So, France made it to the World Cup at the expense of the Republic of Ireland. Expected? Maybe. Still, the way Les Blues made it through is far more than questionable.

For those of you who were hibernating during the past week and somehow don't know how France qualified, Thierry Henry handled the ball 13 minutes into extra time and passed it to William Gallas, who headed the controversial goal allowing France to reach next year's finals with a 2-1 win on aggregate.

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The year is 2010AD, Girls Aloud have split, Jedward are ruling the world with over 237 million albums sold, forcing many a music fan to throw themselves of various bridges throughout the world, Sir Dexy Longshot has left UKFF and now writes for Gardeners Weekly & Spurs are Premier League champions.

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Bad Thierry Henry. You cheated and you are the hero of all of France for it. Somewhere Michel Platini is dancing because you did it. Somewhere Sepp Blatter and the rest of FIFA are doing an Arsene Wegner impression. In Ireland your face will end up on dart boards and was the reason that children cried themselves to sleep last night. Click to continue reading...

Thierry Henry is the villain of the soccer world today. He will be for a while.
In one of the shadiest moves on the big stage in recent memory, the French legend (after being offside) intentionally handled the ball in setting up the game-winning goal to send his country to the World Cup, and unfairly end Ireland's dreams. Click to continue reading...

(Just in case the thousands of others weren't doing it for you).
Thierry Henry's despicable handball in today's deciding World Cup qualifier against the Republic of Ireland was probably the biggest soccer fraud since Diego Maradona's infamous "hand of God" act in 1986. The stakes, then as now, are massive: a quarterfinals berth at the World Cup then, a spot in next year's South Africa tourney now. Click to continue reading...

Today, Santos Laguna inaugurated their impressive athletic complex, Territorio Santos Modelo (TSM). And all of the heavy hitters in Mexican, CONCACAF, and world soccer were there, from Javier Aguirre, Justino Compeán, and Mexican President Felipe Calderón to Jack Warner, Sepp Blatter, and Pelé. Ricky Martin gave the first concert, and Santos and Brazil's Santos are playing the first match in the new stadium (with Matías Vuoso scoring the first goal). Click to continue reading...

The dispute between several clubs in the USL's first division and the league's administrators has reached the end-game this week, and Triangle Offense is reporting that the breakaway Team Owners Association is submitting its application for recognition as a league to the US Soccer Federation.

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Now that Argentina has qualified to the World Cup ensuring the presence of star player Lionel Messi, barring any injury or outlandish suspension,  how does one evaluate the comments made by FIFA President Sepp Blatter? Prior to the decisive qualifiers which yielded  Argentina's qualification to South Africa as well as Portugal's opportunity to do so through a two-legged playoff clash with Bosnia & Herzegovina, Blatter declared that the World Cup will not be affected if Messi or Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo were missing.

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Football's march into the modern era continues apace – whether the game's purists like it or not. Consider a new aerosol spray that is being promoted to help referees mark out the correct distance for a defensive wall to set up during a free-kick. The spray, which was invented by a company with the very catchy name of 9.

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They Think It's All Over... presents a WDKF Wednesday column which looks at the sinister motives behind FIFA's peculiar decision to change the workings of the away goals rule for the upcoming Asia/Oceania World Cup Playoff. Click to continue reading...

After the first leg of the World Cup Qualifying Playoff between New Zealand and Bahrain ended in a 0-0 stalemate in Manama, the New Zealand media all but hapless when it comes to the rules of the beautiful game have ben struggling to come to terms with the workings of the actually-quite-simple away [. Click to continue reading...

On this week's main report we take a look at the world football governing body FIFA.

Main Report 11 Transcript

'It is an institution that ... has taken on a social, cultural, political and sporting dimension in the struggle to educate children and defeat poverty. At the same time it has also become a powerful economic phenomenon.

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"Dear Leaders"

I think even Kim Jong il woud be envious of the uninterrupted reign of Sepp Blatter.

He and his father, Kim il Sung's combined 37 year rule of North Korea have isolated that country and created an international crisis group that deals with that country's nuclear weapons.

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No support for Blatter's re-election, Champions League shock results, impressive individual performances and spectacular goals, all feature on this week's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Vocabulary support can be found for the words in bold at the foot of the post.

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Lionel Messi

Ah! Maybe if I go to sleep I'll wake up and see this was just a nightmare and we didn't lose to a team with a name that sounds like a magician. ... When I do wake up I'm just going to play Legos all day and forget about this. ... It's not working yet. .

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On the day that retired ex River Plate, Argentinos Juniors, Villarreal, Cruzeiro and Argentina full back Juan Pablo Sorín was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Belo Horizonte (the city he's lived in three times during his spells at Cruzeiro), FIFA confirmed that another former Argentina player is held in rather less high esteem. Click to continue reading...

FIFA have established a new award named after Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas that will be given to the player who scores "the most beautiful goal" of the year.
It will be inaugurated in December during the 2009 FIFA World Player Gala and presented to the player - man or woman - who has scored the "most beautiful goal" during the past year.

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Gerade noch haben die Argentinier irgendwie noch die Kurve bekommen und sich für die WM 2o1o in Südafrika qualifizieren können. Überzeugen konnten sie dabei selten, die meisten Siegen waren mehr als glücklich und wo all die argentinischen Supertechniker auf einen Schlag ihre Technik und ihre Spielkreativität gelassen haben, weiß auch niemand. Click to continue reading...

Poring through the results of the closing stages of World Cup qualifying this past week, I'm almost agog at this cauldron of footballing fury, the extreme highs and crushing lows in the fight for the last few places destined for South Africa. And we haven't even reached Sepp Blatter's Official David and Goliath Playoff Round© yet. Click to continue reading...

Apologies to Ireland, Slovenia, Ukraine and Bosnia. FIFA does not want you at the World Cup in South Africa next summer. So fervent was its determination that the rules of the competition were changed midway through it with the introduction of a seeding system in the qualifying play-offs.

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In the aftermath of FIFA's controversial late decision to seed the play-offs for World Cup qualification in Europe, a large part of the debate has focussed on Click to continue reading...

There is a delicious sense of the absurd in the way Don Garber has gone about his MLS business in the last few days, almost like a Steven Colbert satirizing the moronic "ideas" market of the Blatter/Warner contingent in order to expose football's upper echelon time-wasters for what they are.
First, we had Garber telling European clubs that MLS could be a model for wage sharing on the continent, the equivalent of asking the Germans to slow down on the Autobahn or the French to "clean up those unions so everything can run better in the country and there'd be less strikes and stuff. Click to continue reading...

Most of you probably at one time or another saw the reports yesterday that Don Garber and Major League Soccer are "looking into playing indoors to shift season schedule." I waited until this morning to really gather my thoughts on this matter and because I just ended up with no time last night to get anything done (I had a good excuse I was seeing U2 play here in Dallas).

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Big Story
After years of torturous ownership from the insulting and patronising Halls to the clueless and inept Mike Ashley it would seem no wonder that Newcastle fans would be interested in attempting to assert some control on the destiny of their club, especially given their huge numbers and seemingly endless willingness to pump cash in through ticket sales and merchandise.

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The race for South Africa is heading down the final stretch and with the end of each round of fixtures comes the inevitable relief of those nations whose qualification has been secured. Notwithstanding the final set of group stage qualifying fixtures to be played later this week, below are the winners and losers if the road to World Cup 2010 ended today:

Still a couple of summer holidays up for grabs

South America (4; top placed in group) – Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina

With Uruguay and Ecuador breathing down their neck, Maradona's Argentina face a crunch tie in Montevideo in front of 73,000 baying Uruguayans, that will determine if Aguero and Co.

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As international week rumbles on and as we find ourselves exhaling with anger at Sepp Blatter's sudden imposition of a seeding system on the World Cup play offs, as well as cringing with embarrassment at the vast improvement brought about on the Beeb's Football League show by replacing Championship with League One, Bhasin with Chapman, and Claridge with Rosenior, an idle moment has found me Click to continue reading...

I've lost all respect for FC Barcelona.
Of course they have the living legend Thierry Henry and on their day football-wise they are almost as good as Arsenal reserves but thats about it for me. To put it politely, they can go fuck themselves.
Its not Chico time but it has to be time for UEFA, FIFA or the WWE to throw the book at the Catalan's. Click to continue reading...

Austin "Jack" Warner FIFA

Most Hated Men in Football

Listen up, England fans: Jack Warner, FIFA Vice-President and CONCACAF President, might be the one man you're going to want to have a quiet chat with when hosting for World Cup 2018 is decided in 2011.

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Ireland boss Giovanni Trapattoni is not amused by FIFA's bunglingThe timing was definitely odd. Usually in professional sport, the norm is that you have the Click to continue reading...

They Think It's All Over... isn't exactly thrilled at FIFA Vice President Jack Warner's proposal for sin-binning at next years World Cup. Click to continue reading...

This week's good, the bad and the ugly features stories from the upcoming World Cup qualifiers as well as a shock salute from Spurs-fan Damian to Arsene Wenger. Whatever next, Damon to congratulate Sir Alex Ferguson?

Good

Just to prove that we are balanced here at languagecaster, my good this week goes to Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger who completed 13 years in charge of the second-best team in North London (sorry!

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As it's a quiet Arsenal week with the international break and I'm currently in transit from Asia to Africa in Dubai, I thought I might blog today on the prospects for England's World Cup bid for either 2018 or 2022.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">

The bid was recently launched at Wembley.

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As it's a quiet Arsenal week with the international break and I'm currently in transit from Asia to Africa in Dubai, I thought I might blog today on the prospects for England's World Cup bid for either 2018 or 2022.

The bid was recently launched at Wembley. It being Blighty, things couldn't go smoothly of course.

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Am I shocked that Chicago bombed out of the 2016 Olympic bidding? Not really.
Am I shocked that they bombed out in the first round of voting? Yes, quite a bit.
I should add that I have always been an enthusiast and supporter of the Olympics and, had I stayed a sportswriter, aimed towards someday covering the Olympics as a beat. Click to continue reading...

Image by footyfactor.com

What happens when Sepp Blatter and his cronies see millions of dollars and plenty of prestige in danger of disappearing? They change the system.

That's the conclusion drawn by many after FIFA last night announced they were altering their planned World Cup 2010 qualification play-offs system to seed teams based on their FIFA world rankings, a decision which clearly favours the traditionally strong nations.

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