The Archive

Robert Fordham on Liverpool's chairman

Looks like: Keyboard player with a rock group that had a couple of hits in the mid 70s and still play them to big audiences in Kuala Lumpur, Harare and Auckland. Product of an expensive private education, David has reinvented himself as Super Scally. He may have learned the accent phonetically but it seems to have stuck. More recently, he has started to look like a prospective father who turns up at the hospital only to find out it might be a phantom pregnancy – Roy Evans’ continued specialization in almost-but-not-quites is starting to take its toll. Also known as Freddie Boswell.

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Ian Plenderleith reports on how the new model Champions League is likely to discriminate further against teams from the smaller football nations

It’s time for the Champions League highlights on German television with guest star, Franz Beckenbauer. It’s approaching midnight before we get to see the game between Steaua Bucharest and Widzew Lodz. “Well,” says Franz, relishing a rare opportunity to win some points from a public fed-up at his attempts to interfere with the game at every level and at every opportunity, “this is really the game we’ve all been waiting for!”

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Phil Ball and Juanjo Moran explain the Spanish model of the feeder club system

The Spanish league system is something of an oddity in Europe. There are basically three divisions worthy of note – The First, the Second A‚ and the Second B‚ after which there lies a morass of regional feeder leagues containing a hotch-potch of small town clubs, some forgotten bigger clubs, clubs who represent barrios (neighbourhoods), of larger cities that were once independent of the current conurbation, and some reserve sides.

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Simon Evans explains why the bad old days of English football have come to be re-enacted every weekend in stadiums throughout the former Soviet Bloc

Attending a game in Eastern Europe for an English fan is a strangely familiar experience: you could be at an English Third Division match circa 1981 – the crumbling, half-empty terraces, stinking toilets, the alcohol, the drunks and the ‘boys’ staring each other out through fences topped with barbed wire.

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Neil Rose recounts a rare Des Walker goal on 1st January 1992

Des Walker has played over 500 games in his League career. He has scored just one goal. I saw it. I hate him for it.

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