Global Football

Do not adjust your television set; there is still no meaningful football on the planet at the moment. Well, to be fair, there is the National Super League and United States Major League Soccer. Hey, sometimes you get a dance with the hot chick at the club. And sometimes you …

Chapter six: Bribes took the World Cup to Germany                A RIO RACEHORSE OWNER was paid $1 million to strangle Brazil’s faint hopes of hosting the World Cup. The dark campaign to give the 2006 tournament to Germany involved the humiliation of Brazil and …

The Trinidad and Tobago national women’s football team represented the country’s best chance to qualify for a FIFA senior tournament since the men’s Germany 2006 World Cup. Today, it arguably represents something else entirely. Over the past 24 hours, the national women left for Houston in a fashion that is …

Chapter five: Ricardo’s favourite shoemaker  IF YOU BELIEVE Ricardo, he discovered the world’s most generous bank. It was located in Vaduz, in Europe, it lent him millions and charged interest, in the words of the Senator Alvaro Dias investigation, ‘absurdly below market rates.’ In fact, he never paid any interest …

Twenty-three year old James Rodriguez became the most expensive Colombian footballer of all time yesterday when the former Monaco attacker was unveiled as Real Madrid’s latest Galactico. Rodriguez marked his coming out ceremony at the Estadio Bernabeu by kicking footballs into the crowd and saving one exuberant spectator from being …

Chapter 4: How Mobsters João and Ricardo got rich  Baur au Lac hotel,Zurich October 2010 ‘Mr Teixeira, Mr ‘Teixeira!’ Ricardo turns to look. It is a scruffy, grey-haired man in a Joe Colombo-style beige raincoat shouting at him from the hotel gateway. ‘Mr Teixeira, did you take your bribes through …

Trinidad and Tobago national football team head coach Stephen Hart admitted that the “Soca Warriors” will struggle to keep up with its rivals if the present financial woes continue. Last month, Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) president Raymond Tim Kee and general secretary Sheldon Phillips promised camps for the …

Am I my World Cup brother’s (goal)keeper? Earl Best tackles a delicate subject with all the tact and finesse of an elephant in the Serengeti…or a police raid Behind the Bridge: There is a very real resemblance between Paul Pogba and Blaise Matuidi, the tall, handsome, articulate, intelligent, talented, black, francophone pair of …

So the ruthless Germans have won the Cup after all? It wasn’t the outcome Wired868 expert Lasana Liburd foresaw. But he has now decreed that tiki-kaiser shall henceforth succeed tiki-taka as football’s dominant style. Liburd’s opinion dovetails with the post-final view expressed by TV6’s Sweet Samba guru Keith Look Loy. …

Presumably, the German footballers passed the World Cup trophy around at a good tempo with no unnecessary showboating or fumbles. The 2014 World Cup belonged to the efficient, unrelenting Germans in the end. And the baby-faced assassin Mario Götze, who drew ire last year for ditching boyhood club, Borussia Dortmund, …

What players have left their individual stamp on the Brazil 2014 World Cup? Colombia’s James Rodriguez, Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Brazil’s Neymar, Germany’s Manuel Neuer and Netherlands’ Arjen Robben comes to mind. But no player has been at the epicentre of his team’s tactics as well the opposition’s as much Messi. …

Hopefully, the Brazilian football federation will locate the black box one day. Never in the history of the World Cup has a host team faced the embarrassment suffered by Brazil, the five-time champions, over the past five days. This was more tiki-torture than tiki-taka. It is one thing to have …