football

Football fans may remember the under-21 European Championship qualification match between Italy and Slovakia. The Scottish referee deprived the young Slovaks of a penalty and later sent off two of their players for soft tackles. For similar reasons, the Japanese referee Yuichi Nishimura made headlines on the first day of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. By coincidence, both matches ended 3-1 to the home team. However, if the referees could have consulted video replays, the results could have been very different.

Football federations promised to review the issue of video replays after mistakes by referees have caused several controversies over the last few years. However, those who are looking forward to enjoying every detail of the European Championship 2016 in front of the TV might be disappointed. Even viewers will have to do without video replays of questionable offside decisions on TV, as, under the threat of financial penalties, TV broadcasters cannot draw lines on the screen to show the position of players in the decisive moment. It is the result of the latest UEFA ruling that will deprive onlookers from knowing the truth.

The 2014 World Cup is over, and it is the trophy time. Messi was voted the best player. The commentator claimed that Messi is the king, but Diego remains the God (actually, he even looked like Buddha not long ago). This World Cup was a Latin revolution with European winners. Once again, football mirrored reality - despite the growth of the emerging economies in South America, Europe still dominates in real terms. And even if all other countries fail, they are still saved by Germany.

Injuries

For me, the World Cup was further evidence that mankind is going through regression in terms of physical prowess and toughness. We are getting too comfortable! Kids have to bring sports drinks for a 45min PE class and the marks that hardly got me through my athletics exams at university would pass with flying colours today.

Many players had to be carried off the pitch, which testifies to my theory, and this trend is even visible in the new stretchers used for carrying the players off the pitch. Before, they were narrow, but now they are deeper to stop the players falling.

It's not often that you get on the Tube and stumble across some of the best footballers in the world. However, that's exactly what happened for some lucky Londoners yesterday after the German football team decided to take the unorthodox method of travel.

Germany are in London to prepare for a friendly match against England at Wembley tonight and have taken the opportunity to explore the famous Underground system.

Saido Berahino. You may not have heard the name before, but chances are you will soon. The 20-year-old attacker is lighting up English football at the moment with his eye for goal and an equally inspiring backstory. The former refugee from Burundi has had quite a month, scoring on his debut for the England Under-21 team before scoring the winning goal against Manchester United this weekend.

Born in Burundi, Berahino was forced to flee his war-torn homeland a decade ago when he was just 10-years-old. The story goes that his mother was already living in England after being granted political asylum, so he travelled to Heathrow on his own once she had saved enough money to pay for the flight. The family settled in an inner city area of Birmingham and young Saido started playing football.

After just a year in England, he was spotted by Premier League team West Bromwich Albion whilst he was playing for his local side Phoenix United. He joined the club at Under-12s level and started to make his way through the ranks.

The young striker signed his first professional contract in the summer of 2011, before being sent out on loan to various lower league clubs including Northampton Town, Brentford and Peterborough United.

German football fans will be descending on London in their hundreds of thousands this weekend, with an all-German Champions League final at Wembley taking place on Saturday night. Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund will be battling it out to be crowned champions of Europe, whilst fans will be trying just as hard to get their hands on an elusive ticket to the match.

Wembley is hosting the showpiece match for the second time in three years, and each team will have 25,000 supporters inside the stadium. However, it is expected that those lucky enough to be at Wembley may be dwarfed by the number of those in London without a ticket.

When the tickets went on sale, a grand total of 502,567 Dortmund fans applied for one, with less than one in twenty of them getting allocated one. Similarly, over 250,000 Bayern fans applied for their allocation of just 25,000. All that adds up to a lot of fans willing to travel to London who are without tickets.

The Metropolitan police are (very) conservatively estimating that several thousand German fans will be travelling without tickets, plus there are the 300,000 Germans who are currently living in the UK. When they are all added up, experts are predicting as many as 150,000 German fans could descend on London.