Asian Cup Preview: Group C Group C As the tournament kicked off with an exciting come from behind victory for the host nation Australia so we must wrap up these previews (reviews) before the predictions are proved mightily out-dated and erroneous GROUP C IRAN Iran has the guile and talent to easily progress from … Read more
SAUDI ARABIA Group B represents a good opportunity for those nations that have not had great success in the tournament before. Only Saudi Arabia has been triumphant in the continental showpiece, winning three times, the last of which was in 1996 during the country’s ‘golden age’. Unfortunately those days seem quite distant to the … Read more
Preceding the other big international events, such as the Australian Open tennis and the African Cup of Nations, to kick-off the year 2015 is the 16th edition of the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) Asian Cup hosted by first-time host Australia. With the tournament kick-off on the 9th of January the countdown to the opening game, … Read more
North Korea’s global isolation has been cemented over the past few years as political tensions with the US escalated, eventually involving a military standoff and strong rhetoric from the nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The brutal regime in operation cannot feed the country’s population and is currently drip fed with UN humanitarian aid to keep millions … Read more
A vast majority of Saudis favor women having the right to fully engage in sports in a country that has no official facilities for female athletes or physical education programs for girls in schools, according to a Saudi sociology researcher, who has put forward a series of recommendations at a time that the government is … Read more
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has announced a series of measures to prevent soccer stadiums and university campuses from becoming major protest venues as the football season and the academic year begins. In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is taking a leaf out of the playbook of Egyptian military strongman Gen. Abdel Fattah … Read more
Militant, highly politicized soccer fans who played key roles in the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, opposition to post-Mubarak military rule, and last month’s mass protests against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been as organizations conspicuously absent from the dramatic scenes in Cairo with the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi and ongoing … Read more
Now that the Socceroos (Australia’s football team) have qualified for the world cup, albeit in nail biting fashion once again, Holger Osieck should use this world cup as a platform for the youth players to start a new golden generation. Lets face it, the Socceroos with their current golden generation won’t turn heads at the world … Read more
Saudi Arabia, under domestic and international pressure to grant women sporting rights, is creating separate stadium sections so that female spectators and journalists can attend soccer matches in a country that has no public physical education or sporting facilities for women. The move announced by the recently elected head of the Saudi Football Federation, Ahmed … Read more
Employment-related complaints by two international players, one of whom is barred from leaving Qatar, threaten to overshadow the 2022 World Cup organizing committee’s release of a charter of worker’s rights designed to fend off criticism of labor conditions in the Gulf state. In separate interviews French-Algerian player Zahir Belounis, who is locked into a salary … Read more