Search: ' Vincent Tan'

The arrival of a Chechen billionaire has cause some strange developments at Swiss club Neuchatel Xamas, Paul Joyce investigates the new owner’s erratic influence

When Chechen billionaire Bulat Chagaev became the new owner of Neuchâtel Xamax in May, many supporters were optimistic. Swiss champions in 1987 and 1988, Xamax had struggled to stay in the Super League since promotion in 2007. Chagaev, who is also the main sponsor of Terek Grozny, promised to raise the club’s annual budget to CHF30 million (£23m). “We will quickly take on the most incredible challenges in Europe, starting with the Champions League,” he predicted.

Read more…

James Eastham discusses the newest scandal which has shaken French football

It was all going too well. The France national team’s remarkable rebirth under Laurent Blanc came to an abrupt halt last month following the publication of transcripts from tapes that threatened not only to end the former Manchester United defender’s impressive start as les Bleus manager, but also engulf French football in a bigger scandal than the World Cup players’ strike.

Read more…

Relive four weeks of statements of the obvious from the pundits, daily complaints about the wobbly ball and over-emphatic pronunciations of Brazilian names

June 11
South Africa 1 Mexico 1
“It’s in Africa where humanity began and it is to Africa humanity now returns,” says Peter Drury who you feel would be available for film trailer voiceover work when it’s quieter next summer. Mexico dominate and have a goal disallowed when the flapping Itumeleng Khune inadvertently plays Carlos Vela offside. ITV establish that it was the right decision: “Where’s that linesman from, that football hotbed Uzbekistan?” asks Gareth Southgate who had previously seemed like a nice man. "What a moment in the history of sport… A goal for all Africa,” says Drury after Siphiwe Tshabalala crashes in the opener. We cut to Tshbalala’s home township – “they’ve only just got electricity” – where the game is being watched on a big screen which Jim Beglin thinks is a sheet. Cuauhtémoc Blanco looks about as athletic as a crab but nonetheless has a role in Mexico’s goal, his badly mishit pass being crossed for Rafael Márquez to score thanks to a woeful lack of marking. The hosts nearly get an undeserved winner a minute from time when Katlego Mphela hits the post. Óscar Pérez is described as “a personality goalkeeper” as if that is a tactical term like an attacking midfielder. Drury says “Bafana Bafana” so often it’s like he’s doing a Red Nose event where he earns a pound for an irrigation scheme in the Sudan every time he manages to fit it in.

Read more…

A football club set up for asylum seekers in Vienna has found itself pressurised by the Austrian state. Paul Joyce explains

“FC Sans Papiers is a fight against racism and discrimination using modern and elegant means – sport,” explains its president Dr Di-Tutu Bukasa, who founded the side in 2002. Inspired by the French political movement of the same name, the Viennese team offers asylum seekers who lack an Austrian residence permit the chance to play regular lower-league football.

Read more…

Dermot Corrigan on the sad fate of Drogheda, after they nearly knocked Dynamo Kiev out of the Champions League

In August, Irish champions Drogheda United came within inches of eliminating Dynamo Kiev from the Champions League. Midfielder Shane Robinson saw his injury-time cross-shot diverted on to a post by Kiev keeper Taras Lutsenko, before the ball agonisingly rolled across the goalline with no Drogheda player on hand to tap home. Minutes earlier Adam Hughes had somehow fired over an open goal from six yards. The rattled Ukrainians held out to sneak through 4-3, then hammered Spartak Moscow 8-2 on aggregate to seal their place in the group stages. Drogheda were left ruing what might have been.

Read more…