Ian Plenderleith gets the feeling all the best goals have already been scored and all the best songs have already been written
When you hit middle age, it’s almost impossible not to fall into the trap of yearning for the days when things were different. Not necessarily better, just different. When nearly every house had just one telephone and one TV. When you played football in the same field every day with the other kids in the village using cowpats for goalposts (really). When a new album by the Jam was not just a new album by the Jam, but a significant event in your life that you looked forward to for weeks in advance. When a live football match on television was something very special that happened no more than a handful of times per year.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive
Grasshoppers Zürich have been forced to share the home of their city rivals, which isn’t fit for purpose. Paul Knott fears the worst
One of the great names, literally, of European football is at risk of disappearing. The record 27 times champions of Switzerland, Grasshopper Club Zürich (GCZ), are in debt, struggling on the field and without a home of their own.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
Champions League competition can be mixed blessing and James Baxter sympathises with a team thrashed by Marseille
When MŠK Žilina’s first ever Champions League group stage campaign finally drew to an end last December, debate in Slovakia as to its merits and otherwise was already long underway. The general consensus was that the failure to pick up points was disappointing and the 7-0 home defeat by Marseille humiliating but also that the team had played good football in spells and learned several lessons.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
Matthew Barker reports on a desperate but imaginative protest movement that relied on solidarity from the local community
In late February, players, staff and supporters of Lombardy side Pro Patria staged a three-day sit-in protest at the club’s Stadio Carlo Speroni. In recent years the Lega Pro Division Two (fourth tier) team has endured a litany of miserable luck and disastrous financial mismanagement. Occupying the stadium was a last attempt to save a dying club and a famous name in the Italian game, even if i tigrotti (the little tigers) last played in Serie A in 1956.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - Book reviews
Cameron Carter traces the social history of Britain through 25 years of friendly faces presenting football programmes on TV
In 1986 presenters and pundits sat stiffly, in wife-selected jackets, behind desks, because the desk is the key western symbol of wisdom. In 2011 we have lounging gigglers like Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson who do not even wear neckties, or the man-child Jamie Redknapp who is allowed to wear expensive fashion-clothes and constantly interrupt his elders in a career-long attempt to prove his right to be heard. The desk has gone.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive