“The South American Cup competition came hurriedly to life in 2002. In the depths of the continent’s economic depression the tournament which had previously occupied the second half of the year lost its sponsorship and folded. The South American Cup began as a quick mend and make do replacement.

The format, then, is home and away knockout right from the start. And in the first rounds the dominant principle is the need to keep travel costs down; the Brazilians play amongst themselves, as do the Argentines.

All the others face teams from a neighbouring country. For example, of Paraguay’s two representatives, one travels north to meet a team from Bolivia, the other goes south to Uruguay, and so on.”

living beyond our means bought us great riches and accolades for a few years, and when i think about Hubberts chart of fossil fuel use over a timespan of 10,000 years it is very similar. Oxford Utd are now having to loan players from higher leagues, and sign players from lower leagues in the hope of escaping the Blue Square Premier…. we have faced bankruptcy, humiliation and despair for our fans! Was it worth it? For the sake of a few thousand to see our triumph at wembley in ’86, thousands upon thousands have had to put up with our demise for over 20 years!

And now the current management must pick up the pieces, clean up the mess, just as i feel i must in Exmouth. The spirit has gone out of football.. it’s all tactics and money… and much the same can be said of local council and community. But i do feel that it is changing, the very reason these ‘games’ were invented in the first place was to encourage community involvement, a way to spend your time constructively, doing a good deed for your home-town. These are the fundementals of a transition movement, and these are the activities that create a genuine sense of pleasure and ‘being’ that we all need.

That video of Ronaldo shows lots of step-overs and free kicks… and not a lot else… still not convinced of his long term team qualities. (Sounds like a debate for a pint and the pub!)

With regard to football scaling down and becoming local, I think it is highly unlikely. There is still an awful lot of fossil energy left to play with – look at the area under Colin’s graph to the right of 2010 – that’s a lot of energy!

The rich and powerful will use some of it to provide entertainment to the masses. The difference I see to what Gareth mentions above about 250,000 people at the FA cup final in 1920 is that more people in the future will be watching these big events on their TV’s – which need much less energy to power than the transport to get them to the matches.

That said – local teams with local players would be much preferable…

I’ve often thought that the reason football is the most popular sport in the world, when you strip away everything around it, is that to play you really only need a little space and something very roughly resembling a ball.

I’m sure you’re right that the 2010 World Cup will go ahead, but as I’ve said here before the current politic-ing going on around who gets to host the World Cups in 2018 and 2022 very much assumes that the competitions (and the money surrounding them) will look very similar to Germany 2006. I can’t see it.

Oh, and Rob, it’s all very well saying such things about Ronaldo, but could you seriously advocate the Premiership losing a jewel like Torres?