Recent posts in my Football Category
July 12, 2010
Pundits and predictions...the World Cup according to the English press
To celebrate the end of the World Cup, I've made a short video which shows English newspaper front pages going from declaring that England had an "E.A.S.Y." draw, to saying that the players have let their country down. Along the way, it seems like a psychic octopus was outperforming the nation's football pundits. And none of them offered to resign either...
February 27, 2010
The Sun relying on 'copyright thieves' Google and Yahoo! for their Wrightys XI campaign
Despite Murdoch's stance that search engines steal his newspaper's content, The Sun are using search keywords as the main marketing thrust for their 2010 FIFA World Cup competition.
February 1, 2010
Page Three plugs 3D
The Sun was plugging Sky's experimental live football 3D service - even on Page Three!
January 29, 2010
African Cup of Nations online coverage review: Part 4 - British and American online newspapers
I started this series looking at some of the British press coverage in print of the African Cup of Nations, and today I wanted to look a little bit further at online coverage in the main papers. My impression - and this is an unscientific one - is that there has been more coverage of the tournament than in previous years. I think this is in part because it allows news organisations to gear up for covering another football...
January 28, 2010
African Cup of Nations online coverage review: Part 3 - African newspapers
I've been looking at online coverage of the African Cup of Nations, and yesterday I was looking at newspapers in four of the countries taking part - hosts Angola, alongside papers from Algeria, Cameroon and Egypt. Today I've got some screengrabs and notes from the online newspaper coverage of three other African nations - all of whom reached at least the quarter-finals. Ghana The Daily Graphic has its roots in the British Mirror group, and is now state-owned. Their...
January 27, 2010
African Cup of Nations online coverage review: Part 2 - African newspapers
In the second part of this series looking at coverage of the 2010 African Cup of Nations, I have reviews of online news sources from four of the nations taking part: Angola, Algeria, Cameroon and Egypt.
January 26, 2010
African Cup of Nations online coverage review: Part 1 - UK
During the course of this year's African Cup of Nations tournament in Angola, I've been reviewing news coverage in the UK and in Africa itself. In the first part of this series, I look at how, before a ball was kicked, the terrorist attack on the Togo team made print front pages in the UK.
January 5, 2010
Evening Standard fails African Cup Of Nations geography test
Whilst the Evening Standard gets confused about whether the African Cup Of Nations is being held in Angola or Ghana, The Guardian is making available an open public sporting events calendar which knows for sure.
December 7, 2009
Africa in the FIFA World Cup: Part 6 - The noughties and beyond...
Part 6 of this series looks at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, and the prospects for African teams now that the 2010 draw has been finalised.
December 4, 2009
Africa in the FIFA World Cup: Part 5 - The nineties
Today, preparations for South Africa hosting the 2010 World Cup reach a new peak with the draw for the opening group stages in Cape Town. To mark the occasion, all this week I've been blogging about the history of African nations competing in sport's most prestigious competition - from Egypt in 1934, through the wilderness years, to an increased African presence during the seventies and eighties. Today it is the turn of the nineties, and a focus on the...
December 3, 2009
Africa in the FIFA World Cup: Part 4 - The eighties
With the draw for the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa taking place tomorrow, this week I've been blogging about the history of African teams taking part in the finals. So far I've looked at the thirties, the wilderness years and the seventies. Today it is the turn of the eighties, with a look at the tournaments held in Spain and Mexico. Africa in the FIFA World Cup: España '82 The 1982 World Cup Finals were the...
December 2, 2009
Africa in the FIFA World Cup: Part 3 - The seventies
On Friday, in a no doubt over-long and over-complicated ceremony with lots of mentions of complicated factors like 'national co-efficient', the draw will be made for the 2010 World Cup Finals. Africa will be represented by hosts South Africa alongside Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. It wasn't always the case that Africa had so many spots in the finals. Over the last couple of days I've been posting about the history of African teams in the Finals,...
December 1, 2009
Africa in the FIFA World Cup: Part 2 - The wilderness years
On Friday, the draw will be held for the first World Cup Finals to be held on African soil. To celebrate, I've been looking at the history of African teams taking part in the world's biggest sporting tournament. Yesterday I started with a look at the 1930s, when Egypt became the first African team to take part in a World Cup Finals in Italy in 1934. When the tournament resumed after the interruption of the Second World War, it...
November 30, 2009
Africa in the FIFA World Cup: Part 1 - The thirties
Africa in the FIFA World Cup
A series of posts looking at the history of African teams appearing in the World Cup, from Egypt in 1934 to South Africa hosting in 2010.
November 20, 2009
"Thierry Henry and the net" piece on Guardian PDA blog
Having gone on and on and on about comments on The Guardian site this week, I was a little bit nervous what might happen 'below the line' on a piece I wrote for the PDA Blog yesterday: "Thierry Henry and the net: Fifa report whitewash and anger on Twitter". In the end I seem to have got away with just a couple of comments along the lines of 'Journalist gets paid to write article that claims people discuss current affairs...
November 18, 2009
"1966 and all that..." - Contrasting England's 1966 and 2018 World Cup bids
Tonight we'll be finding out the final qualifiers for next year's World Cup Finals in South Africa. Press attention has also been focused on England's bid to host the 2018 or 2022 edition of the tournament. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the reason FIFA abandoned their continental rotation system and introduced this double round of bidding was because they didn't get to go on lots of exotic junkets during the bidding process for 2010 and 2014. Imagine the...
October 23, 2009
Twitter - dangerous hunting ground for paedophiles. And The Sun's football correspondents
Given that today's front page article described Twitter as 'a free and easy hunting ground for paedophiles seeking to lure kids for sex', was it the best timing for The Sun's North East football correspondent Steve Brenner to be opening lots of new accounts on a service where his paper says 'pornographic pictures of young girls are also freely available'?...
October 8, 2009
So was it the Express or The Sun that 'saved' the England game?
I suggested earlier in the week that as part of the marketing operation, the UK's national newspapers might be giving digital sports rights agency Perform an easy ride over their decision to make England's World Cup game with Ukraine available only via pay-per-view Internet streaming. I didn't realise that some of them would be promoting their non-exclusive involvement in an affiliate selling scheme as if it was God's own gift to the England football fan. I'm sure Geoff Marsh...
October 6, 2009
Revenue share deal spikes newspaper guns about England's pay-per-view Internet World Cup qualifier
The confirmation that England's World Cup match against Ukraine will only be available pay-per-view on the Internet reminds me of 2000, when an away game against Finland was only available on short-lived and obscure pay TV service u>direct. Perform, the rights holders this time around, have made a shrewd move in allowing newspaper websites to sell the game on a revenue share basis. Whilst I'm not suggesting filthy lucre has unduly influenced editorial decisions, it is certainly a lot...
September 22, 2009
The Guardian's children's comics: Part 2 - Roy of the Rovers
Last week The Guardian and The Observer published a series of reproduction comics from the 1970s and 1980s, and yesterday I blogged about some of the transformations they illustrated in the relationship between reader and publisher. Today I want to focus on examples from the 19th December 1981 issue of Roy Of The Rovers. The 'team chart' One of the weekly features of Roy Of The Rovers was a chart for you to fill in to track your team's progress....
