The Archive

A club from western Stockholm, known for their commitment to youth football more than the quality of the first team, are making an impact in their debut season in the top flight. Marcus Christenson reports

It was never supposed to happen. Most Swedes have always been convinced that the team called Brommapojkarna – the boys from Bromma – would never take part in a top-flight game. After all, they had played football since 1942 and the team known as BP had never managed to take the step up to the Allsvenskan. Continually producing top players such as the former Arsenal and Sweden midfielder Anders Limpar? Yes, definitely. Getting promoted and defeating the 2005 champions, Djurgården, in their first game? No, not really.

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Tuesday 1 Liverpool beat Chelsea on penalties to reach the Champions League final. “In extra time we were the only team who tried to win,” says José, pouting more than ever. Joey Barton is suspended by Man City for a training‑ground fight with team‑mate Ousmane Dabo. The FA are to investigate Oldham chairman Simon Blitz, who made a £500,000 loan to Queens Park Rangers.

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Dear WSC,
There have been suggestions that some African footballers are actually several years older than they claim to be. But there may be a case closer to home. It may be the strain of shouldering Preston’s promotion bid almost single-handed or the fact that he’s endured over a decade of underachievement as an Everton fan, but David Nugent is the oldest-looking 22-year-old I’ve ever seen. With his sunken, haggard features, he looks like he’s been transported into 2007 from some time in the 1930s. But now he’s hanging around with the worldly sophisticates in the England squad, it can only be a matter of time before he gets a makeover. In fact, that might make a nice feature for Icon, Jamie Redknapp’s splendid magazine for ­millionaire footballers.
David Senior, via email

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Simon Tyers watches the 2007 FA Cup final coverage

As the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Watching the FA Cup final coverage threw into sharp focus what has been lost from interminable final build-ups over recent years. We no longer get intimate films of footballers at play in Essex hotels, with Gerald Sinstadt interviewing players by the tennis court and voicing-over footage of the squad in their bedrooms and holding angling competitions. Once upon a time ITV would put a camera on board the coach; now we’re not even invited to check on its progress via helicopter every couple of minutes before it climactically files into the stadium. It was de rigueur for a reporter to grab players inspecting the pitch and ask them what they make of it and whether they’re confident of victory, like they wouldn’t be, whereas this year’s sequence of players milling about glancing downwards, showing off the suits and looking pensive lasted about 30 seconds and kept a respectful distance. The captains fronting Meet the Teams has long since passed on, only two new interviews filling the two hours and 40 minutes of build-up.

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The league that produced the European champions in its final season. By Jonathan Wilson

The long-term significance
Given the political situation, 1990-91 is remarkable for having passed off so smoothly. The previous season had been overshadowed by the riot at the Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb between Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys and Red Star Belgrade’s Delije, hooligan firms that would end up serving at the front and who later saw that clash as the first battle of the Yugoslavian Civil War. However, although political violence flared across the region, crowd trouble remained relatively low-key.
It was, though, the last season of a truly pan-Yugoslav league. The Croatian clubs – Dinamo Zagreb, Hajduk Split, Osijek and Rijeka, as well as NK Zagreb, who would have been promoted – withdrew to join the league of the newly independent Croatia, while Olimpija Ljubljana, Slovenia’s only top-flight representatives, also withdrew. No sides were relegated, with OFK Belgrade (third), Sutjeska Niksic (fourth) and Pelister Bitola (sixth) joining second-placed Vardar Skopje in being promoted from the second division. The season also saw the continuation of the experiment whereby drawn games went to a penalty shootout, with only the winners taking a point, something that was widely seen as having helped Crvena Zvezda – Red Star – in Europe.

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