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International tournaments don't always attract local supporters and ticketing arrangements rarely help. Mark Brophy explains

A team of FIFA delegates recently visited England on a fact-finding tour to aid the choice of host nation for the 2018 World Cup. There was much for the English bid team to promote including the existing stadiums, the tourist infrastructure and the tradition of the game in this country, none of which could have failed to impress the delegation. Great play was also made of the passion of our fans. But how many home fans will actually turn up for games should the bid be successful?

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Negative press stories allowed some World Cup visitors to justify staying in a sanitised environment. But those who did so missed out on the complete experience of South Africa in 2010. Jonathan Wilson reports

Maybe what I did was stupid – certainly the South African woman sitting next to me on the plane home thought so – but, frankly, the air of paranoia was driving me insane. In most cities in the world walking ten minutes out of a football stadium to a bar would be a normal thing to do; not in Johannesburg.

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Dear WSC
I was very interested in the letter (WSC 276) discussing the topic of the Duckworth-Lewis of football that is stoppage time. Are there any WSC readers who are aware of stoppage allowance for cheating ball boys? I attended Colchester v Southampton in December 2009. The home side took a two-goal lead before the Saints slowly clawed their way back into the game. However, our momentum was thwarted by a series of ingenious defensive set-pieces that can only be attributed to hours of practice on the training ground. They went like this: ball goes off for a Saints throw or goal-kick, ball boys strategically placed around the ground retrieve the ball in exaggerated slow motion or, if the pressure was really on, then not at all. One very clever set-piece saw the ball rest at the feet of the ball boy. He then sat motionless on his stool causing Kelvin Davis to have to race 20 yards to retrieve the ball. Should the fourth official have added stoppage time to thwart this cunning plan? And have any other away teams been subjected to such coaching genius?
Tony Cole, Leigh on Sea

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Ivory Coast’s match with Malawi ended in horrific circumstances as 19 fans lost their lives. James Copnall investigates where things went wrong

The 19 dead and 132 injured in Africa’s latest stadium disaster, in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, suggest lessons haven’t been learned from past tragedies. On Sunday the problems started outside the stadium. Thousands of supporters, many without tickets, milled round the freshly painted bright orange walls of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium. Music was blasting from inside the stadium, and queues outside stretched hundreds of metres even four hours before the 5pm kick-off. The World Cup qualifier, against a limited Malawi side, was expected to be an easy and morale-boosting victory. Local football fans needed a lift after the fiasco of the inaugural international tournament for African-based players in February, which Ivory Coast hosted and flopped at; the national side had also performed badly at an African junior competition in Rwanda. Perhaps more importantly, in a country where he has reached a staggering level of stardom, Didier Drogba was playing on home soil, for the first time in over a year. What happened next will be a topic of debate for a long time.

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Tom Davies looks at three more clubs in crisis

One of the genuinely encouraging success stories of recent seasons has been Stockport County, rescued by a fans’ takeover three years ago, promoted via the League Two play-offs last year and well placed in League One until a recent slump. However, the realities of running a club to budget could yet overwhelm County, with lingering debts threatening to push the club into administration before the end of the season and a familiar search for investment becoming the priority.

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