Grasshoppers Zürich have been forced to share the home of their city rivals, which isn’t fit for purpose. Paul Knott fears the worstOne 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.
Champions League competition can be mixed blessing and James Baxter sympathises with a team thrashed by MarseilleWhen 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.
Matthew Barker reports on a desperate but imaginative protest movement that relied on solidarity from the local communityIn 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.
Cameron Carter traces the social history of Britain through 25 years of friendly faces presenting football programmes on TVIn 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.
The saturation coverage given to football now was unimaginable in the 1980s. Roger Titford looks at how the change happenedTV coverage of English football was in a state of flux 25 years ago. The 1980s was the decade of change between two quite distinct orthodoxies of how we watched most of our televised football. Before 1980 we had the certainties of the highlights era and after 1990 the choices offered by live broadcasts.