Search: 'Brazil'

Matthew Barker reports on a desperate but imaginative protest movement that relied on solidarity from the local community

In late February, players, staff and supporters of Lombardy side Pro Patria staged a three-day sit-in protest at the club’s Stadio Carlo Speroni. In recent years the Lega Pro Division Two (fourth tier) team has endured a litany of miserable luck and disastrous financial mismanagement. Occupying the stadium was a last attempt to save a dying club and a famous name in the Italian game, even if i tigrotti (the little tigers) last played in Serie A in 1956.

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The Brazilian tradition of exporting talented footballers to the rest of the world may be changing. Robert Shaw reports

The new season in Brazil kicked off in January with an unusual sight: four of the country’s biggest stars over the last two decades (Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldinho) were playing for local clubs. Admittedly this curious spectacle did not last long. Corinthians’ cataclysmic exit from the Copa Libertadores saw Roberto Carlos fleeing to another big pay day in Russian football and 
Ronaldo bringing forward his retirement.

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Thirty years ago this month Ipswich thrashed the best team in France. Csaba Abrahall looks back to a memorable UEFA Cup tie

Just the other week, I was listening to Arsenal’s come-from-behind victory against Barcelona at the Emirates. “Remarkable!” said Alan Green. Indeed it was but, as they’d done something very similar last year, somehow not extraordinary. This is how the Champions League has changed European club competition. The group format and perennial participation of the same teams renders a fixture such as Arsenal v Barcelona hardly less routine than Arsenal v Bolton. Notable performances by English clubs in Europe are therefore increasingly common, but so common as to be almost mundane.

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The Asian Cup in Qatar highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of football in the region. John Duerden was there

You had to feel a bit sorry for Qatar. Despite having over a decade to prepare for the 2022 World Cup after the events of December 2 in Zürich, the tiny nation in fact had just five weeks before it was put on the spot. On January 7, the 2011 Asian Cup kicked off in Doha giving an international media, one that needed no second invitation to demonstrate the extent of FIFA’s madness, the chance to scrutinise Qatar’s hosting capabilities/football culture/traffic and pretty much everything else.

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While the big clubs claim conspiracy, Matthew Barker believes that Verona don’t receive enough credit for a famous title in the 1980s

The popular back story to Hellas Verona’s one and only Championship win, in 1985, tends to focus on the introduction of a new public balloting system for the selection of referees. Claims had been repeatedly made that the bigger clubs would block the use of certain unfavoured match officials. Juventus had just won two controversial scudetti in a row. Surely, the argument goes, it was no coincidence that the one season when referee selection was kept in check, a smaller team were able to take the top prize?

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