Nick Wyke looks at the efforts being made to promote women's football in Italy in the face of media indifference
Italy’s Serie A is, arguably, the most prestigious and rigorous league in world football. As a result, Italian women have a reputation to live up to. Their cause has not been helped by a media that shirks the women’s on-pitch efforts in preference for sideline gossip.
John Williams explains why the women's game in the UK is in need of a major overhaul
According to FIFA, 20 million women play organized football worldwide. In Scandinavia, where views about women as athletes, and almost anything else, are at least post-Jurassic, football is the most popular sport for females. Most local clubs cater for both male and female teams and foreign stars such as the USA’s Michelle Akers are brought over to join the semi-professional ranks. No surprise, then, that Norway won the recent women’s World Cup in Sweden and that they and Denmark are as tough as they come in international competition. England? Well, you reap what you sow; in Sweden we were simply outclassed by, no avoiding it now, the Germans.
Paul Fryer explains why he was tempted, in spite of himself, by a new football investment scheme promising quick profits
Football is rolling in money just now, but those of us wondering when the bubble might burst can hark back to a precedent in in the early eighteenth century. Then, the South Sea Company, with a monopoly of trade with South America, offered to take on half the national debt in return for further concessions. With the prospect of huge profits, its 100 shares rapidly increased to 1000 as investors rushed in. The trade could not service the shareholders, the ‘bubble’ burst and thousands were ruined.
Cris Freddi takes a look at 'unique' goalkeepers
Leslie Henderson Skene, who kept goal for Scotland in 1904, was a specialist in mental disorders. What a nugget to dig up. Let the rest of the article write itself, one case history after another.
Brian Homewood salutes an unconventional goalkeeper
Like Timbuktu and Outer Mongolia, Paraguay is best-known for being an out-of-the-way place. If it has any claim to fame, it is for harbouring Nazi war criminals. It is mocked by neighbouring Brazil, which sees it as a smugglers’ haven (in reality Brazil is one of South America’s crime capitals), and sneered at by Argentina, which looks on it as a source of cheap labour. An estimated one million Paraguayans live in Argentina, many of them employed cleaning up after rich natives.