Search: ' Spain'

The Russian League plan to switch to playing through the winter, but James Appell wonders if anyone checked the weather forecast

Russia in winter is not an especially pleasant place, even when you’re wearing a thick coat. It can’t be any better wearing football kit. But the Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) have in recent years been considering moving the season of the top two divisions from summer to winter, in keeping with the majority of Europe’s major championships. Russia’s footballers will have been phoning through orders for thermal underwear since July 29 when the RFPL officially unveiled the plan to switch to an autumn-spring season by 2012. “The most important of our goals is the move to an autumn-spring system,” RFPL president Sergey Pryadkin told the press. “It’s difficult to give a fixed time-frame at this moment, but we expect this to occur in an even-numbered year where there will be a break for the European Championship or World Cup. It’s possible that it will be 2012. This is the way forward from a commercial point of view.”

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Sven is quietly settling in as Mexico manager while his lookalike makes the headlines, says Martin del Palacio Langer

Mexico has always had stormy relations with its national-team coaches. The process is generally the same. They arrive amid great expectation and, after a few poor results, end up arguing with the press and being hated by the fans. Although the national team got through the group stage of the past four World Cup finals, no coach has lasted more than four years since Ignacio Trelles, who was in charge between 1958 and 1968.

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Research has proved that there is more to penalties than just luck, writes Simon Creasey

Shootouts are always fraught with tension. However, one man believes that he has discovered a way of easing the tension and maximising a team’s chances of winning. The man in question is Ignacio Palacios-Huerta from the London School of Econ­omics’ department of management. Part of his body of work includes a recently co-authored report with Jose Apesteguia of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona, entitled “Performance pressure in the workplace: evidence from a randomised natural experiment”. The report saw the pair study 260 shootouts from national and international cup competitions – a total of 2,712 penalty kicks.

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In Spain Phil Ball saw a traditionally divided country come together at last, in football terms at least

The world turned upside down – Spain the favourites to beat Germany in the final. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the ever-superstitious and pessimistic population, represented by its ever-pessimistic and superstitious popular press, were convinced that the Germans would still win. It was nonsense, but Spain needed a get-out clause. It is written into the ­constitution.

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Barney Ronay spent three weeks in foreign parts. Not Austria or Switzerland, but UEFA Town, a tightly policed, mascot-infested, first-class-all-the-way state dedicated not to football, but to money

According to a UEFA press release, the Euro 2008 mascots Trix and Flix embody competition, friendship, tolerance, teamwork, magic, style, ability and attitude. They also have distinct personalities. Flix is a cheeky scamp, but Trix “is more serious and self-controlled” – qualities not, it has to be said, usually associated with a jobbing actor in an eight-foot cartoon outfit doing the running man. At their unveiling, Swiss tournament director Christian Mutschler appeared completely serious when he said: “I am sure the mascots… will become a vital part of the understanding of the whole event.”

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