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The marriages of four England players on one weekend took football’s relationship with celebrity culture to new heights – or, as Barney Ronay sees it, new depths

Footballers, even quite famous ones, used to get married in a registry office in front of three people. They took honeymoons in Whitby before setting up home with Sue/Meg/Jakki in a modern semi, where they might stand out as the only people in the street with a double-glazed conservatory or a new patio. Best of all, you wouldn’t know anything about it, beyond the odd appearance in the “at home with…” feature in Shoot!. All things considered, this seemed to be enough.

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Coming down with premature World Cup fever? Michael Owen’s tournament diary should calm you down (if not send you to sleep). Ian Plenderleith looks at the big boys’ special sites for Germany 2006

Several major internet companies and sports channels have launched their own dedicated World Cup websites and most will track matches during the tournament to catch the unfortunate fans who can’t be there because they don’t have a mate of a mate who works for one of the tournament’s corporate sponsors, or who are unable to be sitting in front of a TV screen.

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In the absence of hooligans in the stands, the press analysis of the Turkey-England game focused on violence invloving the players. Barney Ronay examines the evidence

FIST-ANBUL… We’re through despite shocking Turk violence… EVERY KICK, EVERY BRAWL: PAGES 2,3,4,5, back page & Score. The News of the World found itself in reflective mood the morning after England’s scoreless draw in Turkey. Stretched above a picture of “hate-filled Alpay” poking a naughty finger in David Beckham’s face, FIST-ANBUL captured in one idiot tri-syllable the mood of salacious voyeurism among the tabloid press in the days following Eng­land’s final Euro 2004 qualifying match.

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Goalkeeping fans, budding writers and followers of non-league football in Sussex all have their concerns addressed in  Ian Plenderleith's website round-up

The cyber-slimming of the past few years has seen the crash of numerous financially and conceptually flimsy foot­ball internet ventures, but late­ly some interesting in­de­pen- dent websites have em­erged from the digital carnage. While highly financed schemes have been bounced into the Deleted Items box, a trend for small-scale, hobbyist home­pages has slowly returned and yielded a few pleasant surprises.

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Dear WSC
Thanks for digging deeper into the faceless consortium that are attempting to transplant Wimbledon FC to MK. Although the “stadium” would be on my door­step, I naively assumed that the FA would fulfil their responsibility to the sport and dismiss the move out of hand. Having lived in MK most of my life I’ve hardly been deprived of reasonable live football action. As a child, Saturdays were down to Kenilworth Road (at ten,Luton was an exciting day out). Now I take my son to Sixfields, and both Northampton Town and, if we’re really going on sa­fari, Rushden and Diamonds provide good entertainment, and more importantly teams and clubs that we can feel part of and be passionate about. It’s spurious and irrelevant to try to justify the project by stating that we’re the only city in Europe without a major football club. Firstly, MK is not a city and secondly, so what? The primary consideration should be how this move will benefit Wimbledon FC, and then let’s hear some quantifiable benefits for the area. It’s a small point but it looks like the ice-rink in MK will be closing despite being home to a reasonably successful Ice Hockey team, the MK Kings. The result of this commercial decision by the rink’s owners is that the Kings are likely to be playing out of Birmingham next year. So how long might it be before a more affluent club than Wimbledon decides to realise the capital locked up in their current piece of potential prime retail development land and offer the MK stadium landlords a deal for some “temporary” accommodation. This could be the top of a very slippery slope.
James McAuley, Milton Keynes

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