The Archive

You've got to be in it to win it, as Rob Murfin reports

On Tuesday February 1, football fans in 195 countries logged on to the internet as FIFA initiated the ticket sales procedure for next summer’s World Cup. Ten months before the finals draw, with only the hosts Germany guaranteed to be in the competition, applicants were invited to choose from a list of numbered matches, with the date, kick-off time and venue predetermined, but with no idea which of the world’s teams they would end up watching.

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Malcolm Glazer may have won one battle, but the fight goes on. Adam Brown – now a former Old Trafford season-ticket holder – explains how fans still hope to drive the American out

The “phoney war” waged around Manchester United for the past year or so became a real one when Malcolm Glazer swooped to buy a controlling interest in the club on May 12. He is expected to complete his £800 million buyout shortly, making the club his personal property – but one with a huge debt. Dismayed fans are refocusing campaigning efforts to make his tenure a short one.

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Losing your social club can be disastrous for a semi-pro side. John Bourn reports on a fire that cost Spennymoor dear and plunged the Unibond League into crisis

Whoever discarded a cigarette end behind a fruit machine at the Brewery Field social club on Christmas Eve 2003 has a lot to answer for. They began a chain of events that were to wreck a long-established north-east club and left the Unibond League in chaos this spring.

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There’s heartache for the visitors as survival hopes are dashed – but have we just been brainwashed into thinking that being in the Premiership is all that matters? Taylor Parkes finds out

First – and this isn’t unusual – a team owned by a very rich man won the title. People who don’t know what the term “Russian oligarch” actually means, who have probably never heard, say, the exciting story of the race for the governorship of Chukotka, will think nothing of it, or applaud, because the money “must be good for football” and, after all, who cares where money comes from? There he is on television, look, sitting in the stand. Half-smiling. He looks a bit like Harry Enfield.

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Did you hear the one about the Slovenian and the Frenchman? This sounds like a joke, but Jonathan Barnes and fellow Ipswich fans struggle to see the funny side

Anyone in any doubt how Ipswich Town got into such financial strife after troubling the Premiership’s top five at the turn of the millennium should look no further than Amir Karic and Ulrich Le Pen.

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