By Pete Wilson 15 June 2010 Football’s world govering body Fifa has defended the Adidas Jabulani ball today, saying it has not received a single official complaint from the Football Associations of any of the 32 competing nations at the World Cup. Adidas has also defended the ball again, with spokesman Thomas Schaikvan saying: “I wouldn’t […]

** In the run-up to the next crucial meeting on Thursday of Portsmouth’s creditors at Fratton Park, Guy Thomas, Head of Insolvency at SA Law LLP , who has blogged extensively on Pompey’s woes, takes a look at the key players in the insolvency of Portsmouth City Football Club in its transition from Premiership club […]

By Nick Harris 15 June 2010 Adidas’s controversial World Cup football, the Jabulani, wasn’t simply offered to competing nations for use months ago, but was rejected in some cases – including by England – because of commercial considerations to other firms, namely Umbro in England’s case. England’s squad would only have been able to use […]

By Nick Harris 14 June 2010 North Korea will have fewer fans at the 2010 World Cup than any other nation because ordinary citizens are forbidden to travel and because, according to Amnesty International, expats who gather in public places risk doing so in fear of their lives and in fear of reprisals against family […]

11 June 2010 . Every Friday, sportingintelligence sends out a weekly digest to our database subscribers and followers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn containing a selection of the best stories, features and columns that we’ve run on www.sportingintelligence.com in the past week . . . If you’d like to sign up to receive the FREE mailing, […]

By Brian Sears 11 June 2010 Football is a global game, arguably the only one, but of course there are some areas of the world that love it and embrace it more than others. If that weren’t the case, and nations loved the beautiful game in equal measure and played it in equal measure, then […]

11 June 2010 Can you identify the sporting arena? We take an aerial view of a topical ball park, football stadium, marathon course, golf course, Games venue, race track, iconic arena, athletic theatre (some literally theatres), pitch, park, stretch of water or wherever else sport takes place. And we ask you to identify it with the […]

By Andy Cole in Johannesburg 11 June 2010 The World Cup is probably going to be won by Brazil, with Spain and Argentina absolutely capable of lifting the trophy too. I expect the final to feature Brazil and one of the others. I think England, with a fair wind, could get as far as the […]

By Pete Wilson 11 June 2010 With the World Cup kicking off in South Africa today, fans around the globe are nailing their colours to the mast, highlighting again the animosity between England and their northern neighbours, Scotland. Or to be more precise, the animosity apparently felt by Scottish football fans towards England at major […]

By Nick Harris 10 June 2010 Australia have withdrawn from the race to stage the 2018 World Cup to focus their attentions of the 2022 event. Fifa and Australia’s football federation (FFA) have released a joint statement to that effect after it became obvious that the 2018 race is going to be a Europe-only affair. […]