Welcome Aboard!

When I was a young(er) National Referee, it was a regular occurrence that we had a tremendous guest speaker opine about aspects of the modern game. One such guest speaker was George Cumming who is an incredible wealth of knowledge, and one I took a tremendous amout away from.

His credentials include (from his blog):

George Cumming was the first FIFA Head of Refereeing and was in charge of refereeing at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korean/Japan. Previously he was Development Director for Referees and Education with the Scottish Football Association from 1988 until 2000. He is presently a Senior Consultant with the Asian Football Confederation.

I have included a link to the blog (George Cumming's Football Blog) in the sidebar. As with the other blog's of note, I would recommend taking the time and reading some of the entries as they are very insightful.

Two recent posts from his blog, FIFA must face up to the corruption charges, and World Cup voting must be public, are clear demonstrations about just how wide spread and vitriolic these charges of corruption are, and how badly FIFA needs to get a good hold of what is happening, and expel any found to have committed any wrong doing.

One of my fears however, is in the process that FIFA "throws the baby out with the bathwater," and punish a party (such as the UK) for being in proximity to the corruption, without being a participant in it.

Funny what you find when you are not looking

For those faithful readers who want to know how the loop was closed on the Germany v. Serbia interview, here it is ...

As you can see from this AM post the article regarding the interview with Angelo Bratsis is up, and a link as well to examiner.com. In discussing the details of re-posting this article I got the opportunity to communicate with the author,  LE Eisenmenger, fairly extensively over the course of the day and learned a couple of things.

First, that the sites that LE writes for are excellent, as is the authored content by LE. I strongly encourage readers (if they are not aware of these sites) to go to both Soccerlens.com (specific articles by LE are here) and The Boston Pro Soccer Examiner.

Second, not all that long ago I was waxing about how media is part of the equation regarding popularity in the US, well the game clearly has a friend, as these posts range the spectrum from reporting on individual matches itself, to the more revealing look at the sport, and what goes into it.

Take a look, it is worth the time.

With any luck Kicking Back will find an excuse to collaborate with LE and we can really put our heads together on something.

Have a though about that? Please post it below!

For the Integrity of Soccer

Recently I have been E-Mailed a series of truly excellent articles from a truly excellent blog:

For the Integrity of Soccer

Similar to Ask A Soccer Referee, For the Integrity of Soccer is purveyed by folks with impeccable credentials and is authored and frequented by FIFA panel members on down the line. It is worth the time to read.

I have started to capture such links and they are now posted on the right pane of the blog for easy reference. I will from time to time, report articles that I believe are particularly impactful here for this audience.

If there are other such blogs of refereeing note that you believe are worth posting, please post a comment, or contact me and I will make sure they make there way up.

In the mean time, stay tuned here, and we'll do our best to post the best we find.