The Archive

Brighton escape from the bottom division as Barnet drop out of the league. Peter Evans reports

The long-term significance
Fresh from an £11.5 million takeover by Sam Hammam, Cardiff City spent £1.9m – an unparalleled amount for the fourth tier. However, this season, when each Division Three club were guaranteed a healthy £150,000 in TV revenue, was the beginning of the end for such heavy investment in wages and transfers. The following year ITV Digital went under, leaving many clubs facing the prospect of financial meltdown. Carlton and Granada, the channel’s owners, had paid £315m for the Nationwide League TV rights in June 2000, but, when the company was declared bankrupt in March 2002, Third Division clubs lost roughly £400,000 in earnings.

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Jon Spurling reports on Michel Platini's ambitious plans

“Football is a game before a product, a sport before a market, a show before a business,” said Michel Platini in January. The new UEFA chairman has since claimed that all his proposals – including his suggestion in August to cut the number of Champions League places allocated to Europe’s leading leagues from four to three and his aim that European finals be played on a Saturday afternoon with 75 per cent of allocated tickets going to the finalists’ supporters – are based on “sporting philosophy and not anything financial”. Others don’t share Platini’s altruistic vision.

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Crisis clubs have ground problems. Tom Davies reports

Niggling problems with grounds predominate this month. However, there’s been a rare victory for supporters over property developers at Cambridge City, where the Blue Square South club are celebrating a court ruling that they had been fraudulently misled by the firm that bought Milton Road two years ago.

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Neil Forsyth, like millions of Scots, is still pinching himself after James McFadden’s winner in Paris gave the team a sight of Euro 2008. What will Berti Vogts make of it?

Before the memorable night of September 12, Scotland’s last visit to play France in Paris had been a friendly in March 2002. That was the first game in charge of Scotland for Berti Vogts.

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Walking to the ground is not only a traditional part of the matchday experience, it’s good for you, too. Strangely, it’s becoming much more difficult to achieve. Pete Green reports

“The pedestrian remains the largest single obstacle to free traffic movement,” said a Los Angeles planning report in the 1960s. Four decades and billions of tonnes of carbon emissions later, some UK planners are seeing the light and pedestrian access figures increasingly in new developments. Except for football stadiums, that is – where careless designs and cheap locations threaten to make walking to the match a thing of the past.

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