Reuters Soccer Blog
World Soccer views and news
Drogba, Ferdinand…who next for the World Cup curse?
A top player seems to get injured on the eve of every major tournament and this year it looks like Didier Drogba and Rio Ferdinand have suffered the World Cup curse.
Ivory Coast captain Drogba is seriously doubtful for the extravaganza after injuring his elbow in a friendly against Japan on Friday.
England captain Ferdinand is out of the tournament after he hobbled out of hospital on crutches following a scan on his injured left knee.
The 31-year-old defender suffered the injury in the final minutes of England’s first major training session in South Africa after he went into a tackle and fell badly.
Italy’s Andrea Pirlo has also suffered a calf strain and could also miss the whole World Cup.
It’s still seven days before the big kick off and there could be yet more injuries in the runup.
Politics plays its part at the African Nations Cup
Being in Cabinda for the African Nations Cup should have been fun. At first, it was not, to say the least. The Togo team bus came under fire, with the assistant coach and a press officer being shot to death by a group of separatists as they were on their way to Cabinda from Pointe Noire, Congo.
It was only after long talks and multiple changes of minds that the Sparrowhawks decided to leave the Angolan northern enclave to fly back home and mourn their dead.
We would get calls from players saying they wanted to leave — that was on Saturday. Calls from the same players saying they wanted to stay after all — that was on Sunday.
Eventually, the prime minister got the last word, urging the Togo team to come back home. Until the last minute, some players tried to stay in Angola.
A plane sent by Togo touched down at Cabinda airport but it took off to Lome with the players on board only 10 hours later.
Angolan and Togolese officials locked themselves in a Cabinda airport office for hours as the host nation did all it could to try and persuade Togo to stay.
Reuters Sportswrap: World Cup qualifying special
Join Owen Wyatt for our regular wrap of world sport. This week, it’s a World Cup qualifier special, as we consider the plight of Diego Maradona and the battle for golden tickets for South Africa 2010.
We particularly welcome comments, so if you’d like to critique Owen’s schoolboy fashion errors, please do…
I think people are just stunned into silence by the sheer gloriousness of your televisual presence.
Ivory Coast stadium crush leaves at least 19 dead
Tragic news from Abidjan, where officials say at least 19 people were killed in a stampede at an overcrowded stadium during a World Cup qualifier between Ivory Coast and Malawi.
“We have 19 dead and many seriously injured,” a military source at the stadium said. The crush occurred after part of a wall collapsed when ticketless fans stormed one of the entrances to the 45,000-capacity Houphouet-Boigny arena in the West African country’s main city, Abidjan.
How can something like this happen? Stadiums are frequently checked to prevent these kind of things, right? The article says African stadiums are frequently overcrowded. In my opinion, that means the inspection of the stadiums should even be more thorough.
Fifa needs to step in and make changes to leagues schedules to insure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the future. Accidents in training happen, but people want to see the best of the best in world cup and these injuries diminish the tournament. League schedules need to be curtailed/suspended in the run up to world cup and training should be treated as sparring matches where players are protected to the highest degree from injuries and friendlies need to be limited and closely monitored again treated like sparring matches in boxing where the possibility of injury is greatly reduced.