Thursday 1 “I think I have arrived here at the perfect time,” says Andriy Shevchenko on joining Chelsea for £30 million. Arsenal are to be questioned over a loan payment made to their Belgian nursery club Beveren, which may have breached FIFA regulations. Ronnie Moore steps down as Oldham manager, to be replaced by John Sheridan.
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Stories
James Copnall chronicles the year of the underdog in Africa
With all five qualifiers being decided on the last matchday of the ten-round series, this was undoubtedly the greatest African World Cup qualifying campaign ever. That Angola should have finished ahead of Nigeria was perhaps the biggest shock of all. The southern Africans have next to no pedigree, having qualified only twice for the Nations Cup and had little success once they got there. In contrast to Nigeria’s team of star names, Angola players come from the semi-professional local league, alongside a handful of veterans from the former colonial power Portugal and the middle-eastern leagues. Yet Angola upset Nigeria at home, thanks to a goal from SC Qatar’s Fabrice Akwa, drew the return, and then, when only a win would do, beat Rwanda away, Akwa scoring a late header.
Arsenal’s move for Emmanuel Eboué of Beveren is just the latest example of a strange import-export trade in African footballers, as John Chapman explains
The thermometer is stuck on 4°C. There’s a cold wind blowing around Antwerp’s Bosuil stadium. Around 6,000 fans have braved the elements to see the locals, languishing in Belgium’s second division, take on mighty Beveren, who qualified for this season’s UEFA Cup through being runners-up in the 2004 Belgian Cup. In theory, it’s a Flemish derby. In practice, it’s a visible sign of globalisation’s impact on football.
Why have England's two biggest clubs linked up with struggling Belgian outfits? To get easy access to the African market, of course. Dan Brennan reports
A country that consistently manages to field a team of 30-something geriatrics in the World Cup wouldn’t seem like the first place to go looking for young talent. On the face of it, in fact, the idea of a Belgian nursery club seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms. Odd then, perhaps, that England’s top two clubs, Manchester United and Arsenal, with the world seemingly at their fingertips, should have got into bed with a pair of cash-strapped Flemish strugglers, Royal Antwerp and Beveren.