The Archive

It may be no surprise that you can get great English coverage of football in Ireland, but Ian Plenderleith tracks down individual sites that cover Poland, Slovakia and even the whole of South America

Sometimes a Google search of your club’s name can take you to interesting places. Sligo, for example. If I hadn’t been looking for an obscure fact about Lincoln City, I would likely have discovered too late that the Imps were scheduled to play Sligo Rovers in a pre-season tournament in July. As it was, I was able to cancel my summer holiday in Tuscany and reschedule for the Emerald Isle instead (some parts of this paragraph are a lie).

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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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Bolton's final day defeat was enough to hand Forest promotion and set them on their way to their first league championship, writes Geoff Wallis

The long-term significance
Ian Greaves’ Bolton narrowly missed out on promotion for the second season running, this time on the last day. Third-placed Forest learnt of Bolton’s defeat to Wolves as their holiday-bound plane landed in Palma, Mallorca. Within the next two years Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s team would win the League championship for the first (and probably only) time, win the League Cup twice and become European champions. Bolton finally went up in 1978.

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Will Ferrell's back, and Helen Duff takes a look at his latest effort, Kicking & Screaming

Imagine if film genres were ranked, according to goodness, as football divisions. Allowing for the fact that mafia sagas and Vietnam epics would probably be tussling for Champions League spots – and that anything with Billy Crystal in it would be propping up League Two – American “soccer” movies would be groping for credibility within the Sheffield and Hallamshire Girls County League.

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