The Archive

He looked as though he might be a key player for Barcelona, but now Lazio can't give him away. Paul Virgo profiles the man who is following him around Europe

In the summer of 1998 the Lazio president Sergio Cragnotti forked out £10 million for a promising Spanish lad called Ivan de la Peña. Not a modest sum by any stretch, but Cragnotti was satisfied it was money well spent. According to reliable sources he’d landed himself the next Maradona. Offer Cragnotti the price of a second-hand Fiat Panda for De la Peña today and he’ll take your arm off.

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Ian Plenderleith goes looking for football advice on the web and comes up with something technical, something feminine and something simply divine

We’ve all played in teams where the performances of our team-mates have failed to live up to expectations. But at an amateur level it can be problematic to explain to the enthusiastic left-back that his headless chicken forward runs are not only failing to create anything up front, but are leaving a huge hole at the back too. After all, the left-back might be your mate and, even worse, if he doesn’t turn up next week because he felt all insulted, then that gap at the back might be even wider.

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Alan Moore explains why the Gulf kingdom is unlikely to spring many surprises at this year's World Cup, not to attract any high profile foreign players

Saudi Arabia arrived on the international scene with one of the greatest goals in World Cup history. Saed Al Owarain’s mazy run and shot against Belgium in 1994 lit the fuse for a footballing explosion in one of the most private and secretive countries on earth. But despite another World Cup qualification this time ar­ound, their third in a row, Saudi football has been in steady decline for some time.

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In an extract from his new history of German football, Tor!, Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger recalls the sensation of the 1971 Bundesliga bribery scandal

Despite his name, the German-born Spaniard Horst Gregorio Canellas was not a Cosa Nostra don but an importer of bananas. Legend has it he supplied the DFB (German FA) headquarters. He had a raspy voice worthy of Al Pacino and was a chain-smoker, despite persistent asthma problems. He had also been the pre­sident of Kickers Offenbach since 1964.

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Football managed to soldier on without the devious involvement of television, and the Football League does not have to lie down and die when the money is taken away

The Football League are getting all kinds of advice from the press about what to do in their dispute with ITV Digital, most of it accompanied by fingerwagging. The News of the World, for one, wonders why lower division clubs “think they have a right to such money in the first place” given that they have “wallowed in a swamp of debt for too long”.

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