The home team have suffered in semis, the visitors lost at the last step in Europe and their title challenge has gone awry. One more disappointment is coming to someone in the SPL's Thursday night climax, in front of Dianne Millen

The romance of the cup. Sometimes a welcome distraction from poor league form, sometimes merely a chance for plucky minnows to be patronised, the source of memories we either can’t stop talking about or can’t bear to repeat. In Scotland, where the league is a binary battle, the cup competitions assume greater importance – and while tonight’s game is the league climax, the cups are what has truly defined the ­season for both teams.

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A chart of the most played football songs in the past five years released by Performing Rights Society leaves David Stubbs wondering who on earth has been left in charge of the PA system

Whenever a list of 50 best-ever songs is released, be they selected by Q readers or Virgin Radio listeners, it tends to cast humanity in a harsh light. A list of the UK’s top football songs based on the commercial reality of which have been most frequently played, as recently unveiled by the UK Performing Rights Society, lowers your opinion of the general public all the more. Is this all we are, as a species?

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Zenit St Petersburg may be suddenly popular in one half of Glasgow, but the manner of their success means they have been losing fans in Russia. Saul Pope explains

Not many people outside Russia know it, but the country has two capitals. Moscow, the official capital, is the centre of business, politics and power; its people are seen elsewhere as being arrogant and pushy. St Petersburg, the “Northern capital”, is the country’s centre for culture and the arts; its people are considered to be polite and intelligent, although Muscovites see them as provincial. This dichotomy has largely been true of post-Communist Russian football: Zenit St Petersburg have played a stylish and attacking game, and have become popular among fans outside Moscow, but have always been outshone by the capital’s big guns. Until now, that is.

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Problems when England visited Moscow suggested the Champions League final could be a mess, but Chelsea fan Terry Daley enjoyed more or less his whole excursion except the result and the trip home

Much had been made of Moscow by the British press in the run-up to the Champions League final, and none of it made particularly good reading for those of us who had started planning trips to the Russian capital 30 minutes after Liverpool were beaten in the semi-final at Stamford Bridge. Supposedly English supporters would have to contend with baton‑happy military police and hordes of neo-Nazi hooligans patrolling the streets. Then we would be forced to pay £25 a beer at gunpoint by a one-eyed veteran of the Afghanistan war – if our pockets hadn’t already been picked by a shoeless orphan. Why didn’t they just cancel the whole operation, moaned the English press, and move the damn thing to Wembley?

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Three years after the Americans' takeover, Manchester United's season might appear to vindicate the Glazers. But Ashley Shaw remains suspicious, despite their dramatic European Cup win

As the dust settles on Manchester United’s “Golden Double”, there is a feeling that, unlike the victories of 1999 and 1968, Moscow 2008 will come to be seen as the start of a great era rather than the end of one. Both those previous European Cup-winning teams were predominantly British, but this time around the players are largely from overseas or have racked up sufficient experience to make the transition from domestic domination to European success that much easier. Unusually, this United team have suffered only one major catastrophe in Europe (the under-strength humiliation at Milan last year) and there’s cause to believe that there won’t be another nine-year wait.

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