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Search: ' Spain'

Stories

Drawing a blank

Paraguay fared well at the Copa América and the World Cup, but as Simeon Tegel tells us, their style of play has frustrated many fans

Is the glass half-full or half-empty? That is the question dogging Paraguay’s national team after achieving two of their best ever tournament results, in the Copa América and World Cup, while barely winning a match. The Guaraníes, nicknamed after the indigenous group that still lives in swathes of the country, finished runners-up in August’s South American championship and made it to the last eight in South Africa, a first for the sparsely populated nation in a World Cup.

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Transfer calls

Questions are being raised about the influence one agent has over La Liga’s biggest deals, reports Dermot Corrigan

Given the financial difficulties Spanish football faces, the summer transfer market was mostly quiet, with the majority of deals either free transfers or loans. However, this general trend was bucked by Portuguese super-agent Jorge Mendes and former Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon, whose dealings drew attention from the Spanish media and even FIFA, raising questions about just who makes the important decisions at some of La Liga’s biggest clubs.

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Balance of power

The continent’s richest clubs are attempting to wrestle wealth and influence from more traditional places, reports Alan Tomlinson

In the context of Sepp Blatter’s stated intention to push through reform of FIFA practices, various groups have been claiming to be the true voice of football, none more robustly than the European Club Association (ECA). This is the self-proclaimed “nuclear family of the football society”, the successor to the elite G-14 group established in 2000, which was expanded to 18 in 2002 and disbanded six years later.

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Golden balls

Paul Kelly looks at how the award for the world’s best player has evolved since 1956

In Paris three years ago, after Cristiano Ronaldo became the fourth Manchester United player to win the Ballon d’Or presented by France Football magazine, Alex Ferguson was asked which Old Trafford legends he considered unlucky not to have lifted the prize. “Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs,” he replied. No Roy Keane? No David Beckham? Ferguson’s wrong side is a lonely place to be.

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Free to Ayre

Steve Davies says that dividing TV deals unequally would make football less competitive but it could also be a legal minefield

Ian Ayre, the managing director of Liverpool, quickly qualified his reported assertion that his club should sell its own overseas TV rights and keep the income. He now says he meant that they should be sold collectively but the income divided on the basis of a team’s popularity, in terms of the number of times their games are featured. Clearly he was under pressure to modify his stance, given that even the other clubs who could have benefited from the move were against it. When Ayre heard Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck condemning his plan he must have realised he was on his own.

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