The Archive

France’s national anthem was booed once more, before a game with Tunisia, provoking a political storm. Andy Brassell reports

Politicians pronounce themselves shocked by a great many things, but this was certainly one of the least shocking. The real surprise was not the whistling from the stands at the Stade de France that met the traditional rendition of La Marseillaise before the friendly against Tunisia on Tuesday, October 14, but the fact that it raised so much as an eyebrow anywhere in the country.

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Debt is a fact of life for football clubs, but how damaging will it become?

“We obviously can’t compete with the money Manchester City have so there’s no point trying. We’ve got to succeed some other way.” So said a Premier League chairman in late September. But this wasn’t a pragmatic view from someone at a club that would be happy with a mid-table finish. It was Arsenal’s Peter Hill-Wood, whose comments were reported on the day that his team went top after a win at Bolton. The Arsenal board are bucking the current trend by actively discouraging interest from outside investors, in their case Alisher Usmanov from Uzbekistan, who owns a 24 per cent stake in the club.

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John Toshack’s reorganisation of Wales’ youth teams under Brian Flynn has paid dividends, as Paul Ashley-Jones explains

It’s typical that when Wales finally escape a qualifying group it leads to a play-off rather than the tournament itself. It’s also typical that, despite finishing top of our group, we draw a side as strong as England in the play-offs. Nonetheless, being so close to the 2009 European Under-21 Championship finals is a huge moment, for players and fans. Participation in such a tournament would help towards changing a losing mentality that Welsh players, at all levels, have had for a very long time.

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Who stands to gain from the brouhaha at West Ham?

The summer sales at West Ham that triggered the departure of Alan Curbishley were explained in a splurge of back-page headlines in late September. Hammered! said the Daily Mail, who were a day ahead of the pack in reporting that the club had anticipated a huge fine for their illegal dealings with Kia Joorabchian of the MSI agency, suppliers of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. The tribunal that examined Sheffield United’s claim for damages for having been relegated while West Ham stayed up won’t decide on compensation for several months. But United’s claim for over £30 million, made up principally of the TV and merchandising income they lost after relegation, is likely to be met. Indeed, unless West Ham are relegated this season and Sheffield United come up, £30m seems like light punishment. Most of the coverage sympathised with the claimants, with Neil Warnock telling the Times that he’d still be at Bramall Lane if the club had stayed up. “It knocked us back no end. Relegation is on my CV, which it shouldn’t be.”

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Dear WSC
I write to you concerning Simon Creasey’s fascinating article Parting Shots (WSC 259), in which Ignacio Palacios-Huerta of the London School of Economics describes that, in penalty shootouts, the team that taking a penalty first wins 60.5 per cent of the time. He then goes on to say that the team kicking first “has a 21 per cent greater probability of winning the shootout”. I don’t cast doubt on Mr Palacios-Huerta’s abilities as a statistician, but it is possible that he meant 21 per cent more probability of winning. If Team X has a 60.5 per cent probability of winning, then Team Y therefore has a 39.5 per cent probability. Team X’s probability is [(((60.5 / 39.5) -1) x 100) =] 53 per cent greater than Team Y’s of winning the shootout. Or, in other words, that Team X wins 21 per cent more matches means that their chances are 53 per cent better than Team Y’s for any given shootout. We can be sure that this is precisely what was going through Rio Ferdinand’s head after extra time in Moscow.
Patrick Finch, Eskilstuna, Sweden

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