RB LEIPZIG
Became the first
club from the old
East Germany to
top the Bundesliga
at the winter
halfway stage, as
well as the first
side in Bundesliga
history to score
three goals in
eight consecutive
games.VISSEL KOBE
Inspired by Andres
Iniesta, they won
the first silverware
of their 54-year
history by beating
Kashima Antlers
in the Emperor’s
Cup Final.Portugal, but UEFA will go co-hosting
mad with this summer’s tournament,
spread across 12 nations.
The standard of play at the finals
of both World Cups and European
Championships improved over the
decade after disappointing lows in 2010
and 2012 respectively. For the upgrade,
the lawmakers can take some credit with
efforts to speed up play and the advent
of technological assistance. Goal-line
technology was an instant success, while
VAR brings elements of complicating
subjectivity but it will work eventually and
the attraction of football in the modern
era will be all the better for it.
Improving standards at national-team
level have been founded on the work
undertaken in the club sphere. Here an
increasing understanding of the value of
good coaching – from small children to
walking-football pensioners – has been
crucial. Hence the value of the coaching
development
programmes
devised by
FIFA and UEFA
and now being
emulated worldwide.
A reshuffling of
the balance of
power among
nations over the
decade was seen
most dramatically
in Italy’s regression.
Once upon a
time Serie A was
Eldorado. No more.
The clubs’ earning
potential was frozen by the inability to
develop their municipal stadia just as
English, German and Spanish clubs
turned their own matchday homes
into commercial enterprises.
Along the way the racism scourge has
also exposed Italian football as living in
a deeply depressing past. But that issue
remains social as much as sport’s.
Spain’s national team are now not
quite what they were, while Real Madrid’s
Champions League hat-trick between
2016 and 2018 may prove beyond equal
for many more years.
But not all of the decade was crowd-
pleasingly brilliant. Off-screen the level
of corruption reached record levels. The
nadir was plumbed in 2015 when the US
Attorney-General Loretta Lynch lifted the
lid on the Americans’ shaming FIFAGate
investigation, although some damage-
limitation defenders still insist that the
scandal should be termed CONCACAF-
Gate because the network of shame
began with the tax-haven, pocket-lining
antics of Jack Warner, Chuck Blazer and
company. In fact it was the unscrutinised
membership of the FIFA inner circle –
aided and abetted by Sepp Blatter’s wilful
blind eye – which enabled a gang of
powerbrokers to rob the game.
The FIFAGate process should be
wrapped within the first years of the new
decade, in the US courts and FIFA ethics
committee, but the game will still not be
safe. Further aggressive assaults on the
spirit of football in particular and sport
in general rave on. Match-fixing is one, a
perpetual stain; doping is another, albeit
less of a threat to football than to the
individualised sports such as cycling.
A new decade brings new challenges.
For FIFA it means
maintaining some
sort of connection
between the
breathless rest of the
world and Europe,
whose relentless
onward march under
UEFA generates
more than 90 per
cent of the game’s
wealth and will
continue to attract
its finest players.
Gianni Infantino,
provided he does
not let it all go to
his head, can still be president of FIFA in
2030 when the worth of his expanded
World Cup and Club World Cup can be
properly evaluated.
Women’s football will continue to
expand apace, although one quarter of
FIFA’s 211-strong membership still do not
have an active women’s national team.
Otherwise, little may change within
Infantino’s kingdom and Asia will still
struggle to balance east and west amid
the Chinese-enhanced political tensions
while Africa will remain a challenge
largely to itself let alone anyone else.
So much, so clear, it would seem. But
not the answer to the most important
question of all: who will be our Di Stefano
and Puskas or Pele and Cruyff...or Messi
and Ronaldo?LIVERPOOL
Won the Club
World Cup for the
first time, beating
Flamengo 1-0 in
the Final thanks
to a goal from
Roberto Firmino.DANIEL
STENDEL
A defeat in the
Edinburgh derby at
home to Hibernian
meant that Hearts
boss Stendel
became the club’s
first manager in 82
years to lose his
first four games
in charge.MILAN
Suffered their
heaviest defeat for
more than 21 years
in Serie A when
they were beaten
5-0 by Atalanta.WENDIE
RENARD
The France
defender left
the trophy she
received for
being named
in FIFA’s team
of the year
on a train
when travelling
between Paris
and Lyon.GLOBAL FOOTBALL INTELLIGENCE
ON TOP OF
THE WORLD
2010-WORLD CUP
Spain, Germany, FranceCLUB WORLD CUP
Real Madrid (four),
Barcelona (two),
Bayern Munich, Corinthians,
Internazionale, Liverpool