Search: ' Celta Vigo'

Once famous for their success in Europe, Celta Vigo have suffered a dramatic reversal of fortunes. James Calder explains

Few areas in Spain are feeling the effects of the economic crisis more keenly than Galicia, its remote north-western corner. As companies go to the wall and the region’s dwindling number of workers try to make ends meet on salaries among the lowest in the country, its football clubs find themselves in an equally parlous state. Fourth-tier Ciudad de Santiago have just gone bust, unable even to pay their laundry bills, and Deportivo La Coruña and Celta Vigo, who were trading blows at the top of La Liga not so long ago, are beset by deep-rooted financial problems.

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When David Beckham starts playing for Los Angeles Galaxy, a surge in interest in US soccer is expected. Yet there is already a sizeable British presence in the game there and, as Gavin Willacy explains, it’s not just the MLS that is attracting attention among clubs from this side of the Atlantic

Crystal Palace have recovered from a dodgy start to climb to mid-table, poised for a play-off push. Sadly, only 257 turned up for a recent home win in their 30,000-seat stadium. Fortunately for Simon Jordan, they were rattling around in the Navy Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland, and we are talking Crystal Palace USA.

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When countries had only one European Cup entrant, the UEFA Cup commanded attention. All that seemed to change. But, asks Luke Chapman, is the junior competition now the less predictable one?

Two years ago, after a defensive display in Turin earned Liverpool a place in the semi-finals of the Champions League, a radio reporter light-heartedly asked a Reds fan what was more important: winning the European Cup or ensuring qualification for the competition next year. “Hmm,” pondered the supporter, apparently in all seriousness, “that’s a tough one."

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Communism may have been collapsing around them, but Russian football was healthier than ever writes Saul Pope

The long-term significance
By the time the season ground to a halt in November, football was not the first thing on most people’s minds. During August, President Gorbachev had been held under house arrest for three days as his (and Soviet) power ebbed away. A few weeks after the end of the football season, on Christmas Day, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and the USSR was no more. The turmoil that followed spawned a corrupt economic and social system that would soon lead to one former Soviet citizen being able to buy a leading English team and overnight become the richest man in football.

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Phil Town looks at how Porto have fared since winning the European Cup

Luigi Del Neri never got to warm the coach’s seat at the Estádio do Dragão. FC Porto had a chew on him at the ChampionsWorld Series in America and spat him out within the 30-day trial period provided for by Port­uguese general labour law. They didn’t like him. Not one bit. But just how do you follow an act like José Mourinho, who, in two years, had left the greatest impression of any coach in the history of the club? He was without a doubt the great architect of Porto’s success, helped by the club’s ability to buy key players such as Benni McCarthy and Carlos Alberto, but also by his unerring ability to get the best out of previously modest players that had cost little or nothing, such as Maniche, Derlei, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira. 

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