The ungrateful moaning directed at the game’s most successful managers only discredits the grumbling fans“I very much support Arsenal. But to be honest, Wenger needs to coach another team now and Arsenal needs another coach.” So said Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, after Arsenal’s third successive defeat, 2-1 at home to Manchester United in late January.
James McMahon explains why Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn is concerned about the fate of the Olympic Stadium
On January 28, the Olympic Park Legacy Company will meet to decide the future of the £500 million state-owned stadium centrepiece of the 2012 Olympic Games. Not permitting Acts Of God or natural disasters, by then we will know whether it is West Ham or late bidders Tottenham Hotspur who will be looking to relocate to a new home in Stratford post-2012.
Nonsensical immigration rules and poor administration are holding back football across east Africa. Steve Bloomfield reports
McDonald Mariga should have been the first Kenyan to play in the Premier League. The fact he now finds himself playing for Internazionale means no one should feel too sorry for him. However, the failure of Manchester City to sign him on transfer deadline day highlights the problem with Britain’s immigration rules for football – rules which are holding back the development of the game in east Africa.
Ivory Coast’s match with Malawi ended in horrific circumstances as 19 fans lost their lives. James Copnall investigates where things went wrong
The 19 dead and 132 injured in Africa’s latest stadium disaster, in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, suggest lessons haven’t been learned from past tragedies. On Sunday the problems started outside the stadium. Thousands of supporters, many without tickets, milled round the freshly painted bright orange walls of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium. Music was blasting from inside the stadium, and queues outside stretched hundreds of metres even four hours before the 5pm kick-off. The World Cup qualifier, against a limited Malawi side, was expected to be an easy and morale-boosting victory. Local football fans needed a lift after the fiasco of the inaugural international tournament for African-based players in February, which Ivory Coast hosted and flopped at; the national side had also performed badly at an African junior competition in Rwanda. Perhaps more importantly, in a country where he has reached a staggering level of stardom, Didier Drogba was playing on home soil, for the first time in over a year. What happened next will be a topic of debate for a long time.
The fuss over the timing of Ghana 2008 helped put the tournament centre-stage around the world – and those watching can only have been impressed, writes Alan Sharif Duncan
There can be no turning back now for African football. Largely overlooked a decade ago as little more than the continental confederation’s nativity play, the Africa Cup of Nations is being transformed into something of a global sporting phenomenon. While there will be those who will mourn its relative loss of innocence to a world of sponsors, TV rights and unprecedented western media scrutiny, Ghana 2008 was, in terms of the quality of football alone, a timely coming of age – two years before South Africa hosts the World Cup.