The Archive

Cris Freddi trawls further through the dustbins of 20th century football by selecting champion crap sides from the merely awful

This is a category you know you’re not going to be able to cover properly. For a start, there are so many poor teams around, at every level. Selkirk losing 20-0 in the Scottish Cup, Hyde 26-0 to Preston in the FA Cup, the Austrian club who lost every match in a season except the one in which their opponents didn’t turn up because they’d folded. There’s always some schoolboy side cheerfully conceding dou­ble figures in every game. We could all make acceptable lists and none would look the same.

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Rumours of the death of hooliganism may have been exaggerated. Adam Powley sees signs that it is making a comeback – though not in the newspapers

Remember the Worthington Cup final? Neutrals and even committed spectators could be forgiven for failing to recall anything memorable from such a grim game, but there was one incident that stood out for those at Wembley that day.

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Hankies out for the European Cup-Winners Cup, which ended its days at Villa Park on May 19, 1999. Cris Freddi looks back on a trophy largely unloved outside Magdeburg.

So farewell then ECWC. No more clogging up sentences with “European Cup-Winners Cup quarter-final second leg”. The last of the three Euro com­petitions to be founded is the first to disappear. Fair enough, perhaps, and I suspect it won’t be unduly mourned.

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Jamie Rainbow takes a look at club websites from Yorkshire, Wales and the West Midlands 

Being defined by whom one hates, rather than who one is, can cause no end of problems. Just look, for example, at The Square Ball, a fanzine-cum-website devoted to Leeds United. In terms of who to support, the forthcoming European Cup final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich has caused much anxiety. Should Leeds fans be influenced by a “long-term dislike of Man U” or a “burning sense of injustice from the 1975 European Cup Final”? Or, like the rest of us, should they get on with their life and just enjoy the game on its merits?

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Brazil v Guatemala, CONCACAF Gold Cup, February 5th 1998, Miami. Neil Wills witnessed a shock result

Every so often something comes along which imbues life with fresh meaning. Such an occurrence befell several million people simultaneously on an otherwise ordinary day in February 1998. It is sad to recount that the incident in question was of no greater import than a football match, but there you go: some­times you have to take what you can get.

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