Category: Section 2 Around the Net

German Bundesliga officials hope the World Cup will increase Germany’s appetite for its domestic league, making it easier to sell television rights abroad to matches played by clubs like Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Hertha Berlin. Germany’s league pales in comparison to the English Premiership or Spain’s La Liga in terms of TV rights and […]

The Asian Football Federation is less than impressed with its teams’ performance at this year’s World Cupnone of them qualified for the second round and has said it will make a “very concerted effort” to help restructure and re-launch its leagues, improve match formats, and boost their overall technical and administrative professionalism, an AFC official […]

The Chinese commentator famous for throwing expletives at the Australian team as Italy converted its last-minute penalty to send them home, could be headed for a sacking, the Age reports. Huang Jianxiang shouted things like “long live Italy” and “I don’t like the Australian team” after Francesco Totti put in Italy’s penalty to advance to […]

TV ratings for soccer games may have doubled since last World Cup, but Reuters columnist Steve James wants you to keep in mind a few things: games took place at 2:30, 5:00 and 7:30 AM at the last World Cup, and while ABC’s average rating of 2.5 for its first eight matches represents about 8 […]

Italy, lucky? You certainly wouldn’t call them “lucky” team if you looked at their recent history at the World Cup finals. USA 1994: eliminated on penalties. France ’98: eliminated on penalties. Korea/Japan 2002: eliminated by…well, the Italians would say ‘bad officiating,’ but a neutral just might call it ‘bad luck,’ or even, ‘a better organized […]

This was supposed to be Germany’s month, a time for the whole world to focus attention on how hospitable, proud and unified the dynamic country has become in the last 17 years. But when you take a closer look, it’s the former East Germans who look to be the odd ones out, a Bloomberg report […]

Everyone agrees: it’s already a classic. Germany and Argentina, the top-scoring sides at this year’s World Cup, in relieving us of these two days of soccer deprivation, are sure to serve up drama, suspense, shrapnel, fireworks, you name it…Hmm, the last time a match received this much hype (Argentina-Netherlands) it turned out to be very […]

But others will tell you the quarterfinalists “ooze class.” Whereas four years ago South Korea, Turkey and Senegal had never advanced so far as the final eight, this year, six of the eight teams have won the World Cup before, with Ukraine the only newcomer to the quarterfinals. FIFA President Sepp Blatter is in raptures […]

While FIFA and German soccer marketing heads continue to pipe on and on about how this is the best World Cup ever, Deutsche Welle columnist Oliver Samson just doesn’t agree, what with the lowest goals per game average (2.36) of any finals since Italia ’90 and the highest number of yellow and red cards. Even […]

Former Juventus defender Gianluca Pessotto is in critical condition after an apparent suicide attempt, ANSA reports. Pessotto underwent surgery during the night to improve blood circulation around his ankle, which shattered after the ex-Italy national team defender leapt from the top of Juventus headquarters on Tuesday night. Apparently, Pessotto was “very close” to dying from […]

Buenos Aires stops when the national team plays. Only a quarter of the city’s taxis are running, train service is cut to a minimum, directors encourage professors to suspend classes and pedestrian traffic on the streets is visibly depleted. You hear very few noises too, save for background TV commentary and the drone of a […]

Maybe they just couldn’t believe it: Spain still can’t seem to lift its curse at major tournaments and it all proved to be too much for the citizens of Madrid, who erupted into violence yesterday following Spain’s elimination by France. Municipal police officers drew their clubs on several young people who jumped into a fountain […]

Two of the most criticized players at this year’s World Cup (who happen to be teammates at Real Madrid) silenced their critics yesterday by leading their respective countries to what should be an exciting quarterfinal clash. Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane, both three-time recipients of FIFA’s World Player of the Year award, inspired their teams to […]

In 2002, the World Cup order was thrown out of whack: no France, no Argentina, no Italy, and no Holland, which failed to even qualify for the finals. Instead, the likes of Turkey, Senegal, South Korea and the United States helped give some actual global balance to a tournament traditionally dominated by two South American […]

Gianluigi Buffon, Italy’s excellent goalkeeper, admitted that he couldn’t watch as Francesco Totti stepped up to take Italy’s last-minute penalty against Australia. “You see the play from the back and sometimes it’s a tragedy and it takes you back to (South) Korea and you think, ‘not again’.” But it was Totti who with ice in […]

The International Herald Tribune called it a game of “numbing caution” and “desperate mediocrity,” as the Ukraine ended Switzerland’s World Cup on penalties. Switzerland now has the dubious distinction of being the first team to be knocked out of the finals without conceding a goal. Which is another way of saying they didn’t score enough. […]

Apparently, women are watching the World Cup in record-breaking numbers, which is great for the game. The big losers are advertisers, Reuters UK says, who definitely geared their advertising for predominantly male audiences. “It’s a new phenomenon, which has been undervalued and underestimated,” said Maurice Levy, chief executive of Publicis Groupe, the world’s fourth-largest advertising […]

There’s a saying in soccer that “you’re only as good as your last game.” For international soccer stars, that saying can either be a scourge or a blessing. Barely two weeks ago, Ronaldo was fat, lumbering and in danger of losing his place on Brazil’s starting 11; today he’s one of the greatest strikers in […]

Not that World Cup games need any added drama, but subplots always tend to spice things up. To the chagrin of the hapless Aussies, Italy and Francesco Totti in particular were able to exact their revenge on Guus Hiddink yesterday after Totti converted a 94th-minute penalty after a possible dive in the box from Italian […]

The Brazilian team moves with quite an entourage. No, we’re not talking about the extra team doctor here, but rather the 600-strong media circus that followed the national team to Germany. “Like a herd of wildebeests crossing the Serengeti, the Brazilian media descends upon unsuspecting venues, flattening — and interviewing — everything in its path,” […]

Shortly before the tournament began, comScore Networks, an Internet traffic management company, conducted a multi-country online survey in which they asked respondents to name the country they felt would win the World Cup. Overwhelmingly, Brazil was the answer. In France, 46 percent of respondents chose Brazil as the eventual winner, followed by Spain, 41 percent, […]

Say what you will about David Beckham, but England’s captain not for the first time saved England from another dire performance against Ecuador last night. As ever, Beckham’s goal came from a free kick, which he curled to perfection past the despairing Cristian Mora. It was a great goal, but it was also about the […]

There are two sides to David Beckham, writes Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle: One is a mythic figure capable of doing incredible things with a dead ball and the other is an aging soccer star past his prime, and probably Jenkins says, hurting his country. Beckham’s goal against Ecuador was pure mythic-Beckham; played […]

The reaction from the press is unanimous: yesterday was a black day for World Cup soccer. No less than 16 yellow cards and four dismissals tainted what could have been a classic round-of-16 encounter between the Netherlands and Portugal. Instead, as LA Times reporter Grahame L. Jones says, “Disgrace is the better fit.” Is the […]

Many of us know this already, but the rest of the U.S. is now figuring out there’s nothing quite as festive as the World Cup. “I’ve been to almost every major sporting event in the world,” Hank Steinbrecher, secretary general of the U.S. Soccer Federation between 1990 and 2000, tells the Chicago Sun-Times. “I’ve been […]