Cesc Fabregas is out of the Carling Cup Final.

The Arsenal captain hobbled off in the early stages of the win over Stoke on Wednesday night with a hamstring problem and, immediately, fears were raised about his involvement in Sunday’s showpiece.

Speaking to TV Online on Thursday evening, Arsène Wenger confirmed the bad news. But, thankfully, his absence is not expected to be long.

“It is a very small injury but certainly Cesc will be out for Sunday,” said the Frenchman. “For how long [beyond that] I don’t know but for Sunday he will be short.

“He is [disappointed]. We all feel sorry and sad for him. The only way we help him now is to win the Carling Cup as he contributed a lot in this competition.”

While the manager was clear on the captain’s involvement this weekend, He would not be drawn on the chances of Fabregas being fit for Barcelona on March 8.

“It is very difficult to give a deadline,” said Wenger. “It is impossible.”

As we already knew, Theo Walcott will also miss the Carling Cup Final after being stretchered off in the same game. Again, the problem may be relatively short term.

“I saw him this morning,” said Wenger. “He has a classic ankle sprain. We don’t think there is any more damage to it. But it is still a sprain. We are sad for him too. He is out for Sunday and maybe one or two more weeks.”

(Richard Clarke, Arsenal.com)

Most of the thousands of Australians streaming down the streets of Munich had begged, borrowed and scrimped to be part of the Socceroos’ first World Cup in 30 years. And most had dreams that extended only as far as beating Brazil that afternoon.

But one diminutive figure, the cost of whose holiday in Germany wouldn’t even register on the family fortune, began to visualise the dream of something much greater. As his son held his grandson aloft on his shoulders, and the sun lit
up a flood of slow-moving green and gold, Frank Lowy began to think the unthinkable.

“I saw what was happening in the street, and I began to think how wonderful it would be to see the same thing in Martin Place, or in Federation Square,” he says. “That’s when the idea of hosting the World Cup in Australia was born.”

A little over four years later, Lowy is on the threshold of discovering whether his one-man crusade to drag the World Cup to these shores, in defiance of rivals at home and abroad and the politics of global football, is to end in success.
December 2 is D-Day for the nine countries bidding to host the World Cups in 2018 and 2022, the climax for Lowy of a tumultuous journey of persuasion that has taken in millions of taxpayer dollars, shadowy consultants, lurid headlines, lavish dinners on Lowy’s yachts, Hollywood stars and the most senior politicians. The maths is simple.

FIFA’s 24-man executive committee (known snappily as the ExCo) will vote in December on where the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will be held, a simple majority required. It’s a shoo-in that ’18 will go to the lucrative pastures of Europe after the 2010 and 2014 tournaments went to Africa and South America. Indeed, Australia has already bowed to that inevitability, earning praise for deciding to concentrate only on 2022.

If the envelope opened in Oscars style by FIFA president Sepp Blatter holds Australia’s name for ’22, it will rank as a brilliant coup, a sporting upset to rival any on the pitch. But if the answer isn’t Australia, prepare for a spectacular fall-out as the sceptics rush to claim it was all a costly vanity project.

VANITY ISN’T A WORD ASSOCIATED TOO OFTEN WITH LOWY, whose dedication to building his Westfield empire is rivalled only by his passion for building Australian soccer. Only Lowy could have convinced the Prime Minister and soccer’s global elite that an Australian World Cup was a distinct possibility. Backed by almost $50m in government funds, Lowy has led a mammoth lobbying effort of those 24 executive committee members. They are elected from soccer associations all over the globe and the spruiking has taken bid officials to every one of those corners, from Nigeria to London to the Middle East.

“The message is simply all the pluses we have as Australia, and all the pluses we have in our location, vis-a-vis Asia,” Lowy says. “The message is what that will all do for football, and how successful it will be, the television audience it will attract, the visitors it will attract to Australia, and what a good time they will have.”

There is, to put it mildly, a bit more to it than that. The Westfield boss’s mind-boggling wealth brings him unrivalled access to power, whether in Australian federal terms or to the upper echelons of the global game. Since he was introduced to Blatter, Lowy has succeeded in charming his way into powerful circles according to veteran broadcaster Les Murray – who as a member of FIFA’s ethics committee knows both Blatter and Lowy well.

“His nature means he makes friends easily and he was instantly popular with members of the ExCo – in fact he’s become good mates with several of them,” Murray says. “He’s also a great negotiator – he has written essays and given speeches on the art of negotiation, and to underpin that he has surrounded himself with the right strategic advice.”

The first coup came in persuading FIFA to hold its annual Congress in Sydney in 2008, delegates converging for the game’s annual parliament from all 208 members, including the 24 members with the power to award a World Cup. “The kick-off I suppose was when Congress was here with the executive committee, and I made a speech extolling the virtues of Australia,” Lowy recalls.

That address came after a dinner Lowy put on for the ExCo at his Point Piper mansion and has never before been made public. In it he talked passionately of the shifting balance of power in the world, how Asia is rising to a position of economic power, and how Australia is part of that new wave – with football in its engine room.

Having talked up this country’s sporting credentials, he added like a schoolgirl fluttering her eyelids: “I hope you will forgive this little advertisement for Australia, but it’s not every day I have the FIFA executive committee as a captive audience.”

The statistics he unfurled then, and at every opportunity since, are impressive: Asia is the fastest-growing region on earth, one billion TV viewers in China alone, with a surging – and affluent – middle class.

It’s all designed to counter the notion that Europe is all that matters in football’s geopolitics. What Lowy and his cohorts have sought to show is, to put it crudely, how much money could be generated for the game in the long run by staging an event in Asia now to captivate the audience. Thanks to Lowy’s seduction of what was then the Rudd government, every level of Australia’s diplomatic and foreign affairs apparatus was deployed – from Kevin Rudd visiting the home
of FIFA vice president Jack Warner in Trinidad to local high commissions holding receptions for Australian businessmen to spread the word.

Lacking a football superstar like David Beckham, Australia’s has been a more discreet hearts-and-minds campaign, albeit with some distinctively Aussie glamour: Nicole Kidman fronted the bid video, while Hugh Jackman and Elle Macpherson have been made its ambassadors.

Arguably the high point came almost a year ago in Cape Town at the draw for the 2010 World Cup finals. For the week leading up Lowy and Australian officials put on a master-class in feelgood lobbying – from the distribution of school equipment in impoverished townships to a drinks reception that attracted some of the most important members of the ExCo. They also launched the promotional video, fronted by Kidman and depicting a giddy ride through Australia’s sporting success, its landscape, infrastructure and people.

BUT AS ANY LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER KNOWS, the pacesetter in mid-race often falls away before the end. The glow from the bid team’s success in Cape Town had barely lifted before harsh reality set in.

For months, government civil servants and bid officials had been trying to defuse the clash of league, union and AFL with a World Cup in June 2018 or 2022 – not to mention FIFA’s demands that stadiums are exclusively for its use for weeks beforehand. It took months of sabre-rattling from the likes of AFL chief Andrew Demetriou before an agreement was reached, and hardly presented a united front to the world. But worse was to follow, with claims in a newspaper
that Lowy and Buckley had sought to dupe the government over the allocation of its $50 million bid funding.

The headlines ricocheted around the world, until both the government and FIFA cleared FFA of any wrongdoing – sparking Lowy to launch a defamation suit at the newspaper. The accusations of impropriety deeply hurt Lowy, who not only is unpaid as FFA chairman but bears all his own expenses, including every dinner he has hosted privately, and every time FIFA executives have been entertained on his yacht around the world.

Others have been paid handsomely, though, not least the international figures Lowy and his team have employed to press their case. Acutely aware of Australia’s place in football’s pecking order, the decision was made to hire two controversial European figures.

Peter Hargitay used to be Blatter’s right-hand man, with a CV that includes work for Union Carbide – the company behind the Bhopal disaster in India – and US tax fugitive Marc Rich. Hargitay has twice been charged over cocaine trafficking, and both times was acquitted.

Then there is Fedor Radmann, a fixer in European football circles who is very close to German legend and global powerbroker Franz Beckenbauer. Radmann was forced to quit the organising committee of the 2006 World Cup over the award of a contract to a company he was involved in, and has had countless allegations made against him in terms of FIFA contracts.

Both consultants will be rewarded for their services to Australia – more than $11 million between them if the bid is successful. These are men who open very important doors.

“Are deals being done? No doubt, but it’s so important you understand the rules of engagement,” said one senior sporting administrator, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Australia could run a campaign that’s whiter than white and lose. It’s a moral compass – do you say whatever it takes, and if not where do you draw the line?”

No one is suggesting anything illegal has or will go on. Instead this is a subtle and nuanced dance. Australia played in a youth tournament in Cyprus, and paid some of the costs for Trinidad, home of Jack Warner, to send a team – and it was marked down as aiding the game’s global development.

Look also at the Socceroos’ friendlies this year, against Poland, Switzerland, Paraguay and Egypt. The latter two have members on the ExCo, while FIFA is based in Zurich and Blatter, who may have a casting vote, is Swiss. Everything counts.

JOHN O’NEILL, NOW BACK RUNNING RUGBY UNION, saw the politics of FIFA up close during his four years as boss of FFA, and says the intricacies are far greater than the moves he had to undertake to bring rugby’s World Cup here.

“With FIFA, first your bid has to be compliant. then it becomes a combination of strategic importance for the world game combined with the complexities of the politics. You do hope the best bid wins, but what goes in to that assessment can be mysterious,” O’Neill says.
“Australia is sports mad, it has government support, infrastructure and the stadium base.

It ticks all the boxes. Strategically, is it more important for the world game to be showcased in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East or North America?”

Lowy won’t countenance the idea of failure, but privately knows what defeat will mean. Those sections of the media who opposed the government funding will unleash their fury, and it will be hard for the sport here not to suffer. “This will get ugly if we lose,” a senior member of the government’s bid taskforce has said.

It hasn’t helped that the strategy in recent months has been so discreet. Even Les Murray admits: “There is a PR problem – no one expects them to reveal the strategy completely, but there hasn’t been enough work done on keeping the media informed in Australia of what’s being done.”

Lowy, though, will keep battling until the last second. “Every day I get tired, but if you take something on you have to do it properly,” he says. “I’ve never thought it was slipping away. There were times I was down about it, but I don’t allow myself to stay down. I just get on with it and believe we’re going to get there. And I do believe that.”

Hosts With The Most

Here are the current odds of the 2022 favourites followed by the expected reaction of whoever wins the bid.
USA (9-4) Will carry on as usual as if nothing has happened then work themselves into hysteria over baseball’s World Series.
Australia (7-2) Pandemonium for weeks, productivity shattered before a national referendum decides if the round ball game should be known as soccer or football.
Qatar (6-1) Will go out and get absolutely blind sober before it dawns on them that 50 degrees really is too hot for football.
Japan (6-1) Begin immediate work on hologram ball for all matches.
South Korea (9-1) Begin immediate work on hologram ball for all matches but a slightly cheaper version.

Excerpt from Alpha Magazine.

Nike Safari
If you search for ‘Nike Safari’ online, you will find a huge number of sneakers that feature a similar print, but this is the first time Nike has used the design on a soccer cleat. It was only a matter of time! The print was originally introduced on the Air Safari running shoe in 1987.

Technology
The release is basically the Nike Superfly II with a new design. There are no new technology upgrades on the boot, the unique NIKE SENSE adaptive traction system and flywire technology is still included.

Design
Apparently, these were designed to the exact specifications of Cristiano Ronaldo! If you are wondering what is unique about the actual design, well in another nod to speed, the soccer cleats arresting Safari print is overlaid with a tonal chevron pattern that is illuminated in certain light. Nike has again focused on the premise of reflective graphics improving player awareness on the pitch – you will stand out more.

Breaking it down some more
The black dot pattern comes in two tones; a black and an almost gray. If you look at the side image of the boot you will notice that the areas are divided to make it look like arrows are pointing forward on the outside of the boot. This is the area that will stand out under lights. Not only that, but Nike have added matching laces!

In Action?
Cristiano Ronaldo will debut the CR Mercurial Vapor SuperFly II on pitch November 7, during “El Derbi”, the battle of Madrid’s finest – Atletico Madrid versus Real Madrid.

The new Nike Superfly II CR7 Will be available to purchase from KickItDeals.com in mid – late November. To register your interest and get it faster, let us know by emailing us at customerservice@kickitdeals.com