Guernsey v England? It could happens says Steve Menary
Imagine crowds thronging into St Peter Port to see Guernsey play England in a World Cup qualifier. It could happen, as the island are considering an application to join FIFA.
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Stories
Ian Plenderleith trawls the web for minnows and finds that the smallest European football associations and their clubs are, like their teams out on the pitch, willing but not always particularly able
Like it or not, small and mostly useless European footballing nations are now an integral part of the game’s landscape. This month’s column tackles the highly charged question that many have asked but few have been able to answer – can countries such as Luxembourg and Liechtenstein compete on the web any better than they do on the field?
The Atlantic islad has two thriving teams in Portugal's top flight but, as Jon Spurling explains, some want to wreck that by recreating the Faroe Islands, only with sunshine
On the face of it, football on Madeira, 500 miles south-west of Portugal, is enjoying a boom. In late September, Maritimo, the island’s only fully professional side, were joint top of the Portuguese league. Nacional, the island’s second team and not yet full time, were in mid-table. But if certain political groups get their way, the golden era may be brief.
Dear WSC
Alun Rogers (Letters, WSC 173) may well be right about Wales’ superior claim to Owen Hargreaves, but repeats the canard about how they “should by rights have Michael Owen”. Owen has two English-born parents. They moved to Wales, but close enough to the border that Michael James was born in a maternity hospital in England. He may live in and have been educated in Wales, and took Deeside schools records from Gary Speed and Ian Rush, but chose the training set-up of, ahem, the land of his father, at an early age. While “Owen” clearly suggests Welsh roots, the player’s own comments when asked about this subject are that his nearest Celtic relative is a solitary Scottish grandparent, while he had three English ones. In which case, is he even qualified to play for Wales?
Philip Cornwall, Lewisham
Players from eastern Europe may soon have the same rights as their EU team-mates. Simon Evans does not think that is any reason to panic
The Bosman ruling may have had a massive impact on the game but until now its reach has been restricted to the borders of the European Union. Whatever deal is reached over the new transfer system, it is almost certain to involve an extension of the Bosman principle to those countries with associate agreements and trade deals with the EU – and that means most of eastern Europe.