Lars Karlsson: CapacityNow

There is no doubt that football is the biggest sport on planet earth. The amount of people enjoying the sport every week is enormous world over.

Footballers are heroes, football clubs – like Manchester United, Real Madrid and Paros Saint-Germain – have more in common with multinational companies than with sport organizatilns. Good or bad? It dorsn’t matter it is the way it is. Everywhere I go, prople watch football on screens it doesn’t matter if it is in Africa, U.S. or Asia/Pacific these days. Football id everywhere.

So when a national football hero retires from serving in his national team – at least in a football crazy nation like Netherlands – it is a big thing.

Sat in a mocked up living room in the middle of the Amsterdam Arena pitch with your family, watching goodwill messages from your peers – it is an unusual way to sign off an international career.

Wesley Sneijder was given this very farewell after ending his 15-year Netherlands international career with a victory over Peru.

The midfielder played 62 minutes of the 2-1 win, but after the game was seated on a sofa with his wife and two children to watch pre-recorded messages from former team-mates and managers.

The crowd in the stadium also held aloft banners celebrating the 34-year-old, who began his international career in April 2003 and ends it with a national record 134 caps, in which he scored 31 goals.

I think it is great. We should always remember our heroes and ehat theybhave done for their clubs and countries.

Brexit leave voters are less optimistic for a deal, a drop with 25%.

According to FT.

The UK Secretary of State for International Trade, Lism Fox, recently launched the UK Export Strategy 2.0.

Here is the end conclusion of his speech:

“Forging a new role for the United Kingdom on the world stage starts with addressing the export challenge.

Since the British people’s decision to leave the European Union, there has been much discussion on the UK’s economic future. Some have expressed doubts about our capacity and willingness to ensure this country remains at the very heart of international trade.

This is a view I fundamentally reject. Brexit is not the occasion to ‘pull up the drawbridge’ – but to embrace the opportunities that the changing pattern of global trade presents.

I truly believe that Brexit is an opportunity. At Chequers, the government agreed its proposal for an economic partnership with the EU after the UK leaves on 29 March next year. It confirmed that the UK will leave the Single Market and the Customs Union and will seize new opportunities from trading with the rest of the world.

But to ensure we are at the forefront of global trade, we must do more. We must raise our ambitions, widen our horizons and expand our timescales. Europe is and will continue to be an important market for our goods and services, but there is a world beyond Europe and a time beyond Brexit.

And as we pursue our first independent trade policy in over 4 decades, we must maximise our global export potential, delivering benefits for business, workers and consumers around the UK. To do this, we must embrace the huge changes underway in global trade patterns, look to the future, and recognise that the time is now to set ourselves on this path to our collective prosperity.

I will repeat again – around 90% of global economic growth in the next 10 to 15 years is expected to be generated outside the European Union. We must adapt to be part of that change. And that is just what this Export Strategy aims to do.

To forge Britain’s future as one of the 21st Century’s great trading nations…

And to build a truly Global Britain”

Link to the entire speech: UK Export Dtrategy 2.0 Speech by Secretary Liam Fox