As we continue looking at Croatia this week, today we examine the decaying state of stadia there that reminds some of England twenty years ago, as our Croatian compadre discusses below. Here’s Stadion Maksimir, pictured as Arsenal played NK Dinamo in Zagreb last year.
Croatia (with proposed co-host Hungary) lost the bid for Euro 2012. Considerable [...]
Editor’s note: In his first entry for Pitch Invasion, Joe looks at the growth of football in Liechtenstein, and suggests the talk about pre-qualifying would only stunt a fascinating story captured by filmmakers Sebastian Frommelt and Sigvard Wohlwend.
“The celebrations went on in the restaurants and in the pubs in Vaduz until long after midnight,” he [...]
Abusing the referee seems to be a universal tenet of global football culture. In Italy, the daily newspapers grade them mercilessly and not even Pierluigi Collina can help his beleaguered brethren.
The word “wanker” doesn’t translate directly into Italian. Rather, Italians are likely to chant “buffone” at the ref when he makes a bad [...]
We continue our Croatia series this week, words once again by Croatia’s craziest fan.
The badge of Hajduk Split as graffiti on a wall is a common sight in Croatia’s second city, and here it is at the fourth century Palace of Diocletian.
The club was founded in 1911 in Prague by four Croatian students. One will [...]
Most of the soccer media’s coverage about the Bay Area recently has focused on the impending return of MLS there in 2008, as the San Jose Earthquakes are reborn. But they’ve been ignoring an inspirational showing of grassroots passion a few dozen miles to the north in San Francisco.
Mike Alonso and other supporters of the [...]
Photo Daily this week moves from Serbia to Croatia, the words for the descriptions below courtesy of a man who was a lot happier than me when Croatia beat England last month.
We hail the European Championships as a major tournament these days, but that hasn’t always been the case. In this series, we’ll look at each tournament held since it began in 1960, covering one roughly every two weeks until we get to Euro 2008 next June. As usual on Pitch Invasion, we’ll look at [...]
As we end this week’s look at Serbian football, it’s appropriate to finish with this shot of flares littering the pitch at Red Star Belgrade’s Marakana stadium, as this series was sparked (pun intended) by the attack on a policeman with flares there last weekend.
Photo credit: JonHall on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion photo pool.
Ivan Gazidis, Major League Soccer’s Deputy Commissioner, was interviewed by USSoccerPlayers.com this week, and there were lot of interesting nuggets in there. His views about changing the development of American youth soccer chime with what we’ve been discussing here recently as well. And in fact, the problems he addresses are shared with numerous countries, including [...]
