The Saudis were superb, but the Argentinians got spooked by the hovering legacy of World Cup failures past
With Mané and Salah absent, the semifinals seem as remote as ever, thanks to a glaring imbalance in development systems
United’s tetchy carnivore has lost his alpha status to the rise of collectivism in elite football
Fifa’s boss wants the game to float above ‘ideological battles’. But it’s Fifa’s ideology of greed that steered the World Cup into a desert stinking of money and suffering
Russia and China’s football misery shows the game is only beautiful in noisy democracies
The photographer’s retrospective show maps his decades-long trip through the fear zone
Doctor Khumalo remains South Africa’s most charismatic footballer and TV documentary 16V explores how his brilliance captured the imagination of a generation
By bloating its showpiece, Fifa has made single-country bids impossible and dimmed the tournament’s magic
The football economy is infected with all kinds of glorified rackets – but confronting the social parasitism of betting would be a good start
The continent’s football boss wants to be remembered as the architect of a great African football renaissance