotspur 2-2 Manchester United: Tactical Analysis | Spurs’ superior deep-lying midfield
“Tottenham Hotspur took on Manchester United at the White Hart Lane, both fresh from disappointing league results. The home side had been absolutely thrashed the previous week by Manchester City, with 6 goals flying past them, while United were held away to Cardiff. Many were calling it a must win for both sides, the home side possibly more so. The result, though fair, didn’t do either side any favours.” Outside of the Boot

Lack of Moyes’ identity to be tested vs. Everton

“A recent development in our expectations of football managers is the insistence that they boast an overarching managerial ‘philosophy’ or ‘ideology.’ It’s apparently no longer enough to simply pick the correct players and formulate tactics to get the best from them — there’s a need for a grander, long-term, all-encompassing insistence upon a particular playing style. While managerial strategy has been a crucial factor in top-level football for decades, these lofty expectations are relatively new — but it’s already become an entrenched factor whenever a new manager takes charge of an elite club. Seven of the current top nine teams in the Premier League have appointed a new manager over the past 18 months, and in almost every case it was easy to deduce their philosophy upon their appointment.” ESPN – Michael Cox

The Danish Fairy Tale

“A friend of mine is a fan of F.C. København, the most successful Danish league side of the last 10 years. København have won 7 of the last 10 Danish Superliga titles, but are more famous for being a Cinderella team that beat Manchester United and drew Barcelona and Manchester City in the Champions League. Remarkably, however, København is not the most successful Cinderella that Denmark has produced. That honor belongs to the Danish team that won Euro 1992 against all odds, which wrote a fairy tale that can rival any work by Hans Christian Andersen.” Soccer Politics

Football becomes mother to Syria’s traumatised child refugees

Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan
“Bassam used to be a striker for Izra, an amateur team in Daraa, southern Syria. He is 31, but his slight stoop and the lines around his eyes give him the look of a much older man. In early April, rebels seized a government air base on the outskirts of Daraa, the army counterattacked and the area has been the scene of fierce fighting ever since.” Guardian – Jonathan Wilson

La Liga: FC Barcelona 0-1 Athletic Bilbao: Player Ratings

“… Another game without a goal for the Brazilian who squandered many of Barcelona’s best chances en route to this goalless display. However, unlike many others I’m going to side with the former Santos star — criticising someone for missing chances is all well and good, but when that player is the only one intelligent enough to break down the opposition defense, you’re made to look a little foolish. Just imagine how few chances we would have created without Neymar’s movement and skill…” Barca Blaugranes

Brazilian thugs promise “World Cup of terror”

“Football fans have been warned to expect a ‘World Cup of terror’ at the hands of Brazilian crime gangs. The threat was issued by the First Capital Command (PCC as it is better known in its Portuguese acronym across Brazil) in Sao Paulo, who last year was behind the murder of more than a hundred of the city’s police officers. The gang, the biggest criminal organisation in Brazil, is operated from within the country’s prison system and membership numbers run into the thousands.” Backpage Football

World Cup draw set to reveal unique magic

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“Day after day, reports from the land of the next World Cup send shudders through the soul. A collapsing crane claims the lives of two construction workers at the stadium in Sao Paulo. The Brazilian FA, the CBF, makes the sad announcement that the legendary left-back Nilton Santos has passed away after a lung infection. Concerns rise over local companies fleecing visiting fans over accommodation and internal flights. Anger at socio-economic problems is expressed through protests. The 2014 World Cup is currently associated with many issues, few relating to the promise of an on-field spectacle.” Telegraph – Henry Winter (Video)

El Fantasma helps bitter rivals unite

“The ghost of 1950 is back to haunt Brazil. With Uruguay snapping up the last place in the 2014 World Cup, the possibility opens up of history repeating itself – of Brazil organising the party only for its tiny southern neighbour to walk off with the prize. In the final game of the 1950 tournament host Brazil needed just a draw to become world champion for the first time. It seemed to have a hand and a half on the trophy when it took the lead early in the second half but Uruguay hit back, silencing a huge crowd in the newly-built Maracana stadium to win 2-1.” The World Game -Tim Vickery (Video)

Sheriff Tiraspol, the club at the heart of Europe’s forgotten conflict

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“Had Tottenham Hotspur arrived in Moldova’s eastern city of Tiraspol for their recent Europa League fixture by road rather than by air they would have been greeted by an almost unique phenomenon in international diplomacy. Travelling from the Moldovan capital Chisinau to the city that homes league champions Sheriff requires visitors to cross perhaps the only international check-point in the world that brings you out in the same country that you thought you were leaving, at least in any legal sense. The Moldovan dispute with breakaway autonomous region Transnistria, sitting between the Dnistria river and the south-western tip of Ukraine, could well be described as Europe’s forgotten conflict – dormant since 1992 when a brief war over sovereignty that defined the immediate post-Soviet period fizzled out into a polite ceasefire.” World Soccer

Territorial Discrimination in Italy

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“Remember that mom who always went back on her word? The one whose kid would fail his classes, get suspended from school, and then be allowed to go out the next weekend after you thought he’d never see the light of day again. The mom who threatened to ground her kid for the next two months but always caved and never held firm. Well that mom is exactly like the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), an organization whose menacing threats are undermined by a severe lack of enforcement. Specifically, as territorial discrimination by fans in Serie A continues to escalate, the FIGC’s lackadaisical approach hinders the hope of any indelible progress being made.” Soccer Politics (Video)

Inside Meulensteen’s Time at Brøndby

“Meulensteen was appointed Anzhi coach yesterday to much surprise and fanfare. His last head coaching position was a fairly unsuccessful stint at Danish club Brøndby IF. We get to know a little more about Meulensteen as a head coach through his former player at Brøndby, Per Nielsen, from Nielsen’s recent autobiography. Per Nielsen played his first match for Brøndby IF in June 1993 and between his debut and 2008 he played 548, only eight less than Bjarne Jensen, who holds the club record for most matches played with 556. Nielsen played as a center defender. Per Nielsen has never played for any clubs other than Brøndby, where he won the Danish championship in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2005 and the Danish cup in 1993, 1998, 2003, 2005 and 2008. He also played 10 matches for the Danish national team, earning his first cap in 2004.” Russian Football

Bayern’s Lost Wunderkinds

“From a Bayern fan’s point a view, a look at the club’s bench against Borussia Dortmund would have been a welcome sight: Bayern, with injuries ravaging their praised depth, gave seats to two highly admired youngsters, Mitchell Weiser and Pierre Emile Højbjerg. It was clear from the start that their place on the bench at the Signal Iduna Park was only to fill gaps left by the injuries of Claudio Pizarro, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Xherdan Shaqiri and Franck Ribéry, as a match of Der Klassiker‘s magnitude doesn’t fit the early development of these two young players; however, their absence from lower stake matches – such as UCL matches against Viktoria Plzeň or the Pokal matches, as well as some Bundesliga matches where rotation was possible – must be a cause of concern for any Bayern enthusiast.” Bundesliga Fanatic

The pursuit of Blaise Matuidi and Jeremy Menez is already underway

“Jeremy Menez and Blaise Matuidi have plenty in common. Current French internationals, they were born within a month of each other in the spring of 1987 and both brought up in the suburbs of Paris. They were both first selected for Les Blues for a friendly against Norway in August 2010 and both signed for Paris Saint-Germain, flush with the noveaux riches of Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s Qatar Investment Authority, on 25th July 2011 and frequent their midfield. As it stands, they also both also look set to leave the club when their contracts expire in the summer, making them the most sought-after free agents in the game.” World Soccer