The Archive

Josh Widdicombe watches a remade film about football fighting

“London – The Eighties” the caption reads at the start of The Firm, and it is with brushstrokes this broad that Nick Love goes on to paint his latest picture of violence in days of yore. If coverage of the recent fighting at West Ham has taught us anything it’s that there are still a lot of people that find football hooliganism quite the turn on. Combine this with a yearning nostalgia for the Eighties that can surely only be shared by Norman Tebbit and T’Pau and you have The Firm.

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A new and impressive stadium is available for Euro 2012 but, as Jonathan Wilson explains, it may not actually see any football

Coming in from the airport, you drive over the brow of a hill and there before you, the Donbass Arena appears, a pulsing blue diamond embedded amid the slag heaps of industrial Donetsk. It is a magnificent site and it is, in truth, a magnificent stadium, but you do wonder whether it has become a metaphor for itself, a lone and perhaps superfluous point of light in a city struggling desperately with recession.

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Due to a series of political manoeuvres, Argentine fans can now see more football than ever before. Rodrigo Orihuela explains

Football is a central part of Argentine cultural heritage and, therefore, everybody should enjoy the right to watch live broadcasts of all domestic matches free of charge. This statement does not come from a bitterly disappointed fan tired of ever rising pay-per-view costs. It is actually the crux of the argument used by the Argentine government to justify a £96 million year-long deal to acquire the rights to broadcast football free-to-air.

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Dear WSC
A disgraceful and embarrassing recent football scene. I refer of course to the UEFA Champions League draw on August 27. They managed to stretch the whole process into a tedious one hour plus show, surely beating last year’s record. It was volume off after 15 minutes. John Terry’s “Primark UEFA” suit was one button too tight, and he had to be shown where to go as he walked off stage. It was like he couldn’t remember as he was too dazzled by the whole occasion. The two guys in charge had a height difference between them of about five feet, which again must be a record for a televised draw. The main mystery is why Kenny Dalglish et al deemed it necessary to write down who they would be playing? Must be a bit like Sudoku, the only way to keep yourself awake while on holiday. Or are they all incapable of remembering the names of three other teams?
Mark Lindop, Gravesend

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Paul Joyce looks back at Lucerne's Nationalliga A triumph, their sole league title to date

The long-term significance
In 1987, the Nationalliga A was reduced from 16 to 12 clubs and the season was split into two parts. After a pre-Christmas “qualifying round”, points were halved and carried forward into a “final round” contested by the top eight clubs. As their budgets increased, Swiss clubs were able to attract young overseas talent and also ageing stars, such as Marco Tardelli, who looked forward to playing the “stress-free football” that Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was enjoying at Servette. By 1989, 46 per cent of players in the NLA were foreigners. These changes made the league harder to predict. Neuchâtel Xamax won their only two championships in 1987 and 1988, and FC Lucerne’s sole league title followed in 1989.

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