France’s national anthem was booed once more, before a game with Tunisia, provoking a political storm. Andy Brassell reports

Politicians pronounce themselves shocked by a great many things, but this was certainly one of the least shocking. The real surprise was not the whistling from the stands at the Stade de France that met the traditional rendition of La Marseillaise before the friendly against Tunisia on Tuesday, October 14, but the fact that it raised so much as an eyebrow anywhere in the country.

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What’s it like to have not seen your team play for 15 years?Matt Nation makes an unsentimental return to Ashton Gate

The point behind school reunions, find-your-mates websites and other sewers of nostalgia has always seemed rather moot. There are reasons why people haven’t seen each other for half a lifetime. The hugs may be cloying, the air-kisses sloppy and the compliments gushing, but they do not alter one crucial fact. If they had wanted to stay in touch, they would have.

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Wolves are the quintessential Championship side, in the second tier for two decades, bar one season. Coventry used to be the epitome of top-flight survivors. Both are casting their eyes upwards this autumn, though neither is exactly confident, writes Josh Widdicombe

At 2.15pm in the car park Molineux shares with a 24-hour Asda, a sprinkling of people amble away from their cars, the odd old-gold replica shirt peeking out from under a coat the only clues that they aren’t here for the weekly shop. The loudest shouts come from the raffle-ticket sellers and the strongest evidence of pride in the home colours can be found on the metalwork in and around the ground, an area painted on the Midas principle: anything that can be gold, should be gold.

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Supporters Direct is gaining momentum and credibility, with friends in high places. Adam Brown reports on their annual conference

A cabinet minister making a keynote address, a speech by the chair of the FA and even the shadow sports minister in on the act – it’s hardly what you would expect at a conference for several hundred fan activists. But this signalled just how far Supporters Direct, the ­government-funded agency promoting fan ownership of clubs, has travelled as it held its 2008 conference.

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Michel Platini is trying to level out football’s financial playing fields. It’s a big task, as Ben Lyttleton reports

As Michel Platini knows only too well, timing is everything in politics. It is one of the reasons why, of late, we have heard an increase in the UEFA president’s complaints about one of his biggest bugbears, the signing of foreign players at a young age. Platini wants to implement Sepp Blatter’s plan of a six-plus-five quota to the game, which would limit foreign players but currently does not conform to European employment laws.

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