The Kick Project

Pic: wsj.com Welcome back and happy New Year to all our readers! We aim this year to be a huge one for The Kick Project. As part of our stepping up, we will be filling the blog with more great content - both original and curated - over the coming months. Our topic line is the world of football and how it impacts in areas of peace, reconciliation, community development and social justice. It's a big topic and there's plenty happening. And plenty to be said. So please follow this blog, subscribe and interact. Your support is valuable. We start the year with this piece our founder, James, has written for the ANZ Bluenotes news site. Bluenotes is a dedicated news site run by one of Australia's biggest banks, ANZ. The article is on the movements of one of Asia's biggest property developers, Wanda Group, into the sports industry. The implications of this for us here at The Kick Project are that a) Asia is becoming a focal point in the business of major spor...

FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin Hussein, half-brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II, plans to introduce "new work ethics" in Asia, he told AFP in an interview on Thursday. "We want to introduce new work ethics, not ones based on coming from above, but through working hand in hand with the national associations," said Prince Ali, who on January 6 unseated South Korean Chung Mong-Joo as FIFA vice-president. "This is very crucial because sometimes when it comes to work and development and football, they will take a model, let's say a European model, and they want to implement it completely on the continent." The prince has become the youngest member of the FIFA executive committee at the age of 35 after rallying Arab support behind him. "We have different countries, different societies, different economic backgrounds," he said. "We have to build things on a case-to-a-case basis. We want to fulfill that," he added, calling...