England’s women after winning beach soccer’s European Championship. England Beach Soccer
England’s women have been European champions and are ranked third in the world, but neither they nor the men get support beyond being able to wear the kit
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Playing for your country is the peak for most footballers but, as Steve Menary points out, it can come at a cost for lower-league players
For players in the lower leagues, pursuing an international career is a real gamble. The latest international calendar allows for 19 matches over a two-year period ending in 2012. With no automatic suspension of games in the lower divisions, players going on international duty risk losing their place at their clubs.
Paraguay fared well at the Copa América and the World Cup, but as Simeon Tegel tells us, their style of play has frustrated many fans
Is the glass half-full or half-empty? That is the question dogging Paraguay’s national team after achieving two of their best ever tournament results, in the Copa América and World Cup, while barely winning a match. The Guaraníes, nicknamed after the indigenous group that still lives in swathes of the country, finished runners-up in August’s South American championship and made it to the last eight in South Africa, a first for the sparsely populated nation in a World Cup.
Adam Brandon reports on the story of a footballer whose career, and life, was suddenly put in jeopardy
Just over a year ago Paraguayan striker Salvador Cabañas had been enjoying life as “King of América”, the title bestowed on him by fans of his club in Mexico City for whom he had scored 66 goals in 115 games. Then he was shot in the head in the toilet of a bar where he had gone drinking with his wife and his life turned upside down.
Steve Menary examined how FIFA's strict rules on "political interference" were being enforced across world football, and found varying results
If a private club suspended five percent of its members in the same number of years, asking for an explanation would seem perfectly reasonable. FIFA’s reason for suspending a dozen of its 208 members – some more than once – since 2005 is “political interference”.