Search: ' Ronaldinho'

Robert Shaw looks at how Brazilian football still has racial issues to resolve, especially once a footballer’s playing career has ended

Botafogo striker Sebastián Abreu put on odd boots – one white, one back – for the club’s derby with Flamengo in the Carioca (Rio state) championship on April 10, while another Rio club, Vasco da Gama, recently launched a shirt with a message on the collar about “democracy and inclusion”.

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The Brazilian tradition of exporting talented footballers to the rest of the world may be changing. Robert Shaw reports

The new season in Brazil kicked off in January with an unusual sight: four of the country’s biggest stars over the last two decades (Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldinho) were playing for local clubs. Admittedly this curious spectacle did not last long. Corinthians’ cataclysmic exit from the Copa Libertadores saw Roberto Carlos fleeing to another big pay day in Russian football and 
Ronaldo bringing forward his retirement.

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With Blackburn Rovers linking themselves to several high profile players, it seems enhancing the brand may be a little too high up the priorities list for some clubs

WSC is delighted to announce that JK Rowling is set to join our editorial team later this month. We have arranged an attractive salary package in the vicinity of £20,000 a year plus three weeks paid holiday and various fringe benefits including the use of a bike rack. Her representatives are still to confirm that it’s a done deal but we expect to have it tied up by the middle of January. In the meantime be sure to join the throng flocking to our Twitter and Facebook pages for regular updates. We’re pretty stoked about this as you can imagine.

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Mick Collins observed the closing of the transfer window with unease and distaste, unlike Sky TV or others who stand to profit

The business of football is a complicated one, truly understood by only a special few. Unfortunately, those special few have more sense than to get involved, thus leaving it in the hands of opportunists and incompetents. There’s no longer a mystery about this, with winding-up orders and administrators long since letting light in on the game’s chaos. Even while it steams towards the financial buffers, however, stoking the engine with £50 notes, some of us still look for a defining moment.

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An anti-climatic exit, injured star player and end of an era – the next World Cup hosts need to improve. Robert Shaw explains

Brazilians don’t anticipate winning every World Cup. But they do at least expect to bask in their technical superiority until a defensive howler denies the assumed divine right to be world champions. Frustration at losing to Holland – opponents overcome in 1994 and 1998 – was compounded by the sense that the Dutch posed the biggest hurdle to Brazil’s fourth final appearance in five World Cups.

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