Archie MacGregor explains why Edinburgh clubs have little need of trophy cabinets

On the top of a hill in the centre of Scotland’s capital rests a sorry-looking, unfinished 19th Century monument to the dead of the Napoleonic Wars. Intended to be a replica of the Parthenon in Athens, it has for many years now been popularly referred to as ‘Edinburgh’s disgrace’. As a symbol of inflated grandeur, unfulfilled potential and downright farce it has few rivals throughout these isles, yet, oddly enough, two of the closest contenders lie within its immediate environs. They are called Hearts and Hibs.

Read more…

There are now women working within the game at almost every level apart from team management. Anne Coddington spoke to several who have made football their full-time career

This year’s Carling Report provided the clearest view yet obtained that growing numbers of women are following football. Thirteen percent of supporters are now women and of the fans who started watching football regularly since the change to all-seater stadia five years ago, women represent one in four. 

Read more…

Sarah Gilmore looks at the reasons for the marked increase in the number of women writing and reporting on football in recent times, and the hurdles they still have to overcome

Over the past few years we have seen an explosion of women writing, editing and presenting on football. They seem to have come from nowhere and arrived at the top of their professions, giving their views with authority. 

Read more…

We'd just been wondering whether we'd ever had a feature extolling a much-maligned ginger-haired striker, when Davy Millar offered a tribute to the singular Iain Dowie

Each generation of footballers produces its own crop of heroes, the men whose talents single them out for mass adulation. The rest can briefly rise to national prominence only by persistently psychotic tackling or by becoming a national joke. Iain Dowie is a select member of this group. Ridiculed by lazy comedians and desperate fanzine editors, he is doubly cursed as his physical appearance is considered as amusing as his performance on the pitch. Everybody now knows that he is an anti-Adonis with the footballing ability of a carthorse in labour.

Read more…

Should an award be created for the world's most badly-organised football tournament, 1996 Concacaf Gold Cup would be a front-runner, as Soccer America's Mike Woitalla reports

It’s immigrant-bashing season in the USA. 1994 saw the launch of ‘Operation Gatekeeper’ – a massive border patrol build-up designed to keep out those Mexicans we otherwise welcome to baby-sit our children, clean our houses, pick our fruit and go to our soccer games. 1996 is election year in the USA and the demagogues are raising the level of immigrant scape-goating to another level. The building of the ‘Tortilla Wall’ – a triple fence with razor-blade barbed wire – is part of political discourse.

Read more…