Only formed in 2005, Bunyodkor are luring South Americans to Tashkent and taking Asian football by storm, says Marc Bennetts
After almost two decades of post-Soviet obscurity, football in Uzbekistan hit the headlines this summer when league leaders Bunyodkor mounted an audacious bid for Samuel Eto’o.
When Nacional lingered one minute too long in the dressing room, the referee called off their match. Chris Bradley reports
Players from Nacional, one of Uruguay’s most successful and popular clubs, walked down the tunnel on August 31 knowing they needed a win to stay top of the table. Yet by the time they reached the pitch they found their game against Villa Española had been abandoned. Referee Liber Prudente ruled Nacional had forfeited the match by being one minute late. He subsequently left the stadium with a police escort to avoid fans waiting outside, baying for his blood. The unprecedented conclusion to the match plunged the once tranquil world of Uruguayan football into violence, threats, hearings, appeals and intense debate.
Newcastle, managerless and looking for new ownership, travel to a seemingly far happier club, with West Ham fans welcoming Gianfranco Zola. But fresh turmoil is about to emerge: the papers reporting on the game predict the imminent verdict in Sheffield United’s appeal over Carlos Tevez, writes David Stubbs
I caught this fixture in April, on an unseasonably warm day. The Jubilee Line was subject to one of its rare closures and I had to make the trip in a replacement bus, which, like a mobile greenhouse and packed to the rafters, wended its way at gridlocked-traffic’s pace to Canning Town, then past some of east London’s most eye-catching industrial estates before reaching West Ham. Uncannily, though the journey lasted 40 minutes, the Millennium Dome hovered throughout, seemingly never more than 250 yards away; a curse of the white elephant. West Ham, under the lugubrious watch of Alan Curbishley, darted into a 2-0 lead but then, having blown their bubbles, conceded two quick goals to a Newcastle team with the air of having accidentally rediscovered their self-esteem under Kevin Keegan.
Owning a football club is now officially beyond the wildest dreams. Even Harry Pearson's
When they reach their forties, men experience a change. You begin to suspect that the manufacturers of jeans have started skimping on material, you meet young people (yes, you have started to use the phrase “young people”) that you assume are sixth-formers and when you ask politely what A-levels they are doing discover that in fact they are GPs, barristers or your new boss, and you feel strangely compelled to tell your children not to keep saying like, like all the, like, time, for goodness sake because “you’re hardly going to impress a prospective employer speaking like that”.
It wasn’t just Derby who were up in arms at QPR’s sudden price hike. Thom Gibbs and his fellow Rangers fans are far from sitting comfortably
How much would you pay to watch Championship football? Coventry have recently offered ticket bundles for three home games against Southampton, Burnley and Derby for the price of £50; some QPR fans paid that last month just to watch their side against Derby. Classed as an “A” category game under a new banding system unveiled 12 days beforehand and seven games into the season, the QPR board deemed a seat in the “Platinum” area of the ground for the Derby game to be worth £50. That gets you a mostly unobstructed view from the middle of the South Africa Road stand, a padded seat and access to a private bar.