England’s Football Association (FA) has revealed plans to accommodate the “B teams” of Premier League clubs further down the league system. FA chairman Greg Dyke emphasised such a move is necessary in…
- Professor of AfroEurasian Sport, EM Lyon Business School
I remember the “next big thing”. His name was Wayne Harrison and when he moved from Oldham Athletic to Liverpool in 1985, aged 19, he became the world’s most expensive teenage footballer. He was Kevin…
There is a scene during the film Pulp Fiction in which Vincent Vega (John Travolta) recounts his experiences of eating at McDonalds in France to his fellow partner in crime, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L Jackson…
So Bayern Munich won the German Bundesliga following a win against Hertha Berlin. It is the 23rd time the Bavarian club has claimed the title – and the third time in the past five years. This year is particularly…
What we anticipated might happen in Sochi, in the end did not. Following bomb attacks in the Russian city of Volgograd a couple of months prior to the Winter Olympic Games, several governments issued grave…
By the end of 2012, it appeared as though Oscar Pistorius had the world at the tip of his carbon fibre blades. A supreme athlete, successful Olympian and commercial phenomenon, Pistorius was a poster-boy…
Though a slip cost him gold in the half-pipe, and perhaps his title as the king of 21st century snow sports, American snowboarder Shaun White is what a hero looks like in 2014. White is a phenomenon: a…
On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be much to link Lionel Messi’s choice of drink with a Black Sea beach resort, a former holiday destination of Russian communist leaders. And yet over the next six…
For those unfamiliar with the workings of Formula 1 motor racing, No Angel, Tom Bower’s biography of the sport’s supremo Bernie Ecclestone, is a fast-paced chronology of F1 during the modern era. It reveals…
When Neymar scored for FC Barcelona against Villareal in a recent Spanish La Liga game, it was a momentous occasion. As the Brazilian international turned to celebrate, he pulled up his shirt to reveal…
Three years on from winning the competition to host the World Cup, and still more than eight years out from actually hosting the tournament, Qatar 2022 is everywhere. By the time it happens it will have…
German sportswear company Puma recently ended its contract with the South African Football Association (SAFA), after football’s world governing body, FIFA, found that there was “compelling evidence” that…
With the 2014 Winter Olympic Games fewer than six months away, the last thing Russia needs is another scandal. But that is exactly what the organisers have got. The latest controversy involves migrants…
Some decades ago, there used to be a series of jokes in Britain that began with the line “there was an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman”. Such jokes are generally no longer told: among…
Every year, managers across the world move on from their jobs in a range of different industries. Many of them move of their own free will; several of them retire; and some of them get sacked. Just how…
One year on from the London 2012 Olympic Games and Britain is debating the legacy of the world’s biggest sporting event. Inevitably, much of the talk has focused on the socio-cultural and economic impact…
Summer’s football transfer rumour season is in full swing; an annual activity as predictable as strawberries and cream at Wimbledon or suntans and sports cars at the Monaco F1 Grand Prix. World Cup years…
The football clubs of Western Europe are off to Asia this summer in the hope of engaging fans and building relationships with some of their target customers. For example, China plays host to the Barclays…
Perhaps it is a matter of culture, possibly it is something to do with indifference, but sporting mega-events appear to be considerably less popular in Brazil than in the UK. Whereas a majority of the…
Walk down the high streets of Britain, through the shopping malls of the United States or around the retail complexes of East Asia, and you will inevitably be confronted with a McDonald’s food outlet…
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