Visiting teams complain about the pitch, but the Luzhniki Stadium deals with the Russian weather, writes Sasha Goryunov
In May 2008, Chelsea and Manchester United contested the Champions League final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. There was something unusual about the playing surface: it was grass. For one match only, turf was brought in from Slovakia. In fact, this was the second set of imported grass. The original failed to take root and had to be replaced just two weeks before the game. John Terry might wish they hadn’t bothered.
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 - The Archive
With synthetic surfaces being considered again, Oldham fan Dan Turner looks back at their controversial heyday
Sliding tackles were very big in the 1980s everywhere but Boundary Park. Every other week we were treated to the same spectacle. The opposition enforcer would turn up and launch into his “reducer”, no doubt hoping to render one of Oldham’s more creative players lame. Five seconds and half a yard of skin later, the visiting hard man would return gingerly to the perpendicular with a few doubts about his likely effectiveness over the remaining 80-odd minutes. The plastic pitch had claimed another victim.
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 - The Archive
Ángel María Villar could be the next UEFA president, but his influence over Spanisg football has been mixed at best, says Dermot Corrigan
The result would have made any autocrat proud. Of the 167 votes cast, 161 were in his favour, five were abstentions and one was void. There was loud applause and wide smiles all round in Madrid on February 16, as Ángel María Villar was re-elected for another four-year term as president of the Real Federación Española de Fútbol (RFEF), the Spanish football association.
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 - The Archive
Jörg Haider’s attempts to use football to further his own political career led to the destruction of three Austrian clubs, writes Paul Joyce
The Austrian state of Carinthia (Kärnten) is best known for being the political stronghold of Jörg Haider, the right-wing populist who died in a car accident in 2008. That the region is less well known for its football is also Haider’s legacy. The attempts by the former governor of Carinthia to use local sport as a publicity tool led to the demise of three different clubs and a series of criminal investigations.
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 - The Archive
Instead of trying to mimic their richer neighbours, small clubs in Switzerland can succeed by serving their local communities, says Paul Knott
The normally sober francophone Swiss newspaper Le Temps was recently moved to ask whether there is any point in continuing with domestic professional football. The editorial in question was partly a howl of anguish at a calamitous season for the clubs in the paper’s catchment area. But it also raised a valid question about how clubs in the smaller European countries can remain viable when bigger outfits from elsewhere offer greater glamour by exploiting their status as “the most indebted clubs in the world”.
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 - The Archive