The Archive

The bosses at Major League Soccer in America thought it necessary to spend millions on a new web presence. Ian Plenderleith points out why it has been a disaster

“The days of the 800-word think-piece are over,” a football journalist recently told me as we discussed the state of internet writing. With all that content being condensed into ever shorter formats, readers want easily browsed headlines, Twitter snippets, news-based blog entries that end with a question, controversial quotes and a space at the bottom where they can launch in with their opinions. Those long paragraphs just give us a headache and take up time better spent watching that shaky YouTube clip where the loco ref scores with an overhead kick in a Paraguayan Fourth Division game before taking a out a handgun and opening fire on the crowd.

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Labour's suggestion for the governance of football reflect changes in political momentum, a failed financial model and thoughts about the future of the game. Tom Davies explains

Time was when politicians would stand on what they would do to football supporters, not what they’d do for them. However, the Labour party proposals to give fans a stake in their clubs – first option to buy them when put up for sale as well as to compel supporter-friendly reforms to the game’s governance – indicate how far we’ve come since the days of ID cards and away fan bans.

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The Premier League's generosity in giving larger hand-outs to its relegated clubs may not quite be all it seems. Mike Holden explains

Three years ago, three American economists emulated the non-fiction phenomenon Freakonomics with a book documenting their mathematical studies into sports data. Among other things, The Wages of Wins looked at the “competitive balance” of leagues across a variety of sports using a formula known as the Noll-Scully measurement, leading them to conclude that basketball will always have a competitive balance problem due to the relative lack of tall people.

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Scotland's lower-division footballers came close to glory in a now-defunct European competition in 1967. Steve Menary takes up the story

When Craig Levein started his new career as Scotland manager on March 3, he took on a job burdened by expectation but not success. However, Scotland did once come close to winning an international tournament hosted by their Euro 2012 opponents, Spain.

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It would be unimaginable in the Premier League, but in League 1 a promoted side are challenging at the top. James Eastham reports

French football fans must have wondered what the fuss was about when Birmingham City went on a 12-match unbeaten run from October to January. In Ligue 1, there’s a newly promoted club challenging for the championship.

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