Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 i World Soccer

It’s not every day that the FA appoints a new England manager, and far less a German one, so Thomas Tuchel draws much of our attention for this issue. So too does the Copa Libertadores, as South American football expert Tim Vickery assesses this year’s finalists ahead of the showdown in Buenos Aires on November 30. We’ve still got room for a report from Welsh Premier League side The New Saints in their first-ever European group stage campaign, an interview with Vanuatu head coach Juliano Schmeling, plus plenty more.…

In the nine Premier League games before Thomas Tuchel took over as manager of Chelsea in January 2021, they kept just two clean sheets and conceded 13 goals. There was a sense that Frank Lampard’s side could be got at. In the ten league games that followed, they kept eight clean sheets and conceded just twice. Famously, one hour-long training session was enough for Tuchel to tighten up the midfield. And for England that is hugely positive news. There have been two main strands to the debate around Tuchel’s appointment as England manager. On the one hand, there were the doubts about whether a major nation should ever have a foreign coach, which could themselves be split in two: those who feel that the notion of international football as the…

“I won’t coach in the next year for sure, I’m certain of that. I need to give myself time to make good decisions…I’m fortunate that there are lots of different opportunities presenting themselves” Former England manager Gareth Southgate rules out taking another coaching role in the next 12 months JESE Rodriguez Ten months after his departure from Brazilian club Coritiba, the ex-Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Stoke City and Spain U21 forward moved to Malaysian side Johor Darul Ta’zim. Dwight YORKE The ex-Trinidad & Tobago striker was named the national team’s head coach. It is Yorke’s second managerial role, having previously been in charge of Australian outfit Macarthur FC. Josuha GUILAVOGUI The 34-year-old midfielder, who has played for the likes of Bordeaux, Atletico Madrid, Wolfsburg and Mainz – and won seven caps…

Any assessment of England’s new manager Thomas Tuchel automatically involves the delicate process of disentangling all the 51-year-old German’s many attributes from the less attractive features of his character, notably his visceral unwillingness to compromise and duty corporal style of management. In the 15 years that have elapsed since he made his bow as a top-fight coach with Mainz, whom he steered to an incredible fifth-place finish in the Bundesliga in 2010-11 – the club’s highest-ever placing – Tuchel has proved himself an outstanding cultivator of successful sides. A football obsessive with an astonishing attention to detail, searing intelligence and a flair for matchday strategy and training ground innovation, he loves nothing more than a battle of wits. All that matters to him is winning, and as a provider of…

ATLETICO MINEIRO GROUP STAGE Caracas 1-4 Atletico Mineiro Atletico Mineiro 2-1 Rosario Central Atletico Mineiro 3-2 Penarol Rosario Central 0-1 Atletico Mineiro Penarol 2-0 Atletico Mineiro Atletico Mineiro 4-0 Caracas LAST 16 San Lorenzo1-1 Atletico Mineiro Atletico Mineiro1-0 San Lorenzo Atletico Mineiro win 2-1 on aggregate QUARTER-FINALS Fluminense 1-0 Atletico Mineiro Atletico Mineiro 2-0 Fluminense Atletico Mineiro win 2-1 on aggregate SEMI-FINALS Atletico Mineiro 3-0 River Plate River Plate 0-0 Atletico Mineiro Atletico Mineiro win 3-0 on aggregate BOTAFOGO QUALIFYING Aurora 1-1 Botafogo Botafogo 6-0 Aurora Botafogo win 7-1 on aggregate Botafogo 2-1 Red Bull Bragantino Red Bull Bragantino 1-1 Botafogo Botafogo win 3-2 on aggregate GROUP STAGE Botafogo1-3 Junior LDU Quito1-0 Botafogo Botafogo 3-1 Universitario Botafogo 2-1 LDU Quito Universitario 0-1 Botafogo Junior 0-0 Botafogo LAST 16 Botafogo 2-1 Palmeiras Palmeiras 2-2…

Hungary had little to celebrate at Euro 2024 but the country did at least make a small bit of history. Kevin Csoboth’s winner against Scotland, scored in the tenth minute of second-half stoppage-time, became the latest goal in the tournament’s history in regulation time. Instigated by Dominik Szoboszlai, who started Hungary’s quick counter-attack in his own half, the goal was very much a product of the Fonix Gold academy. Watching on inside Stuttgart’s MHP Arena, the academy’s founder, Zsolt Szoboszlai, beamed with pride. He had watched his son, Dominik, link with Csoboth to score goals like that ever since they were young boys representing the yellow strips of Fonix Gold in Szekesfehervar – a suburban city roughly 40 miles away from Hungary’s capital, Budapest. “It’s always a great feeling to…

“In the old days, the role of the midfield provider was straightforward. His job was to supply his front-runners with long through-passes and the like. If he did happen to score, it was always more the exception than the rule. Basically, he relied on other people to put the ball into the net. But nowadays things have altered, and life for a midfield operator has become that much more arduous. When I began my career with Ajax, I was what could be termed a “forager”. My job was to create chances for my old pal Johan Cruyff. But as new tactics and formations evolved during the middle and late 1960s, I became compelled by the course of events to adopt a more flexible approach to my game. I had to…

Sicily may only have a population of five million people, but three of the 13 most populous cities in Italy are on the island. Nestled in the shadow of the still active Mount Etna volcano, Catania is the tenth biggest city by population and boasts a long, proud but fragmented football history. There are five clubs playing in Serie A this season with a smaller average attendance than the18,000 who have been routinely attending the city’s Stadio Angelo Massimino to watch the club try to get out of the third tier of Italian football. The origins of professional football in Catania date back to1908 and the club has spent 17 seasons in Serie A – most recently in 2013-14 – but halcyon days were often interrupted by numerous financial crises.…

“How does the reality of life as a footballer compare to what you dreamed of growing up? It’s been everything I hoped it would be. I’ve enjoyed my career. It’s been a roller-coaster ride, of course, but I would never regret anything that’s happened, from the first moment up until now. I’ve tried to see the world as much as possible. Different experiences. Different countries. Different people. Different cultures. Different football. Finding my feet and learning on the fly has definitely been my strength. You’ve played for clubs in nine different countries so far. What effect has that had on your life away from the pitch? At the start it’s very difficult to meet new people when you don’t speak the language, but I’ve been with my wife Veronica for…

With Brazil gearing up to host the 2027 World Cup, it was appropriate that their hegemony of the Copa Libertadores Femenina continued with Corinthians retaining their title. The Sao Paulo giants beat Colombia’s Santa Fe 2-0, a repeat of the 2021 final, but there were signs that the continental dominance of Brazilian clubs is not as absolute as it had been trending. Brazilian clubs have won all six competitions since the competition was expanded to 16 teams in 2019 despite none being held in Brazil (unlike Europe’s Champions League, this remains a single-venue tournament with Paraguay hosting this year as a late replacement for Uruguay). Corinthians have collected four titles, Palmeiras and Ferroviaria one apiece. Corinthians will be one of the teams likely to feature in FIFA’s Women’s Club World…

Yet again, all roads lead to Qatar. On December 18, exactly two years after the 2022 World Cup final, Qatar’s Lusail Stadium will stage the final of the Intercontinental Cup with Real Madrid taking on one of the world’s other continental champions. Late last year, amid a rollout of plans for the revamped 32-team Club World Cup, FIFA also released details for what it called the “Coupe Intercontinentale de la FIFA” – a modern reincarnation of the old Intercontinental Cup that pitted the top club of Europe against the best of South America until it was replaced by the Club World Cup in 2005. In essence, the match crowned the best club in the world. In the 1960s, Pele’s Santos prevailed against Eusebio’s Benfica and then Milan; in the1980s, Zico’s…

Shanghai Port needed a victory on the final day of the 2024 Chinese Super League season to lift a third title and they did that in style, thrashing Tianjin Jinmen Tigers 5-0. The celebrations could be heard all around China’s biggest city. For the first time ever in the country, this season was all about this commercial and financial megapolis, as Port and Shanghai Shenhua fought it out at the top of the table all the way to the end. As the Reds lifted the trophy, the Blues were only a point behind. The others were nowhere. It is common knowledge that the spending in China’s top tier stopped some time ago and most clubs have been more focused on staying in business than scouring Europe’s top leagues for big-name…

EUROPE 2024-25 UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Matchday 3 Oct 22 – Milan Milan (Ita) 3 (Pulisic 34, Reijnders 61, 71) Club Brugge (Bel) 1 (Sabbe 51) Oct 22 – Monaco Monaco (Fra) 5 (Minamino 20, 70, Embolo 45+4, Singo 54, Akliouche 90+7) Red Star Belgrade (Srb) 1 (Ndiaye 27 pen) Oct 22 – London Arsenal (Eng) 1 (Riznyk 29 og) Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukr) 0 Oct 22 – Birmingham Aston Villa (Eng) 2 (McGinn 55, Duran 64) Bologna (Ita) 0 Oct 22 – Girona Girona (Spa) 2 (Gutierrez 42, Juanpe 73) Slovan Bratislava (Svk) 0 Oct 22 – Turin Juventus (Ita) 0 Stuttgart (Ger) 1 (Toure 90+2) Oct 22 – Paris Paris Saint-Germain (Fra) 1 (Hakimi 55) PSV (Ned) 1 (Lang 34) Oct 22 – Madrid Real Madrid (Spa) 5 (Rudiger 60,…

Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England manager resurrected the old question about the purpose and value of a national team. Is it a vehicle for patriotism or nationalism or simply, suiting FIFA’s political and development aims, for cash generation? The answer is: all three and more besides. Football’s good fortune, more than ever now, is profiting from the emergence and existence of the nation state. The national team concept was about governance off the pitch and competition on it, the best of one state against the best of another Yet, just as national team football generates millions of dollars hand-in-hand with fixture inflation, so the original concept is devalued. Once upon a time national identity was more a matter of geography than politics. Then technology expanded horizons in the 19th century.…

“We’re talking of at least two months of training. I wasn’t joking…there are one or two teams. Let’s see what my mind tells me and, above all, my body” Roma legend Francesco Totti confirms rumours that he is considering coming out of retirement at the age of 48 50,000 Number of fans that attended Lukas Podolski’s star-studded testimonial, which featured a Cologne XI versus a “Team Poldi”. 54.69% Erik ten Hag’s win-rate at Manchester United before being sacked. Only Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho had better records for the Red Devils. €10m Release clause United paid Sporting to hire head coach Ruben Amorim. 3 Number of games former France midfielder Claude Makelele lasted as coach of Greek outfit Asteras Tripolis, exiting the club undefeated. 4 Consecutive years the Ballon d’Or…

In a late flowering in the curious career of Ronaldinho, Atletico Mineiro won their first Copa Libertadores in 2013. But a second triumph has proved elusive. The Belo Horizonte club have enjoyed an excellent few years – completing the league and cup double in 2021 (and making it to the Copa do Brasil final this year), inaugurating a new stadium last year and also taking advantage of a recent legislative change to re-organise themselves on business lines. But the Libertadores has proved frustrating. In each of the last three campaigns Atletico were eliminated by Palmeiras – on away goals in the 2021 semi-finals, on penalties in the 2022 quarter-finals, and1-0 on aggregate in last year’s second round. This time, fellow finalists Botafogo took care of Palmeiras, and Atletico have been…

On a chilly night in late October, with the end of British Summer Time just a few days away, a unique footballing occasion is about to unfold. For the first time ever, a team from the Welsh top flight will host a match in the group stage of a UEFA competition. But the hosts aren’t based in Wales, the game is taking place 20 miles from their usual home and nine miles from the Welsh border, and many of the supporters in attendance are wearing the colours of a third-tier English club. This is the Conference League clash between The New Saints and Kazakh outfit Astana at Shrewsbury Town’s New Meadow. TNS – or The New Saints of Oswestry Town & Llansantffraid to give them their full name – originally…

Kai Havertz’s recent success as a striker for Arsenal might have come as a surprise to many, but not to Simon Rolfes. Bayer Leverkusen’s former academy manager spotted a goalscorer’s instinct in the versatile Germany star at an early age, long before he was converted into a fulltime centre-forward with the Gunners. “As a 19-year-old, Kai scored a dream goal in a Bundesliga match in Nuremberg in catastrophic weather conditions,” Rolfes, who is now Leverkusen’s managing director of sport, tells World Soccer. “There was water on the pitch, the whole game was just accidents. He chipped the ball out of a huge puddle with incredible technique over the keeper and into the goal. “It was as if he was playing on a fine English pitch in glorious sunshine in July.”…

You have worked across the Pacific for FIFA and the Oceania Football Confederation for over a decade, but only now have taken on a job as a national coach. Why now? I was very familiar with the region as I had been doing coach education, high performance and development in the region. I knew the reality of all the countries as we only have 11 countries in the region. At the beginning of this year, two jobs came up for a national coach in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. I applied for both through the normal process and got this one. You have a lot of experience in futsal. How has that helped now you are focused on football? I worked in football in the region too and also that…

The 2024 ASEAN Championship promises to be one of the most intriguing since Southeast Asia started holding a biennial competition back in 1996. Indonesia have never won it, beaten in six finals, but are somehow the team to beat in this ten-nation meet-up as they are the only country from the region of 650 million to still be alive in qualification for the 2026 World Cup. The first of the two five-team groups (the top two go through to the semifinals and each team plays two group games at home) contains three teams who have won 12 of the 14 titles so far: Thailand won their seventh in 2022, Singapore have won four of the others, although none since 2012, and Malaysia won their first and only title in 2010.…

Gareth Southgate started England on a journey, taking the fear out of the shirt and the shootouts, and taking the team close to glory. The Football Association now places vast faith and finance in a finisher, Thomas Tuchel, to complete the journey. The FA is effectively paying the new England manager £7.5 million to weave his managerial magic over 24 hours. That’s the competitive playing time that Tuchel is in charge of the Three Lions for: 16 games split between 2026 World Cup qualifiers and the tournament itself. It’s New Jersey for those in a famous old jersey. It’s MetLife Stadium or bust for Tuchel. There’s possibly an additional 150 minutes’ extra-time, at least four friendlies and all the many hours Tuchel will spend preparing and overseeing training, travelling and…

THE PREMIER By Jimmy Burns (Pitch Publishing, £14.99) The Premier: Big Business and Great Football explores the history and evolution of the world’s most popular football league. Discover the curiosities and stand-out moments as well as fascinating stories of the owners, managers, players, fans and chroniclers who’ve all lit up England’s top flight. From Wenger’s Arsenal and Ferguson’s Manchester United to the Guardiola–Klopp rivalry, and hooliganism, tragic memories and tribalism to controversial overseas owners, this is the Premier League in all its colour and complexity. TINPOT By Simon Turner (Pitch Publishing, £14.99) Today’s football tournaments seem to have been with us forever. They are the survivors – the bright ideas that quickly caught on. Tinpot recalls the strange and forgotten competitions that sparked into life before shuffling off their mortal…

“It is clear that the UEFA Ballon d’Or does not respect Real Madrid. And Real Madrid does not go where it is not respected” Real Madrid react angrily to Vinicius Junior missing out on the 2024 Ballon d’Or Dieter BURDENSKI (1950-2024) Burdenski was a goalkeeping stalwart of Werder Bremen, setting a club record of 444 Bundesliga appearances over 16 years, while also winning 12 caps for West Germany between 1977 and 1984. Just four days before he was born in 1950, father Herbert scored against Switzerland for West Germany in their first game after the Second World War. Abdelaziz BARRADA (1989-2024) The French-born Morocco midfielder died of a heart attack aged just 35. A youth player with PSG, Barrada made his breakthrough in Spain with Getafe, for whom he once scored…

SEASON RANKINGS Cumulative votes through the season GOALKEEPERS Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa) 3 David Raya (Arsenal) 3 David De Gea (Fiorentina) 2 Michele Di Gregorio (Juventus) 2 Franco Israel (Sporting) 2 Inaki Pena (Barcelona) 2 Matz Sels (Nottingham Forest) 2 Alisson (Liverpool) 1 Peter Gulacsi (RB Leipzig) 1 Alex Meret (Napoli) 1 Vanja Milinkovic-Savic (Torino) 1 Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid) 1 Yann Sommer (Internazionale) 1 DEFENDERS Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool) 8 Giovanni Di Lorenzo (Napoli) 7 Willi Orban (RB Leipzig) 6 Gabriel (Arsenal) 5 Bremer (Juventus) 4 Josko Gvardiol (Manchester City) 4 Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool) 3 Riccardo Calafiori (Arsenal) 3 Pau Cubarsi (Barcelona) 3 Ruben Dias (Manchester City) 3 Federico Dimarco (Internazionale) 3 Eder Militao (Real Madrid) 3 Alex Grimaldo (Bayer Leverkusen) 3 William Saliba (Arsenal) 3 Alessandro Buongiorno (Napoli)…

In early July, Botafogo beat Atletico Mineiro 3-0 in a league game. True, Atletico had a player sent off early, and this was when they were at their lowest ebb, missing players on international duty and suffering with a fixture pile-up. But the worrying aspect for them is that Botafogo are now a much better team than they were then – this match came just before the side was strengthened with an impressive array of mid-year reinforcements. Indeed, three of the new recruits – Argentina World Cup winner Thiago Almada, ex-Napoli midfielder Allan and Brazil striker Igor Jesus – were unveiled on the pitch after that game. Whatever the circumstances, that meeting in July highlights one of the key questions of the Libertadores final: if Botafogo hit their stride, will…

In their opening game of the group phase of this year’s Libertadores, Botafogo found themselves 3-0 down at home to Junior of Colombia before half-time. This was a club still suffering from the trauma of 2023 – on top of traumas that were much more serious. One of the great names of Brazilian football, Botafogo supplied many of the star names to the golden age of the national team, from Garrincha, Mario Zagallo, Didi and Nilton Santos through to Gerson and Jairzinho. This left an appalling chasm between a glorious past and a deeply depressing present. They were Rio de Janeiro’s fourth club, drowning in debt and frequently visiting the second division. Then came the SAF law, allowing Brazil’s clubs to turn themselves into businesses and have owners. It is…

When Gianni Rivera hoisted aloft the European Cup in Madrid in 1969 he was apparently confirming Italian rule over European club football. As Milan celebrated their 4-1 victory over Ajax, the Dutch team slipped away, written off by the media as naive interlopers in a tough new world of tactical cynicism. How wrong could the cognoscenti have been. Within a few more years, it became clear that Milan’s triumph had been a swansong for Calcio’s pride and the mere presence of Ajax at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium a portent of better days to come through the concept of Total Football. Football’s tactical progress has been all about evolution rather than revolution. Hence, Total Football can be traced back to what Willy Meisl forecast as “The Whirl” in his seminal book…

LEVERKUSEN’S RECORD SALES €80m KAI HAVERTZ 2020 (to Chelsea) €55m MOUSSA DIABY 2023 (to Aston Villa) €32m LEON BAILEY 2021 (to Aston Villa) €30m SON HEUNG-MIN 2015 (to Tottenham Hotspur) FRITZWALTERMEDAL WINNERS (Germany’s best young footballer) 2018 KAI HAVERTZ (Leverkusen) 2019 NICOLASGERRIT KUHN (Ajax) 2020 NOAH KATTERBACH (Cologne) 2021 KARIM ADEYEMI (Dortmund) 2022 FLORIAN WIRTZ (Leverkusen) 2023 YOUSSOUFA MOUKOKO (Dortmund) GERMANY 53 CAPS GOALS 19 BAYERLEVERKUSEN’S YOUNGEST-EVERPLAYERS 1 Ken IZEKOR 16 years, 204 days, December 2023 2 Zidan SERTDEMIR 16 years, 276 days, November 2021 3 Iker BRAVO 16 years, 298 days, November 2021 4 Florian WIRTZ 17 years, 15 days, May 2020 5 Kai HAVERTZ 17 years, 126 days, October 2016 CHAMPIONSLEAGUE FINALMATCH-WINNERS 19 Players to have scored the only goal in a European Cup/Champions League final. Havertz became the 17th in 2021…

“You spent nearly three years in Denmark with FC Copenhagen. How do you look back on that period of your career? I spent a long time in Copenhagen and I was very grateful for what they have done for me. FC Copenhagen is a big club and I’m happy that I got the chance there to play in the Champions League, which was an amazing experience. In the beginning it was, of course, difficult. There were moments of adversity, when I had to adapt and mature very quickly. Moving away from home for the first time in my life, to the complete other side of the world, was very difficult for me. But luckily I had really good people around me, who helped me to adapt to Denmark really quickly.…

Are the deep pockets of billionaire Patrice Motsepe killing the South African league? For the last seven seasons, Mamelodi Sundowns have won the championship in an unprecedented streak of success and indicative of their massive resources. The club was bought by mining billionaire Patrice Motsepe two decades ago and his profligate spending has seen them evolve, slowly at first, into a powerhouse that no other domestic side can come close to challenging. Motsepe has since become Confederation of African Football (CAF) president and stays away from matches, but it remains a family business with his youthful son now in charge. Last season, they took the title by a record 23 points (it had been 16 the season before) and were 30 minutes away from becoming the first team to ever…

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As Inter Miami lifted the Supporters’ Shield, breaking Major League Soccer’s regular season points record in the process, it is easy to forget that such immediate success wasn’t widely predicted for Lionel Messi’s team in his first full season in the league. At the start of each season, the official MLS website compiles previews and predictions for each side. Only three of the 17 experts involved predicted Inter Miami to top the Eastern Conference, and only five had them in the top three. After all, Inter Miami finished 27th out of 29 teams in 2023, but with Messi on board, along with Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, this was almost a different franchise to the one that came before it, never mind a different team. The hype that…

Taiwan’s international dragnet is expanding to include players in the US as coach Gary White looks to increase the playing pool at the Asian side. The island, known as Chinese Taipei in a sporting context, struggled in the second round of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, losing all six games to Oman, Kyrgyzstan and Malaysia. After a friendly with Singapore in November, White’s attention turns to the qualifiers for next year’s East Asian Federation Football Championship. In December, Chinese Taipei will battle with the likes of Hong Kong, Mongolia and North Korea in the qualifiers. White says: “The top teams in Asia that go to the World Cup produce players that go to the top leagues in the world. Taiwan are at a much lower level and if you…

Manchester United v Arsenal 2008-09 Champions League, Old Trafford John O’Shea rarely stole the limelight during his Manchester United career but when he did, it was with spectacular results. After a career that included famous winners at Highbury and Anfield, the former Republic of Ireland defender looks back on a Champions League game as his most cherished… “Playing for Manchester United was a dream for a kid growing up in Ireland, and I was lucky to be there for long enough to have a lot of games to pick from as I go for my favourite. Some people will cynically say the most important game that I played for United was against a young Cristiano Ronaldo when we took on Sporting in a pre-season game in Lisbon back in 2003,…