Search: 'grassroots football'

With Sepp Blatter on the ropes, Alan Tomlinson looks at how FIFA might reform itself

FIFA’s motto is: “For the good of the game.” The slo­gan is often parroted by the insiders in the FIFA elite, as they gloat from their luxury rooms in the world’s top hotels, or welcome you to their bunker-like FIFA House in the exclusive hillside suburb overlooking Lake Zurich, the Alpine summits across the water and the self-satisfied gloss of Zurich’s Banhofstrasse, with its top designer stores and morally dodgy banks. The FIFA elite is comfortable here. The wives of FIFA’s top brass like the lobbies and the stores. The FIFA men themselves like the loot and the secrecy.

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With the acrimonious industrial dispute over TV money settled, John Harding sifts through the wreckage and concludes the PFA have retained important principles

On the surface this year’s PFA dispute seemed an eerie rerun of the TV cash row of a decade ago, when a similarly rock solid vote gave Gordon Taylor a mandate to secure a deal with the newly formed Prem­ier League. However, this time around it’s been a dar­ker, murkier struggle. In 1991, Taylor was football’s White Knight, who had never put a foot wrong, was the saviour of small clubs, a doughty opponent of Thatch­er and so on. There were no “dirty tricks” and no club chairmen firing off vitriolic broadsides.

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Justin McCurry reports on how the rising political tensions in South Korea and Japan should not affect the 2002 World Cup

Logistically, awarding the 2002 World Cup to Japan and South Korea was a classic FIFA fudge, but it did raise hopes that the countries would put aside their historical differences and co-operate to make the tournament a success. With kick-off less than a year away, however, “football diplomacy” is proving no match for emotions stirred up by events of more than half a century ago.

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Kate Hoey lost her job as sports minister after the general election, to no one's great surprise. John Williams looks back at her term and argues that her views on Wembley were sound , but doomed

Her arrival was a blaze of brave talk and contro­versy, her departure something of a whimper followed by a series of moans in the Mail on Sunday, no less. In retrospect, appointing as sports minister in this particular government a women such as Kate Hoey was high risk stuff. Hoey has no strong objections to foxhunting, is at odds with her own government’s policy in countenancing a return to terracing in football stadiums, and, laudably, would rather see decent cha­nging rooms at grassroots for all athletes in all sports than see England host the 2006 football World Cup finals.

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With the promise of being the most football-friendly government, Martin Cloake investigates the manifesto which helped New Labour come to power in 1997 

Promising to be the most football-friendly government ever helped Labour get elected in 1997. This time, football has been much lower on the agenda of every party, where it appears at all. Yet the election had barely started before all mention of it was knocked off many front pages by the news that a football manager would probably be leaving his club in 12 months’ time.

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