Book reviews

A journeyman pro in his adopted country, Junior Agogo became a star back in Ghana, even getting the better of Didier Drogba – before returning to League One. Chris Taylor reports

The host country’s Cup of Nations campaign was looking like it was coming unstuck. It had taken a last-minute goal to overcome Guinea in their first match and now, in their second, Ghana were labouring to make headway against the debutant Namibians, who had been hit for five in their opening encounter against Morocco. But when Quincy Owusu-Abeyie crossed from the right, Ghana’s powerhouse centre-forward was on hand to flick the ball into the net from four yards out. Junior Agogo’s goal proved to be the winner and in that moment he went from the popular spearhead of Ghana’s attack to national hero and sex symbol.

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Well, OK, it will be 20 years in May since Wimbledon won the FA Cup, but Robert Jeffery and fellow fans are celebrating early as some key artefacts have at last come home, ending their Buckinghamshire exile

 As scenes of triumph go, Morden Library in south London does not seem the most likely venue. Wimbledon fans, however, will take any glory they can get their hands on – which is why, one evening in February, former players, local dignitaries and a group of randomly chosen supporters gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Dons’ FA Cup victory over Liverpool and, more significantly, the return of the club’s honours from Milton Keynes.

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Joyce Woolridge examines the events and publications marking the 50th anniversary of the tragic incident

As the 50th anniversary of the 1958 plane crash that killed 23 people, including eight Manchester United footballers, approached, the club announced that there would be a new memorial “both significant and easily accessible to all who visit the ground”. This deceptively bland statement nevertheless revealed the club’s anxiety to avoid potential controversy. Why the commemoration of the tragedy should be so fraught with difficulty lies partly in the past, in the continuing dispute about the ways in which victims of the crash were and still are treated. Also, Man Utd’s recent ownership history has left the club, in the eyes of its critics, unworthy to “own” or exploit the disaster’s memory commercially.

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Liverpool’s American white knights have become the focus of protests after less than a year, so fans including John Williams are dreaming of the day that 100,000 of them will buy out Hicks and Gillett

Sat, irritably, on the Kop at the recent home match against Sunderland, I hunched, as always, next to the man now charged with raising some £500 million for a Liverpool fans’ buyout from the current, unloved, American co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Rogan Taylor enjoys ambitious projects. Back in 1985, after Heysel, he formed the national Football Supporters Association to give fans a public voice that the press and the authorities might listen to, before later setting up a football MBA at the University of Liverpool. Today, he thinks this club are in even greater danger than back then, when the fans were labelled beasts and the English game seemed spent. “The biggest crisis in over 40 years,” he says. Since Bill Shankly first arrived, in fact, with Liverpool languishing in the old Second Division.

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Should NRR replace QPR in the league tables? Thom Gibbs reports on a takeover by Formula One bosses and a steel magnate that seems to promise much more than mere survival but carries risks of its own

On the evening of August 14, 2007, during a League Cup match against Leyton Orient, Gianni Paladini’s world was in tatters. QPR’s Italian chairman thought he had secured a deal to save the club from impending administration. Flavio Briatore, managing director of the Renault Formula One team, was set to take over, until significant shareholder Antonio Caliendo balked at Briatore’s offer. The deal looked dead. Rangers were destined for financial meltdown, possibly complete extinction. They also lost 2-1 to Orient.

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