Qatar is no longer an explanation for someone gobbing on the pitch: the Premiership has a rival as a home for retiring players, as Daniel Anderson-Ford reports
“Our football league features some of the world’s greatest players, many of them working with some of Europe’s finest coaches, and we hope to compete with the best at club and national level.”
Snubbed again. Months after FIFA granted Oceania an automatic place in the World Cup, they have reversed the decision. Matthew Hall writes from a very angry continent
After FIFA’s Oceania World Cup backflip, neither Sepp Blatter nor UEFA’s Lennart Johansson should consider taking holidays in the South Pacific for the next few years. The two Europeans would normally receive excellent hospitality from southern hemisphere hosts, but, as figurehead and architect of FIFA’s turnaround on Oceania’s direct entry to World Cup finals, those days are gone.
Should international friendlies be cast on to the football scrapheap?
The new England shirts, launched at the end of March, have “anatomically engineered moisture management panelling”, which is another way of saying lots of small holes, ideal no doubt for playing in hot weather. Whether England will need to use them in a certain international tournament next summer is, of course, far from certain. However, a qualification failure by England wouldn’t displease the clubs employing three of the four players, Michael Owen, David Beckham and Rio Ferdinand, who modelled the new strip.
Today, Chile; tomorrow, the world. Dave Hannigan reports on the roundabout route but boundless ambitions of the Palestinian Authority's national side
Counting down towards the start of the qualifying campaign for next year’s Asian Cup in China, Palestine are hopeful that an influx of some South American flair via the parentage rule will yield success on the field and positive publicity off it.
Ian Plenderleith goes looking for the best in English-language coverage of European football on the web and shares the anguish of the Portuguese public over the latest career move for Phil Collins
Although most of the major websites now pay lip service to the burgeoning interest in European football with scores from, and columnists in, a variety of foreign countries, there are a number of English-language online locations that devote themselves to one country alone. Two of the best cover the Iberian peninsula.