The Archive

Sunday 1 Leeds jump up to mid table after two early goals, including Ian Rush's first for the club, see off Chelsea at Elland Road. Civil war within the Premier League is being predicted after the announcement that Rick Parry is to leave his job as chief executive to take up a similar post at Liverpool, where one of his first tasks may be to negotiate the club's first pay-per-view TV deal. "I believe there is stability and vision at the top of our great game," he says in signing off. He may have been laughing. Tabloid coverage of Parry's departure includes reference to the "so-called Big Five" of which Newcastle now appear to a member, to the exclusion of Spurs. That should swell Alan Sugar's postbag.

Monday 2 Liverpool are second after a 2-0 win at Spurs, their second a tame McManaman shot that takes a freak bounce over Ian Walker, almost identical to a Collymore goal at Blackburn last season. "It was lucky we brought that portable divot with us," says Roy Evans. Arrigo Sacchi leaves his post with the Italian national team to return to AC Milan. It is thought likely that his successor (under-21 coach Cesare Maldini is favourite) will restore some of the players omitted by Sacchi, including Baggio, Vialli and Signori. But probably not Silenzi.

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Simon Kuper explains why the collapse of a pay-per-view channel in Holland is likely to have an effect on the relationship between football and television in the UK

I happened to be in Amsterdam on the Saturday in February when the chairman of the Dutch FA famously announced “We’re going to start something new.” He revealed that Holland’s clubs had sold the TV rights to their matches to a new cable channel.

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Alan Tomlinson and John Sugden report on how the 1996 Asian Nations Cup Finals proved to be a massive disappointment to the hosts of the next World Cup but one

The 1996 Asian Nations Cup Finals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) saw the home side go one better than England in Euro 96, reaching the tournament final after a penalty shoot-out. In the final, in Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City, neighbours UAE and Saudi Arabia sparred their way to a goalless two hours, and into a penalty shoot-out. The Saudis came out on top, with four penalties to the Emirates’ two, reasserting their recent domination of this tournament – they were winners in 1984 and 1988, and losing finalists in 1992.

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Dear WSC
A couple of things about the Back, Crabbe and Solomos article on racism in WSC No 118 which I thought was good and said a few things which needed saying. Most of the academic stuff linking hooliganism and racism was actually about support for the national team in the 1980s and 90s. Multi-cultural hooligan groups have been around for a while as Back and co say, but isn’t it mysterious that only their white members turned up to watch England, especially away? They knew what the score was for these kind of events, and violent racism was indeed central to trouble involving England fans abroad for a long time. Secondly, implying that multi-racial hooligan groups are themselves non-racist raises difficult conceptual issues of course; but try telling the Asian community in Newham in the 1980s, for example, that they weren’t sometimes explicit targets of combined back and white hooliganism and racism at West Ham and you might get some puzzled looks. Thirdly, the article’s point about opposing banal racism is important, but it would help if people involved in the campaign sang from the same hymn sheet. What chance do we have of dealing with the old (white) men on the terrace who often equate racism with a critique of redheads, if Ian Wright at the AGARI launch himself describes racism as being like “picking on people with big ears” or “people who are bald”. Saying, well, Wright’s ‘just a footballer’ or ‘just a working class lad’ won’t due unless we’re willing to say the same about his white equivalents most of whom even now don’t take racism seriously enough for exactly these sorts of reasons. Had a prominent white player made the same comment who knows what kind of press he might have had.
John Williams, Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, Leicester

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Are players from abroad really good value for money?

Just the other week someone phoned up claiming to be Frankie Dettori (“you know, off the telly”) and offering a dead cert tip for the 3.30 at Wincanton. With not a moment to lose we raced out with the petty cash tin and emptied it into the hands of the nearest bookies on a horse that, wouldn’t you know it, strolled in last. So you can appreciate that we felt for Graeme Souness a few weeks back when it was revealed that the ‘George Weah’ who phoned him up to recommend Aly Dia, a Senegalese player who played for Southampton against Leeds in mid-December, was in fact Dia’s agent, and that the player had been previously hawked around several lower division clubs.

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