The future of English football

Last week the chairman of the FA Greg Dyke made a really interesting and far reaching speech. It was bold ambitious and some may say daring. He has certainly put the cat among the pigeons if you like with many top clubs dismissing his ideas straight away. But I think there is a serious issue here with the state of English football and the current plight of the national team. Greg Dyke identified what is going wrong very ell the lack of trained coach's in this country and the huge cost of doing your coaching badges is a real block to people. In England we only have around 3000 trained coaches in comparison France, Germany and Spain are up around the 30 thousand mark which is a lot more and will as a result have a big impact in teaching our younger players about the game. I think in many ways our players in England are as good as any other in the world if they are given the freedom to play. I think sometimes they can be over coached at a young age and not able to fully express themselves learning the game by making mistakes and correcting them by themselves. Dykes speech was visionary he set some bold targets of a semi final in Euro 2020 and to actually win the world cup in 2022. These targets sound absolutely farfetched as we stand in England who still is finding it hard to qualify for next year’s world cup let alone one in 6 or 7 years time. There is hope a few good younger players are making it in the first team in England with prospects like Everton’s Ross Barklay and Tottenhams Andros Townsend getting a place in their club side and getting England call up's. Allot of Greg Dykes speech focused on the Premier league which we would e expect stating that too many average foreign players are brought in when an English based player is being denied an opportunity. I fully take on board the argument that if your good enough you will get in a big team but English players values are hugely over flated for example Swansea managed to sign a young Michu for £2m where as a similar player if he was English would have likely to set them back double that you'd have thought. A home grown player quota could be one answer not the false one we have now where the likes of Fabregas and Almunia were considered home grown as Arsenal had brought them over at a young age to their academy. But English based English born players. I think there should be a minimum amount of English players playing in your team every week. This could be tricky with employment laws I do accept but there needs to be some way either by a carrot or stick approach to encourage the big teams to help out the national team and give English players a chance. If they are never given the chance they cannot grow. All in all the English game is in a slow decline but this can change if radical thinking is taken up and acted on. Greg Dyke was signaling a warning shot to all of us football fans and all who have an interest in the game. For us who wish to see a strong England team c competing at the later stages of tournaments something has to be done and Greg Dyke should be praised for daring to suggest a commission to go about changing things. Whether it succeeds or not remains to be seen.

Brazil social struggle reerupts in a mass form

This is not a copy of Paul Mason’s excellent book but it is seemingly kicking off in a lot of places right now. Just overnight I was reading reports from Brazil where huge protests were taking place including an invasion of the parliament. Seemingly coming out of nowhere we know as Marxists this is not true many social explosions are often waiting to burst out under the surface but need that spark often called the straw that broke the camels back in popular society yet this is a dialectical term is where quantity turns in to quality and vice versa it’s the breaking of the log jam and huge movements can break out. We saw it in London and the UK two years ago with the riots huge anger had been built up over a long while and found its expression in riots in the end. Not something we as socialists could condone but we could at the same time fully understand the anger of the young people out on the streets. Now it would seem following hot on the heels of the protests and mass movements in Turkey I’ve covered a little on my blog Brazil seems to be feeling an upsurge in struggle and this comes as no surprise. A country facing huge gulfs in wealth between the rich and the poor many are feeling alienated from the country’s levels of growth of late with Brazil’s economy receiving a boost from exports to China and feeling the effects of a growing Chinese economy. Well they have been up till now. The global economic crisis is not hiding away from China and now its export lead sub economies like Brazil now is feeling the wind. Mass demonstrations against the increase of bus fares in all major cities has sparked a wider outpouring of anger this was at we’d say the straw that broke the camel’s back here. Was that trigger that has set off much bigger protests and movements finding all sorts of expressions? André Ferrari LSR (CWI in Brazil) In São Paulo, on the night of 13 June, the military police cowardly attacked a peaceful demonstration of about 15 thousand people in the city centre. Police arrested in a totally arbitrary way 235 people, many just for being near the site of the demonstration. Some were arrested just for appearing to be a student or for carrying vinegar in their backpacks to mitigate the effects of tear gas. Riot police fired rubber bullets and bombs indiscriminately. In addition to protesters, many journalists, photographers and cameramen were injured. Even those who tried to medically assist the injured were arrested and their first aid kits were confiscated. The police crackdown comes amid a spate of attacks on social movements and the poor in general. Brazil is experiencing a new era marked by the more evident signs of crisis and the resurgence of struggles by workers and youth. The year 2012 had the highest number of strikes for the previous 16 years. Public sector workers are resisting cuts and withdrawal of rights. Also private sector workers are demanding their share in the vaunted economic growth. The political effects of these struggles were limited by the fragmentation of the movement, the character of the ruling bureaucratic union leaders as well as the weaknesses of the left opposition to the government of Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT). However, 2013, has shown ongoing erosion of the political support for the government and the emergence of a new consciousness among broad sectors of youth and workers. The image of Brazil as a country moving towards the “1st world” is heavily eroded by a situation of very low growth (less than 1% in 2012) along with high inflation, which mainly affects the poor. At the same moment that the federal government has taken a shift to the right in economic policy (increase in interest rates, privatization of ports, airports, oil fields, etc.) its support in the polls dropped 8% since March (65% to 57%). Transport fare increase triggers struggles in big cities In recent weeks, we have been seeing an explosion of popular struggles, led by the youth ignited by increases in public transport fares. In many state capitals and major cities, the demonstrations have assumed a qualitatively and quantitatively higher dimension than in previous movements. In many of them, such as Porto Alegre, Goiânia, Teresina and Natal, the increase in fares was reversed following protests. At this time, the main stage of the struggle is the city of São Paulo. With four different demonstrations since June 6, the movement is growing every day. The immediate demand is to reduce the bus and subway fares from 3.20 to 3,00 reals, but the movement also questions the logic of the transport system in the city, dedicated exclusively to the profits of a handful of employers. Expensive fares, overcrowding and poor conditions represent a daily nightmare for workers and students who have to travel every day in a giant metropolis. In Brazil, it is estimated that 37 million people are excluded from public transport because of high prices. Tens of millions more spend much of their income to travel to work and study amid a chaotic transport of poor quality. One of the demands raised by the movement is a zero-tariff for transport in São Paulo. The idea is that companies and the richer layers of the population should pay the biggest share the costs of transport and not the workers and students. The PT defended the zero-rate project in the 1980s, when the party was still on the left and was based on social movements. The current PT government in the city, headed by mayor, Fernando Haddad, rejects this project today, refuses to reverse the privatizations in the transport system and operates with a canine fidelity towards transport businessmen. The state government of São Paulo, headed by Geraldo Alckmin of the PSDB, the main right wing opposition party to the federal government of the PT, and responsible for the São Paulo subway, also refuses to discuss these demands. Alckmin promotes a process of privatization of new subway lines and is responsible for the brutal repressive response by the Military Police of São Paulo during the demonstrations. Many young workers who voted for Haddad and the PT in municipal elections in October last year to avoid a new victory of the traditional right, at that time headed by PSDB candidate José Serra, today are deeply disappointed with the PT. The unity of PT with the PSDB against the demands of the movement and the policy of repression of demonstrations is alienating large sectors of their social and electoral base. World Cup Crimes The big events to be held in the country in the coming years (World Cup in 2014 and Olympics in Rio 2016) are serving as a pretext for a real urban counter-reform in the big cities. The construction projects related to the World Cup are causing the removal of thousands of families from their homes to make way for real estate speculation. Instead of serving the people, cities are increasingly shaped to serve capital. The space of the city is for sale and any obstacle in the way of profit must be eliminated. All this is under a façade of modernization and social peace. Stadiums are privatized, corruption runs rampant in the construction projects of the Cup, overexploitation of construction workers have caused accidents and deaths, contractors in collusion with governments are profiting exorbitantly while the rights of residents of big cities are trampled on. Today, June 14, begins a campaign of national struggles of popular movements for housing, the Urban Resistance Front, along with the World Cup Popular Committees, to denounce the World Cup crimes. Repression and criminalization of social movements Faced with the rise of struggles and the need to block the demonstrations on the eve of the Confederations Cup (which starts on June 15), the police crackdown on the protests has intensified dramatically. Occupying the streets, a basic democratic right, is prohibited. In many cities, the police crackdown on demonstrations reminds us of the military dictatorship. Judicial decisions prohibiting demonstrations, along with police bullets and bombs against demonstrators, shows that we live in a moment of serious attacks on the basic democratic rights of the people. After a strong media campaign saying that the protesters against the increase in transport fares were vandals and hooligans and thus justifying and supporting police repression, the intense repression of the demonstration on June 13 caused a great commotion and even media itself had to change its tone. In São Paulo, on the night of June 13, the military police cowardly attacked a peaceful and organized demonstration of about 15 thousand people in the city centre. Police arrested in a totally arbitrary way 235 people. Riot police fired rubber bullets and bombs indiscriminately. In addition to protesters, many journalists, photographers and cameramen were injured. The police crackdown comes amid a spate of attacks on social movements and the poor in general. In big cities like Sao Paulo and Rio, black youth in the suburbs live a real situation of slaughter. Rapesin Rio de Janeiro has greatly increased in the last period. The racist police violence, impunity of action by death squads, violence against women, the criminalization of poverty and repression on the right of popular organizations, are a reality in the suburbs. Landless rural leaders have been murdered in a systematic way and recently two indigenous leaders (the ethnic Terena and Guarani-Kaiwoas) fighting against agro-business and the government for the demarcation of their land were also killed. The struggle in defence of democratic rights acquires a central importance in the context of the World Cup, with the attempt to create a real state of emergency in the country, banning demonstrations and free expression. The city for the workers, the youth and people! These struggles for public transport, housing and the democratic right to occupy the streets should be unified into a great national movement for the right of the workers, youth and people to own and control their own cities. As a result of this fight it would be possible to reconstruct the basis for unification and reorganization of fighting workers’, popular and student movements, independent of governments and employers. A national meeting of workers and youth to carry out a plan of struggle could be built and advanced in the direction of building new united tool of struggle. That’s what LSR (CWI in Brazil) advocates in the social movements we take part in and inside PSOL (Party of Socialism and Freedom). We stand for : • Immediate reduction of transport fares! Fight for zero tariffs – make the employers pay for public transport! Nationalization of public transport under democratic workers’ and users’ control! Non-payment of the debt to the bankers and speculators and massive investment in public transport! • End the removals of residents! No to sexual exploitation! Fight against rape and violence against women! • Ensure the rights of construction workers on World Cup projects! No to privatization of Maracanã and corruption in the building sites of the World Cup! Demarcation of indigenous lands! No to emergency laws imposed by FIFA - the right to organization, expression and manifestation! • No to the repression of demonstrations of youth and workers! No to criminalization and increased use of the judicial system against social struggle. Immediate freedom for all political prisoners in the fight against rising public transport fares and other movements. No to the slaughter of black youth in the suburbs! • For a national day of united struggle around the demands for public transport, affordable housing, against the crimes of the World Cup and in defence of the right to protest and against the criminalization and repression of the social movements. • For a national meeting of workers and youth to build a plan of action and a united nation forum of struggles.

The corruption of FIFA

So as we have just learned that fifa have gone with russia and qatar for the 2018 and 2022 world cups. I just think these decisions alone demand a investigation as to the corruption of FIFA.

I personally feel it is a disgrace clearly the people who get to vote on these things can be influenced so much.
We must set up a big campaign to rid fifia of its corruption. FOr the good of the game.
The bbc panarama documentary really did highlight the corruption involved in fifa. Still so many questions to be answered out there. The debate still rolls on whether the documentary helped or hindered our bid. i rather think it didnt as the timing of the show really made us out to be trouble makers. Even if true the timing wasnt great when we were trying to bid for the thing. Maybe we should have waited till after ?

Just disapointed we didnt get it as it would have brought lots of money and revenue into the country which we could have needed.