FIFA

Portrait of the Week

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Kyle Walker in front of England fans at this year’s World Cup in Russia

Two football books examine where money is taking the modern game

29 September 2018 9:00 am

‘Football holds a mirror to ourselves,’ Michael Calvin asserts in State of Play. Modern football is angrier, more brutal, more…

Fifa may be corrupt but it has done wonders for football

30 June 2018 9:00 am

In 1930, Jules Rimet, the creator of the Football World Cup, crossed the Atlantic in a steamship to attend the…

For Putin, the World Cup is not about football but global respect

13 January 2018 9:00 am

Authoritarian regimes love grand international sporting events. There’s something about the mass regimentation, the set-piece spectacle, the old-fashioned idea of…

Novak Djokovic, the world number one, said that he turned down US$220,000 to throw a match. (Photo: Getty)

This could be the year that sport starts to die

30 January 2016 9:00 am

If sport loses the public’s faith – and it’s starting to – then all its power and glory will fade

Any Other Business

2 January 2016 9:00 am

Last year was a bumper year for mergers and acquisitions. Recovering prospects and relatively low price-earnings ratios made the takeover…

Portrait of the Year

12 December 2015 9:00 am

January David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that only electing the Conservatives could ‘save Britain’s economic recovery’. Labour unveiled a…

It’s not just the Russians – there is no morality in top-level sport

14 November 2015 9:00 am

Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had…

Mario Balotelli (Photo: Jamie McDonald/Getty)

I've loved football for decades. Now I dread the start of the season

8 August 2015 9:00 am

I’ve spent years defending football from middle-class disdain. But I can’t do it any more

Why sport and sham morality go so well together

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Why sport and sham morality go so well together

What Tacitus would have made of the applause at Fifa

13 June 2015 9:00 am

Apparently Fifa emperor Sepp Blatter received a ten-minute standing ovation from his 400 staff when he addressed them after his…

Spectator letters: Allan Massie on the FBI; Christopher Booker on graffiti

13 June 2015 9:00 am

The long arm of the FBI Sir: The White House may be less willing than it was to play the…

Portrait of the week

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, toured Europe trying to gain support for reforms to favour Britain’s position in the…

Pliny the Younger on Fifa

6 June 2015 9:00 am

In any huge enterprise (like Fifa), where does the rot begin? Pliny the Younger mused on this question in a…

Charles Moore’s notes: Does Chuck Blazer exist?

6 June 2015 9:00 am

We in the West all hate Sepp Blatter, so we pay too little attention to the manner in which the…

Football’s elite deserve the foulness of Fifa

6 June 2015 9:00 am

My favourite moment in the crisis engulfing football’s governing body, Fifa, came with the intervention of a man called Manuel…

American justice is behaving as the world’s CCTV system – and the fall of Blatter doesn’t make that right

6 June 2015 9:00 am

‘In matters of criminal justice,’ said NatWest Three defendant David Bermingham after a London court extradited him and his co-defendants…

An ancient Olympic tradition that Fifa would love

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Those nice people at Fifa seem to be having a terrible time from the British press, which never stops accusing…

Portrait of the week

22 November 2014 9:00 am

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Red warning lights are once again flashing on the dashboard of the global…

Now even Fifa’s dinosaurs have learned to cry racism

14 June 2014 8:00 am

Are all white women really prostitutes who should be avoided, as some children at those schools in Birmingham were apparently…

Portrait of the week

7 June 2014 9:00 am

Home The government scrabbled together material for the Queen’s Speech, which promised measures to allow money to be put into…

Did anyone really think that Qatar won the World Cup fairly?

7 June 2014 9:00 am

I suppose the appalling shock to the soul that was occasioned by the allegation that Qatar bribed its way to…

ANOTHER media failure. How does Tina Brown get away with it?

21 September 2013 9:00 am

Gstaad Why are hacks scared to state the obvious? In Britain the excuse is the strict libel laws. But in…