The Archive

Often contested by recent Premier League competitors, this year's Championship play-off final featured two clubs who last played in the top division in 1971 and 1962 respectively. Cameron Carter reports

Wembley, on a luridly hot day in May. Almost lost among the blue and tangerine hordes, down for this afternoon’s promotion showdown, glimpses of everyday north London life – the dreaming bouncers outside pubs, the Wembley branch of the school-age outdoor drinking club soliciting help to buy alcohol, the brightly-plumed, chirpy Lidl in the retail park. For the most part, though, this pocket of London is just Cardiff and Blackpool, ribbons of blue and tangerine filing magnetically towards the Wembley arch.

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Three years ago, Jens Heilmann began a project to photograph the footballs used in every World Cup final. From the introduction to a new book, The World Cup Balls, Norbert Thomma describes how they were painstakingly tracked down

Internet searches on World Cup footballs showed only that they had been badly photographed. There was scant information about the originals. Apparently the world was only interested in goals and artistic overhead kicks, in saved penalties and vicious fouls, in posing winners and fallen idols. But the single item they all fight over was often ignored.

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Neil Andrews explains the sharp and sudden decline of a defender who found himself more popular with supporters than managers

There are not many former Millwall players who can claim to have played their last game for the club in an FA Cup final. In fact, there are only two. Australian midfielder Tim Cahill is one. The other is an amiable young Irishman named Robbie Ryan, who was part of a young Lions side that went from near relegation to the bottom tier of English football to European football in just six years. He was also one of the most popular footballers to have played at The Den in recent memory.

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Roger Titford reports on a year in the Championship in which may not have been vintage, but was notable for Blackpool providing the headlines

The Championship alternates between “strong” and “weak” years depending on which clubs have just been relegated from the Premier League. Next season we can look forward to a weak, and therefore more open, contest with two financial basket cases (Hull and Portsmouth) and Burnley coming down.

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Tom Lines looks back on the season in League One, and the considers the divide between many clubs in the division and their well-to-do guests who have fallen from the Premier League

The FA’s decision to hold England matches around the country during the rebuilding of Wembley is generally agreed to have been a great success. Football’s heartlands got to see the national team in their own backyards while the players benefited from performing in front of passionate, knowledgeable crowds. Fans in League One are now enjoying a similar scheme involving former Premier League clubs. This season the division contained no fewer than four sides that have graced the top flight in the last six years. Charlton, Southampton and Norwich were making their first visits, while Leeds Utd had married a local girl and were trying to make a go of things.

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