Next year we hope Nigerian super-pastor T.B. Joshua will let us know what 2013′s top 10 sporting moments will be well ahead of time (we’ll be starting our dedicated sports page “Football is a Country” in the new year and if Joshua wants to join in he’s more than welcome). While professional TV pundits cautiously […]
1. This high-stakes knockout format might not be so bad after all. Qualifying groups are long, turgid affairs, especially the European ones, international football’s equivalent of the snoozetastic-but-moneyspinning Champions League group stages. Knockout football puts the big names at risk, as they should be. This past weekend was joyous.
Ever since Rupert Murdoch invented football in 1992 (see Fivers passim), African players from all over the continent have lit up the English Premier League and helped turn the competition into a continent-wide obsession. (Just last week, Arsene Wenger said he had been “frightened” by the intensity of Arsenal’s popularity in Nigeria and Kenya.) African […]
There’s an abundance of young African football talent plying their trade in Europe now. So much so that a player like Armaud Mendy–seen in the video scoring a spectacular goal in the FA Cup last weekend–has to play for Macclesfield Town in the English second division. Later this month the 2012 African Cup of Nations finals will […]
