Hooligan's and Graeme Souness (no connection) are just some of the things that Jamie Rainbow has been looking at on the web

In the wake of Cardiff’s opening day visit from Millwall, there has been much talk of a resurgence in football hooliganism involving rival fans allegedly arranging fights over the internet. Time then for WSC to undertake an in-depth invest­igation into the phenomenon. An initial search for “football hooligan” produced 230 sites. The first selection was called simply: “Hooligan’s”, which sounded promising until I discovered it was a site advertising Hooligan’s Tavern in New York. However, the bar does claim to be “equipped to serve all your sporting needs”, so you never know.

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Despite going well in Euro 2000 qualification, scandal has hit Romania. Richard Augood reports

These are strange and troubled times for Romanian football. Yet just a couple of months ago everything seemed to be going so well. Romania were in a strong position in Euro 2000 qualifying group seven. On June 5th, Gheorghe Hagi, who had been back at his magnificent best with Galatasaray, was persuaded out of retirement for just one, very important, match. Ins­pired by Hagi, Romania beat bitter rivals Hungary 2-0. Almost unbelievably, this was the first time Romania had ever beaten the Hungarians in 20 games spread over 68 years.

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Mike Ticher talks to Graham Kelly about the formation of the Premier League, England's World Cup bid and the possibility of a future breakaway

When the Premier League began, you maintained it would benefit football as a whole. How successful has it been?
I think in two respects it’s been very successful. Firstly, commercially. The Premier League wasn’t set up in exactly the way that I envisaged at the start. We didn’t set up the Premier League within the structure of the FA, it was set up as an autonomous company, with its own board of directors and, not unnaturally, it was jealous of its own commercial properties. So to that extent the pattern isn’t as we envisaged. But nonetheless, helped by other factors, such as the Taylor Report and the emergence of satellite television, commercially the FA Premier League, standing alone, has been spectacularly successful. The second respect is the impetus it gave to the development of players. We argued for a number of years about getting the best young players more time with the best coaches, without a great deal of success. The Football League tended to operate at the pace of the slowest club rather than the fastest. Setting up the Premier League has led indirectly to the formation of the academies, and in time, hopefully, we will see more good English players coming through.

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Match-fixing has always been in football. Simon Craig looks at the murky history

The lights went out at Upton Park and at Selhurst, and might yet have followed suit at The Valley and up to eight other grounds over the country.

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WSC Readers share their encounters with footballing stars past and present

One lunchtime I needed to get some of my work clothes cleaned so I carried them around to the nearest dry cleaners. In front of me was a large blond guy. I wasn’t paying much attention to him until the person behind the counter asked for his name. “Gottskalksson” he replied. Looking up, I suddenly realised that I was standing next to the Hibs goalie. The dry cleaning man handed him his change, which Ole promptly spilled onto the floor of the shop. Just the sort of performance that relegated Hibs that year. Doug Bell

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