The Archive

The world’s largest continent wants a World Cup and to end European football’s colonialism. Matthew Hall reports from the latest FIFA congress on Asia’s big plans

“Thank you and enjoy your dessert,” said Youssou N’Dour, the Senegalese music star as he ended his performance at FIFA’s 55th congress in Marrakech in September. N’Dour was the musical entertainment during the “gala dinner”, an opportunity to hit the trough with 600 people from every country on Earth (except Yemen, suspended, and Libya, who got lost on the way, apparently).

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Is Russian football corrupt, internationally and domestically? That’s what Latvia’s captain was reported to have said and some clubs agree, as Dan Brennan reports

Ever since Stalin got together with Hitler to annex the Baltic states in 1940 as part of a secret carve-up, relations between Latvia and Russia have remained strained, something that 14 years of independence has done little to patch over. A Russian newspaper recently called for all good Russians to boycott Latvian tinned sprats – a culinary favourite since Soviet times – in protest at discrimination against Latvia’s Russian community. And August’s World Cup qualifier between the two countries in Riga threatened to spark a new international incident.

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There’s nothing wrong with living in the past: the oldest clubs in England, Scotland and Wales are justly proud of their heritage. But, writes Ian Plenderleith, they can’t agree on who invented the crossbar

Fancy boasting that you’re in the same club as Sepp Blatter and Sven-Göran Eriksson? No, it’s not GOAL (the Grand Order of Ageing Lotharios), but the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC, founded in 1857 and still very much proud of the fact. And for £2.50 a month you can boast not just an enamel badge and four free tickets to a North Counties East Football League game of your choice, but fellow membership alongside the game’s balding but well tanned elder statesmen.

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How do you buy votes if you are a club chairman in Buenos Aires? Hire Maradona and try to avoid falling out with your star striker, as Martin Gambarotta explains

That football and politics mix in Argentina is nothing new. But rarely has there been such an explicit case than the recent events at Boca Juniors. Mauricio Macri, the club’s millionaire president who runs his own centre-right party, is running for the lower house of congress in Buenos Aires in the election scheduled for October.

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Dear WSC
I was browsing through the 2005-06 predictions in WSC 223 when I chanced upon the Birmingham City entry. I have to say that, as a Fulham fan of many years standing, a broad and satisfied grin played across my lips when I read the City fan’s disliked team was none other than Fulham – “How are they still a Premiership side?” he demanded. For us Fulham fans this is proof, if proof were ever really needed, that our friends from the “second city” never emotionally recovered from when little, poorly supported, Second Division Fulham dumped them out of the FA Cup in the semi-final replay in the dying seconds, some 30 years ago. We have come to terms with our subsequent failure to turn up for the 1975 final (I occasionally watch the video in the hope that I might spot some element of a spirited performance that has escaped me on previous viewings). I sincerely hope that those kindly, good-natured City supporters can somehow find some “closure” over their failure in 1975, as it’s clearly long overdue.
Ashley Manning, via email

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