The Archive

Sam Hammam's players have ruffled a few feathers, but their team spirit and his shrewd management have kept Wimbledon above water longer than anyone expected

It is rare for all the newspapers, tabloid and broadsheet alike, to run the same picture on their sports pages. But it happened at the end of February when they all featured an image of a middle-aged businessman sitting in a puddle. Wimbledon’s former owner Sam Hammam had just sold his remaining 20 per cent stake to the Norwegian millionaires who took control of the club last year. The players marked the event by soaking him at the training ground. As has often been the case with Wimbledon, it was probably fun for those directly involved.

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A new type of football violence is emerging in the Italian capital, says Roberto Gotta

Italy has again been surprised by an outbreak of football violence, and moved swiftly, though as usual too late, to correct it. It wasn’t the usual city centre skirmishes but a different kind of violence: political slogans written on large banners and racist chants, a disease which had been spreading for a long time without anyone noticing.

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From the local chippy to class hotels, Firoz Kassam has been a success in business. Martin Brodestsky evaluates his time as chairman of Oxford United

Distinguishing features Kassam is a self-made multi-millionaire, with three hotels in London, and he has just received planning permission for another one in Oxford. Kassam came to England from Tanzania as a teenager and worked his way up from the local chippy until he got to where he is now – with money to waste on a no-hope lower division football club with delusions of grandeur.

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Desperate Australian clubs are once again queuing up to employ faded British strikers. Matthew Hall explains why

It can no longer be ignored. Relations between Britain and Australia have sunk to a new low and it’s nothing to do with trade wars or our flawed bid to become a republic. It is, however, all to do with current rates of exchange. It goes a little like this: we send you Nick Cave, saucy soap starlets and Harry Kewell. What do we get in return? Hale and Pace, backpackers by the planeload, and Ian bleedin’ Rush.

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Cris Freddi looks at little Brazil's clash with mighty Exeter City in Rio de Janeiro in 1914

We don’t really chortle at the thought of Brazil taking on a small English club. We understand that these were pioneering days, when a non-League club like Exeter City had not been professional for six years but could field Eng­land players of the future in Dick Pym and Jack Fort. A tour of South America then was probably regarded in the same way as a trip to some­where like Chad or Belize today.

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