Ian Plenderleith bursts the bubble of naive writers and big corporations who claim that football can cure the world's ills
“The beautiful game of football is a religion that unifies the people of the world,” Anand Datla of Indian website the Sports Campus blogged a couple of weeks prior to the World Cup. Once every four years this candied, candle-holding view of football enjoys an airing from all quarters of the game – its fans, writers, players and officials. Oh, and its sponsors too.
Damian Hall takes a look at the decline of former England goalkeeper Richard Wright
Ten years ago he was playing for England, but at just 32 Richard Wright is without a club. Arsène Wenger may act like he’s lost his credit card nowadays but back in the summer of 2001 he was swiping it about like a madman. Arsenal purchased Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Francis Jeffers, Richard Wright and Junichi Inamoto for around £26 million. Fast forward nine years and most of those players’ careers have taken fairly predictable paths, especially the injury-prone Jeffers. But not Richard Wright’s.
Although they both have grounds on the same street, the fortunes of Dundee and Dundee United have contrasted sharply in recent seasons. Neil Forsyth looks at a remarkable few months on Tayside.
In any two-team city a football club’s perceived success is measured in two ways – their success and the comparative success of the other. For the city of Dundee that delicate arrangement has just encountered a volatile season.
Simon Tyers watches ITV and Sky attempt to outdo each other in the calamity stakes as television football coverage slowly becomes a parody of itself
The comedic songwriter Tom Lehrer once said that satire died on the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Seeing Neil Ruddock cast as an expert on a show entitled England’s Worst Ever Football Team, I knew exactly how he felt. At the other end of the scale, ITV’s commentary is the satirical equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
The Mail on Sunday recklessly puts England's World Cup bid at risk and the press leap on a half-hearted scandal, forcing Lord Triesman to resign as FA chairman
Should you be held publicly accountable for every remark you’ve ever made during casual conversation? Yes, according to the Mail on Sunday, only in their world such remarks are “serious allegations” and having dinner with a former mistress constitutes a “meeting”. And having somehow reached those conclusions they unleashed yet another quintessentially English media scandal about nothing in particular.