Berlin has just lost its only top-flight club, but reaction to Hertha's relegation has been fairly muted. Paul Joyce explains
In March 2009, Hertha BSC were top of the Bundesliga and went on to finish fourth. The Berlin club were relegated a year later, however, having been bottom of the table since September. For the first time since 1997, Germany’s capital will be without top-flight football next season.
The 1974 World Cup fixture between East and West Germany was a unique encounter during the Cold War era – but meetings were more frequent than the official history suggests. Paul Joyce looks back to the little-known Olympic qualifying competitions and reveals the political manoeuvring behind the remarkable Geisterspiele (ghost matches) of 1959
Most history books refer to East Germany’s 1-0 victory over West Germany at the 1974 World Cup as the only game between the two countries. Strictly speaking, however, it was already their sixth encounter. Before this, the Federal Republic and the GDR contested a series of pre-Olympic qualifiers with a Cold War intensity that made disputes about the composition of the 2012 British Olympic football team look like a vicarage tea-party.
Michel Platini is trying to level out football’s financial playing fields. It’s a big task, as Ben Lyttleton reports
As Michel Platini knows only too well, timing is everything in politics. It is one of the reasons why, of late, we have heard an increase in the UEFA president’s complaints about one of his biggest bugbears, the signing of foreign players at a young age. Platini wants to implement Sepp Blatter’s plan of a six-plus-five quota to the game, which would limit foreign players but currently does not conform to European employment laws.
As the World Cup approaches, the possibility of violence is a concern but so is the ability of the German police to tell the difference between a fan and a hooligan, writes Paul Joyce
On November 27, 53 Polish hooligans drove to a wood in Briesen in north-east Germany for a pre-World Cup fight with 45 hooligans drawn from the region’s Hell’s Angels and nightclub bouncer scene, one of whom had been involved in the assault on French policeman Daniel Nivel at the 1998 World Cup. Although German hooligans had previously been keeping a low profile at home, fears of a resurgence of organised violence had already surfaced last March, when more than 40 Germany followers were arrested after rioting during a friendly in Slovenia.
Sven-Göran Eriksson’s team are top of their qualifying table and heading home to a shiny new stadium next year – but, as Philip Cornwall writes, the fans don’t seem to have much to sing about
It’s 9.52am and my train is at journey’s end – in a year or so’s time. As a kid on my way home from London I always felt a thrill just here, long before I first walked up close to the Twin Towers (FA Trophy final, 1982) and went inside what was clearly to me then the home of football, English or otherwise. On winter nights I would press my face up against the windows to negate the reflections, peer out, longingly, then pull back as we rattled through Wembley Central and see the impression my forehead had made on the glass.