The Archive

Italian football, beset by corruption and cynicism, is now suffering from a frightening new wave of hooliganism. Richard Mason reports

Few people paid much attention to the 1-1 draw between Atalanta and Pistoiese in their Italian Cup match played on August 20. In fact, for Italian football, it was the start of an annus horribilis. Two days after the game there were reports of strange betting patterns involving relatives of some of those playing, and seven months later six players, four of them from Atalanta, were suspended for up to a year.

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Irving Scholar was just one of the strange heroes of The Men Who Changed Football. The BBC documentary gave only a partial account of the past two decades, says Nick Varley

I was one of the men who changed football. Well, actually, I was one of those in The Men Who Changed Football, BBC2’s three-part documentary on how the game was transformed from “national disgrace to big business”. Granted, it was a fleeting appearance, lurk­ing behind Tony Banks and David Mellor, the Laurel and Hardy of west London, after they completed an ill-advised football-playing photocall before the launch of the Task Force. The press conference which followed the slapstick routine was, you won’t be surprised to hear, a lot less entertaining.

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The production of footballers, like everything else in the Republic, is taking off. Dave Hannigan reports

When the Republic of Ireland began their World Cup qualifying campaign last autumn with highly creditable draws away to Holland and Portugal, their efforts were bulwarked by the then out of favour Internazionale striker Robbie Keane, the then Everton substitute centre-half Richard Dunne and Blackburn Rovers winger Damien Duff. Despite all three battling difficult periods in their nascent club careers, they had no problems turning it on at a higher level. From three veterans of international youth football, the Irish fans would have expected nothing less.

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Cris Freddi recalls a narrow escape against Austria in 1932, when the 'man of paper' exposed the shakiness of England's supposed dominance over the Continental teams

The last time England had played a foreign country, almost exactly a year earlier, they’d thrashed Spain 7-1. Now the selectors decided it was no more Mr Nice Guy. Putting it another way, they were bricking it. With just cause, too. While Spain were a perfectly res­pectable side (the great Ricardo Zamora simply had a shocker in goal), Austria were something else. In a run of 13 unbeaten games, they’d hammered Scotland 5-0, Ger­many 6-0 and 5-0, Switzerland 8-1 and Hungary 8-2. 

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Ian Plenderleith shows us websites from the top of the football hierachy, to the bottom.

There is no end of general football sites saturated from the top down with Premier this and that, but one website with the courage to eschew the tedium of big boy coverage is League Matters, which describes itself as the independent and dedicated guide to league football. And by that it means the Football League.

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