The Archive

Dover soul Mark Winter believes that the dramatic changes to the non-League game outlined below will give Athletic a lot more matches he can actually go to

Imagine you spend your season in a league with just one promotion place on offer. From here, take the quantum leap to assume that there are now 13 promotion slots on offer. That is the prospect facing supporters of the three feeder leagues below the Conference, which is to get two second divisions, a north and a south, from next season. For clubs at this level, restructuring of non-League football is long overdue and some­thing to be celebrated.

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Four years after the Football Task Force recommended them, the FA still haven't produced rules on who can and cannot own a club. James McNamara explains why

Despite their latest move to investigate an initiative designed to rid the game of opportunist asset-strippers, the Football Association have been accused of dragging their feet over introducing a Fit and Proper Persons Test (FPPT). The 1999 Football Task Force report Commercial Issues recommended the introduction of a vetting procedure for those wishing to become large shareholders in a football club, but the proposal has remained on the drawing board. On the back of recent speculation about “mysterious” foreign in­vestors circling the game, the government has hard­ened its pressure on the FA to address the matter. Following the Chelsea takeover, a source from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport reportedly told the Guardian that Tessa Jowell hoped football would introduce a "fit and proper per­sons" test in the near future. By mid August the FA’s newly formed Finance Advisory Committee (FAC) met for the first time and pledged to introduce the test at next sum-mer’s FA Annual General Meeting, ready to be implemented at the start of the 2005-06 season.

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A side rooted in London’s Bangladeshi community will be playing four rungs short of the Conference this season. Matthew Brown traces the rise of Sporting Bengal

As footballing milestones go it probably won’t rank up there with the first FA Cup final or England’s World Cup win, but the acceptance of an east London amateur team into the ranks of the Go Travel Kent League marks a breakthrough of no little significance for one section of the footballing fraternity.

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Just one level beneath the Swedish top flight, Assyriska Föreningen are the highest-ranked immigrant-based club in Europe. Marcus Christenson reports

Assyriska Föreningen in Södertälje, south of Stockholm, was founded by Sweden’s Assyrian minority in 1971 with the aim of helping new immigrants settle. The society provided translations and information on the cultural and social aspects of Sweden and created four different sections – culture, youth, women and football – within a few years of its foundation.

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If you missed the 1978 World Cup final and don’t want to know the score, look away now. Al Needham's dad preferred the seaside to the match and didn't know the etiquette

The film Field of Dreams is about the sacred bond between father and son and the perverse ways they express their love – namely, by chucking a ball at each other. It’s deep. It’s meaningful. It’s absolute bollocks.

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