Word: fifa
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...Thailand is now ranked 116th by world soccer body FIFA, thanks to erratic and occasionally farcical performances that date back to the team's notorious match against Indonesia at the 1998 ASEAN championships. Both teams set out to lose, since the winner would play a stronger team in the next round. Indonesia lost 3-2 after deliberately scoring against themselves. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Thai national team has a less than fanatical following. Only 25,000 spectators went to watch the team play Japan in Bangkok earlier this year - and most of those were Japanese. (Thailand lost...
Soccer's world governing body FIFA pays no heed to historical enmities or geopolitical feuds in the draw for the World Cup qualifying tournament; only seedings count. That's how South Korea ended up facing the diplomatically sensitive challenge of having to beat North Korea in order to secure one of the 32 places at World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Even more potentially volatile was the May 31 match-up between Sudan and Chad - FIFA postponed that one indefinitely, because the two countries were on the brink of war. (A World Cup qualifier in which El Salvador beat Honduras...
...Whether or not FIFA can win the E.U. around - and it's unlikely it will - one thing is clear: international football's governing bodies are perturbed by the commercial might amassed by England's Premier League. As by far the world's richest soccer league - club revenue grew 11% in the 2006/7 season to $3.6 billion, according to figures published Thursday by consultants Deloitte - the contribution from foreign players, coaches and investors has grown rapidly in recent years. With legions of foreign stars lured by the piles of cash accumulated from the lucrative sale of TV rights, only a third...
...required to have been trained by their club, or by another in the same country, for at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21, regardless of their nationality. But UEFA doesn't demand that local players actually take the field, as Blatter's more draconian FIFA proposal would. He has said he would push ahead on making that far more visible change with "consultation, not confrontation...
...with clubs accumulating muscle and money right across Europe - until recently, the most powerful were grouped together into a representative organization known as G-14 - FIFA's proposals may also be an attempt to re-emphasize the governing body's authority. For instance, rich clubs across the continent paying vast sums in players' wages have long bickered with FIFA's national soccer federations over the release of those players for international matches, something FIFA requires of clubs...