The Kick Project

Pic:Goal.com Sport, as they say, is the great leveller. Nothing else quite matches it to inspire, to lift, and to take us out of ourselves. In England today, perhaps the greatest sporting long-shot in living memory reached its spectacular conclusion. The path of bolters Leicester City to win  the English Premier League title is the stuff of legend, the kind of story parents yearn to tell their children. Is this something that can define a far larger moment? Leicester have already become everyone's favourite second team. Even some Spurs fans have a soft spot for the former battlers from the Midlands. as the usual big-money suspects - Manchester United and City, Chelsea, Arsenal - dropped out of contention as the season has progressed, Leicester kept ;ighting up stadiums across the country with an exhilarating combination of speed and directness. As a result, we have all become Leicester City now. The team itself is mostly made up of also rans and never weres. ...

Pic: Reuters With the deadly attacks in Paris and in Beirut in November still in the headlines, it is easy to concentrate on the problems, not on solutions. Even as we mourn for the victims of these crimes, and question the justification for such acts, let us not lose sight of the fact that humanity, for all its apparent hatred and evil, is also imbued with the ability to make peace and find love. And sport is one of the most powerful means of realising these positives. The evidence for this is, to some extent, embedded within the acts of terrorism themselves. For decades, terror groups have targetted major sporting events for their campaigns. It is no shock, in historical terms, for instance, that the terrorists behind the Paris attacks honed in on the Stade de France where a friendly football match between France and Germany was being played. This simply follows a pattern that has existed since at least the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. ...

Pic: pearsonblog The BBC have released the results of a study into just how much it costs to be a fan of a major football team these days. The headline figures are telling and say a lot about modern football's shift away from its grass-roots, street level base. It emerges that the average cost of the cheapest seat in the EPL now sits at 30 Pounds. Note this is for the cheapest seats. While few seats in today's super stadiums are like the old nose bleeds - behind a wall and facing at an angle - these spots are well away from the field. The minimum wage in Britain in 2015 is 6.70 Pounds/hour. So that means, the man/woman on the street working in the lowest formal jobs in the country (and we all know lower rates are paid in the informal or underground economy) would need to work for almost 5 hours to watch a 90 minute game of football. Chelsea FC is owned by a Russian whom some consider a modern day Robber Baron - in Russia at least - with an estimated net worth of o...

Pic: latestonsports.com This week, with the Women's World Cup reaching the pointy end, some insights into women and football, and sport in general.* And, finally, a comment on the Palestine v Israel dispute at the latest FIFA Congress. Sport and Women Girls Tackle Stereotypes (And Each Other) in US Football League How FIFA Discriminates Against the Women's World Cup (possibly for the better...) Is Women in Sport a Feminist Issue? Pic: Zimbio.com Women's Star May Have Violent Past Female EPL Club Owner Shows Men How its Done Culture Must Change for Women's Game Prejudice Still Exists Norway's Team Takes a Shot at Detractors....By Laughing at Them Power of Sport This Young Girl Collapses Every Race, But She Keeps Racing Comment: On May 29, The FIFA Congress saw the culmination in the campaign by the Palestinian Football Federation to give the Israeli federation the red card, by kicking them out of FIFA on charges of player discrim...

Last month commemorated the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. This war essentially began the modern era of warfare and began the shift away from simple line v line battles to more complex and changeable theatres of war. It also began the trend towards greater numbers of civilian deaths which continues today. In most wars now civilian casualties outnumber military personnel and wars are fought in largely civilian areas. So, it's pertinent to recall this story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, which included spontaneous soccer/football games between soldiers on both sides of the trenches. Maybe the UN and other bodies vested with generating peace in situations of war really should take off their suits, get out of the negotiating rooms and drop a football in the middle of the warring parties. Word is the EPL is involved in putting on some kind of event to mark the occasion, which has been planned for some time.

I always thought the football authorities over-reacted after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. It was a horrible accident and shouldn't have happened, but standing crowds weren't really the problem. Thus rebuilding stadiums to dispense with the terraces was both uneccessary and mistaken. As this article notes in good detail, the debate about retro-fitting stadiums is now hotting up. Having paid a small fortune to watch top level games in Europe, I know that match prices are out of reach to most and for those without access to fountains of cash - like me- going to a top level football game is more a rare treat than the weekly ritual it used to be. This hurts kids especially. The irony of all-seater stadiums is of course that you spend half the game standing up anyway. In the EPL such match prices, along with high TV fees which have put many free-to-air TV channels around the world - including here in Australia - out of reach, go to paying overly inflated ...

Really interesting spot on football wages in England particularly.   Showing my age, but I remember pre-EPL when players would set up businesses post-career to maintain an income. Trevor Brooking from memory had a sausage factory...I had trials with then first div clubs in England (Coventry and Wolves) and recall it wasnt the money I was interested in, it was the glory, and if could simply make a living doing something I loved, then life was good. It was the same for the other lads I was trialling with. Sounds like the "Good "Ol Days" I know but I think something is missing with all the money. One thing I have to mention is that for years Australian TV would have English football highlights on free-to-air TV, now its only on pay-TV, which means lots of kids miss out on the opportunity to watch top English football (still the best), as I was able to every week. Money talks alright but sometimes I reckon it talks rubbish. See this piece I wrote a few years ago for the...