Football

Disastrous decisions by Fifa are nothing new. But yesterday’s announcement by football’s governing body that it will expand the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams in 2026 marks another depressing low. The logic is that more teams will now get an opportunity to play on football’s biggest stage. A noble sentiment, perhaps, but this is a half-baked plan that should worry football fans. The huge imbalance in the quality of football on display at the tournament is one of the main troubles with expanding the World Cup. England fans are accustomed to watching their team play our dismal 3-0 victories against the likes of San Marino and Malta at the qualifying

Football is no stranger to scandal, but the scale of the sex abuse allegations now circling the beautiful game is something new. Over 350 incidences of sexual abuse have been reported in football’s sprawling academy system. Crewe Alexandra was the focal point of the initial allegations, but the net has widened rapidly – taking in the likes of Chelsea, Newcastle and now QPR. It’s no exaggeration to compare this scandal to Operation Yewtree. But it’s important, too, that the Football Association, which is conducting the probe into what has happened, learns its lessons from Yewtree. So far, the football world is making the right noises about facing up to what

The Twitch-hunters, those antsy, intolerant guardians of what it’s permissible to say on Twitter, have claimed another scalp. Eric Bristow’s. The former darts champion, lovably known as the Crafty Cockney, will now probably be better known as hate-speaker thanks to the offence-taking army that took umbrage at his tweets about child abuse. For this quarrelsome mob has the power to destroy reputations, and it looks like it has successfully destroyed Bristow’s. Bristow’s speechcrime, or tweet-crime, was to gruffly express his views on the child-abuse scandal rocking football right now. Last night, somewhat unguardedly, he wrote a series of tweets in which he asked whether it is wise for the former

The English football team have a problem and everyone knows it. After a string of disappointing results, many fans are beginning to lose faith that their team will ever come out on top again. Happily, Labour’s Stella Creasy thinks she has got to the bottom of what’s going wrong for our boys. The issue? Too many of the players attended private school. Yes, the Labour MP suggested this in the Commons today in debate on education and social mobility. Her comments came after John Redwood said it was fair that ‘elite sportspeople are selected at young age for special training’. In response to Redwood, Creasy argued that they were missing out on talent from comprehensives

Home Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said that Britain would oppose attempts to create an EU army, as it would ‘undermine’ Nato. Forecasts for British economic growth in 2016 collated by the Treasury were revised from 1.5 to 1.8 per cent, the level expected in June, before the EU referendum. Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, said that leaving the European Union would make Britain ‘better off than continental Europe’ within five years. Scotland began importing shale gas from the United States. Fourteen candidates are to stand in the by-election at Witney on October 20 to replace David Cameron as MP, including one from the Bus-Pass Elvis

At last, an English football manager who actually deserves to be sacked (or ‘left by mutual agreement’ if you prefer the official line). An England manager on £3 million a year shouldn’t be dreaming up ways of helping himself to an extra few hundred thousand through dodgy deals. But that makes Sam Allardyce something of a rarity. It is hard to think of another England football manager of recent times who really deserved the heave-ho. Roy Hodgson led a team to an embarrassing defeat against Iceland, but was it really him who deserved to go or the useless players who couldn’t even pick up a pass? It is no use

A gastropub in Manchester is a fitting venue for the latest corruption sting on England manager Sam Allardyce. While his poncey European counterparts are busy nosing the bouquet on a glass of dry white wine, Big Sam, who only took up the top job back in July, is laid back in his seat, the buttons on his shirt bulging as he swigs from a tall pint glass. This is the image that you’ll see on the front cover splash of today’s Daily Telegraph. A 10-month undercover operation has concluded with the brassy headline: ‘England manager for sale’. Allardyce, it is claimed, has conspired with a couple of ‘businessmen’ to concoct methods

For football fans, today is a special day: it’s Transfer Deadline Day – a branded, almost to Hallmark levels, moniker. It’s a day of bathos and unfulfilment. Your club will miss out on a top target, sign some underwhelming alternative, and clog up social media with pictures of them holding a shirt in a car park. Transfer Deadline Day is the great dance of performative capitalism for the working classes. We call it a ‘window’ because it is supposed to be a ‘window of opportunity’ for clubs and fans, but there is also a voyeuristic element. We spend the summer hidden in the bushes, watching the attractive Athletico Madrid winger

With parliament in recess, silly season is in full swing. In fact, silly season would be an apt name for the transitional period between the dying days of the previous Premier League season, and the Bacchanalia that greets the opening weekend of the next one. Football’s silly season is a time when Slovenian journalists can sentence Jose Mourinho to three years in jail, when Wales can become (arguably) the third best team in Europe, and when Manchester United can decide that a player – any player – is worth €100 million. That last, silliest of silly season traditions, is the essential contradiction that greets the start of a new season.

Finance firms love taking football fans for suckers. The latest is Virgin Money which has this week launched a Manchester United savings bond. It pays just 1.25 per cent for 12 months which is roughly two-thirds the interest you could get at the current best buy account. So far, so rubbish. But it has a neat gimmick designed to reel in optimistic fans. If Manchester United win the title next season, the interest rate paid doubles to 2.5 per cent. Sound attractive? It’s meant to. But in reality it’s a total con. And it’s just the latest in a long line of football-related finance deals that take fans for mugs.

The invitation to supply a report on a Uefa Euro 2016 match written in the florid style beloved of some sportswriters produced entries of inspired awfulness. How about this, from Mike Morrison: ‘The craven defence unravelled like cartoon knitwear, enabling Dottirdottir, the archetype of stoic strategy, to blithely torpedo the decider through the enmeshed architraves of triumph.’ John O’Byrne, Josh Ekroy and Derek Morgan were on impressively toe-curling form too, but were pipped to the post by those entries printed below which earn their authors £25 each. Adrian Fry pockets the extra fiver. Adrian Fry Spain’s three-nil defeat of Turkey demonstrated how, in Spanish hands at least, soccer is a