The Archive

For a season at Stoke City he could do almost anything, except pass to a team-mate. Mark Blakemore celebrates a talent before it was made to conform

Earlier this season, while enduring the sight of Exeter City thrashing helplessly about in the bottom division, I beheld something won­d­rous. The opposition’s left midfielder watched a high ball as it fell over his left shoulder, cushioned it out of the air with his instep, and brought it instantly to rest in front of him. Then he immediately placed an inch-perfect pass through the middle of Exeter’s defence, enabling a team-mate to run through and sky it hopelessly over the bar, which didn’t matter be­cause his team was already 4-0 up. It was comfortably the most beautiful thing I’d seen on a football pitch in four seasons of watching Third Div­ision football.

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Belarus missed their two best players as Ukraine pipped them for a World Cup play-off spot. Paul Roberts explains why some saw sinister motives at work

"It was treachery and disgraceful,” said the Belarus coach Eduard Malofeyev. He was referring to the performance of his two key midfielders, Oleksandr Khatskevich and Valentsin Belkevich, after his team’s 2-0 home defeat in the crucial World Cup qualifier against Ukraine on September 2. Khatskevich was substituted at half-time and Belkevich on the hour. The two players then re­fused to travel to Wales for the final qualifier (“still ash­amed of themselves” according to Malofeyev) which a demoralised and weakened Bel­arus lost 1-0. This allowed Ukraine to snatch the group five play-off place at the death, thanks to a controversial late goal by Andriy Shevchenko in Poland.

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Finally, China have made it to the World Cup finals. They can hardly wait and nor can the Korean tourism industry. Zhang Wenya reports

If England fans think “30 years of hurt” was tough, pity their Chinese counterparts. China have been trying simply to qualify for the World Cup finals since 1957. Nearly 50 years of hurt – and considerable heaps of humiliation – have been the fate of fans in the world’s most populous country. Among a people for whom “face” (and not losing it) is of considerable im­portance, the procession of defeats in vital qualifying matches has been soul-destroying.

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Suddenly, all official club websites look alike. It's another triumph for commerce over diversity and independance, says Jan Lotze

In a move which proves that the desire for money will always overrule quality, all 72 Nat­ionwide League clubs, and a handful in the Premiership, have effectively handed over control of their official web­sites to Prem­ium TV, a subsidiary of the broadcaster NTL. Lured by an initial six-figure fee, and with the pro­mise of further revenue dependent on traffic and the number of “referrals” to an on­line bet­ting shop, clubs have opted to buy and oper­ate the PTV soft­ware for the next five years.

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Anthony Hobbs talks QPR – what's gone wrong in recent years, bad signings and mergers

What has been the main reason for the club’s steady decline over the past few seasons?
The then chairman Richard Thompson failed to invest in the squad six or seven years ago, at a time when a moderate outlay might have paid dividends through revenue generators such as UEFA Cup qualification (don’t laugh, we weren’t that far away). His successor, Chris Wright, was much more willing to invest at first. Sadly, he and his managers almost seemed a bit too desperate to buy players and show­ed all the judgement of the bloke who bought £70,000 worth of Rail­track shares the day before they went belly-up.

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