Search: 'Brazil'

Apparently, Portugal's campaign suffered from the odd distraction. Andy Brassell looks at how the Portuguese, Spanish and English media covered the saga of Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid

As soon as Cristiano Ronaldo arrived in Viseu in northern Portugal on May 23 for his national team’s pre-Euro 2008 training camp, he must have known he was in for a long summer. He’d been granted permission to arrive four days later than the rest of the squad, along with Nani, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira, after his participation in the Champions League final. His delayed entrance was only lacking him riding in on a white horse for the Portuguese media, although Real Madrid had already made very clear their intention to make him into the Bernabéu’s new superhero.

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FC Vaduz have become unwelcome guests in the Swiss top flight, writes Paul Joyce

The 35,365 citizens of Liechtenstein, the principality of only 62 square miles wedged between Switzerland and Austria, barely raised an eyebrow in March 2007 when Swiss troops on exercise mistakenly wandered into their country. An invasion in the other direction, however, is currently proving more controversial.

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For years Sepp Blatter has proclaimed how wonderful his organisation is, but a report  has highlighted how unaccountable FIFA are and a court case in Switzerland is hearing allegations that a collapsed marketing firm paid bribes to members of FIFA committees. John Sugden sorts through the murk

Two developments are raising serious questions about the way Sepp Blatter and the organisation he so prominently overlords go about their business. First, in a recently published “accountability” league table comprised of 30 of the world’s most powerful international organisations, it will come as little surprise to those of us who have been investigating world football’s governing body to discover that FIFA are languishing fifth from bottom.

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Futsal has become a professional game in some countries and improves the basic skills of players but England is still not interested, writes Jon McLeod

It is the game that produced Ronaldinho and Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet despite it having fostered some of the world’s finest talents with skill, ingenuity and tactical astuteness, England has neglected futsal. From its constricted origins on the streets of São Paulo and Montevideo in the 1930s, this five-a-side version of football has spread throughout Europe and the Middle East and across the rest of Asia. In 1989 FIFA confirmed it as the official small-sided form of the game and, in the internet age, players such as Brazil’s Falcão (aka Alessandro Rosa Vieira) are becoming YouTube regulars, rivalling the most flamboyant exponents of 11-a-side football.

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São Caetano weren’t founded until 1989 yet rose rapidly to the pinnacle of the South American game, only to fall at the last hurdle and slip back as the richer giants reasserted themselves. Robert Shaw reports

Brazil’s most consistent club at the start of this decade were not one of the major names. Instead it was Associação Desportiva São Caetano, a club that rose from the third division of the São Paulo state league to upset the establishment before returning to near obscurity six years later.

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