Search: ' Skonto Riga'

The Vikings are leading the way in Europe: a new competition for the top teams in Denmark, Norway and Sweden is attracting plenty of interest, including from Margot Dunne

There is, as anyone who has ever witnessed the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest can tell you, a bond between Scandinavian countries born of more than a shared love of herrings, saunas and flat-pack furniture. It was perhaps inevitable that Norway, Swe­den and Denmark would sooner or later link their football together in some way as there have been mutterings about it for many years. Thus the formation of the Royal League (so named because the three nations are all monarchies) comes as no surprise. They are, after all, broadly similar countries whose football clubs face roughly the same problems.

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Small isn't beautiful in the Champions League: the cash from qualification can permanently skew the domestic game in some countries, explains Steve Menary

Has the Champions League become the European super league that the G-14 group of top clubs is pressuring UEFA for? The popular perception is that the same clubs from each country compete every year as cash from the Champions League fuels greater domination of domestic European competitions by a handful of clubs. Yet research shows this is not the case in Switzerland, Sweden, France or even Germany, where a variety of different clubs regularly enter and are competitive in the Champions League. The study ranks nations in terms of domestic variety from the least to the most, with a rating produced by dividing a country’s total amount of Champions League appearances by the number of clubs to appear.

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Latvia may be the least expected qualifiers for any major tournament, but Daunis Auers believes they travel with a realistic aim: to overcome indifference to football at home

In November, Latvia, a tiny nation of 2.4 million wedged at the northern end of the Baltic, trampled all over World Cup semi-finalists Turkey, home and away, to win a lucrative place (worth eight mil­lion Swiss francs, apparently, £3.6m or 3.4m Latvian lati) at Euro 2004. This is all too much for the small band of long-suffering Latvian football fans, accustomed to years of tediously predictable underachievement. Success has usually been measured by the odd victory over neighbours Estonia. Just a few years ago there were a half-dozen Latvians plying their trade on the substitute benches and reserve teams of English professional football. Now only Marians Pahars (in the cosy South­ampton treatment room) and Andrejs Stolcers (Ful­ham reserves) remain. Yet Latvia have suddenly started playing well, winning and attracting sell-out crowds.

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Ian Plenderleith has happy memories prompted by a shrine to Aberdeen's European heroes and toasts some hard-drinking yet non-fighting Vikings, but is distinctly unimpressed by the efforts of the G-14

Certain teams capture a boy’s imagination no matter their colours or home town. I’d never been to Aberdeen by the early 1980s, but the last Scottish team to win a European trophy (the 1983 Cup-Winners Cup) boasted one of those long-lost line-ups – crammed with tal­ented native names that never seemed to change – and rarely seemed to lose.

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There are more Latvians than you might think in English football – it's just that very few are actually appearing on the pitch. Daunis Auers numbers them off

Rather unexpectedly, the late 1990s saw an exodus of the best Latvian footballers to England. It was actively encouraged by the spectacularly unsuccessful (yet annoyingly optimistic) former manager of the national side, Gary Johnson. It all seemed a bit odd because, despite a promising start to Euro 2004 qualifying, the national side is essentially crap and the eternal champions, Skonto FC, have never set Europe alight. Indeed, Latvian football in general has a Ven­ables-like tradition of glorious failure: Skonto 2-1 up at Barcelona with a few minutes to go in qualifying for the 1997-98 Champions League, only to lose 3-2; outplaying Scotland in the first 2002 World Cup qualifier only to lose to a last-minute Don Hutchison goal; having an 86th-minute winner against Sweden in the first Euro 2004 qualifier wrongly disallowed for off­side. I could go on. But I won’t.

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