Search: 'Brazil'

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.

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Dear WSC
How’s this for a delicious sense of irony? Brentford v Colchester United, Tuesday February 18, 2003. 1) On a freezing cold night when almost everyone wishes they’d stayed indoors, the Bees put in a dreadful first-half display and are roundly booed off the pitch. 2) In an effort to pla­cate the home fans, Brentford decide to play the D:Ream hit Things Can Only Get Better over the tannoy. 3) Immediately the song finishes, the club announ­ces the match has been abandoned at half time. If only the Bees’ strike force was as good as their comic timing.
Eddie Hutchinson, Ashford

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The most annoying fan in Brazil and quite possibly the world meets the women of Iran and Scotland star Lord Bron in Ian Plenderleith's latest surfing review

There are always new and arguably useless things to learn about football. Once you’ve been to Futebol, a website founded by writer Alex Bellos to promote his acclaimed book about Brazilian football, you’ll discover that no one in Brazil has any idea how many professional clubs there are in the country because new ones open and close every week. One sports paper lists almost 800 in its encyclopaedia, while another claims that “only” around 300 are actually operational.

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Brazil win again, but are the other sides there just to make up the numbers? Robert Shaw reports

You won’t find the likes of Jorginho, Junior Negão and Benjamin complaining, as Charlton did, that they have to play on a beach. That is because they form part of Brazil’s trium­phant squad that sealed the country’s eighth win at the World Beach Soccer Championship held in Rio this February. And with corporate sponsorship funding them as full-time professionals and an established circuit in Brazil it was little surprise that they took the title by beating Spain 8-2 in the final. In fact the only time that it has eluded Brazil was in 2001 when Portugal recorded a win in the north-eastern state of Bahia.

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Wednesday 1 Arsenal stay five points clear but only after a nervous last few minutes in which Chelsea score twice before losing 3-2. “I like to win games like that when you’re tired,” says Arsène, making an excuse even though he doesn’t need to. “It was like watching the tide coming in,” says Howard Wilkinson as Man Utd score two late goals to beat Sunderland 2-1 having trailed for 75 minutes. Liverpool drop down to seventh after a tenth winless match, a 1-0 defeat at Newcastle, but Gérard sticks his chin out, sort of: “I don’t want to commit suicide before the end of the season.” Several fixtures are postponed due to bad weather, and one, Reading v Leicester, is called off at half-time due to a waterlogged pitch.

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