The two Champions League finalists already know they have around €70m in the bag.
- Professor of AfroEurasian Sport, EM Lyon Business School
Canadian tennis star Eugenie Bouchard has topped the list of most marketable athletes.
Is the UK condemning itself to decades of underachievement and potentially terminal decline?
r all of India’s cricketing passion, economic strength and for that matter its population size, the country is arguably the world’s most under-achieving sporting nation.
A winter World Cup in Qatar is no one-off inconvenience, it’s football’s new normal.
The Chinese economy has been growing at break-neck pace for the past three decades. It is the largest in the world by some measures and, as we all know, the Chinese sell the world everything from electronics…
There do not appear to have been any exclamations of “Je suis Torben” on social media over the last few weeks. This suggests that, in spite of the tragic and abhorrent events that have recently hit Paris…
He may not possess the urbanity of Carlo Ancelotti, be owner of the world’s biggest sporting brand, or have Cristiano Ronaldo at his disposal, but Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov is intent on creating…
It was a massive year for sport – a winter Olympics, a summer World Cup, the FIFA World Cup scandal that won’t die, and reforms afoot at the International Olympic Committee. Here are some of my highlights…
In 2014, Mercedes became the first German team to secure the Constructors’ World Championship title, the award for the most successful Formula 1 outfit over a season. Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg delivered…
Last year, the inhabitants of Bavaria overwhelmingly voted against Munich even bidding to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Ludwig Hartman, a member of the Green Party in the Bavarian state legislature…
Albert Camus once said, “What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport.” He was referring to the relative simplicity of morality on a football pitch rather than the realm of…
“The black players at this club lend the side a lot of skill and flair, but you also need white players in there to balance things up and give the team some brains and some common sense.” So said Ron Noades…
There is an old British saying: “It never rains but it pours”. One of Britain’s former protectorates may well have to consider adopting the phrase as its new national slogan. In Qatar, it hardly ever seems…
Football’s transfer window, like the post-Christmas sales, sees buyers frantically rushing around flush with cash and sellers rubbing their hands with glee. Except that, unlike goods in Selfridges on Boxing…
The domestic football season has already started in both France and England, with Germany, Italy and Spain’s leagues following hot on their heels. As each league kicks off, the competition over which is…
Over the next nine months, countless people will marvel at Manchester City or berate Jose Mourinho without ever really grasping how powerful and all-pervasive the Premier League has become. While 21st-century…
Back in 1990, while living in the Leicester suburb of Oadby, I spent two balmy summer evenings watching Oadby Town (currently of the United Counties League) play games to mark the opening of their new…
The two highest paid coaches at this year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil were Russia’s Fabio Capello ($11,235,210) and England’s Roy Hodgson ($5,874,570). Both of these teams exited from the World Cup after…
Although one of sport’s biggest mega-events has now come to an end (the World Cup), we are still only halfway through another – the Tour de France. Already, there are clear comparisons to be made between…
It is entirely predictable that the famous Audi advertisement and its tagline, “Vorsprung durch Technik”, came to mind while watching Germany’s epic World Cup victory over Brazil. In fact, using this tagline…
For the uninitiated, there is a popular British reality television show called “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” in which desperate wannabes compete for the right to star in a London-based theatre…
By now, the names Moy Park, Oi and Yingli are deeply embedded in your brain, right? And, you know what they are, where they are from and what they do, agreed? Or are you struggling with them: perhaps these…
If you haven’t heard the song by now, you soon will; Mas Que Nada by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 will be a big part of this summer’s soundtrack. As the World Cup in Brazil fast approaches, the 1963 Jorge…
Ever wondered what the World Cup is worth? When Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga designed the current trophy in 1971, it was worth US$50,000. Now the trophy is estimated to be worth US$10m. The World…
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