The Padanian VIVA World Cup winning team (see this photo on Flickr)
Our congratulations go to Padania, who were 2-0 winners over the Aramean Syriacs in this year’s VIVA World Cup final.
Padanian fans with their flag (see this photo on Flickr)
The VIVA World Cup is a competition for countries that do not have UN or FIFA recognition. It’s run by the New Football Federations-Board, whose General Secretary is “Luc Misson, a lawyer who represented Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman in a case that led to the Bosman ruling that established greater freedom of movement for professional players in Europe.”
Further reading suggestions: James Montague, author of When Friday Comes: Football in the War Zone, has written a good article about this year’s the VIVA World Cup and Kurdish attempts to join FIFA. There’s also Outcasts!: The Lands That FIFA Forgot, Steve Menary’s book about the footballing nations not recognised by FIFA.
We’ll be passing right through Occitania on our way to South Africa — perhaps we should suggest a game?
In an ongoing series of video embeds that I think have a bearing on the way we develop our style for 2010, here’s one from Matt Harding that’s been doing the blogosphere rounds of late:
I have to say that I really enjoy the light-hearted and inclusive feel to this latest video — previous ones didn’t include other people the way this one does. And I say “hats off” because the guy gets paid to do this!
Although he’s a little bit too inconsiderate towards the unwitting “goalkeepers” in this video for my liking, I enjoy the way he uses the urban landscape as his “pitch”. And his skills are pretty decent too.
Thanks for the heads-up, Ian
A generally optimistic Kenyan view:
2010 promises to be a great year for South Africa if everything goes as planned.
Is South Africa ready to host the 2010 World Cup?
Let’s hope it does.
John Turnbull has posted an interesting article on the birth of football in the US on The Global Game. The article details the history of Paterson FC, which has a strong claim to being the first club to play football according to the 1863 rules which we honour with our kick-off game in Battersea Park. However, it also mentions Oneida FC of Boston, who were established earlier, but “played one of the football codes–perhaps a soccer-rugby hybrid”. Oneida FC are commemorated with a monument on Boston Common which I think we should visit as we head for Brazil…
The monument (photo wallyg on Flickr, CC license)
Since the idea of The Ball is to some extent inspired by the Olympic Torch and the Torch Relay, we’re following the progress of this year’s torch closely.
2008 Torch Relay on Google Earth 
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If you’re in the UK, this is the route through London tomorrow.
It’s interesting to note that the last time there was a purely overland relay was to the 1980 games in Moscow and indeed how few relays have actually been entirely overland (only three: 1936 Berlin, 1972 Munich and 1980 Moscow). The 2004 games in Athens (the torch relay went global, visiting all the previous hosts of the modern games) seems to have set something of a precedent which has been expanded for this year’s games to a route that seems to be a somewhat aimless promotional tour around the world.
Personally I think this is a pity — and possibly even a mistake — as it seems to detract from the value that the torch has (largely accidentally) accrued as symbolic of the ideals of athletic endeavour. That lofty symbolic quality has been replaced by a return of the torch to its original purpose as something of simply promotional value for the hosts.
UPDATE: Here’s a gallery of photos of the disruptions to the relay
We love the way that the BBC’s Your Game initiative combines music, media, football and opportunity. Check out the video:
This is the first of what will hopefully become a regular feature of this blog — a digest of recent news stories about the 2010 World Cup. So, let’s kick off with a few items that have caught our attention:
South Africans will be able to watch the 2010 Soccer World Cup for free on SABC or at public viewing events, soccer’s governing body Fifa announced on Monday.
The national education department is proposing a five- week long school break during the 2010 Soccer World Cup to avoid pupil and teacher absenteeism and a chaotic transport system, the Daily Dispatch Online reported on Wednesday.
Fifa has been forced to build a £400m contingency fund to cater for the possible collapse of the 2010 World Cup.
Insurers are holding off on a decision to provide coverage for the event in South Africa amid fears that the stadiums will not be ready in time. Assessors for Munich Re, the German insurance giant which insured the 2006 tournament in Germany, are concerned about progress.
The Ball is not round!
LAW 2 — THE BALL
The ball is spherical.
The early history of football is littered with attempts to standardise the rules by which the game was played. Perhaps the first were the Cambridge Rules, which were first agreed in 1848. Unfortunately, no copy of the original rules survives, but an 1856 copy of them has. Then there is Sheffield FC, who were founded as the first football club with their own codification of the game — the Sheffield Rules of 1858. And, of course, the Football Association was founded with a code derived in part from the Cambridge University Rules in 1863. We at Spirit of Football think that these are the rules that, more than any code, have become the basis for the modern game — which is why we celebrate them at Battersea Park, where they were first deployed in a game.
Nonetheless, there was little agreement amongst those who played the game in its various guises for more than two decades, until a meeting of the Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English FAs in Manchester on the 6th December 1882 proposed the establishment of a permanent board to regulate the laws of the game and to produce a common set of rules under which international matches could be played. This was to become the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which held its first meeting in London on 2nd June 1886. The minutes of that meeting can be read in this PDF (Adobe Acrobat required). You can read the subsequent history of IFAB on Wikipedia, so I won’t repeat what’s already out there.
Fast forward to the present. IFAB met at Gleneagles last week. Apparently. FIFA’s coverage amounted to one press release, a news item and the agenda. But they have yet to release anything that I can find that summarises what actually happened. Nor can I find anything on the FA’s website.
“But why?” I hear you ask. “This is, after all, football’s legislature meeting to decide the future direction of the game.” Well, perhaps there aren’t enough people in the relevant organisations to do that. Perhaps there’s no obvious place to post news of IFAB’s decisions. “But IFAB have their own website, don’t they?” you ask. Amazingly, at the moment, the IFAB archives are hosted in Torrance, California by none other than the Soccer South Bay Referee Association. “What? Who are they?”, you rightly ask. Well, er… um… quite. Unfortunately, the powers that be seem to have missed the boat on www.ifab.com to Industrial Fabricators Incorporated. “Oops!” you say, “that’s a bit of an oversight”.
Oh well. I suppose football never has been and probably never will be run on democratic lines. It’s not like the players can have a vote on the merits of a penalty decision, or put forward a motion of no confidence in the referee. Nor, I imagine, does the average fan particularly care about such administrivia. But it does seem that football’s legislative body is unusually and unaccountably coy.
