Search: ' FC Moscow'

Known for his eccentric wardrobe and time in Brazil, Miura is now breaking records in Japan. Simon Coterill explains

Now that Shunsuke Nakamura has returned from Europe and Hidetoshi Nakata has retired, Japanese “sakka” is looking for a new leading man. Competing are Borussia Dortmund’s new talisman Shinji Kagawa and CSKA Moscow’s Keisuke Honda, whose World Cup goals, bleached-blond hair and penchant for expensive fashion make him the favourite. Whoever lands the role will be the latest to replace Japan’s first football superstar, Kazuyoshi Miura. Now aged 43 Miura is still playing professionally, seemingly unwilling to relinquish his limelight.

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Bratislavia’s oldest club don’t seem to be missing their brief period of domestic success and European glory. James Baxter explains

Anyone who has registered MSK Žilina‘s progress to the group stages of this season’s Champions League may also recall that the last team from Slovakia to get this far was Artmedia Bratislava, in 2005-06. But, while Žilina fans have been in bitter dispute with their club over ticket prices for home games in the competition, FC Petržalka 1898, as Artmedia are now known, are experiencing life outside Slovakia’s top division and, so far, seem to be enjoying it.

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Sasha Goryunov looks at how attempts to improve youth development don't always have the desired effect

What attracted Zenit St Petersburg, runaway leaders of the Russian league, to Aleksandr Bukharov? It wasn’t his knee – which has a history of cruciate damage. It may have been his 16 goals in 23 games in 2009 for reigning champions Rubin. But those goals would have been insufficient without something else – Bukharov’s Russian passport.

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A club's sudden demise has left many fans angry, or worse, suspicious. Saul Pope sheds some light on events in Russia's capital

At this year’s New Year celebrations, FC Moscow fans toasting their side would have been looking forward to the new season. The club had finished in the top six the previous year, was in the semi-final of the Russian Cup and had a promising young manager in Montenegrin Miodrag Božović. But in early February they suddenly found themselves without a club after their main investor announced they were stopping sponsorship and removing the club from the league. This sponsor is Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of nickel, based in Taimyr, a peninsula 6,500 kilometres from Moscow.

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Arsenal Football Club
From Woolwich to Whittaker
by Brian Glanville
GCR Books, £11.95
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 296 Oct 2011

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Over The Bar
Memories of My Career with Arsenal and Wales
by Jack Kelsey
GCR Books, £12.95
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 296 Oct 2011

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Both of these titles involve journalist and lifelong Arsenal supporter Brian Glanville, who began his literary career aged just 19 when he persuaded Cliff Bastin to allow him to ghostwrite his memoirs. In 1952, aged just 21, Glanville wrote one of the first histories of Arsenal, from 1886 to 1952, when, unbeknown to the author, his team were about to embark on one of the most fallow periods of their history.

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