The Archive

The papers were pleased by the trouble at West Ham v Millwall – it gave them a reason to get angry

“We hoped it had disappeared forever but deep down we knew it was still out there festering, simmering.” Unfortunately Ken Dyer of London’s Evening Standard was not speaking about the hypocritical moralising of the great British newspapers, but rather the shocking, photogenic and highly lucrative stories about football hooliganism in the wake of the violence at West Ham v Millwall. “Today, when the blood is washed from the pavements of east London and the ripped seats, coins and debris are cleared from the pitch, questions will be asked,” mused Dyer evocatively. Perhaps, prior to writing about the “violence we prayed had left our game for good”, he ought to have questioned his paper’s marketing team’s use of billboards plastered with the gaudy advertisement: Football riots – all the pictures inside.

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Referees seek respect with the help of the FA's new season guidelines

Every football season begins with a “clampdown”. Traditionally this involves new FA directives intended to punish foul play accompanied by a healthy dose of moral hysteria about the state of game. On the pitch, referees attempt to implement the new rules, producing a spate of early bookings and a subsequent outcry from managers. Match officials feel the need to loosen their interpretation of the new disciplinary regime a little, often after a meeting with managers at which “robust views” are exchanged. We end up roughly back to how things were before, except that at least one match official will have been maligned in highly personal terms.

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Cameron Carter casts his eye over the BBC's football presenters

With no summer tournament as a distraction the new season has been a long wait for all of us. Even so, it is still irritating of Gary Lineker to preface each Match of the Day with a promise of “enthralling” games and “high drama”, as if a significant amount of those watching were still debating whether to commit to the whole programme. Match of the Day is one of the few commodities left, along with milk and weapons-grade uranium, that does not require a hard sell. Lineker is dangerously close these days to resembling the kind of schoolboy no one ever liked until his parents invited all the neighbourhood kids to his birthday party with a bouncy castle (symbolically, Lineker’s 1986 World Cup goals) and a chocolate fountain (the 1990 World Cup goals). This makes the boy popular for a while, but not, as he mistakenly believes, forever. In other words, we’re not actually winking back at you, Gary.

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With recent controversy surrounding English clubs signing Europe's young talent before they turn professional, Neil Rose looks at FIFA's plans to protect Europe's schoolboy stars

The furore over French teenager Paul Pogba – with Le Havre accusing Man Utd of stealing him – is just the latest controversy thrown up by English clubs signing the cream of foreign youth. United insist that they complied with UEFA guidelines in signing the 16-year-old and the row is reminiscent of that caused by their capture of Federico Macheda from Lazio in 2007, or Arsenal’s of Cesc Fàbregas, or several other players, mainly by the Big Four. Of course, signing players before they can pen a professional contract is not just an English pursuit – French clubs themselves have plundered Africa for a stream of young players. With transfer fees spiralling ever higher the appeal of relatively cheap, if raw, foreign talent is growing.

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Ian Plenderleith reports on how the internet has led to the downfall of a British football pundit whose show can only be heard on the other side of the Atlantic

If a loudmouthed British football pundit based in California decides to broadcast a big opinion on a satellite radio show available only in the United States or by podcast, will anyone care? Well, thanks to the internet the world has become a smaller place and so the unfortunate answer for Steven Cohen, host of World Soccer Daily (nothing to do with the monthly magazine), was a resounding yes. Shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy earlier this year, he told his audience that Liverpool fans still bore the responsibility for the 96 deaths. After a web lobbying campaign led to sponsors such as Heineken and FourFourTwo magazine pulling their support from the show, it ceased to broadcast in late August, citing harassment and deprivation of the right to freedom of speech.

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