SoccerBlogs

The modern football fan has grown accustomed to dealing with hypocrisy and idiocracy from the governing bodies that oversee the game. FIFA, UEFA, CONCACAF, etc. regularly make poor decisions and hand out head scratching fines and decisions all the time. The real frustration for me when it comes to dealing with the chronic nonsense from the alphabet soup on governing bodies is the feeling that they never seem to learn.

There are, of course, two sides to every coin. The news that HMRC had failed in its bid to get the football creditors rule, which ensures that all football creditors are paid in full in the event of an insolvency event at a football club while the the taxman has to join all other unsecured creditors in the line for coppers from a CVA wasn't particularly surprising.

Perhaps we are now so used to the gamesmanship of Sir Alex Ferguson in press conferences and interviews that we now look for subliminal messages in everything he says without even thinking about it. His comments yesterday on the nature of the relationship between football and television have certainly provoked debate, though, not least from those that have chosen to reflect upon the irony of the manager of a club that has arguably benefited more than any other from the expansion of television rights into being the main financial mover in the modern game commenting on the influence of broadcasters being to "shake hands with the devil.

The headline in El País said it all: "The strike of champions."

As of Friday, August 12, the AFE (Spanish Footballers' Association) union resolved to strike for at least the first two matchdays of the Spanish professional football season.

Their reason is  a crisis in Spanish football related to the credit bust that, thus far, has left at least 200 players in First and Second Divisions owed €50 million in wages.

Football is a passionate sport. It's played by passionate people, and followed by passionate people, and without such people, the sport would not thrive the way that it does – as Jock Stein famously said, "Football without the fans is nothing". The various governing bodies use the fact that the game is passionate, and that football fans are passionate people in order to sell television rights, and other marketing concepts around the world.

FIFA has already taken steps to assure that players picking up a single yellow card in the semifinals of the World Cup won't be ineligible for the final because of card accumulation. Should club governing bodies adopt the same approach?

The question is raised yet again after Chelsea's riveting triumph over Barcelona, one in which three starters picked up their second cards of the knockout phase and are forced to miss the final.

Buriram United chairman Newin Chidchob has vowed to continue his bid to find out if there are financial irregularities in football management.

During a meeting of representatives of Thai Premier League clubs last month, Newin asked TPL chairman Vichit Yamboonruang about the broadcasting rights of TPL matches and other income but Vichit could not give an answer.

The last week or so has said a lot about England, the state of the country, its sporting culture and the team that is supposed to represent it on the stage of international football. Apathy levels with the national team, however, are growing to the point at which it may become pertinent to ask the question of what the England national football team is actually for.

The last week or so has said a lot about England, the state of the country, its sporting culture and the team that is supposed to represent it on the stage of international football. Apathy levels with the national team, however, are growing to the point at which it may become pertinent to ask the question of what the England national football team is actually for.

There are plenty of people, not least within the governing bodies of football itself, who would have it that football and politics don't mix. This is, of course, bunkum, whether we like it or not. The game holds such influence over so many people that it sometimes seems impossible for politicians not to be able to link the two, from the relatively harmless, "You only win the World Cup under Labour" slogans of Harold Wilson's British government of the late 1960s to the altogether more sinister machinations of the state organisations and their leaders that ran clubs in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

The FIFA Women's World Cup 2011 is currently taking place in Germany and so in this post we feature a reading from 2002 on the history of women's football. The pdf worksheet contains exercises on skimming, note taking, vocabulary building and summary writing complete with answers.