More unlikely meetings between WSC readers and professional footballers

“While holidaying in Greece, I shared a hotel with Doug Alder, a Millwall and Brentford ‘left half’ from the ‘60s. He was playing a poolside game with his pals one night, of ‘trying to guess the pop celebrity’. Early in the game he said, ‘It’s on the tip of me tongue,’ and, ‘I’ll know it if I see the name.’ Several clues later: a dual nationality, a liking for tartan, an indirect link with the Small Faces, a hit with Sailing, a penchant for tight trousers and spiky hair, and still Doug couldn’t guess Rod Stewart. ‘Oooh, I know it. I can see his face.’

Apparently Doug now works in customs at Heathrow Airport.”
Jamie Sellers

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Matthew Brown doesn't think the latest anti-racism campaign it is aimed at enough people

“We must act to prevent the return of this racist menace” screamed the Express after the “appalling scenes” of racist chanting at Leeds v Leicester the other week. Amid “furious responses from both clubs”, the newspaper launched its own ‘Kick Out The Scum’ campaign, where you the reader can help to “cut out the cancer which afflicts OUR game”. Ho hum. Another season, another campaign against racism. There’s no Cantona antics this time, nor seig heiling England fans, but another high profile incident helps to keep up press interest in a topic that’s been covered from more angles than a game on Sky TV over the last few years.

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Scotland's biggest clubs are threatening to resign from the league. Paul Hutton details their bizarre plans

Even the most casual observer of Scottish football can hardly have been surprised by the news that Scotland’s Premier League teams were planning to resign from the League at the end of the season. It was, after all, common knowledge that they had already employed an accountancy firm to investigate how the Scottish game might be improved (bless ’em). More importantly perhaps, almost five whole years had elapsed since the leagues were last tinkered with.

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Simon Evans tells the tale of how he co-wrote The Rough Guide to European Football

The Hungarian train conductor thought we were two very strange young men. Two Englishmen sat in a train travelling to see Videoton, UEFA Cup finalists in 1985, in a relegation play-off in Salgotarjan, a small ex-mining town in the depressed East of Hungary.

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Laura Vanauskas looks at the father and son millionaires who own Belgium's biggest club

Distinguishing features: Constant is a self made millionaire of the old school who presided over the club like it was his family. He liked to think he knew what was best for everyone and was known to have meddled in the daily running of the team. His eldest son, Roger, who took over last season, is simply a chip off the old block.

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