By Brian Sears 17 June 2010 England are the only country ranked inside the top eight nations in the world who perform worse at football than national income levels suggest they should, according to sportingintelligence analysis. Last week, we considered how countries fared in footballing terms in relation to the population resources at their disposal. […]

By Nick Harris 17 June 2010 NB: original story posted pre-11am, update below Portsmouth are expected to exit administration and begin re-building for the future after the formal acceptance today of an offer by the club’s administrators to creditors. Sportingintelligence understands that the club’s administrator has received “yes” votes from creditors acccounting for around 80 […]

By Nick Harris 17 June 2010 Blackpool, newcomers to the Premier League for 2010-11, will begin their first season in the division with a home game against Wigan Athletic on 14 August. The Lancashire Oranjie will then play their next match away at Arsenal. Blackpool’s final game in the Premier League (next season, perhaps for […]

By Nick Harris 16 June 2010 When Germany won the Eurovision song contest last month, it was billed back home as the ‘Miracle of Germany’ because it was so unexpected. The triumph for their 19-year-old songstress, Lena Meyer-Landrut, with ‘Satellite’, was the first time in 13 years that one of the “big four” in the […]

By Nick Harris 15 June 2010 Portsmouth’s administrator Andrew Andronikou has told sportingintelligence this evening that he is “pretty certain” that his proposal to creditors to take the club out of administration will be accepted at a meeting on Thursday. The plan offers creditors 20p in the pound, and although one major creditor, HMRC, has […]

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 […]

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 […]

By Nick Harris 10 June 2010 The World Cup final on 11 July will vie with the 2002 World Cup final for the record of being the second most-watched live televised event in human history – behind the 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony – according to Kevin Alavy, a leading authority on global TV viewing […]

By Nick Harris 10 June 2010 Glenn Hysen, one of the stars of the last Liverpool team to win the English league title in 1990, tells sportingintelligence today that Kenny Dalgish is the man Liverpool need to to restore the “heart and soul” to the club. The Swedish international defender, 50, was an integral part […]