Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i World Soccer

GET MORE OF THE BEAUTIFUL GAME THIS CHRISTMAS GIVE WORLD SOCCER THIS CHRISTMAS Don’t miss this special Christmas Sale offer SAVE 26% • Get three World Soccer Presents special editions • Save 26% off our standard shop price • Never miss an issue with FREE UK delivery • World-class football content delivered straight to your door Subscribe online now shop.kelsey.co.uk/WSC1121 or call 01959 543 747 quote code WSC1121 Calls charged at your standard network rate. Lines open 8.30am-5pm Monday to Friday. Terms and conditions: Offer available for UK Direct Debit customers only. You will pay £57.99 for13 issues – saving 26%. Your gift will be mailed separately and if we run out of stock, an alternative will be offered at the same value. Order before Friday, December 17 to ensure the gift is…

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the former presidents of FIFA and UEFA, respectively, will face trial in Switzerland having been charged with fraud. Both men have denied any and all wrongdoing. Blatter completed a final set of investigatory interviews in August after various delays because of his fragile state of health. He underwent heart surgery last December and could be questioned for only 90 minutes each day. The investigation concerns the payment by FIFA, on the orders of then-president Blatter, of two million Swiss francs to Platini in early 2011. At the time, Platini was both UEFA president and a FIFA vice-president, but the work for which he claimed the payment had been undertaken ten years earlier when he worked as Blatter’s “football counsellor”. Prosecutors believe the two men lied…

SEASON RANKINGS Cumulative votes through the season GOALKEEPERS Edouard Mendy (Chelsea) 7 Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich) 5 David Ospina (Napoli) 4 Ederson (Manchester City) 2 Bono (Sevilla) 1 Thibaut Courtois (Real Madrid) 1 Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG) 1 Mark Flekken (Freiburg) 1 Mike Maignan (Milan) 1 Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid) 1 Aaron Ramsdale (Arsenal) 1 Maty Ryan (Real Sociedad) 1 DEFENDERS Kalidou Koulibaly (Napoli) 16 Achraf Hakimi (PSG) 8 Ruben Dias (Manchester City) 7 Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool) 6 Joao Cancelo (Manchester City) 5 Antonio Rudiger (Chelsea) 5 Ben Chilwell (Chelsea) 4 Alphonso Davies (Bayern Munich) 4 Marquinhos (PSG) 4 David Alaba (Real Madrid) 3 Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool) 3 Reece James (Chelsea) 3 Andy Robertson (Liverpool) 3 Thiago Silva (Chelsea) 3 Marcos Alonso (Chelsea) 2 Davide Calabria (Milan) 2 Giovanni Di…

Among all the many managerial changes that have already taken place in this season’s Premier League, the appointment of Eddie Howe by Newcastle United forces us to confront fundamentals in how we assess management. Presented with a side that is struggling in the relegation zone, how do you transform it into a team of dreams that can challenge for the Champions League while playing thrilling, attacking football? It is some way from being the main issue at Newcastle, but beyond the craven acceptance of owners with no respect for human rights, the club also presents an intriguing tactical challenge. When Steve Bruce was dismissed after eight games of the season, Newcastle had three points and had not kept a clean sheet. Although the club had the13th-highest wage bill in the…

Iconic Teams, part six of World Soccer’s bi-monthly 100-page souvenir bookazine collection, digs through the archives to take a closer look at some of football’s most iconic XIs. It focuses on the formations, starting line-ups, tactics, coaches, star players and what the teams achieved. Save 15% Subscribe today and pay just £40.94 every 6 issues Great reasons to subscribe • Pay just £40.94 for 6 issues – saving 15% on the shop price• Each issue delivered directly to your door for FREE Subscribe online at shop.kelsey.co.uk/WSP120 or call 01959 543 747 quote code WSP120 Calls charged at your standard network rate. Lines are open 8.30am-5pm Monday to Friday. Terms and conditions: Offer available for UK customers only. You will pay £40.94 every 6 issues saving15%. For overseas rates please visit…

At the start of November, the leading contender for the 2021-22 ESM Golden Shoe was not Cristiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski or Lionel Messi, but a 27-year-old striker playing for Molde in the Norwegian top flight: Ohi Omoijuanfo, a Norway international with Nigerian roots. Scandinavian-based players topping the Golden Shoe charts is not uncommon at this time year. The early, summer-time start of the Norwegian top flight and pre-Christmas conclusion means that the league’s top scorers have a head start over the rest of Europe, but by the turn of the year their records have usually been beaten. “Getting chances is the first step, scoring them is the next. What you see this year is the result” Ohi Omoijuanfo Omoijuanfo, however, will have the opportunity to add to his tally when…

Bayern Munich defender Josip Stanisic has quickly established himself as a key man in the Croatian national team. Having made his debut in the 3-0 victory against Cyprus in October, he announced himself as the country’s right-back “for the next ten years,” according to head coach Zlatko Dalic. A versatile player, he has proven himself to be outstanding in one-on-one duels and useful in offensive actions. Right-back has been a sore point for Croatia since the end of the 2018 World Cup. Sime Vrsaljko was first choice in Russia, but severely injured his knee ligaments shortly afterwards and was absent from the national team for almost two years. Meanwhile, Kieran Trippier has kept him out of the Atletico Madrid team, but in Stanisic Croatia have “an extraordinary solution”, says Dalic.…

The last thing on Ebrima Darboe’s mind as he waited, stuck in Libya trying to hustle for a place on a boat to Europe, was playing football. It had been six months since he had left his home in The Gambia, where there was not enough food to feed the family and where his mother and three siblings were struggling to survive. His father had died and, although only14 years old, he had little choice but to try to strike out for a better life, one where he might not only have opportunities and choice but also one that would allow him to eventually be able to provide for his family back in Bakoteh. He and two friends had caught a bus first, and then vehicle after vehicle as a…

If there was a single phrase that dominated football in 2021 it would probably be “Super League”. The announcement, in April, of12 clubs’ intention to join forces and form a new league was widely criticised by fans and media as a cynical cash grab from the already-established elite, and the latest step in trying to preserve their own dominance. While the talks have been shelved for now, the plotting, scheming and conniving will not stop anytime soon, with reforms to the international match calendar to be introduced from 2024 onwards. For others though, forming a new league may offer a chance to bridge the gap to the top. Faced with the increasing inequality, smaller countries and leagues are pondering their own futures. In Belgium and the Netherlands, there have been…

Malawi have qualified for only their third-ever Africa Cup of Nations finals, and for the first time since 2010. Is there a fever building up in the country? Everyone is so excited. It’s taken a bit of time since 2010 for Malawi to qualify for the finals, so everybody’s happy. We’ve just had the trophy tour and you got a real sense of how much everyone is looking forward to the tournament and how much the public wants us to do well. It is really building up and by the time the tournament starts the whole country is going to be watching and behind us. You exceeded expectations by edging out Uganda in a tough qualifying group to finish second. How did that happen? There wasn’t really any secret to…

Craig Butler was kneeling on scorching sand. The sun’s rays burned his skin and all he could see around him was desert. Broken, bruised, dehydrated and scarred for life having come inches away from death, this was not the outcome he expected from an innocuous business trip to Mexico. Nor the path he envisaged when he embarked on his quest to help his sons, including Leon Bailey, make it in Europe. Merely a few years prior, Butler founded his academy, Phoenix All Stars, with the aspirations to change the landscape of Jamaican football and give impoverished kids a chance of a better life. The team found early success, but trouble came when more established clubs in Jamaica’s Premier Division tried to pluck away his best talent. This would culminate in…

Qatar It seems like only yesterday that on a cold afternoon in December 2010, Sepp Blatter and his executive committee awarded the 2022 World Cup – much to the bewilderment of other bidders, observers and fans – to Qatar. As always, FIFA was simply following the money. Now, in December 2021, FIFA will stage the tenth edition of the Arab Cup, a Confederations Cup replacement, as a dress rehearsal for Qatar 2022. Blatter and his cast of villains exited the stage to be replaced by the ruthless regime of Gianni Infantino but, amid all the apprehension over the direction the global game is heading in, the leadup to the 2022 World Cup remains overshadowed by a single, major concern: Qatar’s human rights records. Earlier this year, Norwegian club Tromso whipped…

United States In their 26th year in Major League Soccer, New England Revolution finally lifted the Supporters’ Shield trophy, doing so as the league’s standout side by some distance. As one of the original MLS teams, the club are as old as the league itself, but until this year they had never topped the pile at the end of the regular season. Their wily 70-year-old head coach, Bruce Arena, has now won the Shield with three of the four MLS clubs he’s managed in his illustrious career, having previously claimed titles with D.C. United and LA Galaxy. A former lacrosse player who was capped by the United States soccer team as a goalkeeper, Arena guided his side to the top of the regular-season standings in his third season in charge,…

Africa The group phase of this season’s African Champions League starts in February, once the Cup of Nations finals in Cameroon are completed, but the 16-team field was settled in mid-November. When the draw takes place, just before Christmas, there will be plenty of pedigree, with eight former winners involved, as well as three rookie clubs. Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Sudan and Tunisia all have two representatives, emphasising the strength of their respective leagues and, at the same time highlighting how west Africa has been hit badly by the mass exodus of playing talent to every corner of the globe. No clubs from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria or Senegal advanced from the two knockout rounds and, in a surprise, the Democratic Republic of Congo is not represented…

EUROPE 2021-22 UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Group stage Group A Oct 19 – Brugge Club brugge1 (Vanaken 81) Manchester City 5 (Cancelo 30, Mahrez 43 pen, 84, Walker 53, Palmer 67) Ht: 0-2. ref: Kovacs (Rou) Oct 19 – Paris Paris saint-Germain 3 (Mbappe 9, Messi 67, 74 pen) rb leipzig 2 (A. Silva 28, Mukiele 57) Ht: 1-1. ref: Guida (Ita) Nov 3 – Leipzig rb leipzig 2 (Nkunku 8, Szoboszlai 90+2 pen) Paris saint-Germain 2 (Wijnaldum 21, 39) Ht: 1-2. ref: Ekberg (Swe) Nov 3 – Manchester Manchester City 4 (Foden15, Mahrez 54, Sterling 72, Jesus 90+2) Club brugge1 (Stones17 og) Ht: 1-1. ref: Mateu Lahoz (Spa) Current standings Group B Oct 19 – Madrid atletico Madrid 2 (Griezmann 20, 34) liverpool 3 (Salah 8, 78 pen, Keita13) Ht:…

Football is, as we all know, a ruthless business – five Premier League managers losing their jobs by early November (already surpassing the whole of last season’s total managerial casualties) provides a stark example of that. It will be fascinating to see how Newcastle United rebuild under Eddie Howe (page 16), and how Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa fare under new managers Antonio Conte and Steven Gerrard (page 20). Similarly, a huge rebuild is required at Barcelona, with the hope that the appointment of club legend Xavi will arrest their recent decline. The future now looks much brighter for Blaugrana, especially as one of the world’s most promising teenagers, Pedri, is already among their ranks and will likely be their midfield lynchpin for the next decade and beyond. Not to…

JOSH CAVALLO “I am a footballer and I am gay,” said Cavallo in a video posted by his club Adelaide United, as the Australian became the only openly gay male top-flight professional footballer in the world. “I have been fighting my sexuality for six years now and I’m glad I can put that to rest,” he added, while players, managers and clubs from around the world greeted the news with supportive messages. The hope is that Cavallo coming out will break the stigma that exists in the game, although the 21-year-old has admitted he would be “scared” to play at next year’s World Cup in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal. VIVIANNE MIEDEMA & LISA EVANS The WSL stars are the latest footballers to sign up for the Common Goal charity…

Football does not need the Olympics and the Olympics does not need football. For years it’s been a partnership of prestige. Now political reality is cutting in. The bizarre prospect of a World Cup every two years is fading fast after powerful and noisy Europeanled opposition, so something else will have to give in the congested international calendar. So why not the Olympic football tournaments? That is the thinking. After all, the Games are not a FIFAbrand event and that two week-slot every four years could be usefully jammed with something Zurich can control. European clubs would be delighted to see the back of the four-yearly wrangle over player release. The Games are not a FIFA event, so they are not duty-bound to free up star names. But many players…

“Sergio Ramos is not planning to retire or break his contract. There is no doubt about Sergio. It’s a physical problem, he will play when he can”Sergio Ramos’ agent and brother Rene responds to rumours that the defender will have his PSG contract torn up “He means everything to a lot of folk, myself included. He was my boss, my coach, my second father and then turned into one of my best friends. The loss is absolutely incredible”Ally McCoist led the tributes to Walter Smith on talkSPORT IN EUROPE In addition to Antonio Conte and Steven Gerrard, EDDIE HOWE also returned to the Premier League to take charge of Newcastle United. Former Sheffield United manager CHRIS WILDER replaced Neil Warnock as Middlesbrough boss. Bournemouth completed the free transfer of Republic…

Ten years ago, during a UEFA TV report on Milan legend, Paolo Maldini, his former team-mate, Clarence Seedorf, was asked about the possibility that either of Maldini’s two sons, Christian or Daniel, might follow in their recently retired father’s footsteps: “It’s in their genes. I would say that they have talent, especially the little one [ten-year-old Daniel],” responded Seedorf. Now, that prophecy is beginning to look good. In his third season with Milan, Daniel Maldini seems set to add another chapter to the fabulous story of the club and the “Maldini Dynasty”. When Daniel came on as a substitute in Milan’s 3-1 defeat to Juventus last January, it marked the1,000th Serie A game that a Maldini had played in for Milan. Daniel was making his sixth league appearance that day…

Mohamed Aboutrika is generally acknowledged as the best African footballer to have never played in Europe, and certainly Egypt’s finest player until Mohamed Salah came along. For a decade, between 2003 and 2013, he was the heart of the success of Egypt’s national team and the fabled Cairo club Al Ahly, earning hero-like status. He was a driving midfielder with a gait similar to that of Zinedine Zidane, gliding across the turf, distributing touches of finesse or finishing with deadly accuracy. It is this popularity that now condemns him to a life in exile, and living in fear of his life as Egypt’s iron-fisted military government look to crush any possible challenge to their rule. He has been branded a “terrorist” in his home country, a charge few on the…

Unbeaten in their first 11 games of the 2021-22 Scottish Premiership season, their first campaign back in the top flight since being relegated in 2020, Heart of Midlothian could hardly have wished for a brighter start to their era of fan ownership. The transfer of a majority stake to the fan-backed Foundation of Hearts (FoH) in September this year made the Edinburgh side the biggest fan-owned club in the United Kingdom, a feel-good story of supporter empowerment that has been held up as a beacon of hope to fans of other clubs discontent with their own powers that be. But the remarkable story of Hearts fans’ ascent to ownership of their beloved club should not be mistaken as a tale of overnight success. Their grassroots movement has traced a long…

How would you describe yourself as a footballer? I’m hardworking and I like to be creative. I put the team ahead of myself. I’m not a selfish player. I’d much rather the team does well than me individually, but if that means I can chip in with a few goals and assists then even better. You were compared to Lionel Messi when you first burst onto the scene. How did that feel? In the beginning, it was okay. It was quite laughable. It’s something you take as a positive when you’re 16, 17 years old. I was living with a few of my pals at the time, at Dundee United, so we had a good enough joke about it. But as it’s followed me through my career, it’s become less…

England’s 2023 Women’s World Cup qualifier in Latvia in mid-October was an attack v defence training exercise masquerading as a competitive international. While Latvia failed to register any shots, England had 58 – one every 95 seconds, including injury time. Given the time lost fetching the 37 wayward shots, and re-setting for kick-off after each of England’s ten goals, the Lionesses were having a shot roughly every minute the ball was in play. This was not surprising. England’s footballers are well-paid, full-time professionals that benefit from the funds and expertise of leading men’s clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal. Latvia’s players are part-timers who fit training around their jobs. The same applied to Luxembourg, also beaten 10-0 by England, all but one of the North Macedonia…

1,602 Games managed by Neil Warnock, breaking the all-time English professional record, in his final match before being sacked by Middlesbrough. £1.1bn The reported value of the new Premier League TV deal with US broadcasters. 43 Bayern Munch’s 5-0 loss away to Borussia Monchengladbach was their worst defeat in 43 years, and their biggest German Cup defeat of all time. £160m Reported value of the 27 per cent stake in West Ham United, which has been purchased by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who will join the Hammers’ board. £60m Amount that a ban on betting companies sponsoring football shirts would cost the Premier League clubs in total. 35 Managers to have taken charge of over1,000 professional matches in the modern era of English football after David Moyes passed the milestone…

India The Indian Super League (ISL) no longer attracts the world-famous stars of a few years ago. There are no players to match Nicolas Anelka, Alessandro Del Piero or Robert Pires and no coaches of the stature of Zico. But the competition, which started in 2014, is settling down as it approaches its second season as the top tier of Indian football. It has moved on from the shortterm signings but there is an issue that remains: the overly long gap between short-term seasons. When the new campaign kicked off on November19, it was eight months since Mumbai City, who finished the regular season on top of the table, won their first title with a 2-1 win over Kolkata’s ATK Mohun Bagan in the final game of the championship play-off…

South Asia The 13th edition of the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship took place in October and became something of the Sunil Chhetri show as the legendary striker led India to a fifth triumph in the last eight tournaments. The final saw a comfortable 3-0 win over Nepal in the Maldivian capital of Male with the 37-year-old getting the all-important first to cement the best player award as well as the top goalscorer. Five goals from five games moved Chhetri, once linked to Rangers and Queen’s Park Rangers, on to 80 in total, level with Lionel Messi and second only to Cristiano Ronaldo in the active international goal charts. It also moved the diminutive forward past Pele’s tally of 77 for Brazil. When the pressure was on, Chhetri came…

Greenland FIFA figures suggest that approximately 250 million people around the globe play football on a regular basis, while a 2018 study found that almost half (43 per cent) of the world’s population considers themselves a fan of the game. It should come as no surprise, then, that football is just as beloved in secluded pockets of humanity as it is in South America, Europe and Africa. And, when it comes to isolation, you’d struggle to find anywhere more remote, more off the beaten track, than Greenland. Bordered by both the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, Greenland – part of the Kingdom of Denmark – is a place of biting winds and expansive glaciers, unexplored frozen tundra and difficult to reach fishing hamlets. It is perhaps not the place that springs…

Spain1 Yugoslavia 2 1990 World Cup, Italy In the summer of 1990, Dragan Stojkovic was on the verge of joining Marseille from Red Star Belgrade, and went to Italia ’90 bidding to build on his growing reputation. The current Serbia coach reflects on the game in the knockout stages of that tournament that changed his life… The legendary match against Spain at the1990 World Cup deserves a special place in my album. I will remember it as long as I live; the two goals I scored in Verona marked my status in the national team. The game was played in scorching heat, and a place in the quarterfinals was at stake. There was that indescribable feeling of knowing that millions of people at home were watching, and that you had…

“I would love to be a technical director at some point. I don’t know if it will be at Barcelona or not. If there is a possibility, I would like to contribute again because it’s the club that I love”Lionel Messi suggests that he could also return to the Nou Camp one day New Barcelona coach Xavi admitted it had been his dream to return to the club ever since he departed in 2015, following his appointment as Ronald Koeman’s replacement. “I feel that Barca is my home, but I know that I have a very big responsibility,” he told Barca+ in his first interview after returning. “I arrive in a complicated moment for the club, but I feel prepared. “My DNA has not changed: the idea of being the…

“Cole has a special quality…but I know how it works with young players. We are calm and patient, like we have been with Phil Foden as well”Pep Guardiola discusses Manchester City’s next prodigy, Cole Palmer, after the19-year-old’s emergence Spotlight on the players and coaches making waves (Velez Sarsfield) Described by Joel Richards in the 2020 World Soccer 500 as one of the “prime candidates” to take up the mantle for Argentina after Lionel Messi retires, Almada has been on the radar of the world’s top clubs for a while. It represents something of a coup, then, for Atlanta United to have landed the 20-year-old from Velez Sarsfield. Though the deal has not, at the time of writing, been officially announced, the player has reportedly confirmed it. A diminutive winger or…

EURO SUMMITS By Jonathan O’Brien (Pitch Publishing, £19.99) Panenka’s penalty in Belgrade, Van Basten’s volley of a lifetime in Munich, Gazza’s nearmiss at Wembley: over its six decades, the UEFA European Championship has thrown up many of the most memorable stories in football lore. Dramatic, detailed and teeming with compelling personalities like Michel Platini, Hristo Stoichkov, Zinedine Zidane, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, this is the complete story of a footballing event second only to the World Cup. SCOTLAND’S LOST CLUBS ByJeff Webb (Pitch Publishing, £16.99) Scotland’s Lost Clubs: Giving the Names You’ve Heard the Story They Own is the gripping, constantly surprising, intrinsically romantic and all too commonly tragic story of some of Scotland’s lost football clubs. You’ll be taken on a journey across Scotland, from the Highlands to…

The Gambia’s head coach discusses dealing with COVID, and assesses the favourites at AFCON 2021. This will be the first COVID-19 Africa Cup of Nations in history. I don’t know if that’s an honour but it’s the first time that we will have to cope. In the Gambia, we have been working very hard against the virus. We chartered private planes, all the players have stayed in single rooms throughout the qualifiers to minimise the risk, and we have an international medical team. We had to cancel a friendly game with Guinea in Portugal in 2020 when eight of their players got the virus, but so far we have been lucky. Almost all of my possible players are vaccinated. For some, like Dembo Darboe, it’s been complex because he plays…

Despite not being a household name on the international scene, the Algerian national team have been quietly going about their business. Within the camp, many believe they are on the cusp of something very special. When Djamel Belmadi took the job in 2018, not many expected him to lose just one game in his first three years. Since a defeat against Benin in October of that year, the Desert Foxes have gone a whopping 31 games unbeaten, setting a new African record, and are now looking to break Italy’s world record of 37. This unbeaten run has had many twist and turns, but included many remarkable results along the way. A 3-0 thrashing of Colombia in Lille proved that this side have not just what it takes on African soil,…

Hwang Hee-Chan’s early success in the English Premier League with Wolverhampton Wanderers has been greeted with delight in the Black Country. The exploits of the 25 year-old forward have also gone down well back in South Korea, though eyebrows have gone up a little too. When representing the national team Hwang has promised much but has yet to show the kind of clinical side in front of goal that brought four goals in his first six appearances in England’s top tier. Few have been in any doubt that he has the necessary tools to succeed – “The Bull” is strong, fast, two-footed, intelligent and hardworking, but it has never quite come together on a consistent basis. In truth, Hwang has been a frustrating figure in the international arena. The defining…

If you travel to Zilina, a city with 81,000 inhabitants in north Slovakia, and watch a game at the Stadion pod Dubnom, it’s very likely that you will see a future international or two. The academy of local club, MSK Zilina, is considered to be the best in Slovakia, and one of the best in the region. Over the past decade, Zilina have produced a number of Slovakian internationals, including Milan Skriniar (Internazionale), Martin Dubravka (Newcastle United), Laszlo Benes (Borussia Monchengladbach), Robert Bozenik (Fortuna Dusseldorf) and David Hancko (Sparta Prague). Simply put, no team in the country is better at developing young players. In the past, they chased silverware – winning six league titles between 2001 and 2012 – and qualified for the group stage of the Europa League in…

Born within a few weeks of each other in November 2002, Frenchman Eduardo Camavinga and Spaniard Pedri should be looked at as what that they are: twin sons of different mothers, upmarket contemporaries with a great deal of common ground. Both are teenage midfielders of the highest possible calibre. Both stand for early-year instant achievement. And both have that rare ability to thrive under pressure, more than happy to be handed huge amounts of responsibility for their respective clubs and national teams. The impact that the pair have made in such a short space of time has been incredible. For example, Pedri, a native of the Canary Islands, has been a Barcelona player for less than 18 months – joining the Blaugrana from second-division outfit Las Palmas in a €5…

The 2023 finals will feature 32 teams, up from 24 at the 2019 finals. Co-hosts Australia and New Zealand qualify automatically and 27 teams progress directly through qualifying. Ten others go into a complex process of inter-confederation play-offs (ICPO), held in Australia and New Zealand in February 2023, producing the final three qualifiers. For this ninth Women’s World Cup, 173 countries entered, up from144 in 2015. AFRICA Four direct qualifiers + two play-off places The four semi-finalists at the 12-team Africa Women Cup of Nations (to be played in July 2022) will qualify automatically, with two of the quarter-finalists entering ICPO. With the qualifying draw for AWCON mostly done on a geographical, rather than seeded basis, there are some heavyweight ties. Nigeria, Africa’s top-ranked team, put out fourth-ranked Ghana in…

Marshall Islands Halfway between Hawaii and Australia in eastern Micronesia, the Marshall Islands is one of the last countries in the world untouched by football. Basketball and wrestling dominate the Pacific chain but a group of islanders from the capital, Majuro, are defying isolation and poor facilities to get football played. Mike Slinger, an Australian businessman, had organised regular games after coming to live on Majuro in the early 1990s. The island is home to half of the Marshall Islands’ 59,000 population, but only measures 3.7 square miles and does not even have a pitch. Games were played on any available space and eventually petered out. But a new Marshall Islands Soccer Federation was formed in December 2020 with Shem Livai, chief commercial officer at the islands’ energy company, as…

Australia It’s all change for football in Australia ahead of the new season: the A-League is now the A-Leagues. With the Women’s World Cup coming to Australia and New Zealand in 2023, the men’s and women’s competition (previously known as the W-League), will now run under the same name, in order to give the women’s competition equal billing. While this could cause some confusion, it’s hoped the arrival of league sponsors (the men’s has already acquired Isuzu-UTE) will provide a clear enough differentiation. Not that they will be entirely separate entities, with the introduction of a new, additional trophy: the Club Championship, where the men’s, women’s and the A-League youth teams’ results will be combined to find the overall winner. The game has a new broadcast partner too. After16 years…

CONCACAF Champions League Despite a format change, a long hiatus during the summer, and some surprise results in the early stages, ultimately the 2021 edition of the CONCACAF Champions League ended in the most predictable way. Not only did two Mexican teams reach the final (they have dominated the tournament during the last16 editions), but the ones who made it were the two most successful clubs of the last ten years; America, champions in 2015 and 2016, and Monterrey, winners in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2019. There was, then, a lot of expectation around the match, although the two teams could not have arrived with more disparate trajectories. Monterrey had the advantage of playing at home, but seemed to be badly out of form having lost four consecutive league games…

(All kick-off times, if stated, are BST) Saturday November 27 URUGUAY: The all-Brazilian Copa Libertadores final takes place at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, with holders Palmeiras facing 2020 winners Flamengo. GERMANY: Wolfsburg take on Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga race for the top four. Sunday November 28 ENGLAND: In the Premier League, Chelsea host Manchester United. Monday November 29 FRANCE: The day’s Ligue1 action begins with Saint-Etienne hosting PSG, before Marseille face Troyes. ITALY: Maurizio Sarri returns to his old club as Lazio visit Napoli. SPAIN: Sevilla will aim to kick-start their title challenge with a trip to the Bernabeu to face Real Madrid. Tuesday November 30 ENGLAND: A packed midweek Premier League schedule begins with a relegation scrap between Newcastle United and Norwich City. NORTHERN IRELAND: Northern Ireland’s…