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Dear WSC
I’m assuming the Ruud Gullit who recently defended himself working for a dictator by saying he wasn’t interested in politics (Caucasus calling, WSC 292) to be the same one who dedicated his 1987 European Player of the Year to Nelson Mandela. I realise people’s opinions can change over 20 years, but I’m just curious as to what made him decide he wasn’t bothered about injustice anymore.
John Chapman, Sheffield
With uprisings across the Arab world dominating the world press, can change be sparked in football’s most powerful regime?
The popular uprisings in the Middle East are now receiving more coverage than football in the UK press. Even the Arsenal v Barcelona Champions League tie, apparently regarded by some pundits as the most momentous event in the history of the game, couldn’t keep the revolution in Libya off the front pages. So it’s surprising that no one has yet asked the keen Tweeter Jay Bothroyd for his views on the implosion of the Gaddafi regime.
Only minutes from the London 2012 site lies a very different sort of sporting venue. Ian Aitch visits the Old Spotted Dog
As any true football fan knows, even the sight of five ten-year-old kids playing three-and-in is enough to make you watch back over your shoulder as you walk across the park. So, as you can imagine, moving so close to a real football ground that an errant shot of Geoff Thomas proportions could end up in your back garden is the kind of thing that makes you divert the walk to the corner shop, just so you can admire the floodlights peeking up from behind the fence.
By the time it was scrapped in 2008, the Intertoto Cup had little respect. In 1995, when English sides were first made to enter, it had even less. Owen Amos looks back at that first season
From 1961 to 1995, the Intertoto Cup was a summer tournament for mid-ranking, mainland European clubs. It offered pre-season football, modest prize money and – most importantly – kept the pools companies happy (Australian state league games having the same function here). By the mid-1990s, according to the November 1994 Intertoto newsletter – yes, there was one – the tournament was stagnating. The pools companies wanted better games, and bigger names. The organisers asked UEFA for help and, after some discussion, the Intertoto was made the fourth UEFA club competition.