The Archive

While the Czech Pavel Nedved celebrates being named European Footballer of the Year, Ian Farrell  remembers the rapid decline of a previous winner, from slightly further east

Such is the general view of football in eastern Europe today, it takes some effort to imagine teams from there electrifying the sport and win­ning admirers across the world. But in the mid 1980s, Dynamo Kiev, together with the virtually interchangeable USSR side also coached by Valery Lobanovski, took football to another level with a conception of the game as a living machine. Total Football meets applied mathematics. This lent itself easily to Cold War stereotyping – collectivised football played by faceless automata – but the play was a world away from the drabness of the Eastern Bloc, thanks mainly to Oleg Blokhin, Alexander Zavarov and, foremost among them, Igor Belanov.

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Football agents enjoy little in the way of popularity and much in the way of blame. But Athole Still, a man who can claim to be responsible for the appointment of one of his clients as the current England coach, believes his profession is a must in modern football and wants to clean up its image

Do footballers need agents?
Frankly, football is now part of the entertainment business. In the entertainment business worldwide, agents have been established for 150 years or so. So I would say everyone in football who has a desire to have a long-term career must have an agent and it must be one who is fully involved in football, who knows what’s going on. Some use a lawyer instead. A lawyer may do the contracts side perfectly well, but there is infinitely more to being a good agent than doing contracts. It’s much more important now in relation to things like the Bosman rule. At the start of this season, for instance, there were something like 530 players out of work: it’s now a bit of a dogfight, unless you’re a star. But less than five per cent of footballers are what you could call real stars. The vast majority of players need somebody with their ear to the ground who knows what’s going on.

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Archie MacGregor believes Berti Vogts’ forward thinking is the one thing going for the German, but Scotland’s topsy-turvy play-off defeat to Holland was a dismal throwback

Ah, the roller-coaster ride that is the lot of the Scot­land supporter. From exultant, wide-eyed op­tim­ism to the pits of despair in four days. Wasn’t this sort of thing supposed to have been banished once and for all after Argentina 78?

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The eternally controversial former Rangers goalkeeper took the high road to Elgin in the autumn – but, as Dan Brennan relates, the low road would have led, amazingly, to Brazil

For all its merits, Elgin is not Rio. Ask Andy Goram. This summer, the 39-year-old former Rangers goal­keeper appeared close to an improbable move to Brazilian top-flight side Botafogo, after a chance encounter with the club’s representatives in Selkirk, where he was organising a six-a-side tournament.

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Wales’s journey from outsiders to group favourites to narrow play-off failures leaves Paul Ashley-Jones unsure whether to despair at another defeat or celebrate progress

It’s the Euro 2004 draw and, despite my shutting myself in the other room, my wife insists on shouting out who’s in which group. I’ve not quite reached the fingers-in-ears stage but it’s getting pretty close.

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