Football Dissected

Juventus, the most successful team in the history of Italian football, returns to the top-flight of Italian football this season after their one season spell in Series B following their match-fixing scandal verdict over a year ago. The Old Lady of Italian football will be hoping for immediate success in Series A, especially since their busy transfer season so far.

Argentina central midfielder Sergio Almirón arrives from Empoli for a reported €9 million. Almirón was a key component in getting Empoli qualification for the UEFA Cup in the 2006-07 season as he provided protection for the back four in his holding midfield role.

Ex-Chelsea midfielder Tiago also arrives at Juventus from Lyon for a reported €13 million. The midfielder’s enjoyed great success with the unstoppable French winning-machine with winning his second Ligue 1 title last season, Lyon’s sixth consecutive league title, but now he looks set to enter a completely different football arena in Series A that will certainly be more competitive than the French Ligue 1 with the likes of Milan, Inter, Roma and even Udinese.

Manager Claudio Ranieri is certainly going to continue to be busy in the transfer market. Pavel Nedved and Alessandro Del Piero, the aging veterans of the black and white shirt, are already into their thirties and with age comes tired legs. Players like Marco Marchionni and Vincenzo Iaquinta are certainly going to be tested in the upcoming season. Other players like the solidly-built Jorge Andrade, who arrives from Deportivo de La Coruña, and the vastly experienced Hasan Salihamidžić, who arrives from Bayern Munich, will no doubt be tested as well as they enter an entirely new league. Juventus will be hoping they can get off to a good start with the team they're built.

With a population of over a billion, why is India not one of the big footballing nations? According to a recent study, over 550 million of the population are under the age of 21. With this massive pool of young people, perhaps the biggest on the planet, why then does India not even produce at least one world-class player? Why has India never played at a World Cup?

Firstly, young Indians have for decades have been influenced by Indian culture and family to concentrate more on education as a career than on sport. No one would argue that this is a bad thing, but it does immediately take out a significant amount of the under 21 age group.

Another problem is poverty. Most of the under 21s are in poverty and football is not seen as a way out of poverty like it is in South America. Some do play football, like in Goa and Kolkata, but because the caste system is still in effect, these young players are often ignored by the few scouts there are, regardless of their skill levels.

Some would say India is more of a cricket nation than a football nation. But, according to some leading experts, football is bigger than cricket domestically. So why then does India not produce world-class talent when football is argued to be the number one sport in the country and has been played in the country before FIFA ever existed? One reason is the structure of football in India. For many decades the infrastructure of the country was poor (e.g. communications, roads etc.). Because of this, the young talent that existed never got noticed because the villages and towns were poorly connected and therefore few scouts, if any, ever went to see the talent. In addition, because the country was poor, youth development never improved and because it didn't improve, top-quality players were never produced. All this is of course changing because of the super-power India is becoming and the infrastructure that comes with it.

Football in of Kerala, Manipur and West Bengal is said to be the top sport but still India lacks a world-class player. Attendances in India are erratic. In some parts of the country attendances can be very low while in other parts, particularly when the East Bengal Club and Mohun Bagan AC are playing in their derbies, attendances can be as high as 120,000. So the fan support exists (well in some parts anyway), but fan support doesn't equal better players. Proper training and youth development is very poor, although this is changing as the scheme, signed in September 2006, between India and Brazil to train Indian footballers and coaches is proving.

Another reason is media coverage. Cricket is seen to be the most popular sport because it has massive media coverage and because the Indian national cricket team is one of the best cricket teams in the world. In comparison, for decades football coverage in India was very low, although that is changing due to the realisation of the massive fan support, and for decades the football national team were poor having never played at a World Cup and never won a major trophy (except for the South Asian Football Federation Cup). At the time of writing, the Indian national football team are ranked 162 in the world according to the FIFA rankings, behind teams like Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Singapore and even Niger - a Western African country which has a population of only roughly 14 million. With this young footballers have no idol to look up to with regards to the Indian national team.

In my opinion India could be as good as Brazil and Argentina. The climate is very similar to South America. Street football already exists in some areas in India. But the development at the grass-root level needs to improve significantly and hopefully that will happen with the scheme between India and Brazil as mentioned above. Nothing will happen overnight and in my opinion it will probably take another 10-20 years for India to even get into the top 30 of the world rankings.

For decades South American nations have been the most feared footballing nations on the planet. The big two are of course Argentina and Brazil. But how do these two countries countinue to produce world-class players like Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho when their economies are worser than their European counterparts?

Firstly poverty plays a big role in the development of these players. Because most of the big stars, including Ronaldinho, Messi and others, were born into poverty, football was and is still seen as a way out of poverty. As a result of this and because of the amount of money involved in football nowadays, any young player which shows he has talent and skill from a early age is immediately pushed into football by his family. Football then takes over the player's life and the player spends more time in the football environment than in school.

There's also the factor of street football and beach football. Street and beach football in South American develops the player's skills significantly whereas in most European countries "No ball games" signs forbid young European players from this development. Street football lives on skill and talent and winning and scoring goals doesn't really matter; its about the art of football. Of course street football does exist in some European countries, including France and Spain, but quite often these young players are (1) not very fit when compared to players coming through the academies of the football clubs (2) not interested in getting into professional football, or (3) ignored by the football clubs completely because of various factors, including their skill levels when again compared to footballers in the academies.

The climate is also important. Young players running around in hot weather year round in South America are obviously going to develop their lung capacity, Cafu and Daniel Alves are prime examples, and because of this the stamia of most young players is better than their European counterparts. With improved stamia, some South American players are able to sprint up and down the field for a full 90 minutes and with this ability players like Cafu, Robert Carlos and other wing-backs are able to sprint forward without difficulty, adding a new attacking threat when teams come forward.

The economy of football in South American is also significant. Most players coming through the ranks of football clubs are owed by a third-party, like the Carlos Tevez case recently has proven. This is due to the fact that South American clubs are rather financially poor so third-parties, e.g. investors, come in and buy percentages of the players, like 20-30%, and then hope to make a profit when the player is sold to Europe. Brazil, as a example, exported around 700 players in just one year recently, so football in Brazil is more of a exporting trade and because of this the quality of the Brazilian league is rather poor as the best players are sold off to Europe.

These factors help South American countries produce some of the best players in the world, but, nevertheless, in some circumstances they don't apply. Zinedine Zidane and Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo recently are prime examples of non-South American players making it on the world stage.

One would be hard pressed not to say Liverpool don't deserve to be named as possible contenders for the Premiership, especially since their busy transfer summer so far and especially since this may be the first time in nearly two decades they have a chance to win the Premiership title. But can they win it?

Fernando Torres, arriving from Atlético Madrid for just over £20 million, takes up the legendary number 9 shirt which has been previously been worn by Anfield greats Robbie Fowler and Ian Rush. No doubt the young Spanish striker may have a hard time filling the boots of the Fowler and Rush. Although El Niño (The Kid) is one of the quickest strikers in the whole of Europe and one of the strongest, there's no doubt going to be the difficulty of adjusting to the speed and physically nature of the Premiership, particularly after coming from a league like La Liga where getting away with a dive is something more special for some players than actually scoring a goal. But with his stats from his playing days in Spain, 75 goals over 5 seasons which is an average of 15 per season, he's definitely something special. My prediction: 12 goals this season

Ryan Babel arrives from legendary Dutch club Ajax in a transfer worth £11.5 million but, like Torres, he's no doubt going to have difficulty in adjusting to the Premiership. In the 97 games he's played for for Ajax he's only scored 19 goals, just under 5 every season, so he's no goal-machine. But he does have potential. My prediction: a good buy, but will be out of form at the start of season while he adjusts to the Permiership.

Unlike, Babel and Torres, Yossi Benayoun, arriving from West Ham in a deal reported to be worht £5 million, is a different matter. Benayoun has already adjusted to life in the Premiership while at West Ham and there's no doubt in my mind that while Babel and Torres adjust themselves, Benayoun will be called upon straight away to add to the team. My prediction: a solid season as a back-up player to captain Steven Gerrard and Javier Mascherano.

With Gerrard, Mascherano, Alonso, Sissoko, Reina, Carragher and many other good-quality players already at the club, there's only one thing that the team needs to work on: consistency. Also will Rafael Benítez concentrate more on the Champions League and other cup competitions or the league or does he think he has enough depth in the squad to concentrate on all four? Nobody can argue Liverpool don't have european pedigree with their five European Cups and with reaching the Champions League finals twice in three years (05, 07), but, with the undoubted challenge from champions Manchester United and former champions Chelsea, do they have what it takes to win their first Premiership title since 1990?