Search: ' Mohamed Fayed'

Football Fans, Terrace Songs and a Search for the Soul of Soccer
by Colin Irwin
Andre Deutsch, £12.99
Reviewed by Ed Upright
From WSC 243 May 2007 

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Sing When You’re Winning has a very broad brief. It is an attempt at an amusing travel journal, a brief history of several football clubs and the story of terrace songs. It supports the folk singer Martin Carthy’s view that football crowds “represent the one true surviving embodiment of an organic living folk tradition”. Above all, according to the subtitle, it is a “search for the soul of soccer”. With so many boxes to tick, this was always going to be difficult task and unfortunately it doesn’t quite succeed.

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Channel 4 has produced some landmark television down the years but they don’t have a good record with football. Their latest attempt is probably the worst yet as Cameron Carter reports

On October 7’s Match of the Day 2, over a shot of the Fulham chairman choosing a winning competition entry at Craven Cottage with the help of Gabby Logan, Gary Lineker quipped: “And Mohamed Al Fayed had his hand in Gabby’s bucket – she only asked him for a dance…” Now, if you take the crassness of that joke, stretch the brief wondering silence that followed it to half an hour, then imagine a team of media creatives trying and failing to fall off a log… what you have there is a near approximation of The Fanbanta Football Show.

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Paul Ince and the dearth of black managers

Should you need evidence that football is the global game, then England is the place to find it. The Premiership is the most widely followed league in the world (if not perhaps the best, whatever Sky may claim) and there are more nationalities represented in it than any other. All of which throws into stark relief that in one way English football upholds a very old tradition – almost all the managers are white.

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What's next for women's football? Steve Menary reports

As more money pours into the Premier League through television, where this cash should end up – apart from players’ pockets – is a topical subject. One area barely receiving a mention is women’s football. Five years ago, then FA chief executive Adam Crozier decided the top flight of the women’s game should go professional. This idea was swiftly exposed as financially unviable and rapidly died, but women’s football certainly hasn’t.

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Preston promoted, Torquay saved by ground rules, Bosman blew the game right open. Ed Upright looks back

The long-term significance
There were signs of things to come everywhere. The FA Cup third-round draw was turned into a 20-minute peak-time show and the Premier League signed a £743 million TV deal. Jean-Marc Bosman won his restraint of trade claim, changing the transfer market for ever. More than 100 full international players born outside the UK played in England, prompting Rothmans to include a list of foreign players. In the bottom division, Wigan became the first English club to field three Spanish players. This certainly worked in Wigan’s favour – Isidro Diaz and Roberto Martínez finished as the club’s leading scorers.

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