Reuters Soccer Blog

Soccer Break Tuesday – Blatter unbeatable?

Short and sweet today. Is Sepp Blatter really “unbeatable” ahead of the June 1 election for the FIFA presidency?

It would appear so, though under his leadership the sport’s governing body has come under fire for alleged corruption.

That said, you have to admire his workrate. He is no ordinary 75-year-old.

Some transfer speculation now, and with Ligue 1 leaders Lille set to all but clinch the title on Wednesday will they be agitated by rumours that star man Eden Hazard could leave?

And how about Everton’s Leighton Baines to Manchester City for 25 million pounds? Money is no obstacle for the Manchester side as they prepare to sail into uncharted waters in the Champions League next season.

This article says City need to focus on actually winning trophies, not annoying fierce city rivals United and trying solely to beat them.

Finally, a piece on what relegation means to teams leaving the top flight. West Ham United went down last Sunday, and two more clubs will follow suit next Sunday. Who are you backing to stay up?

Soccer Break Friday – R.I.P FA Cup?

When I was in a French campsite in the 1990s a Dutchman caught wind of the fact I was English and immediately asked “Do you know the scores in the FA Cup semi-finals?”

Ask most football fans about what day in the season they looked forward to the most in the past and the FA Cup would have often topped the list, but the grand old competition is on the wane.

This year, four Premier League fixtures will be played before the trophy-starved Manchester City and Stoke City take to the Wembley turf for a shot at glory, the irony being Manchester United could clinch the league title about 20 minutes before their bitter city rivals try to win their first piece of silverware since 1976.

Is this farcical and disrespectful to the FA Cup or a sign the times-are-a-changin’? Money rather than trophies seems to rule modern football, so it’s no surprise to see the lucrative Champions League taking over as the ‘must win’ competition.

Off the pitch the red half of Manchester had a pleasing day after announcing their revenue was up by 30 per cent. The Red Devils roll on.

Over to the ongoing FIFA corruption scandal, and president Sepp Blatter has written a letter to Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport about his re-election bid on June 1. 

The talk in Africa is that one of the executive members embroiled in the affair, Issa Hayatou, should step down from his role as one of African football’s most influential figures. Agree?

Soccer Break Thursday – How to stop Barca?

Just another night of footballing action and another trophy for the all-conquering Barcelona, who on Wednesday clinched their third successive La Liga title despite a laboured 1-1 draw away to Levante.

Manchester United will be hoping a similarly weary Barcelona turn up at Wembley for the Champions League final on May 28, hopefully having themselves recently won their top domestic honour, the Premier League.

Now, onto Manchester City, who are in the news for two reasons on Thursday. One, they play Stoke City in the FA Cup final on Saturday. Click on this link for facts and figures about the game. Two, newspaper reports say they are lining up a move for Barca’s Xavi. But then again, it was Cesc Fabregas on Wednesday.

Realistically who do you think they might poach for the new season?

Sadly the news dominating the sport this week has been the FIFA corruption allegations, where president Sepp Blatter is promising a swift enquiry into the accusations. Brazil 2014 World Cup chief organiser Ricardo Teixeira is coming under fire in his home country but he is defiant and says former FA chief David Triesman should prepare for legal action.

This blog says Triesman’s accusations have further harmed English football’s reputation.

Another sour note for the game and another damaged reputation is in Scotland, where the attack on Celtic boss Neil Lennon on Wednesday was the latest blow to Scottish football.

Soccer Break Tuesday – corrupt game?

Dominating football news on Tuesday are the allegations by David Triesman to a UK parliamentary inquiry that several FIFA executive committee members asked for favours in return for their votes for England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

Startling stuff, especially with the FIFA presidential election less than a month away and a third of the 24-man executive committee having been accused of corruption.

Current chief Sepp Blatter sought to distance himself from the committee on Tuesday. Rival Mohamed bin Hammam has been campaigning by pledging transparency and technology. Who do you want to clean up the game?

Click here for a timeline of events that have rocked FIFA over the past year.

Back to the pitch, and Liverpool’s blistering late-season form has got everyone talking after their 5-2 destruction of Fulham.

Not that Fulham are being ignored mind you, goalscoring midfielder Clint Dempsey very much a transfer target this summer.

More off pitch drama now and France coach Laurent Blanc has been cleared of racial discrimination.

What happens in CONCACAF, stays in CONCACAF….

Visitors to the Marriot Marquis Hotel in downtown Miami on Tuesday were greeted by a typical conference ‘Welcome Desk’ in the hotel’s spacious lobby area. Behind the desk was a banner declaring the 50th Congress of CONCACAF – the governing body for football in North and Central America and the Caribbean was gathering, along with FIFA president Sepp Blatter, to review the year, discuss key issues and – top of the agenda – to decide whether to back Blatter in June’s FIFA elections or to support his opponent, Asian soccer chief Mohamed Bin Hammam.

It was the first time I had seen the logo of the congress. There had been no promotion of the event on the Confederation’s website, no communiques from CONCACAF inviting the press to the gathering and, somewhat strangely, the three seats at the welcome desk were empty. A rather odd ‘welcome’ to what was, in world soccer governance, a crucial meeting.

It was a crucial congress not only because of the agenda but because it was the first gathering of CONCACAF’s membership since the World Cup vote when, their bid, for the U.S to host in 2022, was defeated, sparking anger and bitterness in the American soccer community.

When FIFA awarded the hosting rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, after a selection process which had been heavily criticised in the media and was subsequently attacked by some of the losing federations, particularly England‘s, there was a huge amount of pressure on soccer’s global governing body to increase its transparency and accountability. The secret voting, the endless lobbying meetings and the impression that financial weight rather than purely the merits of the bids was a key factor, created a mood of frustration and anger amongst fans, especially coming after reports of votes being sold resulting in the suspension of two members of FIFA’s executive committee.

There was talk in the British press of the United States, England and Australia, all embarrassed by failure for their World Cup bids, heading a new reform movement to transform FIFA. In the United States, anger at the outcome led one of the country’s best known soccer writers, Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, to declare himself as a potential candidate, largely as a platform to rally opinion for reform or revolution. Other internet-based campaigns, such as Change FIFA, sprung up and it was asked whether FIFA had reached it’s ‘Salt Lake City moment’ – the point where corruption around the Olympics was fully exposed.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter implicitly acknowledged the problems his body faces when he talked recently of following the example of the International Olympic Committee and reforming the voting process by giving all members a say in the selection of World Cups rather than just members of the executive committee.

Soccer Break Tuesday

Football’s governing bodies are dominating the news on Tuesday as the FIFA presidency candidates hit the campaign trail and the UEFA presidency will be retained by an unopposed Michel Platini.

The sport is more global than ever, highlighted in December when Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup ahead of the United States, Japan, Australia and South Korea despite the fact a Middle Eastern country has never before hosted a major global sporting event.

For Qatar’s Mohamed Bin Hammam is challenging Swiss Sepp Blatter as the head of football’s world governing body later this year. Who would you like in charge? Reports of a divide, or potential one, have been ruled out by the Qatari.

Michel Platini has more football in him having been the architect of France’s 1984 European championships win, but is his re-election as UEFA president necessarily the best thing? Would you prefer someone who hasn’t played the game to come in with an outside view?

Sticking with the global theme, we’ve already been discussing the new season of the American league MLS. Do you agree with this blog that the MLS is a little misunderstood? Or do you believe it truly is a ‘major league’?

Another league which provokes debate is the Scottish Premier League, dominated by Celtic and Rangers. Is this a good or a bad thing? Scotland’s captain thinks the league is a bore.

One of the world’s best leagues in La Liga often ends up in a two horse race, Barcelona and Real Madrid battling for the title. Do you prefer more open leagues such as Ligue 1?

Soccer Break Friday – Champions League draw special

Well well well. Now the Champions League really is wide open..

So here’s that quarter-final draw again:

Real Madrid v Tottenham Hotspur

Chelsea v Manchester United

Barcelona v Shakhtar Donetsk

Inter Milan v Schalke 04

As Gary Lineker put it, there will be an English team in the semi-finals, but could Tottenham make it two sides? Real are certainly not invincible.

Winter World Cup looks more and more a reality

What Sepp Blatter wants he usually gets. So when the FIFA president said that the Qatari World Cup finals will “probably” be in the winter because of the summer heat you can safely begin preparations now for your trip to the Middle East in January 2022.

The decision to move the date of the first World Cup in the Middle East, which first needs to be ratified by FIFA’s executive committee, is going to have huge ramifications on club and international soccer up to five years before the 2022 tournament as well as on other sports.

The highly complex and crowded sporting calendar is designed to involve as little overlap between the major sports so that each receive the maximum exposure, and thus sponsorship, from audiences around the globe.

We wait to hear what the International Olympic Committee (IOC) make of the prospect of the World Cup being switched to the same time as their 2022 Winter Olympics.

Blatter’s strongest hint that the tournament would be moved was coupled with a dig at the IOC when he said that they ran their finances like a housewife and claimed they had no transparency.

So far the criticism towards FIFA for deciding to take the World Cup to the tiny gas-rich Gulf country has been almost as fierce as the heat experienced here in the summer months of June and July.

Blatter, though, continues to ride out the storm and he saw his chances of a fourth term as FIFA boss boosted at the AFC Congress last week when his ally Prince Ali of Jordan was voted on to the FIFA ExCo at the expense of his long term critic Chung Mong-joon, which damaged both the South Korean’s and AFC president Mohammed Bin Hammam’s chances of a potential bid against Blatter later this year.

Calling time on extra-time

FIFA president Sepp Blatter is well known for coming up with some odd ideas and this latest seems as strange as any.

Blatter has admitted that there was too much negative football at the World Cup and believes that one way of improving things would be to scrap extra-time after drawn knockout matches.

Admittedly, this would seem to be a slight improvement on his suggestion last month, during an interview with the German magazine Focus, that drawn matches in the group stage should be settled by penalties. But at first glance there does not seem to be much else to recommend it.

The logic behind Blatter’s thinking is that when extra-time gets under way, teams often prefer to take their chance on penalties and shut up shop. So he reckons we might as well get straight on with penalties rather than waste another 30 minutes of everyone’s time.

In fact, this has long happened in two of South America ‘s most prominent competition, the Copa Libertadores. The result, at least until the away goals rule was introduced in the competition, was that more games went to penalty shootouts and teams played even more defensively, knowing that they only had to get through 90 minutes rather than 120.

Interestingly, Blatter has craftily evaded talking about the existence of penalty shootout itself.

Loathed by many supporters, the shootout has managed to establish itself as part of the game and now appears untouchable. But maybe there are better alternatives which may force teams to attack if they want to win the game: corner counts have been suggested, as has reducing the number of players in extra-time to open up the match.

Ramsey injury was horrific but should not be used to outlaw tackling

Anybody who saw the pictures of Aaron Ramsey’s shattered shin will have winced in disgust but the hysterical reaction to Ryan Shawcross’s tackle that caused it has been based on emotion rather than cold analysis.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger muttered dark thoughts about how it was “no coincidence” that Ramsey, Eduardo and Abou Diaby had all suffered terrible injuries as teams tried to kick Arsenal off the pitch.

Shawcross was sent off for the tackle and, judging by his distraught face as his left the pitch, it was probably the best decision all round.

But though the consequences were appalling, all the more so for the victim being only 19, the tackle itself did not look too bad.

Modern TV enables us to view, in super slow motion, some of the studs-up impacts that leave shins, knees and ankles bending to near-breaking point.

Shawcross’s did not look like that and initially few would have even begun to guess what damage would result.

Analysts have been quick to jump on the tackle, suggesting that it, and the injuries caused, prevail only in the hurly-burly of the Premier League, where high-speed collisions are part of the game.