Inside Insight – Inside World Football

How to become a winner, engrave your name on the trophy

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 16:54:31 +0000

November 18 – Sometimes you come across a person who appears to have become bigger than the organisation or institution they represent. FIFA seems to have found one – and it isn’t Lionel Messi.

FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, has taken a step towards football immortality, but not via perfomance on the field of play. He has had his name engraved on the Club World Cup trophy.

The Club World Cup is Infantino’s increasingly desperate looking expanded club competition that will be played with 32 teams in the US in 2025.

FIFA sambas the 2027 World Cup all the way to Brazil

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:52:09 +0000

Brazil’s success in winning the vote to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup at the FIFA Congress in Bangkok last Friday will undoubtedly provide a stimulus to, until now, a generally unloved women’s game in the country.

The success over the Belgium-Netherlands-Germany (BNG) joint bid was significant – both for South American women’s football and in assessing where power currently lies in the murky world of football politics, and who is manipulating it.

Waiting for Webb

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:49:09 +0000

September 6 – Former Concacaf president and FIFA vice-president Jeffrey Webb, who was scooped up in the FBI raids on the Bar au Lac hotel in Zurich will not be sentenced until December 7, more than six years after his arrest in May 2015.

Webb has almost become the forgotten man of the US Department of Justice indictments that brought the biggest institutional crisis in FIFA’s history. The highest profile of those arrested – he was many people’s tip to become the next FIFA president – he has escaped sentencing having petitioned the US courts 11 times to postpone his sentencing (most recently on march 22).

The post Waiting for Webb appeared first on Inside World Football.

Doha doting: Good ol’ boys join Wenger in Qatar

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 09:55:51 +0000

September 8 – If you think you might need moral support then call up a group of your sycophantic and often well-paid ‘legends’ to get you over the trickier hurdles of public and industry opinion.

That would appear to be what FIFA has done with its Technical Advisory Group looking into the impact of a World Cup every two years in the men’s game.

Led by FIFA Chief of Global Football Development Arsène Wenger,

Gold Cup delivers a dramatic return that ticks all the boxes

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 04:27:29 +0000

July 28 – The last time these two teams met Qatar beat the USA 14-8. That was in the vote for the 2022 World Cup hosting in 2010 and it unleashed a storm the like of which the football world has never seen.

Tonight Qatar – champions of Asia – play the US in the semi-final of the Gold Cup, Concacaf’s blue riband event for men’s national teams.

The 2010 World Cup vote was the trigger for a sequence of events that rocked football to its core as investigations into the vote process were instigated,

FIFA gives Swiss justice system a lesson in criminal law

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 15:45:25 +0000

By Paul Nicholson

Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. FIFA’s ethics folk don’t do much that isn’t in their own interest either.

Yesterday’s press release from FIFA was a work of art that can only be admired for the brilliance of its efficiency in dealing with the latest integrity crisis (and probably biggest so far) to hit the world governing of football under president Gianni Infantino.

It is a wonderful work of literature that is worth multiple re-reads – so remarkable is the content.

Did FIFA and Infantino just pull up the drawbridge as criminal investigators circle?

Paul Nicholson — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 13:01:12 +0000

FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s insistence that he will continue in post and brazen it out in face of the criminal investigation into his own behaviour – repeat, CRIMINAL investigation into his own behaviour – is no small thing. On multiple levels.

Up to this point Infantino has tried to pass off the growing pressure around his undocumented meetings with Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber as frivolous local politics – a Swiss thing that should be ignored.

In a world (cup) of their own. Will Trinidad be left playing Tobago?

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 11:36:20 +0000

By Paul Nicholson

The fate of Trinidad and Tobago’s 2020 World Cup qualifying campaign currently looks to be lieing in the hands of a Port of Spain High Court judge rather than at the feet of a team on the pitch.

Yesterday Judge Carol Gobin conducted a four-hour virtual hearing that will decide whether a case brought by the former Trinidad and Tobago FA board saw them illegally removed from office by a FIFA Normalisation committee.

Infantino’s Blatter complaints could become a rod for his own back

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 04 May 2020 09:11:47 +0000

By Paul Nicholson

May 4 – FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino’s insistence on the Swiss judiciary pursuing a criminal case against former FIFA president Sepp Blatter could blow back on the governing body and potentially become a PR embarrassment for beIN Sports and PSG boss Nasser Al-Khelaifi.

FIFA struck a secret deal in February – described at the time as a “friendly settlement” with Al-Khelaifi – that saw FIFA withdraw its criminal complaint against him.

Asian games: What help for Qatar-shirt wearing British football fan detained in UAE?

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 13:09:33 +0000

By Paul Nicholson

January 6 – FIFA has a new human rights case to champion and this one looks like it is directly related to football. Following the Iraq vs Qatar game at the Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates, British passport holder Ali Issa Ahmed was arrested, reportedly for wearing a Qatar shirt to the game.

The UAE, which is part of the economic blockade of Qatar,

Al Araibi and FIFA’s new found politically moral compass

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 10:44:47 +0000

By Paul Nicholson

The alacrity of FIFA’s move to call on stakeholders to find a solution to the detention of part-time footballer Hakeem Al Araibi in Thailand shows a remarkable new found conscience and morality in an organisation that eschews a philosophy of never mixing politics and football.

But for this FIFA it is rarely about the football. It is always about the power, and the money that can bring.

Asian political power play threatens a hard-won regional stability

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 14:05:38 +0000

By Paul Nicholson

The three biggest football presidencies in global football come up for election in 2019 with FIFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and UEFA all voting on new presidential terms. At present the only election of the three that will be contested will be in Asia – current president Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa announced his intention to run again last week.

He will be up against former Saudi Football Federation chief Adel Ezzat.

Enemies of the FIFA state beware

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 13:09:10 +0000

August 15 – FIFA has moved swiftly to counter criticism of its Ethic processes following global outcry over the removal of the word ‘corruption’ from its updated Ethics Code, and the worrying (if not frightening) introduction of a new ‘defamation’ offence, being widely talked about as a new law for cover-up.

Ever since FIFA president Gianni Infantino removed the ‘independence’ of its ethics body at its May 2016 congress in Mexico City by making key appointments subject to FIFA approval (initially only for a year),

The post Enemies of the FIFA state beware appeared first on Inside World Football.

Is Saudi Arabia heading the way of Kuwait and Pakistan?

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 07:57:56 +0000

Saudi Arabia may be breaking through a long criticised barrier to allow women to watch sports in stadiums, but the real questions should perhaps be around what sports they will be able to watch.

An alternative narrative is that this news is a worldwide smokescreen to cover up a much deeper issue that could lead Saudi Arabia on the road to international sports exclusion – and perhaps even exclusion from the FIFA World Cup in Russia 2018.

Paying lipservice? For FIFA equality is just a word

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 14:11:51 +0000

US striker Megan Rapinoe’s claim that FIFA is “old, male and stale” may have been a comment triggered by disbelief over FIFA’s final nominations for its top female player award, but the wider context does bear closer examination. A look at the top of the FIFA hierarchy shows that half its confederation presidents do not have competing national women’s senior teams.

So is FIFA really just paying lipservice to the women’s game and its development?

So what do we really know about Qatar that isn’t fake?

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 11:10:12 +0000

July 20 – The G20 demonstrations in Hamburg against Qatar last Saturday were paid for by an Egyptian businessman, according to German reports. The fake event that in turn spawned ‘fake’ news reports is one of an increasingly distorting series of stories and revelations that make the real situation in Qatar hard to understand, especially when trying to put into context any impact the blockade will have on the 2022 World Cup preparations and hosting.