The Archive

Setanta’s Conference coverage has been surprisingly refreshing – more so than the station’s attempts to reinvent the wheel when it comes to sports news and the Premier League, believes Josh Widdicombe

If ITV Digital taught us one thing, it is that lower-league football is less popular with television audiences than a knitted monkey. So, like a team about to sign Nigel Quashie, you might think that someone should have warned Setanta of the mistakes of the past before they splashed out on 79 games from the Blue Square Premier (aka the Conference) to supplement their Premier League coverage.

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Bayern Munich will have a new coach next season. For now, everyone is happy. But, as Karsten Blaas reports, the club’s relations with Jürgen Klinsmann haven’t always been cordial

Bayern Munich are always big news in Germany. Thanks to Franz Beckenbauer’s and Oliver Kahn’s womanising, Mario Basler’s drinking and Stefan Effenberg’s obnoxiousness, the club did their best to earn the nickname FC Hollywood. But when they announced that Jürgen Klinsmann would be their new coach – a two-year contract starts in July – the public response verged on the lunatic, even by Bayern standards. Half-a-dozen TV stations rescheduled programmes in order to cover the press conference and the broadsheets commented in their politics sections. Even chancellor Angela Merkel stated how happy she was about the return of the prodigal son.

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Dear WSC
Amid all the furore over the arrival of Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, I was struck by the fact Kev’s old mate Terry McDermott has somehow been kept on at St James’ Park in the ten years since KK’s departure. He usually sat among the coaching staff on matchdays with seemingly no specific role and was never mentioned by TV commentators when the cameras scanned the bench (as they often did during the later days of Big Sam’s turbulent reign). His insignificance was such that I wonder if he had been there so long that no one at Newcastle could actually see him any more. He was visible from afar, showing up on photographs and on TV screens, but up close he blended into the background. Terry has rematerialised fully now that his little mate is back in charge, although his exact role remains unclear – I’m guessing that it doesn’t extend much further than making tea and going out to get Special K’s copy of the Racing Post.
Ross Cannon, via email

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Diego Maradona's Napoli were strong favourites but it was Milan who won the title, writes Daniele Meloni

The long-term significance
Silvio Berlusconi – the media tycoon who took over AC Milan in 1986 – first noticed the inexperienced Arrigo Sacchi when his Parma side won at Milan in the 1986-87 Coppa Italia. Berlusconi duly hired Sacchi. With his belief in zonal marking and total football, Sacchi was a revolutionary who changed the mentality of the Italian game, especially when his Milan side won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990. 

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England need to get Jack Warner on side if they hold any hope of hosting the 2018 World Cup

As you know, the England team won’t be too busy this summer. So they are arranging a friendly for June, in Trinidad to celebrate the centenary of the FA there. This will be the first time that a full England team have played in the Caribbean, which is surprising, though not more so than the fact that their only ever game in Anglophone Africa was in Durban in 2003. 

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