The Archive

Want to buy a stake in your club? Need to check whether it's worth what you're paying, or 14,975 times less? Or just keen to know if they're going out of business? Ian Plenderleith takes stock of online football finance

Proving that the internet may still be the last refuge of scam merchants, WSC was re­cently sent a link to a website called Framed Share that allows fans to buy smartly framed single share certificates in football clubs. “In the past only the richest football fans could afford to be a shareholder in various football clubs and have their say in how the club is run,” says the blurb, as if we had just emerged from an era when only the wealthy had the nous to pick up a phone and talk to a stockbroker.

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Monday 1 On transfer deadline day, Chelsea finally snap up Claude Makelele from Real Madrid for, ooh, £80 million or so. Everton fans might be pleased by the arrival of James McFadden from Motherwell, but possibly less excited by that of Kevin Kilbane and the return on loan of Franny Jeffers. Among other loan deals, Marcus Bent leaves impoverished Ipswich for Leicester and Portsmouth take Jason Roberts from West Brom.

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Dear WSC
At the time of writing it is Thurs­day, September 11, 2003. Last night I along with 8,815 others ventured to Windsor Park, safe in the knowledge we could finally put to rest the 11-game goal drought. After all, we only lost 1-0 away to Armenia and we hit the post and crossbar and we mis­sed a few chances. Two hours later we had lost 1-0 again and we hit the crossbar and hit the post and missed a few chances. The media has generally chuckled at our plight, and who could blame them. BBC Northern Ireland is running a phone poll on whether or not we should scrap the Northern Ireland football team in favour of an All-Ireland -Team. This in itself is a quite ludicrous, deliberately contentious and politically loaded question from a supposedly public service broadcaster. I don’t recall a similar poll in favour of a British and Irish Lions team poll when the Irish rugby team lost to Argentina in a World Cup game. A plus point about the goal drought is that for the first time in years what little publicity we have received hasn’t been about problems with sectarianism and the national team. To an outsider it probably seems that Northern Ireland home games are a seething cauldron of bigotry and hatred.In fact, anyone attending a game without preconceived ideas would be surprised at how good the atmosphere is given the terrible ground, poorly performing team and crowd size. We are now just known as being useless, not useless bigots. I hope one day soon to look back and laugh about when we couldn’t score as Andy Smith nods another past a hapless Barthez on our way to automatic qualification for the World Cup in Germany…
Jim Lockhart, Banbridge, Co Down

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Heralded as an indicator of football’s rise when launched 12 years ago, it’s the best guide to the game’s health. Roger Titford looks at this year's Deloitte & Touche report

Deloitte & Touche’s annual review of football finances is now in its 12th year. The series will offer the foot­ball historian of the future a far more accurate and detailed source for the football boom-and-near-bust years than the usual run of football/business books.

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The United States’ most famous victory, perhaps England’s most famous defeat, is being made into a film and, as Dave Hannigan reports, a rock star plays Stan Mortenson

Discovering Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of Bush, husband of No Doubt’s Gwen Ste­fani, will play Stan Mortensen in a forthcoming movie about America’s 1-0 victory over England at Belo Hor­izonte in the 1950 World Cup was initially wor­rying. So soon after Bend It Like Beckham grossed over $25 million (£16m) in 18 weeks at the US box office, this sounded perilously like the beginning of some horrendous Hollywood attempt to cash-in on the game’s perceived current trendiness.

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