The Archive

Paul Pomonis examines the bribery allegations that have tainted football in Greece

On September 7, Greece beat Armenia 1-0 in Yerevan in a Euro 2004 qualifier. A few hours later, Suren Baghdassarian, press officer with the Football Federation of Armenia, alleged that the Hellenic Football Federation (HFF) had unsuccessfully attemp­ted to buy the game. According to Baghdassarian, in the days leading up to the game, former Armenia international Yervard Sukassyan had repeatedly phoned the national man­ager and the chairman of the federation, offering $1 million (£600,000) on behalf of the HFF chairman Vassilis Gagatsis in order to secure victory. The Armenian officials had taped the incriminating phone calls and, prior to the match, notified UEFA’s match delegate, who decided to give the match the go-ahead and look at the case afterwards. Based on the evidence col­lected since, UEFA have appointed a disciplinary in­spector, Austrian Gerhard Kapl, who is ex­pected to report back ahead of the final series of qualifying matches on October 11.

Read more…

Tom Davies examines the day to day struggle for survival of three clubs in the lower leagues

The wheels have well and truly come off at Barry Town. Mounting debts have caught up with the seven-times League of Wales champions, forcing the club into administration and the team to the bottom of the Welsh Premier table. The crisis came to a head shortly after shy and retiring John Fashanu quit in August. As reported in WSC 192, Fashanu took over at the end of last year with talk of using the club as a gateway to European foot­ball for African players for whom he acted as agent. But none of this came to pass and fans now see his tenure as just a publicity stunt.

Read more…

In the dizzy heights of the Premier League when emotions run high things can get out of hand

Millions of neutrals will have watched the recent Manchester United ver­sus Arsenal match and greatly enjoyed its conclusion – even people who dislike the Premiership for what it represents will have been entertained. They may have been surprised, therefore, to learn that civilisation itself was undermined by what followed a late penalty miss. Sky, of course, were shock­ed by the hounding of Ruud van Nistelrooy and made sure we saw why, repeatedly, from every angle. Revulsion swept through the media – phone-ins were jammed, the tabloids brought out extra large point sizes for their head­lines and the letters pages were full of tearful letters from parents about how their poor children were shocked by what they saw (while they were outside, argu­ing over who was going to play Mar­tin Keown in their reconstruction).

Read more…

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.

Read more…

England may have lost twice to the United States but have inflicted frequent and often quite heavy revenge, beginning, as Gavin Willacy relates, with Tom Finney in 1953

Three years after their humiliation by the United States in Belo Horizonte, Alf Ramsey, Billy Wright, Jimmy Dickinson and Tom Finney were given the chance to gain some sort of revenge on those pesky Americans when the FA sent England on their regular tour of the Americas.

Read more…