Diego Maradona, Allan Simonsen and Bernd Schuster ahead of the 1982-83 season at Barcelona. Getty Images
Diego Maradona’s room-mate at Barcelona drove them to domestic and European glory before a spat with Terry Venables ended in him joining their bitter rivals
by Paolo Condo
(translated from Italian by Anthony Wright)
DeCoubertin Books, £12.99
Reviewed by Paul Kelly
From WSC 372, February 2018
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Ángel María Villar could be the next UEFA president, but his influence over Spanisg football has been mixed at best, says Dermot CorriganThe result would have made any autocrat proud. Of the 167 votes cast, 161 were in his favour, five were abstentions and one was void. There was loud applause and wide smiles all round in Madrid on February 16, as Ángel María Villar was re-elected for another four-year term as president of the Real Federación Española de Fútbol (RFEF), the Spanish football association.
The lack of a winter break is more of an excuse than an explanation for the failure of English teams, says Adam BateAs we approach the climax of another English football season, it is perhaps only to be expected that there should be the usual talk of tiring bodies. Equally unsurprising is the now familiar demand for the introduction of that much-vaunted miracle cure: the winter break. A two-week gap in the fixture list has long been viewed as the answer to English football’s problems. Fabio Capello claimed “all the players were really tired” after England’s miserable performance at the World Cup in 2010. His thoughts were echoed by one of his predecessors, Sven-Göran Eriksson, who added: “It’s more difficult for England than other countries to do well in a big tournament. You need a break.”
Tom Shepherd argues that the concept of feeder teams is not too dissimilar to the current league structure and will have similarly negative effectsAndré Villas-Boas raised the possibility of introducing “feeder” teams into the English league structure recently. “The youth development system in England is not right, in my belief. The reserve leagues and youth levels are not competitive enough,” said the Chelsea manager. Villas-Boas believes that having a Chelsea feeder side in the lower leagues would help bridge the gap between reserve standards and first-team football. He also wants to improve his club’s youth development. John Terry, the last player to come through the Chelsea academy and become a first-team regular, is now in his thirties.