If clubs need hand-outs from the FA, then they're not going to ask too many questions of the man in charge – even when he lines up his son as his eventual successor, as Rodrigo Orihuela explains

The transfers of Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano opened Argentine eyes to Russian corporate involvement in football, but the background to the September 3 friendly between Argentina and Brazil in London was still a surprise to the average local fan. The game was the first arranged through a contract, signed in April, between the Argentine FA and Renova, a Russian corporation that calls itself “the leading Russian asset management company”. Viktor Vekselberg, Russia’s third richest man, is chairman of Renova.

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The official pizza's hot, the toilets are clean, the playing legends are ready: it's the first Champions League group game at a stadium built for European competition – or possibly a trip to outer space. By Barney Ronay

 You know how it is when you go round to someone’s new house. It’s all very nice, of course; but somehow it’s never quite right. Those floral curtains. That full-circle panorama of 150 glass executive boxes dwarfed by two matching 100ft plasma screens. Well, we certainly wouldn’t have done it like that. Maybe you really have to be a fan to get excited about the Emirates Stadium. Either way, Arsenal’s first Champions League game here is a hugely significant occasion for everyone concerned with the erection of this cavernous upturned-spaceship of a stadium. This is, after all, what it’s here for. This a club remodelling – and re­mortgaging – itself along pan-European lines, with a 60,000-capacity stadium designed not with Reading and Sheffield United in mind, but Real Madrid and Bayern Munich; or even just the club’s first ever meeting with Porto, on a mild Tuesday night.

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Ballo Ousmane escaped Ivory Coast after the murder of much of his family. As an MP helps him battle to stay in the UK, he isn't allowed to play non-league football even for free. Dan Brennan reports

What a time to be an Ivorian footballer in the UK. Didier Drogba is suddenly flavour of the month again at Chelsea and half of that once most English of institutions, the Arsenal back four, now hails from Ivory Coast.

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Nicholas Birch meets players brought to Turkey on agents' promises that are swiftly broken

It was set to be the big grudge match: for Nigeria, the opportunity to repeat last year’s 2-0 victory; for Guinea, the chance of revenge. Then, 36 hours before the August 18 kick-off, came news of the big police swoop on the central Istanbul slum of Tarlabasi. Guinea’s entire midfield was among the 60 people arrested.

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Leaving Africa can be a culture shock – especially when you think living in Poland or on the Mediterranean are much the same, as Jonathan Wilson reports

Remember Julius Aghahowa? Lightning fast, multiple somersaults whenever he scores, linked with Arsenal? After a series of explosive substitute appearances at the African Nations Cup in 2000, he was Nigeria’s great striking hope at the 2002 World Cup, but essentially football has passed him by. In six years he has gone from teenage prodigy to a 24-year-old yesterday’s man.

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