Search: 'Karl-Heinz Rummenigge'

Paul Joyce studies how the Berlin Wall divided the city arbitrarily and changed the lives of clubs, players and fans

Although post-war Germany was divided into two states in 1949, football clubs on both sides of the border were determined to maintain sporting relations. Despite political tensions between capitalist West Germany (FRG) and the socialist East (GDR), numerous cross-border friendlies took place on public holidays in the early 1950s. These proved massively popular with supporters on both sides of the divide. In October 1956, 110,000 East German fans filled the new Leipzig Zentralstadion to watch 1.FC Kaiserslautern, whose team contained five players from West Germany’s 1954 World Cup-winning side, beat SC Wismut Karl-Marx-Stadt 5-3.

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The continent’s richest clubs are attempting to wrestle wealth and influence from more traditional places, reports Alan Tomlinson

In the context of Sepp Blatter’s stated intention to push through reform of FIFA practices, various groups have been claiming to be the true voice of football, none more robustly than the European Club Association (ECA). This is the self-proclaimed “nuclear family of the football society”, the successor to the elite G-14 group established in 2000, which was expanded to 18 in 2002 and disbanded six years later.

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Only recently formed, the ECA already faces the daunting task of taking on football’s leading organisations in an attempt to increase fairness across the board. Steve Menary reports

When is enough really enough? For Europe’s biggest clubs, seemingly never. The formation of the European Clubs Association (ECA) was supposed to end the selfish lobbying of the big clubs but, having turned European football into a cash cow, the continent’s leading sides are now targeting the money FIFA makes from the World Cup and distributes to member associations.

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Paul Joyce looks back at Lucerne's Nationalliga A triumph, their sole league title to date

The long-term significance
In 1987, the Nationalliga A was reduced from 16 to 12 clubs and the season was split into two parts. After a pre-Christmas “qualifying round”, points were halved and carried forward into a “final round” contested by the top eight clubs. As their budgets increased, Swiss clubs were able to attract young overseas talent and also ageing stars, such as Marco Tardelli, who looked forward to playing the “stress-free football” that Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was enjoying at Servette. By 1989, 46 per cent of players in the NLA were foreigners. These changes made the league harder to predict. Neuchâtel Xamax won their only two championships in 1987 and 1988, and FC Lucerne’s sole league title followed in 1989.

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Directors of football are a little-loved breed. Paul Joyce looks at changing attitudes in Germany, where despite successes many clubs now have doubts

Kevin Keegan is hardly unfamiliar with outside interference in managerial affairs. His move to Hamburger SV in May 1977 was engineered by one of the Bundesliga’s first general managers, Dr Peter Krohn. A football layman who saw sport as “show business”, Krohn changed HSV’s blue shirts to pink to attract female customers and made the team ride into the stadium on elephants. Viewing himself as more important in the club hierarchy than “overvalued” coaches with “insufficient school education”, Krohn’s meddling meant that HSV finished only tenth in Keegan’s first season.

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