History Archives ⋆ An Old International

Eternal Bauer – Bauer Eternel

These days tickets to see Red Star at the time-honoured Stade Bauer are hard to come by. The team sit comfortably on top of the league with a five-point cushion over second-placed Niort Chamois. The game vs Nîmes was a sending-off for one the oldest stands in European football still in use: it dates back…

Crisis? Crisis! Magdeburg in freefall

More than a third of the season have been played and Magdeburg look not convincing. The moment this began came during the match against Schalke 04 in September. The team of Christian Titz were cruising to victory and were already 2-0 up after 30 minutes when Schalke suddenly scored. It swung the momentum the other…

it’s only a tap-in

The finish by Marcus Dinanga looks easy but the movement involved more than 30 passes – 37 to be precise – and saw 10 players touching the ball at least once. Observers of football of a certain age will remember a previous instance. During the group stages of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Argentina…

Red Star’s new shirt a reference to club’s history

The Parisian club Red Star have chosen to create their new shirt for the 2023/24 season with the help of artificial intelligence. OFFICIEL ! Le Red Star dévoile ses nouveaux maillots 2023/24.Pour dessiner ces maillots, Kappa et le Red Star ̀… ' , à partir d'images d'archives du club.Qu'on aime ou qu'on n'aime… pic.twitter.com/6TBU7mNGCA— Actu…

Not my game (anymore)

Barely a week is passing during this summer transfer window without news of some daring transfer proposal from a Saudi Arabian football club. It appears that ever since Cristiano Ronaldo has signed for Al-Nassr FC, his colleagues have followed suit. The latest arrivals are Karim Benzema, Sadio Mané, N’Golo Kanté, Jordan Henderson and Steven Gerrard.…

Gianni Infantino’s moral compass

There is a new president of FIFA and it is the same as the old: Gianni Infantino. The vote was more or less a proclamation of a new king or emperor, less a democratic process. Though, whoever thinks FIFA acts democratically may think twice. Afterwards, the president gave insights into his motivation to stand for…

John Motson, 1945 – 2023

Some classic John Motson commentary. Two matches of football which Motson commentated on and which have engrained themselves in memory for various reasons. Enjoy. Germany’s Wurst Nightmare, 2001 This is a classic match: for one team it was a nightmare, for the other it was the beginning of a dream that come to an end…

FIFA’s coffers

As a little note for the weekend:

According to its latest report, FIFA have recorded $5.8bn revenues in 2022, largely due to the World Cup in Qatar. According to Wikipedia the Gross Domestic Product of Guam for 2017 was estimated to have been $5.793bn; for 2022 there were no figures available yet. For 2022 the list of GDP shows that FIFA would rank somewhere between Lesotho and the Central African Republic in terms of revenues. For a non-profit organization this is a lot.

This gives this association an incredible amount of financial and political power. And it is of course not shy to use this. It has borrowed the city of Berne around CHF1.8bn over the last six years. Apparently, the towns and cities to which FIFA has leant money had found no other lenders despite their ratings being impeccable. What is not so impeccable is of course the reputation of FIFA. The organization is mired in scandal, yet the mayors seemed not to care.

At the same time global governing body of soccer has ‚only’ donated $1m to the earthquake relief fund for Turkey and Syria.

FIFA is drowning in money says this report in the German broadsheet F.A.Z.

image credit: Money Bags by 401(K) via flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0

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Opening the Box of the Pandora

According to Greek mythology Pandora was the first woman on earth, made by Zeus from clay. Legend has it that Prometheus copied man from clay found on earth and as a punishment Zeus send Pandora to earth, gave her a box but prohibited her to open it. Being curious she opened it herself and out…

Walking backwards into the future

The World Cup 2022 in Qatar ended just as the previous edition in a desaster when the team were eliminated during the group stages of the tournament. It initiated a debate about the national coach, Hansi Flick who fially stayed in office and about the manager and sporting director Oliver Bierhoff. The latter handed in…