The Archive

Clubs ruined by debt are finding themselves in a continuous cycle of money problems, writes Tom Davies

One of the more depressing features of recent years’ club crises is just how recurrent they are: a threat is averted temporarily, only to resurface a couple of years later, with underlying problems unsolved. At few places is this more evident than at Rotherham United, who last month entered administration for the second time in less than two years, as a three-year decline, which has seen ownership of the club change hands twice and the ground once, has again pushed the Millers to the brink. The League Two club owe what is thought to be “several hundred thousand pounds” to the tax authorities and, needing funds to pay players and rent their ground from octogenarian former chairman Ken Booth, are in another fight for survival.

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Unless something is done to improve grassroots facilities, we will never be able to improve standards of play, writes Gavin Willacy

I’m all for selling off playing fields. The majority of our pitches are good for nothing but walking a dog or building houses on. That suggestion may be considered heresy by callers to phone-ins and fellow feature-writers, but selling them off could be the answer to one of English football’s biggest barriers to progress.

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Futsal has become a professional game in some countries and improves the basic skills of players but England is still not interested, writes Jon McLeod

It is the game that produced Ronaldinho and Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet despite it having fostered some of the world’s finest talents with skill, ingenuity and tactical astuteness, England has neglected futsal. From its constricted origins on the streets of São Paulo and Montevideo in the 1930s, this five-a-side version of football has spread throughout Europe and the Middle East and across the rest of Asia. In 1989 FIFA confirmed it as the official small-sided form of the game and, in the internet age, players such as Brazil’s Falcão (aka Alessandro Rosa Vieira) are becoming YouTube regulars, rivalling the most flamboyant exponents of 11-a-side football.

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For years Sepp Blatter has proclaimed how wonderful his organisation is, but a report  has highlighted how unaccountable FIFA are and a court case in Switzerland is hearing allegations that a collapsed marketing firm paid bribes to members of FIFA committees. John Sugden sorts through the murk

Two developments are raising serious questions about the way Sepp Blatter and the organisation he so prominently overlords go about their business. First, in a recently published “accountability” league table comprised of 30 of the world’s most powerful international organisations, it will come as little surprise to those of us who have been investigating world football’s governing body to discover that FIFA are languishing fifth from bottom.

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These are changing times for Match of the Day, with the BBC struggling to hold on to TV rights but launching a new mag for kids with a design so busy you contract motion sickness if you even glance at its cover. Roger Titford compares this and other titles aimed at boys with those of his youth

My eyes hurt. I’ve sustained an industrial injury through reading Shoot, Match! and Match of the Day magazine in less than 90 minutes. It’s the visual equivalent of downing two litres of fizzy blue pop and half a dozen Boost bars. Yes, suddenly and unexpectedly the boys’ football weekly magazine market has burst back into life, with the three titles all competing at the £1.80 mark.

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