By Nick Harris 1 June 2010 For an organisation that purports to represent the interests of everyone in the global game, Fifa has a habit of appearing rather elitist at times. Its regulations that the World Cup trophy can be touched only by “heads of state and former winners” hardly speaks of a people’s game, […]

By Pete Wilson 1 June 2010 . England’s 23-man World Cup has been confirmed this afternoon and sportingintelligence brought it to you first, both here and in a Tweet two hours before official confirmation. After all the rumours, chatter and betting market moves, the squad is revealed to be (those omitted from the 30-man squad […]

By Nick Harris 1 June 2010 The Red Knights group of super-rich Manchester United fans who want buy the club from the Glazer family will react to reports that their plans are “in tatters” or “on ice” by releasing a statement to confirm they still intend to make an offer for the club. Sportingintelligence has […]

By Keira Daley 1 June 2010 West Ham United’s South African striker, Benni McCarthy, his country’s all-time leading goal scorer with 31 goals for Bafana Bafana from 79 senior caps, has surprisingly been left out of the host nation’s 23-man squad for the World Cup. The 32-year-old forward spent much of the run-in to West […]

By Nick Harris 1 June 2010 NB: 5.20pm UPDATE AT FOOT OF STORY Crystal Palace’s administrator, Brendan Guilfoyle, is still hopeful that a deal can reached today between potential buyers for the financially stricken Championship club and the Bank of Scotland, which is handling the – entirely separate – sale of the club’s ground, Selhurst […]

By Pete Wilson 1 June 2010 The European managerial merry-go-round cranked into a higher gear this morning as Internazionale prepared themselves for a formal rejection of their overtures to England’s manager Fabio Capello. The Inter president, Massimo Moratti, has made it clear in recent days that he wanted to talk to Capello about succeeding Jose Mourinho. […]

1 June 2010 Three British-based players – Manchester United’s Park Ji-Sung, Celtic’s Ki Sung-Yueng and Bolton’s Lee Chung-Yong are among eight midfielders named today in South Korea’s final 23-man squad for the World Cup. The squad, nicknamed the ‘Taeguk Warriors’, was announced at the Korean training base in Neustift, Austria, by the coach, Huh Jung-Moo, and details […]

By Nick Harris 31 May 2010 With the World Cup in South Africa looming and all of Europe’s major nations readying themselves for the competition, new analysis by sportingintelligence of the domestic seasons just ended shows that Germany’s top division attracted more fans overall than England’s top division for the first time in history. It […]

By Nick Harris 28 May 2010 Tom Hicks and George Gillett got off to a bad start as the owners of Liverpool. And then it got worse. Inside their first year they made – and then broke – a string of promises to supporters, as outlined in this piece written for The Independent in January […]

28 May 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 […]