The Archive

Owning your country's biggest club is a sure-fire way to boost public profile, or even become president. Simon Cotterill explains

For all the allegations, infidelity and plastic surgery, the most surprising aspect of Silvio Berlusconi’s time as Italy’s prime minister is his ownership of AC Milan. It’s not surprising that he finds the time – the mystery is why the fans of Inter, Juventus and all other rival teams don’t form a significant political resistance. Were a Premier League chairman to run in an election, most rival club fans would surely put political preferences aside and vote against him.

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This part of east Africa has a deep love of football, both in domestic and international terms. Andy Ryan reports

It’s a title decider. Red Sea FC, the traditional giants of the Eritrean game, will be champions if they beat struggling Tesfa. A whisper in my right ear says: “Watch Red Sea’s number eight, he has much talent.” Less than 20 seconds later, number eight dispossesses a defender, rounds the keeper and gives Red Sea the lead. The baseball cap-wearing Nostradamus smiles.

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Joel Richards reports on the continuing difficulties in controlling Argentinian groups, both inside and outside the country

“I paid up,” shrugged Oscar Ruggeri. “I paid up loads of times,” admitted the World Cup winner on national television. As other guests on set were dismayed at his honesty, Ruggeri calmly replied. “What do you want me to do, lie? I had to pay up, but I didn’t give any money in 1986. I had just moved from Boca to River and they burnt my house down. What else could they do to me?”

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Mark Segal looks at how Europe's media-savvy clubs are competing to reach new supporters on other continents

Manchester City’s ambitions to break into the Premier League’s top four may still be in the balance this season, but their determination to mix it with the elite in the online world continues apace. Since their takeover by the Abu Dhabi Group, City have relaunched their website to critical acclaim and become the kings of social media with popular feeds on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Soon after the take­over, City also launched an Arabic version of their website and now they’ve enhanced this offering by adding an Arabic Twitter feed (@CityArabia).

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More football coverage doesn't necesarily mean any more information. Paul Ramon vents on a pet hate

Jerry Seinfeld has a joke on how it is amazing that the amount of news that happens every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. Suffice to say he doesn’t read the sport sections of the British press. While in the past decade or so the sport pages have multiplied, often even into their own pullout sections, the amount of news has unsurprisingly refused to follow suit. This leaves each day’s few notable events padded out by stories as irrelevant and disposable as an unofficial biography of a teenage pop star.

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