fifa Page 18 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The World Cup's Third-Place Game Is A Goddamned Disgrace To Soccer
When Spain were dealt an embarrassing group stage exit a jet was chartered to fly their players back to Madrid as soon as a flight path could be cleared. Just a matter of hours after their final game against Australia, the Spanish squad was at São Paulo International Airport, perusing the Duty Free ...
FIFA Is Its Own Metaphor: A Day Inside The Underground Bunker
Excerpted from The Soccer Diaries: An American's Thirty-Year Pursuit of the International Game....
Yes, Referees Are Biased Towards Brazil
Today, Brazil will face off against Germany in the World Cup semi-finals, and they'll do it without their superstar Neymar, who was taken down in Brazil's game against Colombia. FIFA has decided that they won't punish Juan Camilo Zúñiga, whose knee-to-the-back tackle fractured Neymar's vertebrae. Bu...
Head Of FIFA's Anti-Racism Task Force Says It Hasn't Done Squat
If you've been taking in the World Cup this week, you probably noticed plenty of banners and commercials with FIFA telling you to just, "say no to racism." A great idea, except FIFA doesn't always follow its own message....
FIFA's No. 2 Is "Amazed" At How Drunk World Cup Fans Have Been
Congratulations, 2014 World Cup fans: You are very good at drinking. Or perhaps, like our American friend above, very bad at it....
Kosovo Club Offers Luis Suárez Chance To Play During FIFA Ban
Had you heard of K.F. Hajvalia out of Kosovo? Nah? Well, now you have. The Kosovan Superleague club offered Luis Suárez a contract to play for peanuts during the four-month, worldwide ban imposed by FIFA for biting Italy's Giorgio Chiellini. Kosovo, while part of the world, obviously, isn't fully re...
The Ministry Of Silly Walks Tests The Pitch In Recife
This photo was brought to our attention by the Washington Post's Cindy Boren, who assures us that we are looking at a FIFA official testing the conditions in rainy Recife, and not a Monty Python sketch in action....
FIFA Opens Disciplinary Proceeding Against Luis Suárez, The Biter
FIFA will invite Luis Suárez to defend himself against fairly overwhelming evidence that he straight-up bit a dude during a World Cup match. Under regulations regarding player misconduct against other players and non-0fficials and/or more general rules of decorum in the disciplinary code, FIFA has g...
Qatar Soccer Head Says World Cup Bidding Was Fair
Today's Guardian publishes an op-ed by Hamad Bin Khalifa Bin Ahmed Al-Thani, president of the Qatar Football Association, in which he contends that Qatar deserved to host the 2022 World Cup. It's the sort of thing that begs you to scroll to the comments first, just to see the readers catalogue omis...
The View From Inside A São Paulo World Cup Protest
SÃO PAULO—During the lead-in to the World Cup, thousands of Brazilians took to the streets to protest a range of social ills highlighted—and exacerbated—by the arrival of Swiss distressed debt shop FIFA. Protesters wanted better health care and education, higher wages, lower transit costs. They want...
What FIFA Gets Right About Nationality
In April, Manchester United midfielder Adnan Januzaj finally picked his country. The oddsmakers were right, and he selected Belgium over a palette of other national shirts: Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo (through his parents), Turkey (through his grandparents), and, if you asked the English, maybe even...
Sepp Blatter Says We're All Racist For Pointing Out FIFA's Corruption
While addressing FIFA's African and Asian confederations on Monday, FIFA president Sepp Blatter seized the opportunity to mount a defense against the most recent and damning allegations that Qatar bribed its way to the 2022 World Cup. He did this by accusing all of his critics of being racist....
John Oliver Brilliantly Lays Out All The Reasons To Hate FIFA
We spend a lot of time talking about what a cartoonishly corrupt organization FIFA is, but sometimes it feels like there's not enough time in the day to do a proper rundown of everything there is to hate about Sepp Blatter and his goons. Thankfully, John Oliver is here to give FIFA the comprehensive...
FIFA Vice President Would Support A Re-Vote On 2022 Host
On the heels of The Sunday Times report detailing Mohamed bin Hammam's successful campaign to purchase the 2022 World Cup for Qatar, FIFA vice president Jim Boyce told BBC Radio 5 he would support a re-vote for a new host. Boyce says the claims in the Times report would have to be proven, but if the...
FIFA's Match-Fixing Investigation Staff Is Just Six People
FIFA, soccer's world governing body, has long struggled to police match-fixing, either because there's not much it can do, or because there's not much it wants to do. In the first part of a two-part series, The New York Times investigated allegations of match-fixing during the 2010 World Cup in Sout...
North Korea Is Another Year Closer To Soccer World Domination
On the eve of the World Cup, North Korea's FIFA ranking is holding steady at 137, which sounds pretty bad until you remember that places the North Koreans ahead of fully 70 other countries, unincorporated territories, protectorates and, in the case of No. 177 Curaçao, even an overachieving liqueur. ...
Sepp Blatter: Giving Qatar The World Cup "Was A Mistake"
FIFA president Sepp Blatter offered up his strongest words yet regarding the scandal- and problem-plagued Qatar bid for the 2022 World Cup, admitting what nearly everyone else already has: "Of course," Blatter told a Swiss TV station, "it was a mistake."...
Barcelona Slammed With Enormous Transfer Ban For FIFA Rules Violations
Today, FIFA announced unparalleled sanctions against Barcelona for repeated and systemic violations of the international body's youth transfer rules. Barcelona has been banned from any transfer activity for the entirety of next season. This is the coup de grâce in what already has been a monumentall...