The Archive

After securing promotion from Division Three on the final day, Stag Colin Dobell can take a deep breath and look back at where it all went right

What has been the single biggest reason for the club’s successful season?
The promotion of Stuart Watkiss from youth team coach to assistant manager at the start of the season, and then to manager, brought a new sense of pur­pose and belief, especially for the young players Stuart had nurtured through the youth team. The success of players like Lee Williamson, who made the PFA Third Division team in his first full season, has made all the difference. 

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As the world looks east towards the World Cup, England could be on course to righting the wrongs of 1998

You never really know until it starts, of course, but it feels as though this World Cup is going to be very different from the last one. Some of the differences are obvious, notably the fact that it is be­ing held much further away from Eng­land. While you would not want to rule it out, it seems implausible that hooliganism will be as big a theme as it was in France. Perhaps more interestingly from England’s point of view is the way the culture of the team itself has changed, lar­gely, though not entirely, due to the in­fluence of Sven-Goran Eriksson.

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Paul Pomonis reports on the corruption scandal that has dragged Greek football through the mud

Although news had leaked out about a huge scoop, the extent of the revelations about cor­ruption in Greek football made by a famous investigative reporter, Makis Triandafylopoulos, left everybody breathless. On March 31, Triandafylopoulos presented live on TV a ser­ies of taped phone conversations made during the 2000-01 season.

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Ian Plenderleith burrows through the heaving mass of World Cup sites to discover the debut official song and the meaning of Korea's "intangible cultural assets"

Predictably enough, there has been a huge amount of cyberspace set aside for online coverage of the coming World Cup. The following is an attempt to help you focus on the least drivel-ridden websites.

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Next season the Bosnian league will finally include clubs from all parts of the fractured country. Nedim Hasic reports on the slow process of unification

Next season Bosnian football will be united for the first time since the war. After the Dayton peace agree­ment was signed in November 1995, Bosnia be­came the only country in the world with three different football leagues. The Premier League, organised by the Bosnian Football Federation (BFF), was recognised by UEFA and FIFA, while the Croat-controlled part of the country maintained its own tournament, as did the “ethnically cleansed” Bosnian Serb enclave, Re­publika Srpska.

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