The Archive

Few countries were as desperate for a lift from the World Cup as Trinidad & Tobago, whose team provided some much needed national unity, as Mike Woitalla explains

XTrinidad & Tobago defender Marvin Andrews was 12 years old the last time his country came close to qualifying for a first World Cup. The Caribbean twin-island nation needed to draw against the United States in Port of Spain on November 19, 1989. Dwight Yorke, who had turned 18 two weeks earlier, started in midfield. Schools lifted their dress codes so the children could honour “Red Day”. The 30,000-strong crowd at Hasely Crawford Stadium looked like a scarlet blanket. Calypso bands played tunes about going to Italy. The Mighty Sparrow sang: “I never know Trini did love football so.” Lincoln Phillips, a former T&T national team goalkeeper, said: “It’s crazy. It’s the first time in the history of the country that everybody has gotten behind one thing.”

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There was little to be positive about in 1985, the game’s year zero, till the founders of the FSA reinvented fan politics.  Adam Brown charts the body's highs and lows

It is now 20 years since the Football Supporters Association was formed by a handful of souls in a Merseyside pub and began to transform the landscape of fan politics in England. Before 1985 there was only the National Federation of Football Supporters’ Clubs, a federative body of officially sanctioned club organisations, their activities based on raising money for the club and organising travel. The “Nat Fed” was certainly not politically radical.

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Live football helped Sky transform the UK television market – and now Rupert Murdoch hopes it can yield similar profits on the internet. Bruce Wilkinson reports

The current spat between the football authorities, Sky and the European Commission may be little more than a sideshow to the most significant media  business event of 2005 – BSkyB’s acquisition of the broadband internet provider Easynet for £211 million, part of a major drive to acquire new media interests around the world. As the EC worries about Murdoch’s monopolistic grip on English football, his henchmen are gaining a stranglehold over what many experts predict to be the future of sports broadcasting – the live coverage of matches over the internet.

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The 2007-08 Premiership season will not be live on just one channel. Neil Rose explores how much competition there'll be

“For the first time in the history of the Premier League, free-to-air television will have a realistic opportunity to show live Premier League matches.” So said the European Commission. Not during the current shenanigans over competition for television rights, but two years ago when it persuaded the Premier League and Sky to sub-license a measly eight matches (out of 138) to be shown by another broadcaster. Nobody took up the offer.

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Sepp Blatter’s weird ways attract derision yet, as Ben Lyttleton reports, the FIFA president is skilfully lining up Michel Platini to succeed him. But Lennart Johansson still hopes Franz Beckenbauer can ride to the rescue

FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s most recent interview in the Financial Times was an odd one, even by his unconventional standards. He laid into Wayne Rooney, urging his coaches to teach him some respect, and claimed that a mystery West Brom director had told him that Chelsea were too good for the Premiership. That was before he criticised the salary players were getting as “pornographic”, which is not the word most people would have chosen to use.

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