After this week’s round of World Cup qualification play-offs the dust is finally settling and the World Cup is in sight for many. Yes, next year’s World Cup in Brazil (the real home of football?) will be a real spectacle and a hearty congratulations are in order for those who have made it. But what about those who have not?
Have you looked at the Eredivisie league table so far this season? If not then you may be a little surprised by the team that sit at the top. Title winners from recent years fill up the top five; FC Twente, Ajax and AZ Alkmaar are all jostling for position. But ahead of all of these teams are Vitesse, a club that has never won the Eredivisie and who herald from the city of Arnhem in the East of the Netherlands.
The world of football management is one full of potential pitfalls and stumbling blocks. It appears to be a world that pushes it’s incumbent to the very limit with numerous challenges that test a person’s ability to deal with all sorts of, often contradictory, problems. Of all of the paradoxes that a manager deals with the one that seems most prevalent at the moment is the post-match interview. Especially when broached on the subject of the referee.
It’s been said many times already that this could be the most competitive season in the history of the Premier League. No longer are gamblers having to choose between two teams when deciding which title winning hopeful deserves their bet. No, this season is different. Six (or maybe even more) teams can boast genuine ambitions of winning the league, whether they want to admit it or not.
David Beckham must be getting to the point where he is running out of avenues to explore. People the world over are already more than familiar with Beckham the model, the fragrance, the underwear range, the charity worker and the advertising juggernaut. Have I left anything out? Oh yeah, David Beckham the footballer.