URUGUAY has long struggled to live up to its football heritage, but then any country of just three and a half million people battles against huge odds to win major competitions, especially with far noisier and more acclaimed neighbours on their doorstep. Yet two Olympic titles and two World Cups, along with 15 Copa America […]
URUGUAY has long struggled to live up to its football heritage, but then any country of just three and a half million people battles against huge odds to win major competitions, especially with far noisier and more acclaimed neighbours on their doorstep. Yet two Olympic titles and two World Cups, along with 15 Copa America […]
WITH Brazil and Uruguay falling at the quarter-final stage, the 2018 World Cup became an all-European affair, not a total surprise, but the old excuse of geographical disadvantage, used for decades to explain early disappearance in the competition by Europeans or Latin Americans, is becoming somewhat outdated Only Brazil and Germany have won the World […]
IT IS the largest city of the world’s most successful and sometimes overlooked national football team. No, it is not Berlin, Madrid or Brasilia, but Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. Uruguay is the smallest country to have won the World Cup, it has a population of just over three million and Montevideo accounts for around half of […]
The Uruguayan league kicked off last weekend and predictably for a small nation, Montevideo will continue to dominate the Primera Division. Thirteen of the 16 teams are from the capital city, with three – Villa Teresa, Liverpool and Defensor Sporting – added to the 10 that survived last season. It might have been 14 had […]
Spain’s tepid defence of the World Cup signaled the end of an era for the global game. Like all playing systems, the time of “tiki-taka” has probably come to an end. Or has it? Was it just that too many of Spain’s team have been around for too long? I like to think it is […]
Picture the scene in 1950: 200,000 people packed into the Maracana Stadium, awaiting to pronounce Brazil as the new kings of world football. But then their opponents, in the game that will decide who will win the fourth World Cup, stun the crowd to win 2-1. Uruguay were the opponents and they lifted the Jules […]
