The Archive

Massed ranks of WSC writers and interviewees reflect on the best and worst of 2000

Jim Rosenthal
Ups
– Premier League highlights acquired by ITV
– Cardiff losing at Gillingham to ensure Oxford United avoid relegation
– Playing for the Cookham Dean Parents against 12-year-old son Tom (lost 8-7)

Downs
– Hearing the country I had backed to win Euro 2000 (Italy) had lost in the final in extra time. They were still leading with two minutes to go when I boarded a flight home after the French grand prix.
– Oxford United’s owner Firoz Kassam telling the fans after the Luton game to “piss off” unless they gave him their support. The club’s “saviour” is taking us into the fast lane out of the League.
– Sitting in the stadiums of Florence, Rome and Turin and hearing the racist abuse directed at black players of Manchester United, Arsenal and England

Hope for 2001
– It stops raining and English clubs go all the way in the Champions League.

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Life has been tough for the independent countries that grew out of the olf Soviet Union. Kevin O'Flynn  tracks the progress of the smaller republics in the latest qualifiers

In 1988, the soviet union’s football team was more or less at its peak, reaching the final of the European Championships. Unfortunately for them, it was more or less the only part of the country that still functioned as well. When the Union broke up ten years ago no one realised how badly afffected the new republics would be. The lack of decent competition – think what would happen if the Premiership were split into 15 regional leagues – was bad enough, but the economic collapse of most of the republics meant that most decent foot­ballers could not earn a proper wage.

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Across eastern Europe, black players are making their mark. Filippo Ricci reports

After nearly two decades in the international wilderness, Poland appear to have found a top class goalscorer. And he’s Nigerian. Emmanuel Olisadebe has scored three goals in four games for the national team including two in a surprise 3-1 win World Cup win in Ukraine. He arrived in Poland three years ago, having been top scorer in the Nigerian league, and helped his new club Polonia Warsaw to a league and cup double. A year ago his former coach at Polonia, Jerzy Engel, took over the national team and asked Olisadebe to take out Polish citizenship and start play­ing for the national team. There are even rumours that the player could change his name to Olisadebowski.

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The organisers are getting ready but who will qualify? Ian Plenderleith shows the best places to find out

If you’ve been lying awake at nights wondering what the mascot for the next World Cup is going to look like, you might imagine that nothing could be worse than the feckless man-cum-chicken that adorned memorabilia at France 98. Yet if you happen to be passing through the website of the Thailand national team you will discover that the collective marketing genius of FIFA and the Japanese and Korean organising committees has come up with not one but three half-witted creations that will be acting as symbols for the 2002 tournament.

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Ian Plenderleith enters the egocentric world of footballers' websites to discover new blends of philosophy, art criticism and Frank Leboeuf's love of frocks

The world is not a big enough place to accommodate the egos of most professional footballers, so it is not surprising that many of them have embraced the internet as a new forum to promote themselves and their brilliant achievements. It would be wrong to avoid such sites simply on the grounds that pros have little to tell us beyond how misunderstood they are, because in many cases their homepages are not just a vehicle for self-promotion, but unintentional platforms for ­protracted self-prattery.

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