The Archive

It's taken a while, but football clubs are slowly getting an official presence on Facebook to match the fan-made pages. Mark Segal logs on to see who's ahead of the game and who's getting left behind

As Simon Cowell found out at the end of the year, you underestimate the power of Facebook at your peril. The campaign to make Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name the Christmas number one was a classic example of how social media, and Facebook in particular, is changing the way people connect with each other.

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The 2010 World Cup draw has revived US interest in a meeting with England 60 years ago, as Ian Plenderleith reports

In an era when English football seems to carelessly treat its pre-1992 history as an embarrassment that only serves to complicate clean-cut Premier League records, the United States is paradoxically looking to resurrect a past that will help it to feel more accepted in the global game. Unfortunately for the US, that past largely consists of a single game – the 1-0 victory over England in the 1950 World Cup.

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A home game against the reigning champions is often a foregone conclusion. On this occasion things went very differently as Neil Hurden saw the hosts comfortably dominate their out of form visitors

It’s the Saturday before Christmas, it’s uncharitably cold and my mind is dis­orientated by mixed signals. Only three days before, Fulham performed heroics in the St Jakob stadium in Basel, hanging on to win 3-2 and to secure a last 32 draw against UEFA Cup holders Shakhtar Donetsk in the Europa League, the financially poor but spiritually enriched man’s Champions League.

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Following the demise of Setanta, there is a reluctance to spend big on matches that draw small viewing figures. So does the future involve sitting in front of a computer? Andy West reports

The subject of live online streaming rose to prominence with the internet-only showing of England’s World Cup qualifier in Ukraine, opening up the question of how strongly the internet’s presence will be established in the sports broadcasting market. In years to come, will international fixtures be exclusively shown by online media as a matter of routine? Or was the lack of TV coverage of the Ukraine clash a one-off occurrence borne out of a unique set of circumstances (Setanta’s demise, England’s early qualification and an unsociable 5.15pm kick-off)? Fans who missed out on the Ukraine game will be relieved to learn that the latter seems to be the case.

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Twitter has changed reporting and news analysis. Mark Segal looks at its footballing role

October was a good month for fans of microblogging site Twitter after they were credited with both protecting the integrity of Parliament and bringing Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir to book over her article on the death of Stephen Gately. And the site notched up a significant hat-trick when Rangers midfielder Maurice Edu used his feed to reveal he had been racially abused by fans after the club’s Champions League defeat to Unirea Urziceni.

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