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Arsenal fans worried that they hadn’t heard of Champions League rivals Thun shouldn’t be embarrassed. Paul Joyce explains the rise of the tiny Swiss side, with players whose annual salaries are less than many Premiership stars get in a week

Having hosted West Germany’s World Cup final victory over Hungary in 1954, the recently rebuilt Stade de Suisse Wankdorf witnessed its second “Miracle of Bern” on August 23. Nine years after gaining promotion from the semi-professional third division and a mere three years after arriving in the top flight, FC Thun 1898 became only the third Swiss side to reach the Champions League, by completing a 4-0 aggregate victory over Swedish side Malmö.

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Friday 1 Manchester United are fined £1.6 million by the Office of Fair Trading for price-fixing replica shirts. One of the other ten businesses to be charged are… the FA who will have to pay £158,000 for selling overpriced England shirts on the internet in 2000-01. Tangled web-weaver John Fashanu says he has resigned as chairman of Barry Town, though there is some doubt whether he ever really held such a position. Jody Craddock leaves Sunderland for Wolves, who are also to sign Senegalese striker Henri Camara and Spurs’ Steffen Iversen.

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Mathias Kowoll leads us round the grounds that the home nations may or may not be visiting four summers from now

Does anyone remember Sir Bert Millichip’s al­leged promise to the DFB (German FA) that Eng­land would not bid for the 2006 World Cup because Germany had supported Eng­land for Euro 96? Well, Bert himself didn’t. But Franz Böhmert, the president of Wer­der Bremen, must have recalled it when he found out that the Weserstadion would not be one of the 12 stadiums sel­ected for 2006.

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In an extract from his new history of German football, Tor!, Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger recalls the sensation of the 1971 Bundesliga bribery scandal

Despite his name, the German-born Spaniard Horst Gregorio Canellas was not a Cosa Nostra don but an importer of bananas. Legend has it he supplied the DFB (German FA) headquarters. He had a raspy voice worthy of Al Pacino and was a chain-smoker, despite persistent asthma problems. He had also been the pre­sident of Kickers Offenbach since 1964.

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In Germany the debate over players' wages has been conducted in public during Bundesliga matches, as Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger describes

On A day in late March, Schalke 04’s business manager Rudi Assauer stormed through the corridors of power at UEFA headquarters. Grey-haired functionaries ducked out of his way, detecting a take-me-to-your-leader glint in the man’s eyes that heralded trouble. And they were right: Assauer was on a mission to save the world of football all by himself.

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