Dynamo Kiev's Soviet Supreme League triumph in 1975 put the club on the way to being the most successful team in league history. Saul Pope reports

The long-term significance
Dynamo Kiev were midway through a run that would ultimately see them win more Soviet league titles than any other side. Spartak Moscow picked up six titles through the Fifties and Sixties but Dynamo accumulated eight through the Seventies and Eighties, leaving them with a total of 13 titles to Spartak’s 12. A large part of Dynamo’s success could be attributed to manager Valeriy Lobanovsky, a pioneer of football science who used physical and psychological testing to evaluate players’ potential and blended the total football of the era’s Dutch sides with tactical discipline. As well as winning the league in 1975, Lobanovsky’s Dynamo won the Cup-Winners Cup. They would repeat this feat in 1986 before Lobanovsky led the USSR to the Euro 88 finals and Dynamo to the Champions League semi-final in 1999. The English FA’s forthcoming National Football Centre is partly based on the training centre he built for his Dynamo side in the Seventies.

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Dear WSC
For a major international tournament junkie like myself, summers in the odd-numbered years are the worst of times. As such, no amount of luxury on my holidays can ease the pain of the absence of a World Cup or European Championship finals. Even allowing for Scotland’s continued inability to connect with the 21st century, I miss, nay need, a big summer football event. A mid-life crisis only makes matters worse whereby I’m forced to accept an ever-increasing gap between myself and those much younger (and of course fitter) men I choose to cheer on. Surely I’m not alone in this respect – there must be thousands of similar sad old gits out there. My solution – a biennial seniors tournament featuring players aged 40-plus. I’m talking about a chance to see superstars from yesteryear such as Dalglish, Keegan, Platini, Maradona and others who are nearer to my age group. Restrict the tournament to 16 nations with the hosts being countries unlikely to ever stage the big events such as Norway/Denmark, Wales/Ireland, Canada, Cuba. All profits to charity, a boost to local economies and a chance to travel the world with a purpose. Someone hear my plea!
Robert Marshall, Cambuslang

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The football team may not have won a game yet but Timor-Leste has a side to be proud of, as Matthew Hall writes

In his own words, Alfredo Esteves lives a different reality to many of us and that’s not just because he’s a defender for Wollongong FC in the New South Wales Premier League, a regional competition in Australia. In 2008, as well as helping Wollongong win the championship, the 32-year-old lined up alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Edgar Davids and Raúl in an All-Stars team selected by Luis Figo for a charity. That’s not the amazing part of the story, however.

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Amid anger and recriminations, has David Beckham's US "project" failed? Neil Forsyth considers an alternative view

While most British footballers watched Ayia Napa slide sadly away through aero-plane windows before returning to pre-season training, the most famous of all has had a far more demanding month. David Beckham returned to America and a controversy that could bring a premature end to a relationship that always seemed built on artificiality and misjudgement on the player’s part.

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'Iranian footballers banned for political protest' ran the headlines. James Montague investigates what really happened

It was the image that encapsulated a nation’s struggle for freedom: 11 stern-faced Iranian footballers, some wearing prominent green armbands, huddled together on a foreign pitch while their homeland burned, moments before a crucial World Cup qualifier. Tehran had been in the grip of street protests following the country’s heated presidential elections, won by the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but contested by the reformist-leaning Mir Mohammad Mousavi. With the regime wildly thrashing about to restore order, the players appeared to be expressing their feelings about the crisis moments before they took on South Korea.

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