The Archive

Ulf Roosvald spent time with Tord Grip when England's assistant coach first came to London. Here he profiles the man who walks two steps behind Sven

It was the day of calm before the storm. Tord Grip pre­pared himself by renewing his wardrobe. He stepped inside a men’s outfitters in Soho and said a friendly good morning to the shopkeepers – in French to Karim from Algeria, in English to his colleague. Two months in London had been enough to become a reg­ular. When he leaves he is carrying two bags with a new blazer, two pairs of trousers, three ties. “I’m not vain by any means, but I have to look good if I’m going to sit next to Sven­nis. He always wears tailored suits, you know.”

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Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger explains why most German fans were not quite as upset by the result in Munich as their English counterparts would have liked

All German Sunday papers have sold out at Mun­ich’s main railway station, that’s why everybody on the train to Frankfurt is now hunched over the Observer or the Sunday Times. Or maybe it’s because, in this coach, they’re all English. Apart from me. The two men from Leicester at my table have im­mersed themselves in pieces on a cricketer called Keith Par­sons and the Ryder Cup, respectively. The six or eight fans from near Liverpool behind me are dis­cussing with gusto an article that mentions “drunken English football fans”, “baton-wielding German riot police” and “blood pouring from wounds”.

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He has been at Chelsea since before the fall of the Berlin wall, yet has played barely 100 games. Mike Ticher looks at the enigma of the underemployed keeper

“Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish that man would go away.”

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The allocation of tickets has caused more chaos and disruption than anything else, Mark Perryman explains how more needs to be done to ensure that England fans are catered for

The official FA ticket allocation for the match in Germany was around 6,000 seats, but a nightmare ensued for many hundreds who had snapped these places up only to head for Munich with no sign of their tickets. This was the first away match involving the relaunched supporters club, “englandfans”, run by the FA. All members sign an agreement which allows the FA to cross-reference applications against criminal records. This process undoubtedly contributed to the delay in issuing tickets.

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The football website intended to bring extensive football coverage to those in the US but as Rich Zahradnik explains the dream soon decended into a nightmare as spiralling costs and debt meant that the site had to be closed down

Football: speed, colour, noise, passion, even – when you’re lucky – dazzle. The web: click, click, click, yawn, click. Was there ever a bigger mismatch? The dotcoms are now dot-bombs and it’s become fun to bash the net. Did football gain anything from the web frenzy besides more of big media’s tentacles in the game?

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