The Archive

The campaign for respect for referees is targeted at managers and players, but, Michael Whalley wonders, wouldn’t it be better directed at broadcasters such as Andy Gray and Eamonn Holmes?

Sky Sports News – the channel that only considers sporting events to be truly newsworthy if they have the rights to show them – was a bit stuck during the Olympics. But on the day American swimmer Michael Phelps won a record-equalling ninth gold medal, it cleared its afternoon schedules – so that Eamonn Holmes could talk to John Terry about respecting ­referees.

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Trabzonspor make their debut, a significant event as they went on to take six titles in nine years and break the dominance of the big three, writes Alp Ayhan

The long-term significance
Brazilian World Cup winner Didi had taken over as Fenerbahce coach in 1972, finishing second in his first season, taking the title in 1974 and again the following season. Fenerbahce wouldn’t win two in a row again until 2005. This was a bleak period for local rivals Galatasaray, who were to go 14 seasons without winning a championship, a run they broke in 1987. Both Istanbul clubs were to be overshadowed over the next decade by the Black Sea side Trabzonspor, who made their 1. Lig debut in 1974-75 and went on to take six titles in the next nine years.

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The Northern League have their own anti-swearing initiative in place. Owen Amos reports

My first memory of football swearing is, strangely, a good one. It was the mid-1990s, Easington Colliery Welfare, near Sunderland, at home in the Northern League Second Division. The crowd was 60, at best. Easington had a corner. The right-winger jogged over and placed the ball. It was one inch – maximum – outside the quadrant. The referee couldn’t see; the linesman wasn’t bothered. The opposition were too busy shouting “Hold!” and “Tight!” to notice.

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Journalist Terry Daley used to work for Chelsea – at least when it suited the club. It seems Roman learnt a few tricks from Pravda…

“This must be your dream job, I bet your dad must be really proud of you,” is the first thing almost everyone said to me after they found out that I was working for Chelsea’s official publications. To nodding heads and blank stares I’d point out that the money was terrible, the people above me had no idea what fans wanted, didn’t care what they had to say and had less of an idea of what made a good magazine. The response was the same almost every time: “Still, Chelsea eh? And what happened with Mourinho? Go on, tell us.”

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On October 15, England face a Belarus team whose coach used to be an informer for East Germany’s secret police. Paul Joyce reports

“Football trainers shouldn’t mix work and politics,” Belarus coach Bernd Stange stated in March. “That is dangerous.” His critics would argue that Stange has often used this tenet as an excuse to pursue his career while closing his eyes to the political and human consequences of his actions. A media-friendly, yet curiously elusive, figure, Stange was known in the former East Germany as “der Lügenbaron” – a modern-day Baron Münchhausen whose tall tales about his exploits needed to be taken with copious pinches of salt.

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