Chris Lines on Fulham’s scapegoating of fans after a ticketing shamblesFast becoming football’s answer to the Harlem Globetrotters, September saw the Brazilian national team in London for an enticing friendly with Ghana at Fulham’s Craven Cottage. But for many supporters the occasion was marred by events outside the stadium.
The Premier League recently rejected a proposal to introduce play-offs for Champions League places. David Wangerin explains what even its consideration tells us about the state of the game
You could be forgiven for thinking that the most important thing about English football this season is not who will win the Premier League, but who will finish fourth. To many, it’s a slightly surreal notion and one not easy to reconcile. Have we become jaded by the monotony of the same four teams jousting for English supremacy? Or is the Champions League casting an ever-larger shadow on the domestic game?
The home team have suffered in semis, the visitors lost at the last step in Europe and their title challenge has gone awry. One more disappointment is coming to someone in the SPL's Thursday night climax, in front of Dianne Millen
The romance of the cup. Sometimes a welcome distraction from poor league form, sometimes merely a chance for plucky minnows to be patronised, the source of memories we either can’t stop talking about or can’t bear to repeat. In Scotland, where the league is a binary battle, the cup competitions assume greater importance – and while tonight’s game is the league climax, the cups are what has truly defined the season for both teams.
The response of the authorities, at the time and later, to the crush involving Manchester United supporters at Lens would have been all too familiar to those who watch English club sides abroad, says Adam Brown
The problems experienced by some Manchester United supporters at their Champions League fixture in Lens may have attracted an unusual number of tabloid headlines, but they should not have come as a surprise to anybody.
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.