The Archive

It's 20 years since automatic promotion blurred the distinction between the League and Conference. Roger Titford charts the acceptance of what at the time was a revolutionary step

Twenty years ago Torquay and Preston finished in the bottom two places in the Football League. Both were re-elected, along with Exeter and Cambridge. Then the re-election process itself was voted out and replaced by automatic relegation to the Conference, ending almost a century of tradition. Election and re-election had always been fundamental to the League. The clubs had always chosen their fellow-members rather than admitted them through any public demand or involuntary mechanism. Yet the possibility of new member clubs existed from the very first season, 1888-89, when the bottom four, in a League of only 12, had to reapply. All were successful, as so often would later be the case, including Notts County who this season finished perilously close to the relegation line.

Read more…

The rising tide of scandal engulfing Serie A in general and Juventus in particular has shoacked a nation. But amid the ruins there is hope, as Paul Virgo reports

You know things are bad when you have to take morality lessons from Sepp Blatter. But former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi seems to have taken soccer skulduggery to a new frontier – as Paddy Agnew of the Irish Times noted, it’s not a question of match-fixing any more, it’s “season-fixing”. Blatter described the affair as the worst scandal in the game’s history, adding that he would have expected it from an African nation, but not Italy. Franz Beckenbauer predicted Italy will pay the consequences at the World Cup. The international press have had fun getting sanctimonious about sleazy Serie A, too. 

Read more…

Brazil are everyone's second team, we are told. Well, after watching Nike's latest advert, Barney Ronay suddenly feels a lot less goodwill towards a corporate steamroller masquerading as the people's champions

What kind of person could possibly have a problem with the “beautiful game”? The good old joga bonita, with its smiling children, Brazilian superstars, tippety-tappety freestyle moves and remixed samba rhythms. Not to mention an entire range of polyester sportswear and accompanying DVD and soundtrack album. What kind of fiend, what kind of monster, could possibly feel a sense of queasiness at being told by the World Footballer of the Year, a man with a “brand value” of €47 million per annum, that we all need to stop being such corporate dupes and get with the kids on the street who are keeping it real? OK, Ronaldinho, I give in. I’ll take a gross of cap-sleeved soccer shirts and a dozen pairs of Air Zoom 90 boots. Just, please, no more back-flicks.

Read more…

Music and football get on about as well as the couples that appear on Trisha and, as Taylor Parkes found out, this year's World Cup songs show nothing has changed. Worst of all, England's two 1966 final goalscorers put one in their own net this time

Despite FIFA’s worst efforts, the World Cup remains a commercial free-for-all – professional flagmakers, at least, will drink to that. In the case of World Cup records, this has created a (relative) meritocracy, in the sense that which song is “official” and which isn’t matters not a jot. Who remembers Boom, Anastacia’s official “anthem” of the 2002 World Cup? Or Ricky Martin’s France 98 classic The Cup of Life? England fans have often been unimpressed by officially sanctioned musical product, the exceptions being World In Motion and Three Lions, often choosing homespun rubbish such as Vindaloo or Three Lions retreads over branded nightmares from the Spice Girls, Simply Red or Ant & Dec. Perhaps the FA have just given up, since offering the contract for this year’s England song to never-popular misery-guts Embrace looks very much like a joke. Although, after hearing The World at our Feet, no one’s smiling.

Read more…

As his team get ready for life in League One, even John Earls can see the attraction of a league as unpredicatable as The Championship

With a fortnight left, everything in this league was already settled – automatic promotion, the play-off entrants and relegation. But this didn’t tell the whole story of a frequently absurd season. Reading were so good, Brighton so bad and everyone else so inconsistent that the other 22 clubs should have been told: “Come back next season and do it properly this time.”

Read more…