Manchester bids to become the new natioanl football centre even though the odds are firmly stacked in Wembley's favour. Adam Brown reports
It is now a year since the Sports Council made the curious decision of asking Manchester and Wembley to revise and re-submit their bids for the national stadium. The ‘race’ for the national stadium saw the final, final bids re-entered on 6th November.
As Sunderland bid farewell to Roker Park Tom Lynn explains how their move to a new site came about
“We meet this day to bring Martin Thwaites to his final resting place, a place he loved to come to for many years, to watch the team he loved and the game he loved . . .” Roker Park, 18th March 1994.
In the build up to the 1998 World Cup Simon Harris assesses whether Hungary's fortunes may be changing for the better – and explains how they came to sink so low in the first place
Poor old Ferenc Puskas. It doesn’t matter which Hungarian team is playing in Europe, his old club Honved, Ferencvaros, Ujpest or lesser names like Videoton or MTK, the foreign press are there waiting for their Puskas quote.
Sarah Gilmore and John Williams explain why Paul Gascoigne had an easy time of it following allegations of wife beating
Who could doubt the awfulness of the daily existence of Paul Gascoigne, given the culture of the ‘tabloid celebrity’ shaped for us by the popular press over the past decade? A goldfish bowl nightmare if ever there was one. But the precarious PR profile being created of Gazza as ‘new-ish’ man fell apart at Gleneagles. The subsequent press mêlée which focused on his inclusion or exclusion from the England squad revealed some extremely unpleasant and morally suspect views so prevalent in the game and in the liberal media.
Looking at aspects of maleness and football, Joyce Woolridge explains why the New Lads beloved of the media have little in common with the lads who actually go to watch matches
A few weeks ago at 6am I began a solo train journey from Bristol to Manchester to watch Manchester United lose to Chelsea. I’ve never been to a match alone before, but it happened that this time I was the only one with a ticket. As a solo traveller, I thoroughly expected to observe at first hand some spectacular displays of laddish boorishness, given that football is where the ‘new lads’ are most at home; where they gather to worship the cult of curry, boozing and birds whilst rejecting all standards of decent behaviour.