The Archive

Kris Boyd has walked away from George Burley’s Scotland set-up. Gordon Cairns asks why many have sided with the sulking player

Former secretary of state for Scotland David Cairns seems an unlikely mentor for Rangers striker Kris Boyd, but one wonders if the only minister to resign in the short-lived rebellion against Gordon Brown had been whispering in the ear of the disaffected reserve Scotland striker. How else might the bizarre retirement of Boyd in the wake of the draw with Norway be explained? The catalyst seems to have been Burley’s decision to bring on two strikers, Chris Iwelumo and Stephen Fletcher, with one cap between them rather than Boyd, which was obviously too much for his fragile ego.

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Directors of football are a little-loved breed. Paul Joyce looks at changing attitudes in Germany, where despite successes many clubs now have doubts

Kevin Keegan is hardly unfamiliar with outside interference in managerial affairs. His move to Hamburger SV in May 1977 was engineered by one of the Bundesliga’s first general managers, Dr Peter Krohn. A football layman who saw sport as “show business”, Krohn changed HSV’s blue shirts to pink to attract female customers and made the team ride into the stadium on elephants. Viewing himself as more important in the club hierarchy than “overvalued” coaches with “insufficient school education”, Krohn’s meddling meant that HSV finished only tenth in Keegan’s first season.

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Neil Rose welcomes a familiar voice back to 6.06 – a broadcaster who believes football phone-ins are not just about the match

For a radio station never more than a few minutes away from a trail, the return of Danny Baker to 5 Live was curiously unheralded. The addition of an hour from Baker on Tuesdays means that you are now more likely to hear 6.06 of an evening than not, but – and this is the good, nay joyous, news – his show shares only a name and sidekick (Issy Clarke) with those of Alan Green, Tim Lovejoy and Spoony.

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Luxembourg hadn’t won a World Cup qualifier for 36 years – but that didn’t save Switzerland in Zurich. Ben Lyttleton reports

Köbi Kuhn was always tolerated rather than loved during his seven years as Switzerland coach, but the knives are already out for his replacement Ottmar Hitzfeld, just two months into his reign, after last month’s 2‑1 home World Cup qualifying defeat to Luxembourg. Embarrassing, ­embarrassing, embarrassing was the headline in Der Bund, while tabloid Blick claimed that only Hitzfeld’s past club glories were keeping him from the sack.

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There’s very little entente cordiale between the presidents of Marseille and Lyon. James Eastham examines their latest row

Some transfer sagas leave no trace; Hatem Ben Arfa’s summer move from Lyon to Marseille does not fall into that category. The 21-year-old attacker’s transfer marked a new low point in the increasingly fractious relations between the clubs. The sticking point was a contractual clause stating Lyon had to pay Ben Arfa €1.5 million (£1.19m) if they sold him. Instead of reaching an amicable agreement, Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas and his counter­part at Marseille, Pape Diouf, used it as an excuse to verbally beat each other up over a deal for the second time in three years.

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