The Archive

ESPN’s purchase of Premier League games is not their first brush with football. David Wangerin traces a complicated relationship

In America, ESPN (Entertainment Sports Programming Network) is generally the most indispensable channel in the house; in the UK it’s just another satellite option. Whether the acquisition of Premier League rights will help the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports” to find greater favour over here is open to question. But its association with English football goes back further than even its Wikipedia entry is prepared to acknowledge.

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Ahead of next year’s World Cup the Confederations Cup is an opportunity for South Africa to prove they can host a major tournament, while for Spain there is a chance to become record breakers. Jonathan Wilson reports

“Er, Aidan,” I asked. “What’s that yellow light?” “What yellow light?” he asked. “The one in the middle of the dashboard in the shape of a petrol-pump that looks like it might be telling us we’re running out of fuel.” “That? I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s all under control.” And usually the accusation levelled at News of the World journalists is that they don’t require their information to be double-sourced before believing it. It was about 20 minutes later that the engine coughed a couple of times and gave out.

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Nobody expected Walsall to scale the heights that they reached in 1998-99. Tom Lines remembers an amazing season

The winner of the 1999 LMA Manager of the Year award wasn’t a huge surprise. Alex Ferguson (the knighthood would follow a few months later) had just led Manchester United to an unprecedented treble, after all. What was remarkable was that Fergie was given a run for his money in the voting by an unassuming 51-year-old enjoying his first season as a manager. That Ray Graydon’s Walsall side had just finished runners-up in Division Two gave his status as the country’s second-best manager a certain symmetry. But given Fergie’s achievements, the fact that Graydon received any votes at all says much about the incredible job that he and his players did that season.

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After showing early potential, unreasonable expectation and an unlikely transfer fee took their toll. James Eastham looks back

Recollecting the transfers that took place across Europe during the 2001 close season, you can safely say there was no credit crunch in the world of football eight summers ago.

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Latvia's unstable economy has affected football too, as Daunis Auers explains

The 2009 Latvian Virsliga season kicked off in mid-March under cold and dark skies. So cold and dark, in fact, that pitches across the country remained frozen, forcing games to be played at the Riga Olympic Centre, a modest indoor facility with a tight, vertigo-inducing balcony along one side of the pitch. Two rows of free-standing chairs give it a capacity of about 300.

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