One Belgrade club has floundered since the assassination of their infamous and highly feared owner in 2000. Richard Mills reports
Earlier this year Serbian pop singer Svetlana “Ceca” Ražnatović was finally charged with embezzlement over the sale of footballers and the illegal possession of firearms. These charges date back nearly ten years and relate to transfers from Obilić Belgrade Football Club. Ceca took over the running of Obilić when her husband Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović was assassinated in 2000 after an extraordinary life which included bank robberies, prison breaks, commanding a paramilitary organisation and indictment for war crimes. In death Arkan continues to be a legendary figure among Serbian nationalists, but the plight of his football club has been less well documented.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
Phil Town explains how a recent ruling could mean more good news for Porto, while Boavista hope for a reversal of fortunes
“This is our destiny” ran the stadium banners that accompanied FC Porto’s best ever season. They won four out of a possible five trophies – Portuguese Championship, Cup and Supertaça (between last season’s Champions and Cup-winners) and the Europa League – and faltered only twice. The League Cup went to Benfica and the open-top bus broke down on the way to the city-centre celebrations for the Europa League win.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
AFC Wimbledon’s promotion to the League provides optimism for a supporter-led future, yet Andy Brassell also remembers the machinations in SW19 that led to the death of the original club
Never mind May 28, 2002 – I remember exactly where I was on January 15, 1999. Sitting on the sofa at home with some mid-morning tea, Teletext told me that Wimbledon had signed John Hartson from West Ham. For £7 million. Seven million pounds. My mug hit the floor. Not for the last time in the years to come, Wimbledon FC were involved in the previously unthinkable.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
Success for Ipswich came under a traditional style of ownership. Csaba Abrahall looks back on a local dynasty and would love to know something, anything, about the club’s current chairman
As the first issue of WSC was running off the photocopier in March 1986, all was not well at Ipswich Town. After 18 largely successful seasons in the top flight, an inadequate team, shorn of the bulk of the squad that had tasted domestic and European glory a handful of years previously, was fighting a losing battle against relegation in front of dwindling crowds. The sense of decline was inescapable.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
This month’s 25-year retrospective takes on the thorny issue of ownership at three contrasting clubs. Mike Ticher begins with Chelsea, unrecognisable from 1986 but difficult to love for very different reasons
In about 1996 I interviewed a pleasant man in a suit from Deloitte & Touche about its work on the finances of football clubs. He patiently took me through one of their early annual surveys, explaining why the industry was unsustainable. If clubs could not rein in players’ wages, there would be a disastrous crash within years.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - The Archive