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If you’re stuck in the office, can’t afford that away trip or are living on the wrong side of the world, then you still have to keep up with the match and plenty of people want you to do so online. Not all the web options are that compelling, though, unless you love throw-ins. Ian Plenderleith reports

Gary Lineker once famously remarked that it was more fun watching Wimbledon on Ceefax than it was to watch them live. That was before the internet, but with the advent of online commentaries, live blogs and constantly updated match trackers, there is more than enough opportunity to follow a game by sitting in front of a screen that is not actually showing the action.

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Geoff Wallis recalls the 1993-94 Division Two season when Reading cruised to the title

The long-term significance
Reading became the first side to win the championships of the Second, Third, Third (South) and Fourth Divisions (a feat Brighton would later match). The momentum continued almost throughout 1994-95, when they would finish just behind First Division champions Middlesbrough, but fail to be promoted because the Premiership was cutting its size. An extra-time 4-3 play-off final defeat by Bolton would rub further salt in their wounds. Chairman John Madejski would soon move the team to its new Madejstic stadium. This was also the last season when all Football League sides wore shirts numbered up to 11, as squad numbering became permissible for the following season. 

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The MLS seemed intent on turning its back on millions of Hispanic potential fans but, as Mike Woitalla relates, there is now an LA offshoot of a top Mexican team

Walt Whitman once offered his opinion on the USA’s cultural mix: “The British and German, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Something outside them, and to counterbalance them, is seriously needed… To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts.” Walt said that in 1883, but it could be applied to the history of American soccer throughout its evolution. Not until 1996, when Major League Soccer launched, was America’s ever-increasing Hispanic population finally recognised as a key to success. MLS made sign­ing Latin American stars a priority – to lure Hispanic fans and to create a skill-based style of play that would be more likely to entertain than the northern European game.

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India is a potential superpower of Asian football, but huge support has not been matched by dynamic leadership on the subcontinent. Dan Brennan reports

Last month Brazilian goal-machine Barreto scored the only goal in a fiercely fought local derby in front of 120,000 fans. Next month he will be lining up against Shevchenko. He plays not at the Maracana or the San Siro, but at the Saltlake Stadium in Calcutta, where his team McDowell Mohun Bagan were taking on East Bengal in the opening game of India’s sixth National League season. While cricket may hog the media limelight and the sponsors’ money, in many parts of India, such as Bengal, Goa and Kerala, football is the main sporting obsession. In one half of India’s second city, Barreto is a cult figure.

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