Search: ' Ruud Gullit'

Saul Pope explains the monetary chaos, calendar change and political factors affecting the Russian Premier League

The new Russian Premier League season will be different, but not in a way many fans hope. With the gulf between the big boys and the rest growing ever wider, the league is getting more predictable – the top places will go to Zenit St Petersburg, CSKA Moscow, Rubin Kazan and Spartak Moscow. The difference is in the length – 2011-12 is to be a transition season of 18 months’ duration, with the season that follows swapping from the current spring-autumn calendar to, like much of Europe, an autumn-spring calendar.

Read more…

No one knows how much money hosting a World Cup makes (or loses). Ernst Bouwes reports

FA conservative analysis by [auditors] PWC calculates the economic benefit to England of hosting the FIFA World Cup™ at over £3.2 billion, creating thousands of new jobs and opportunities for the entire country.” So says the England 2018 bid on its website.

Read more…

Simon Tyers watches ITV and Sky attempt to outdo each other in the calamity stakes as television football coverage slowly becomes a parody of itself

The comedic songwriter Tom Lehrer once said that satire died on the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Seeing Neil Ruddock cast as an expert on a show entitled England’s Worst Ever Football Team, I knew exactly how he felt. At the other end of the scale, ITV’s commentary is the satirical equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

Read more…

Simon Tyers finds himself frustrated and bored by the level of punditry offered during live football matches

There’s an argument that we don’t need pundits on live football any more. Ultimately it’s all their own fault. Alan Hansen and Andy Gray laid the groundwork with their arrows and circles on replays over a decade ago. Since then the tactics industry has boomed in newspaper columns and books to the extent that there’s no longer any reason to have players’ attributes pointed out to us. Allied to that, at some point in the 1990s the people called upon to act as pundits changed from managers, coaches and wily old captaincy material to any old ageing pro who’s available.

Read more…

My love affair with Liverpool
by Dietmar Hamann
Headline, £16.99
Reviewed by Rob Hughes
From WSC 303 May 2012

Buy this book

For a man whose diligently effective playing style did little to dispel that old cliche about cold German efficiency, Dietmar Hamann is a burning romantic at heart. At least when it comes to the institution he served so well for seven seasons. In this hugely engaging memoir, written with Malcolm McClean, he likens his "magnificent romance" with Liverpool to "a passionate, flaming and enduring love affair" with both club and city.

Read more…