Search: 'World Cup 1982'

Robert Shaw looks back at a Sao Paulo team filled with future Brazilian World Cup winners who won their third league title

The long-term significance A landmark season for Sao Paulo and coach Tele Santana, 1991 would prove a false dawn in the reform of Brazil's domestic football. The squad that Tele built featured 11 players including Cafu, Leonardo and Rai who would play international football. Championship success in 1991 established the platform for Sao Paulo's Libertadores and World Club titles in 1992 and 1993. The 20 clubs played each other once: play- offs between the top four followed, meaning the 1991 Serie A was the simplest format since the establishment of the competition 20 years previously.

Read more…

ESPN’s purchase of Premier League games is not their first brush with football. David Wangerin traces a complicated relationship

In America, ESPN (Entertainment Sports Programming Network) is generally the most indispensable channel in the house; in the UK it’s just another satellite option. Whether the acquisition of Premier League rights will help the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports” to find greater favour over here is open to question. But its association with English football goes back further than even its Wikipedia entry is prepared to acknowledge.

Read more…

John Morrow examines a season in which football took a backseat to politics as Derry City were forced to resign from the league

 The long-term significance
The Northern Irish Troubles, which had broken out in earnest in 1969, cast a long shadow over football in the province as nationalist-supported side Derry City resigned from the league during the course of the season. Derry, whose Brandywell ground is located near the city’s Bogside area – the scene of fierce rioting in 1969 and Bloody Sunday in January 1972 – had been forced to play home games at Coleraine’s Showgrounds since September 1971 due to the fears of unionist-supported teams entering the area. Unable to sustain senior football, Derry City were put on the road to joining the League of Ireland in 1985 and remaining outside Northern Irish football to this day.

Read more…

América de Cali are the South American continental also-rans. They lost three successive Copa Libertadores finals in the 1980s and four in total. But the drugs barons who financed their success in getting there are now the cause of the club’s demise. Henry Mance takes up the tale

 “If they say I’m the best Colombian footballer ever, I must have done something right,” smiles Willington Ortiz. The former striker, who now runs a football coaching school, helped América de Cali to four of their five consecutive league titles in the 1980s with a style of play he recalls as “mucho dribbling”. Yet there was something else that “Old Willy” Ortiz and the América team built around him could not do: win South America’s major club competition, the Copa Libertadores. Three successive years América marched to the final, only to shuffle back to Colombia empty-handed. Few clubs can match América’s serial failure. Valencia have a decent claim, being the only club to have lost two Champions League finals in a row without ever having won the trophy; they also chalked up three consecutive Copa del Rey final defeats in the 1970s. In England, six teams – from Newcastle (twice) to Old Etonians – have lost consecutive FA Cup finals, but all won finals on other occasions.

Read more…

The trend in fake orgasmic goal celebrations is out of control and something needs to be done, according to Al Needham

Like everyone else, I thoroughly enjoyed Euro 2008, but I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why. Sure, the football was great, the lack of lumpy Englishness refreshing, and the feeling that you couldn’t tear yourself away from even the 0‑0 draws (just in case the entire Turkey squad ran on at the last minute, scored the winner, then ran off down the tunnel leaving everyone else standing there) was palpable throughout. But there was something else. And it bugged me for weeks.

Read more…