The Archive

Brazil’s quest for Olympic glory fell short once more, adding to the pressure on Dunga in the World Cup, writes Robert Shaw

A new film called 1958 – The Year in Which The World Discovered Brazil has the team fondly recalling how the blue shirts worn to beat Sweden in the World Cup final were hurriedly bought at a local shop. The badge of the football federation was then stitched on. Fifty years on and Brazil’s Olympic team turn up to collect their bronze medals with sticking plasters over offending badges – the full national football team wear Nike shirts, while Olympikus sponsor the Olympic team,

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An Argentine investigation into players claiming Italian heritage could stem the flow of transfers to Europe, says Rodrigo Orihuela

In 2003, Leganés, a small Segunda División club from the suburbs of Madrid, made headlines by signing 16 Argentine players, most of whom held EU passports (Spanish clubs are permitted to field a maximum of three players from countries outside the EU). Results were bad and the Argentine businessman who bankrolled the team dropped out at mid-season, with most of the players leaving by year’s end. The Leganés case was the most extreme illustration yet of how the Bosman ruling has brought about an influx into Europe of South America players claiming EU citizenship.

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Dear WSC
I thoroughly enjoyed your blow-by-blow review of Euro 2008, noting with some reassurance that I’m not the only one driven to distraction by the so-called expert input of BBC and ITV pundits. However your assessment of the Holland-Italy game surprised me somewhat. The furious and defiant ignorance of the laws of the game displayed by Clive Tyldesley and David Pleat with respect to Ruud van Nistelrooy’s goal were surely worthy of comment, indeed arguably the most damning condemnation of their failure in their roles in providing insight and ­explanation. Instead, you bafflingly seem to support their case and argue, in effect, that an official ought to base an offside call on whether he believes a player is faking an injury or not. Actually he’d already made that call by not stopping the game to permit treatment to the Italian defender in question, who had in effect left the field without permission and thus had to be playing the Dutch striker onside. One shudders to imagine the Machiavellian tricks that some domestic managers would concoct were it possible to play an opponent offside by tumbling off the pitch in a writhing heap. Next you’ll be condemning cliched and inappropriate English attitudes to the German team alongside an anglicised spelling of “dummkopf”…
Matt Rowson, Watford

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There has been little action in the transfer market, but young talent is a talking point

Anyone who has managed to stay awake while reading reports about Frank Lampard’s contractual wrangling may have noted a comment by his agent that negotiations with Chelsea been going on “for two years”. Nuclear non-proliferation treaties have been wrapped up quicker. So what have they been discussing for all this time?

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Financial restraints are making the Irish leagues consider dramatic changes, writes Geoff Wallis

As AGMs go it was as cosy as they come when the Football Association of Ireland met in Castlebar, County Mayo, on July 26. Chief executive John Delaney reported a healthy increase in turnover, that financial plans were well in place to secure the FAI’s role when the rebuilt Lansdowne Road reopens in 2010, and that their assumption of control over the Eircom League had seen an aggregate attendance rise of 100,000 over the last year. That figure represents slightly more per game than the mere 320 who attended the 4‑0 victory by Waterford (Delaney’s local side) over Longford the previous night.

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