Search: 'Ivory Coast'

A German-speaking club are enjoying unprecedented success thanks to a strong Italian influence. John Chapman explains

May 23, 2010, was a day that will be long remembered by supporters of Allgemeine Sportvereinigung Eupen. On that day, AS Eupen became the first team from the German-speaking region of Belgium to reach the Jupiler League. With a population of 18,000 and close enough to Cologne to make watching games in the Bundesliga attractive, it’s not obvious how Eupen could put together a team that would one day rub shoulders with Anderlecht and Standard Liège. The answer dates back to October 2008, when Eupen were five points adrift at the bottom of the second division, and the arrival of Antonio Imborgia.

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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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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.

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Negative press stories allowed some World Cup visitors to justify staying in a sanitised environment. But those who did so missed out on the complete experience of South Africa in 2010. Jonathan Wilson reports

Maybe what I did was stupid – certainly the South African woman sitting next to me on the plane home thought so – but, frankly, the air of paranoia was driving me insane. In most cities in the world walking ten minutes out of a football stadium to a bar would be a normal thing to do; not in Johannesburg.

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David Bartram gets a sense of perspective on outlandish claims about a country competing in their first World Cup for 44 years

It’s July 11, 2010, and they’re celebrating on the streets of Pyongyang. North Korea have just won the World Cup. Well, not quite, but at least the people celebrating think they did. In reality, government officials have spent days tinkering with footage, editing out anything that reflects badly on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The 6-0 drubbing of the US in the final was particularly tricky, given that both sides crashed out in the group stages.

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