Dunga played for two of Brazil’s dullest coaches and is now following in their footsteps – but none the less his team conquered the opposition to win another Copa América. Rodrigo Orihuela reports
Were it not for Sebastião Lazaroni, Carlos Alberto Parreira would surely be remembered as Brazil’s most defensive coach ever. Parreira’s 1994 World Cup-winning side were the antithesis of stereotypical Brazilian jogo bonito, but managed to lift a major trophy.
Daniel Gray discovers that the past of Arsenal's recent opponents Dinamo Zagreb is far from ordinary
While the price of refreshments in their pristine Emirates abode is a more likely cause of protest for Arsenal fans than political events, for supporters of Champions League qualifier opponents Dinamo Zagreb the reality at home games is very different. This manifested itself most in the final home game of last season, a 1‑0 victory over Hajduk Split on May 13, when, instead of indulging in the now traditional lap of honour, both club and followers celebrated Dinamo’s Croatian championship triumph by publicly lauding an alleged war criminal and demonstrating against his treatment.
In our third piece on anti-poverty initiatives in football, Paul Virgo reports on the unlikley circumstances that have brought together the corporate giants of Internazionale and the anti-capitalist rebels of the Zapistas in southern Mexico
Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos and Internazionale owner Massimo Moratti make an odd couple. The first spends his time fighting for the rights of indigenous people in the Chiapas region of Mexico, while the other spends his oil bucks on expensive footballers who don’t win many trophies.
There's a World Cup coming up, apparently, so we invited three well-travelled journalists to make some rash predictions about what will happen. As a Swede based in London Marcus Christenson has ties to two of the countries in Group F. Gabriele Marcotti has lived in Japan and how tries to explain English football to Italians and vice-versa. Alan Duncan reports regularly on Nigeria and Cameroon, who face England and Ireland respectively, as well as the three other African qualifiers
Are playing styles and tactics are becoming more homogeneous throughout the world, because most of the top players are playing in the same leagues? If so, does that make the World Cup less interesting?
Gabriele Marcotti There’s a greater uniformity. Not just in the way teams play, but also in how they train. If you look at the size of the Italian or Spanish players, they are now as big as the northern Europeans are expected to be. Everybody’s an athlete. Some of the English players still get drunk and irresponsible but the impression I get with players like Beckham and Owen is that they train seriously and take care of their diet. In some ways it has become more uniform, but in a positive way – the level of fitness has definitely increased everywhere.
Thursday 1 The Department of Employment issue new rules on work permits. Players will be given permits for the length of their contracts rather than having their cases reviewed at the end of each season, and the rule stipulating that non-EU players must be among the top five wage earners at their clubs is scrapped. Forest's search for a manager ends with the appointment of the impressively tanned David Platt, who says: "The two months I had at Sampdoria were a massive learning curve." That's just what Sampdoria fans will have been thinking when they went down. The charges against Sol Camp≠bell for assaulting a steward after the Derby v Spurs match last autumn are dropped. Arsenal spend £3.5 million on a Brazilian full back, Silvinho, who says: "I have been following Arsenal ever since I knew they were watching me."
Friday 2 The PFA's Gordon Taylor criticises the changes to work permit rules. "We already have more foreign players than anywhere else in the world. Removing the wages criteria means you are opening the door to players who are not neccesarily top quality". Terry McDermott joins the Barnes-Dalglish dream team at Celtic as "social manager" – a highly specialised position which involves a lot of shouting and laughing plus the collecting of betting slips.