THE EYES OF THE FOOTBALL WORLD have been firmly focused on the Far East since Chinese Super League teams began splashing vast amounts of cash on some top European, South American and…
Tag: asia
As featured on Guardian Sport THE 2015/16 WINTER TRANSFER WINDOW was the first time that the world really took note of Chinese football. Huge amounts of money were spent over the winter months…
Cyril Radcliffe was a civil servant who was little known outside British bureaucratic circles before 1947. However, the events which transpired in August of the same year would etch his name into…
Despite boasting the largest youth population in the world and a rapidly advancing economy, Indian athletes have always flattered to deceive on the international stage in most sporting events across the globe.…
There is nothing new in international teams seeking an edge through claiming talent with even the most tenuous connections to their countries. But Timor Leste’s attempt to fill their squad with Brazilians…
North America remains the destination of choice for big-name players past their prime looking to prolong their careers in a new environment. China has tried to muscle in on that market and…
SYRIAN FORWARD Mahmoud Al-Mawas cuts through two Chinese defenders, caresses the ball away gently from the on-rushing goalkeeper, maintaining his balance all the while, to score the only goal of the game.…
In an age of continuous footballing progress, it’s fair to say that the game has a hold in most cultures across the world. Comfortably the world’s most dominant sport, football is unparalleled in…
Asian football has been hit with match-fixing scandals aplenty over the last decade. On 23 May, yet another scandal made the news. Three things made this scandal different: first, it involved one of…
CHINESE FOOTBALL HAS BEEN GRABBING THE HEADLINES RECENTLY, mainly due to the huge transfer fees that have been paid to entice players to head east. These transfers have made headlines around the…
MOST TEENAGERS COUNT DOWN THE DAYS until they turn 18, eagerly anticipating this milestone in their lives when they gain their independence and are able to do things that they couldn’t as a…
NESTLED IN NORTH EAST THAILAND, 400km from the gleaming skyscrapers and tourist traps of Bangkok, at first sight Buriram seems an unlikely place for a football revolution to be taking place. The north…
From the depths of a 31-0 defeat, we look back at the remarkable redemption of American Samoa and their first competitve victory despite being FIFA’s lowest ranked side.
NOT SO LONG AGO, a chat about the state of football in the tiny US island territory of Guam would have been greeted almost immediately with derisive comments about their habit for…
On 14 May 1992, Gary Lineker scored his final goal in English football as Tottenham Hotspur lost 3-1 to Manchester United. Following the game, players, managers and fans across the UK began to…
It is the smallest member of the Asian Football Confederation; just 165,000 inhabitants scattered across a tropical island in the north Pacific. Owing to the fact that it is indeed an American territory, like…
To take a hurried look at Chinese football and then condemn it as a spectacle inferior to anything produced upon the European continent is an incredibly easy thing to do – and something…
SOMETIMES YOU HEAR A FACT, notice a name or log a date in your memory in the obscure hope that one day, you’ll be in a pub quiz team, or watching a television…