Norwich City will travel to The Hawthorns to face fellow English Premier League club West Bromwich Albion after the two sides were drawn to face each other in the 4th round of the prestigious FA Cup.

This means that The Canaries will face The Baggies twice in the month of January, with one match being in the English Premier League, which is scheduled to be held next Saturday.

The League match between the two sides was originally slated to be held in February but a Premier League rescheduling meant that the fixture was brought forward by a couple of weeks to January.

The English football Association has said that it is extremely confident that the England national team's base for the Euro 2012 will be ready. There have been a few rumours that the base for the Euro 2012 championships is in tatters. There have been a few pictures released of these locations, which has certainly not served to increased confidence. However, the English football Association remains confident that it will finally be ready when the team's go out to the massive tournament held in Ukraine and Poland.

England are getting ready for an international friendly against the World and European Champions, but will have a brave new look about them now that coach Fabio Capello has left out a few of the previously key performers out of the squad.

Saud Abdul Ghani, head of the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Qatar, recently unveiled a special plan for the 2022 World Cup: remote-controlled artificial clouds over the stadiums!

In a few hours WikiLeaks will release thousands of secret FIFA documents detailing World Cup match fixing and widespread corruption within football’s governing body.

Never before have such confidential documents been released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into FIFA’s activities on the shores of Lake Zurich.

There is a Church of Maradona in Argentina with 120,000 members, but rumor has it that the Church of Leo Messi has opened its doors and its membership may soon reach into the millions. I’ve lost track of how many hat tricks, foot tricks, long-distance surface-to-air missiles, slaloms, chips, far-post benders, headers and assists Barcelona’s King of Football has given us. Pure joy.

There is hope that the hyper-fit, inverted pyramid, cynical and suffocating football so dominant in recent times will not completely silence the magical qualities of the beautiful game.

600 FNB branches in South Africa failed soccer fans today. I waited at my branch for hours with students, cops, lecturers, government employees, farmers, housewives and South Africans from other walks of life only to be told that ‘the system was down’.

We waited with Job-like patience, hoping against hope that we could buy a ticket for a seat at stadiums built with the people’s tax money.

When people ask me ‘Who will win the 2010 World Cup’ I tell them either Spain or England. Loaded with talent in the middle and up front, Spain have been magnificent in the past 3 years, as the Euro 2008 crown and the subsequent winning streak demonstrated.

Meanwhile, Capello has resurrected an English side that didn’t even qualify for Euro 2008, mixing tactical acumen with more traditional Anglo attributes and an experienced player corps.

In two weeks time the ageing David Beckham has to return to the United States and play for the Los Angeles Galaxy in the MLS (against the New York Red Bulls at Giant Stadium outside New York City). In January this year, Beckham left the MLS mid-season to go play for AC Milan in Italy’s Serie A. Blasphemous to the MLS. Not surprisingly, Beckham has not been very enthusiastic about returning to the US. In 2007 Beckham had arrived, with much fanfare, at the Galaxy.

Football is often described as the “beautiful game”. Indeed, it is. As Michael Worsnip pointed out recently (The Witness, June 12), football on the local recreation ground reduces the possibility that young people will be tempted into crime. And, of course, South Africa will host a successful Fifa World Cup next year — if it tries hard enough. All of this is obvious. But what is crucially missing from public debate are a number of awkward political, economic and social questions.