English Football Blog

Lillian Thuram is the latest player to be diagnosed with a heart problem that will probably signify the end of the great French defenders career. His brother suffered from the same problem and died last year while playing basketball. Over 40 footballers have died from heart attacks or seizures since the year 2000, most have died from heart related problems. FIFA decided in August 2007 to bring in Cardiac testing to all players from all levels but that is still to be implemented with no set date for this to happen yet. Since then
2 player have died on the pitch from heart related problems.
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This week Sepp Blatter, FIFA President, said in a interview that he did have a contingency plan after reports came out that one of South Africa’s stadium is running behind schedule for it’s completion for the 2009 Confederations Cup. It is important that every stadium is complete for the Confederations Cup to show FIFA that the countries transport and stadiums safety infrastructure works and will not fail in the 2010 World Cup. But the major question in hand is who is Mr Blatter’s country of choice if they do have to move the competition.
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Over the past decade or so the balance of power has been shifting from club to player. It would seem quite unreal that only 50 years ago players were on a maximum pay structure of £7 a week. Now the average income of a Premiership player is over £676,000, with the likes of John Terry and Steven Gerrard paid in the region of £120,000 a week. When in 1990 Jean Marc Bosman took his club FC Liege to court over being released from his contract and won finally in 1995 it sent shock waves throughout the footballing world and has had serious repercussions since. Now FIFA and the EU have deployed new laws that give players even more power to leave their respective clubs, with players no being allowed to pay their final two years of their contract to be able to leave the club and also allowed to rescind their contract if the club refuses to play them and leave them in the stands.
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There is no other country in the world that understands more about the heartache from loosing in a penalty shootout than England. Since the 1990 world cup in Italy there have been eight major international tournaments England have been involved in, they have been knocked out five times by penalty shootouts in those tournaments. It has been a long unanswered question by many, is there no other way to finish a game?
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