Andrew Warshaw – Inside World Football

Qatar 2022: East meets West and lunch with an Arab

Paul Nicholson — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 14:07:12 +0000

It’s early afternoon at the official FIFA ticket resale centre near downtown Doha.

I have gone there expectantly, with my cousin and travelling companion, hoping to add a couple of extra games to those I already had purchased tickets for at this most unusual of World Cups – my ninth overall but my first purely as a fan rather than a working journalist.

It’s 29 degrees in the burning sun and there is a long queue of colourfully dressed fans snaking round strictly marshalled railings,

Derision and division: Infantino’s Qatar legacy

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 14:17:39 +0000

By Andrew Warshaw

November 21 – Two weeks ago, as organisers put the finishes touches to 12 years of planning, the president of FIFA and his trusted number two – clearly alarmed about their showpiece tournament being undermined by constant criticism over Qatar’s human rights record – took the unprecedented step of pleading with the 32 finalists to concentrate on the football and not to preach morality.

Fast forward to last Saturday on the eve of the big kick-off and Gianni Infantino,

England knocked out of another World Cup

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 13:10:18 +0000

By Andrew Warshaw

And so it goes on. While Italy, France, Germany and Spain have all hosted the World Cup in the last 40 years, the other member of Europe’s so-called Big Five elite – England – remain outside looking in, conspicuous by being overlooked when it comes to staging football’s greatest show on earth.

No matter how legitimate the reasons (excuses?) that were put forward by the UK and Ireland for ditching a joint 2030 World Cup bid in order to concentrate on Euro 2028,the fact remains that the country widely regarded as having some of the most modern stadiums on the planet and a domestic product worshipped by billions of fans worldwide isn’t even in the running for the global showpiece –

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Gunners shoot a dangerous hole in Premier League’s covid rules

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 14:34:09 +0000

It has become a regular occurrence but at the weekend it reached farcical proportions, leaving thousands of fans in the lurch, resulting in an unprecedented backlash and even prompting calls for a full investigation.

In the latest postponement of a top-flight English fixture because of coronavirus, the Premier League took it upon themselves to sanction the north London derby between Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal being called off following a plea by the visitors –

Getting to Euro 2020 kick-off is a triumph in itself, now anything could happen

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 10:19:39 +0000

June 10 – Better late than never. One year after its original date, Euro 2020 finally kicks off in Rome on Friday but with a very different feel to anything we have experienced in the past.

Twenty-four teams battle for supremacy across 11 cities one fewer than the original concept devised by former UEFA supremo Michel Platini to mark the 60thanniversary of the tournament.

With almost all host cities having to manage vastly reduced stadium capacities because of the Covid-19 pandemic that has ravaged football across the continent,

International breakages: Players and clubs feel the twin strains of covid and a heavy schedule

Paul Nicholson — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 13:18:13 +0000

November 20 – It’s been an international break like no other when it comes to the impact of Covid-19 on European and global football and has raised legitimate questions about the folly of the scheduling.

Matches called off due to lack of available players or government intervention, a string of positive tests resulting in key games being missed, managers up in arms. And that’s just for starters.

Everybody acknowledges that international football needs to be played.

Was Clarke’s stereotyping stereotypical of the English FA?

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:39:19 +0000

By Andrew Warshaw

November 11 – As inappropriate gaffes go, they don’t come much more untimely. Just as he was locked in a public and hugely anticipated debate with members of parliament on the subjects of inclusion and diversity, so English football boss (make that EX-football boss) Greg Clarke goes and puts not one but both feet in it.

First he referred to black players as “coloured”. Then he suggested South Asians had “different career interests”

Are FIFA Ethics’ teeth in un-repairable decay?

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 12:47:47 +0000

Will FIFA’s so-called independent ethics committee dare show its teeth in arguably its most important test case to date? That is now the all-important question after three days of unprecedented trouble-shooting by the organisation’s administration in defence of its under-fire president, Gianni Infantino.

Before attempting to answer it, let’s not under-estimate the attempts to which FIFA’s public relation machine rolled into overdrive over the past 72 hours as it tried to put the record straight over a criminal investigation launched against Infantino by a specially-appointed prosecutor with regard to those infamous undocumented dealings he held with Switzerland’s attorney general Michael Lauber who,

Andrew Warshaw: Does Klopp’s FA Cup cop-out take gloss off shiny image?

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 13:19:06 +0000

January 28 – Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is facing accusations of undermining the game’s oldest domestic cup competition in a row over whether English football’s first winter break is being fairly applied.

Klopp says he is pulling his entire first-time squad out of an FA Cup replay with third tier Shrewsbury Town next week and using his under-23 side instead because the fixture clashes with when his senior players should be enjoying a much-needed rest in the middle of a gruelling season.

When enough is enough: Haringey walk off over Yeovil Town fans’ racial abuse

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 13:23:32 +0000

By Andrew Warshaw

October 21 – Everyone was appalled by the headline-making events in Sofia recently when England’s black players were verbally abused by a section of the Bulgarian fans.

Much was immediately made, and rightly so, of the disgraceful behaviour of those responsible and it was little surprise, in the aftermath of the monkey chanting and Nazi salutes, that the Bulgarian FA chief Borislav Mikhailov and national coach Krasimir Balakov both tendered their resignations.