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Spurs will play Charlton, Preston v EvertonBrentford away at Birmingham; Ipswich v LeicesterFive-time winners Chelsea have been handed a home draw against League One Luton in the second round of the Carabao Cup. Chelsea’s new manager, Xabi Alonso, will begin the club’s attempt to win the competition for the first time since 2015 later this month.Fellow Premier League side Tottenham have also benefited from a home draw, against Championship opponents Charlton. The 11 top-tier sides not involved in European competition enter the draw in the second round, with the remaining nine following in round three. Continue reading...
Confederations write open letter damning Fifa presidentConcacaf president Montagliani seen as top contenderUefa, the Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf will push for Gianni Infantino to resign after writing an open letter calling for “leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it”.In a dramatic escalation of the war that has threatened to tear football apart since details emerged of the Fifa president’s failed Football Forward Enterprise (FFE) scheme, the three governing bodies accused Infantino of “trust broken through deception” and condemned his failure to acknowledge that the proposal should not have been unilaterally launched. Continue reading...
Tebas says Swiss is ‘destroying essence of football’Any reform at highest levels must be ‘genuine’Javier Tebas says Gianni Infantino’s position as Fifa president is untenable, claiming he is “destroying the very essence of football” while calling for reform at the highest levels of the game.The La Liga president, who is a longstanding and vociferous critic of the current Fifa regime, said “the Infantino era is over” and called for control of the game to be expanded beyond the current “elite”. Continue reading...
The sponsorship deal between Cwmbran Celtic and the Welsh indie-rockers is a nostalgia trip rather than a cynical attempt to monetise ‘adjacent audiences’As someone born on the cusp of the gen X-millennial divide, I am the perfect target for today’s 90s nostalgia. I played my modest, teenage part in the Battle of Britpop (verbal skirmisher, Blur division); I fervently sang – and, God help me, believed – that Things Can Only Get Better. Super Furry Animals were a band I knew only distantly, via the transgressive thrill of that song they had with all the swearing in. And yet the news they’ll be shirt sponsor for a Welsh football club this season has managed to whisk me straight back to a time when things seemed simpler, kinder and more hopeful.Nearly three decades have passed since Super Furry Animals last had their logo on a football kit. Back in 1999, their frontman Gruff Rhys and bassist Guto Pryce, both Cardiff City fans, persuaded their Bangor-born bandmates to lay down their north Wales allegiances for the duration of the Bluebirds’ Welsh Cup run – which was, incidentally, all they could afford. The cup shirts cost them £2,000 and were, according to Rhys, knock-offs made for ice hockey. This year’s beneficiaries are a more modest outfit: Cwmbran Celtic, just relegated from Wales’s second tier. Cwmbran is the town where the band send their stage props for repair, and given the props in question are giant inflatable bears, you wonder whether they could get one installed in goal. Continue reading...
In an unseasonable black bomber jacket, with heavy duty company beside him, David Sullivan took his seat. Against the advice of the stadium’s operators, unbowed by serious allegations placed against his name and the weight of public opinion, West Ham’s major shareholder, the former co-chair, sat with arms crossed, always conspicuous by his presence.By beating Portsmouth in relative comfort, West Ham, the club where Sullivan’s name is no longer above the door, had secured a heartening Carabao Cup passage to the second round. There, they will be reunited with their former Premier League peers. The serious Championship business begins next Sunday at Burnley. Whether Sullivan travels north for that remains to be seen. It cannot be ruled out. Continue reading...
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