The Archive

The announcement of England's 17 preliminary World Cup venues was supposed to get the stuttering 2018 bid back on track. Instead, the inclusion of Stadium MK has caused yet more controversy

England’s 2018 World Cup bid has not been going well. Members of the organising committee have squabbled repeatedly and it has been suggested that the government want FA chairman Lord Triesman to step down as the bid leader. Meanwhile, some of the FIFA voters who need to be wooed have complained about the high-handed manner displayed by members of the bidding team.

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Scott Anthony looks back on Blackburn Rovers' Premier League triumph

The long-term significance
Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn Rovers remain the only club outside the current Big Four to win the English title since the 1992 breakaway of the old First Division. Arsenal and Chelsea not only finished below Tottenham, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest, but also QPR, Southampton and Wimbledon.

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In the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, Gabby Logan travelled to South Africa for BBC television's Inside Sport to talk apartheid, crime and vuvuzelas. Cameron Carter watches with interest

Since discovering the continent of Africa, Europeans helped themselves to its vast mineral and human resources. In return, Africa received smallpox and football. At least the latter is going to pay off for some of the population of South Africa next year. Inside Sport (BBC1, December 7) gave a brief history lesson on football in the apartheid era and addressed the two main fears of visiting European fans – the urban crime rate and a loud plastic trumpet.

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Following the departure of George Burley, the Scottish FA appointed Craig Levein as the latest in a long line of Scotland managers, just as Neil Forsyth predicted

Not that they really need one, but Scotland have got a new manager. Eight months from a competitive fixture the SFA acted with surprising swiftness in nicking Craig Levein away from Dundee Utd and appointing him as George Burley’s successor. In WSC 273 I said that the SFA would still be reluctant on a foreign manager after the horror of the Bertie Vogts experiment and that Levein was the standout Scottish candidate. That shows no prescience on my part, rather a depressing lack of qualified candidates who would actually want the job. David Moyes has a more attractive role at Everton, Gordon Strachan had just committed to Middlesbrough, Graeme Souness ruled himself out and Walter Smith made the worthy point that he’d walked out on Scotland for a Rangers return and it would be somewhat cheeky to go back.

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Steve Menary examined how FIFA's strict rules on "political interference" were being enforced across world football, and found varying results

If a private club suspended five percent of its members in the same number of years, asking for an explanation would seem perfectly reasonable. FIFA’s reason for suspending a dozen of its 208 members – some more than once – since 2005 is “political interference”.

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