Search: ' Udinese'

With uprisings across the Arab world dominating the world press, can change be sparked in football’s most powerful regime?

The popular uprisings in the Middle East are now receiving more coverage than football in the UK press. Even the Arsenal v Barcelona Champions League tie, apparently regarded by some pundits as the most momentous event in the history of the game, couldn’t keep the revolution in Libya off the front pages. So it’s surprising that no one has yet asked the keen Tweeter Jay Bothroyd for his views on the implosion of the Gaddafi regime.

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While the big clubs claim conspiracy, Matthew Barker believes that Verona don’t receive enough credit for a famous title in the 1980s

The popular back story to Hellas Verona’s one and only Championship win, in 1985, tends to focus on the introduction of a new public balloting system for the selection of referees. Claims had been repeatedly made that the bigger clubs would block the use of certain unfavoured match officials. Juventus had just won two controversial scudetti in a row. Surely, the argument goes, it was no coincidence that the one season when referee selection was kept in check, a smaller team were able to take the top prize?

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A change of attitudes in Italy could provide some useful lessons for football's oldest tournament. Matthew Barker explains

Much has been made in the press recently about falling attendances in the FA Cup, with concerned reports warning that the grand old competition is on the wane, its status increasingly devalued as an unloved irritant for clubs who prize the Premier League above all else. The temptation is to draw a parallel with its continental counterparts, the Coppa Italia and Copa del Rey.

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Cameron Carter reviews the month's best and worst TV

There are many different levels of interview, ranging in difficulty from the longish ones carried out at Camp X-Ray to the up-tempo drivel exchanged between Fearne Cotton and cornered celebrities. From a programme billed on the BBC website as bringing us “fresh and incisive journalism that gets under the skin of sport”, we might reasonably expect something halfway between. Unfortunately, Inside Sport (BBC1) was invited into the home of Birmingham City’s multi-millionaire co-owner, David Sullivan, and immediately went Hello! magazine on our arse.

Tony Livesey, previously an employee of Sullivan at the Daily Sport and now really slumming it at The Daily Mail, may have left his house that morning as a fresh and incisive journalist, but by the time he reached Sullivan Mansion he was a cub scout being shown round the richest man in the village’s house. On the verandah, above an unobtrusive soundtrack of classical strings, Livesey incisively murmured that his host was a very private man. In the custom-made bowling-alley, he trenchantly heeded Sullivan’s highest ever bowling score (266 incidentally, with nine straight strikes). In the games room, he penetratingly remarked on Sullivan’s boxing prowess while the late middle-aged sex-shop magnate brawled with a flaccid punchbag.

Sullivan apparently underwent a much more difficult interview when police routinely questioned him about financial irregularities at his club. “You felt you’d been psychologically raped”, he told Livesey, the latter nodding sensitively in the hope he might be invited back sometime for a sleepover. The real horror of Sullivan’s situation became apparent when he showed us his cabaret lounge and named the most memorable singer to perform there: Rick Astley. Sullivan and his best mates of that evening eating braised haunch of venison while Astley shuffles about singing “Together Forever” is not an image that endears one to this life. Perhaps Livesey’s approach was the correct one, it is surely more humane to be gentle with people as frail as this.

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For the second time this year, Italian football has been rocked by a violent death, but this time the killer was a policeman and the victim was a fan asleep in a car. Vanda Wilcox examines the tragedy

In the early hours of Sunday November 11, Gabriele Sandri climbed into the back of a friend’s car and went straight to sleep. A group of fans were headed for Milan, to watch Lazio take on Inter. The 28‑year-old shop manager had been up DJ‑ing all night at one of Rome’s best-known night clubs, but his nightlife never stopped him from following Lazio home and away, however far he had to travel. He was friends not only with individuals in the club’s established ultra groups – though not himself a member – but also some players.

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