The Archive

A German-speaking club are enjoying unprecedented success thanks to a strong Italian influence. John Chapman explains

May 23, 2010, was a day that will be long remembered by supporters of Allgemeine Sportvereinigung Eupen. On that day, AS Eupen became the first team from the German-speaking region of Belgium to reach the Jupiler League. With a population of 18,000 and close enough to Cologne to make watching games in the Bundesliga attractive, it’s not obvious how Eupen could put together a team that would one day rub shoulders with Anderlecht and Standard Liège. The answer dates back to October 2008, when Eupen were five points adrift at the bottom of the second division, and the arrival of Antonio Imborgia.

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Fans deserve better than the tripe spouted by commentators and managers

The football season usually begins with a clampdown of some sort, whether it's on dangerous tackles, player dissent or managers’ post-match criticism of referees. But a variety of comments made in relation to the game escape censure every year and it’s high time that their perpetrators were brought to book. There should be a moratorium on public whinging about there being "too many foreigners in the game", an observation especially popular among club chairmen whose own teams are packed with players from outside the UK.

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Henrik Manninen reports on how a side in Lapland have benefited from a long-established relationship with Zambia

In January 1994, two Zambian footballers touched down at the Arctic Circle for a trial with Finnish side RoPS. Returning home after two weeks in the snow and freezing conditions of Rovaniemi few expected this to be the start of a partnership that is stronger than ever today.

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Some are puzzled by England's poor performances while the Premier League grows ever richer and more powerful. But, as Tom Davies argues, these facts are very closely linked

All modern World Cups are accompanied by nostalgia for earlier tournaments, but for England the build-up to this one was more resonant than most, 20 years on from the last truly gripping campaign by the national side. How far we’ve failed to come.

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Negative press stories allowed some World Cup visitors to justify staying in a sanitised environment. But those who did so missed out on the complete experience of South Africa in 2010. Jonathan Wilson reports

Maybe what I did was stupid – certainly the South African woman sitting next to me on the plane home thought so – but, frankly, the air of paranoia was driving me insane. In most cities in the world walking ten minutes out of a football stadium to a bar would be a normal thing to do; not in Johannesburg.

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