The Archive

The conflict with Russia placed Georgian football in the forefront of the struggle to maintain morale, as Jonathan Wilson explains

Under normal circumstances, Wales’s friendly against Georgia in August would not have been of too much concern to anyone – perhaps not even those playing in it. As Russian military support for the separatist regions of South ­Ossetia and Abkhazia continued, however, and threatened at one point to escalate into a march on Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, it became for the visitors a rallying point.

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Olympiakos’s Champions League qualifier against Anorthosis did not go to plan for the Greeks. Paul Pomonis reports on Cypriot joy

The elimination of Olympiakos in the third qualifying round of the Champions League at the hands of Cypriot champions Anorthosis Famagusta was greeted in Greece with the traditional mixture of disbelief and outrage reserved for national sporting disasters: “Grief and unending sorrow”, “Crime and punishment” screamed two Olympiakos-friendly Athens sport papers. Although Anorthosis were grudgingly recognised as worthy winners, they were offered scant credit for their qualification, which was instead blamed on Olympiakos’s “bad luck” and “fatal mistakes”. As Anorthosis veteran Stefanos Lyssandrou noted: “It is as if Olympiakos were alone on the pitch.” Even at the hour of Cypriot football’s biggest triumph, the Greeks chose to completely ignore their “brethren”.

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Joao Pinto, one of Portugal's feted 'Golden Generation' and the scourge of England in 2000, has retired. Phil Town looks back at his career

So farewell, then, João Vieira Pinto. The diminutive forward has retired at the age of 36 after a colourful career that started stratospherically, with two World Cup winner’s medals at Under-20 level nearly two decades ago. Among the highs along the way was a glorious display and hat-trick in Benfica’s 6-3 away crushing of Sporting in 1994 – for which JVP was awarded an unprecedented 10 out of 10 by sports daily A Bola – and that sublime headed goal against England at Euro 2000. The lows included an ignominious exit from Benfica in 2000 – he was considered surplus to requirements by the subsequently disgraced club president João Vale e Azevedo – and a six-month ban from football after punching referee Angel Sanchez in the defeat against South Korea in 2002, an aberration that effectively ended his international career.

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Vasco da Gama's new president had to overcome electoral fraud before tackling years of neglect. Robert Shaw reports

Like many Brazilian footballers, Carlos Roberto de Oliveira was always known by a nickname – in his case Dinamite. In a career spanning three decades he scored 470 goals for one of the big Rio clubs, Vasco da Gama, as well as having a brief spell at Barcelona. Now he has a new role, as a president of his former club, having defeated one of the most controversial figures in Brazilian football, Eurico Miranda, in an election at the end of June.

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Sven is quietly settling in as Mexico manager while his lookalike makes the headlines, says Martin del Palacio Langer

Mexico has always had stormy relations with its national-team coaches. The process is generally the same. They arrive amid great expectation and, after a few poor results, end up arguing with the press and being hated by the fans. Although the national team got through the group stage of the past four World Cup finals, no coach has lasted more than four years since Ignacio Trelles, who was in charge between 1958 and 1968.

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