Some unexpected names are shining in the FA Youth Cup these days. Gavin Willacy explains why lower-division teams are suffering hammerings as the result of an educationl initiative
Anyone who glanced at the FA Youth Cup results this winter might have wondered just what was going on. Second Division Hartlepool lost at home to Chester-le-Street, who then put five past Port Vale; Stevenage Borough thrashed Oxford United 6-1 away; Hayes beat QPR; Crawley Town won at Bristol Rovers
Barney Ronay considers the way that a piece of squat, ugly technology, once a source of condescension, changed English football
Desperate times call for desperate publicity stunts. In 1990, with the battle for control of the skies between BSB and Sky TV at its most feverish, camera-shy media mogul Rupert Murdoch took the unusual step of paying a surprise visit to the home of Sky’s millionth UK subscriber. Awkwardly posed in raincoat and inch-thick specs, Murdoch smiled for the cameras with an arm around the shoulders of his hosts, a family of five torn from their expensively assembled tea-time viewing to stand outside in the cold next to a laconic billionaire.
Chris Taylor argues that all David Beckham had to do to become universally popular in England was to stop playing for Manchester United
The reason Real Madrid bought David Beckham was obvious to everyone. World domination. Those crafty swine from the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu weren’t content with their European monopoly, they wanted the rest of the world. And so to help promote their tour of south-east Asia, they bought David Beckham.
Previously best known for providing comedian Eric Bartholomew's stage name, the seaside resort could soon have a Football League team. Geoff Walters reports
Until 1995 my experience of watching Morecambe had been restricted to the Northern Premier League. Memories are of high-scoring games in dilapidated grounds featuring players who would have looked more at home on Blackpool beach, and the peculiar habit Morecambe had of scoring every time I decided to move to another position in the ground.
Tom Bower, whose investigations helped bring down Robert Maxwell, turns to football in his latest book, Broken Dreams. It left Harry Pearson screaming …
A decade or so ago Paul Kimmage, who would later ghost Tony Cascarino’s autobiography, wrote a book about his experiences as a professional cyclist. A Rough Ride told of systematic drug use by riders in races such as the Tour de France. In Britain, where bike racing ranks alongside clay-pigeon shooting, Kimmage was rewarded with the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In Europe, where cycling is big news and big business, however, he was denounced by everybody from fellow riders to sports journalists as a fantasist and an embittered loser. The Irishman had predicted this would happen. There existed, he said, a code of silence within the world of cycling when it came to drug taking, extending from the mechanics to the upper echelons of cycling’s ruling bodies, from the team masseurs to all branches of the media.