Footballs Coming Home?

Today it has been announced which countries will be competing to host the 2018 and 2022 football World Cup’s.

Nine countries are interested in hosting the tournament for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments whilst two countries are interested in just the 2022 finals.

England are amongst the nine countries that are going to bid for both along with, Russia, Australia, the USA, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia and joint bids from Portugal-Spain and Netherlands-Belgium. Whilst Qatar and South Korea have applied to host the 2022 tournament only.

Surely FIFA must now come to their senses, and allow England to finally host the World Cup again. By the time 2018 or 2022 comes around it could be 52 or 54 years since we last held the tournament on these shores, which is far to long.

Since the Wold cup was last played in England, three of the countries bidding this time around have held the tournament, including the USA, Spain, Mexico and Japan held the tournament with South Korea in 2002.

England is the home of football, and if they wanted us to hold the World Cup next month, we will be able to do that with no problems, unlike some other countries, such as South Africa (holding the tournament next year).

Unlike South Africa where they have had to build new stadia from scratch, we already have the infrastructure in place ready to go.

FIFA state that Successful hosts must meet certain conditions if they are to win the right to stage the World Cup and provide at least 12 stadiums with minimum capacities of 40,000. The final must be held in a stadium with a capacity of at least 80,000.

England tick both of those boxes and are on stand by for the World Cup next year if South Africa haven't finished building all of their stadiums.

It's been an extremely long time since last held the World Cup, whilst other countries such as USA and Japan have had the opportunity, but football is way down the pecking order in those countries in terms of sport.

We have held the European Championships in England since 1966, and they past with flying colors.

Both FIFA and UEFA seem to dislike the fact that English teams do well in the Champions League and tend to hold it against us, but surely the time has come where football and come home, and maybe who knows a repeat f what happened in 1966?

IPL Defines Credit Crunch

Two of England’s cricket stars became the most costly players in the Indian Premier League. Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen where bought for £1.1 million each at the auction in Goa.

Flintoff was bought buy Chennai whilst former England skipper Pietersen is going to be playing for Bangalore. The amounts will be paid to the players as salary, and will be based on the amount of games that they play.

Other England players to be bought in the auction include, Ravi Bopara to Kings XI Punjab for $450,000, Former England skipper Paul Collingwood for $275,000 while Owais Shah went for $375,000 both joined Delhi.

There were no bids for England’s other two players in contention at the auction, Sussex batsman Luke Wright and Nottinghamshire all-rounder Samit Patel.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the previous transfer record during the 2008 IPL auction, when Chennai bought the India captain for £1.04 m.

Last year the England players where not involved in the IPL auction due to international commitments and this year they will be restricted to half the tournament because of the home Test series against the West Indies in April and May. The 2009 IPL season will be held from 10 April to 29 May.

This is the second year of the Indian Premier League, which is a Twenty20 cricket competition that was set up by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

There are eight franchises, not like clubs or county’s in England but more like the way sport is done in North America. The Eight Franchises in the IPL are,

Mumbai Indians

·      Royal Challengers Bangalore

·      Hyderabad Deccan Chargers

·      Chennai Super Kings

·      Delhi Daredevils

·      Kings XI Punjab

·      Kolkata Knight Riders

·      Rajasthan Royals

Last year the winners of the first IPL where the Rajasthan Royals who beat Flintoff’s new side Chennai Super Kings in the final.

The IPL is shown on Setanta, and this year English Cricket fans will be able to watch the tournament with a lot more interest than in the previous year, with the likes of Flintoff and Pietersen taking part.

TV Mess Up

With the rights for the Premier league up for grabs yet again, and Sky successfully bidding, its left for everyone else to step up and bid, and the companies likely to get the rights are Setanta, or ESPN.

How bad will it be if ESPN, an American sports network owned by Disney got the rights to live Premier league games in this country.

I'm not saying ESPN are bad, because they are not far from it. I myself watch alot of American sport on TV on channel five, and ESPN show the Baseball (MLB), and American Football (NFL), but I feel that they should stick to covering their own sports and leave ours alone.

But with the gaffe ITV produced on Wednesday during the Mersyside Derby, ESPN will have a better chance than any of our terrestural Tv networks at showing live top flight football.

Setanta has done a good job, of the live premier league games they have been broadcasting, and in a short period of time are competing with Sky, and have taken FA Cup and England games away from Sky.

Going onto he rights for highlights the BBC has been successfull in that department, and thank god because Match Of The Day is alot better than the offering that ITV produced when they had the rights to Premier League highlights.

ITV has shown why once again they are a joke when it comes to football being broadcast, during the recent Everton v Liverpool FA Cup 4th round replay, fans indured 118 minutes of a dull match only for ITV to cut to and ad break with two minutes left of a game which looked like it was heading to penalties, only to come back and see Everton celebrating the winning goal.

ITV seems to let itself down when coming to football coverage, but why? They have really good Champions League coverage, and even their Uefa Cup coverage is good.

Sky leads the way in terms of football coverage, I don't have sky, but I go to the pb to watch games and their coverage is the best, and Setanta is also very good. When the BBC and ITV get a chance to prove themselves showing live football they seem to let not only themselves down but the viewers as well.

Thrilling Season For The Premier League

The premier league is usually seen as boring with the top four already known before the season even begins, and the teams to be relegated can usually be predicted, with one major upset.

However this season looks very different, with places to fight for all over the Premier league table. Looking at the table after this weekends games the top four are the same old clubs, with Chelsea and Liverpool leading the way.

Looking at the rest of the table from the bottom up, it is hard to separate the teams as it is very close, and we are going to be in for a very interesting season. With West Brom sitting at the foot of the league with 11 points, which is a record number of points for the bottom team at this time in the season and you can go up to eighth place in the league where Middlesbrough are placed with 17 points, and that is only a six point difference from 20^th to eighth place in the table.

Even when you look above eighth place it is still very close, with Everton one point above Middlesbrough, and you have both Aston Villa and Hull City on 20 points.

The season so far has already thrown up a few surprises, and looks like it could be a season where anything could happen, and anyone looks like they can beat anyone.

Look at Arsenal for example they have lost three games so far this season, but not to teams you would have expected them to lose to. Two of the three teams that have beaten the gunners where newly promoted Stoke and Hull

Tottenham once again have changed their manager early on in the season after their worst ever start to a season, and since Harry Redknapp as come into the Spurs hot seat, Tottenham haven’t lost.

But the teams they have got points against even after a poor start, is good, having under former manager, Junade Ramos, going to Stamford Bridge and gaining a point. In Redknapp’s second game in charge Spurs claimed a 4-4 draw in the North London Derby at the Emirates against Arsenal, after being 4-2 down, and then went on to beat the league leaders at the time Liverpool, coming back from a goal down.

But the biggest surprise so far this season has been Hull City, who are lying sixth place in the league, with six wins from their 12 games played so far.

This season looks like it is going to go down right to the wire, with teams fighting for their place in the top flight, and in the space of a game or two, teams could be pushing for a place in Europe or finding themselves in a relegation battle.