World Soccer
April 2025Your life made easier - every day. The unrivalled authority on the game of soccer around the world, World Soccer calls upon journalists from the globe's great soccer capitals. The best writers, analytical features and the ability to deliver the inside-track on domestic and world football have made World Soccer an institution. With stunning images and a website delivering up-to-the-minute global results and authoritative insights into the players, politics and power-struggles, the brand constantly looks behind the score-lines. Its insightful writing reaches to the heart of the triumphs, scandals and controversies that constantly emerge in the greatest international sport of them all.
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Editor’s Note
IN THIS ISSUE… Home. That’s the theme of this month’s issue of World Soccer, with Brazil superstar Neymar leading the way. It’s probably not quite how he imagined it, it may not even be for very long, but he is back at Santos, the club where it all began. It’s a familiar story. Xherdan Shaqiri, one of 25 stars to watch that we’ve picked as the season’s conclusion approaches, has also returned to his first club, Basel, as has Roma manager Claudio Ranieri. As long as football is played, variations of the same story will occur. The nostalgia, the romance, is simply too irresistible.…
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Prescient or profligate? The Jhon Duran dilemma
An Instagram post of Jhon Duran celebrating another goal for Al Nassr inevitably drew some mocking responses. “He grew up watching this team!!!” said one. “Money will ruin your career,” added another. It’s no surprise. Cynicism spiced by dollar emojis will invariably follow the £64 million January signing from Aston Villa around during his time in Saudi Arabia. A torrent of criticism chased him out of England for turning his back on the Premier League and UEFA Champions League for the money of the Saudi Pro League. As if to highlight the average quality, Duran promptly scored twice on his league debut against Al Fayha on February 7 in front of 20,207 fans at Al Awwal Park. It’s no Villa Park. A league with average attendances of a little over…
Shifting sands of footballing power
Growing tension over the venue for the 2030 Centenary World Cup Final illustrates the shift in the axis of world football. Europe may boast the game’s most magnetic club competitions with the Champions League in the international sphere and the English Premier League at domestic level, but high-level governance is fleeing Europe at greater speed than at any time since the1950s when FIFA fragmented into regional confederations. Awarding the 2026 World Cup finals to Canada, Mexico and the United States was no insignificant leap in logistics, given the finals’ expansion to 48 teams. But the complexities of 2030 are entirely different. South America accepted, with bad grace, the anniversary gesture of opening matches in Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Asuncion; simultaneously Europe accepted the inclusion of Morocco to ensure no significant…
BOOKS THIS MONTH
FOOTBALL IN WIND AND RAIN By John Williams (Pitch Publishing, £14.99) Football in Wind and Rain provides educational but entertaining bite-size accounts of the history of British football and its people. The voices of commentators, fans, managers and players all feature amid the succinct observations and engaging narrative stories, with topics such as fandom, stadia, great matches, law changes, memorable goals and regional differences given due coverage. KLOPP’S LAST STAND ByJeff Goulding (Pitch Publishing, £19.99) Klopp’s Last Stand: Red Odyssey IV continues the epic chronicle of Liverpool’s history, picking up the baton from Champions Under Lockdown and exploring events on and off the pitch following the club’s momentous Premier League title win in 2019-20. From the European Super League debacle, the agonising quadruple near miss, the horror of Paris, and…
