It may be no surprise that you can get great English coverage of football in Ireland, but Ian Plenderleith tracks down individual sites that cover Poland, Slovakia and even the whole of South America

Sometimes a Google search of your club’s name can take you to interesting places. Sligo, for example. If I hadn’t been looking for an obscure fact about Lincoln City, I would likely have discovered too late that the Imps were scheduled to play Sligo Rovers in a pre-season tournament in July. As it was, I was able to cancel my summer holiday in Tuscany and reschedule for the Emerald Isle instead (some parts of this paragraph are a lie).

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If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, then Taylor Parkes has the unpleasant answer: in Goal! they have created a football film so bad that David Beckham is not the worst actor on display

A brief synopsis; you’ll get the idea. Santiago Muñez is a young Mexican midfielder whose name sounds like it was auto-generated by Championship Manager, incapable of running four inches without flipping the ball over his head and balancing it on his nose. Rather than getting his pretty face kicked in, this attracts the attention of a wily Scots ex-pro who spots him playing amateur football in Los Angeles (the Muñez family are illegal immigrants to California, as we learn from a pre-credits border-dash sequence that adds nothing to the film but crowbarred-in American locations, like some Seventies Italian zombie flick – a pointless expense considering the chances of Goal! making a nickel in the States).

He’s given the outrageously irresponsible assurance that if he saves up and flies to Newcastle (“They’re a huge club!” “Yes, a massive club”) he will get a trial with the Toon. “What, like Looney Toons?” says the adorable hot-shot. “Bugs Bunny?” Against the wishes of his misery-guts dad, he does just that, and I’m pretty sure I’m not spoiling the film by telling you it ends with him scoring the last-minute goal that ensures Newcastle’s Champions League qualification. The only real surprise is that he doesn’t do it with a penalty, like Sean Bean did for Sheffield United.

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Cedric Anselin played with Zinedine Zidane in a UEFA Cup final. So how did he come to paint doors at a caravan site near Lowestoft? Jon Welch investigates

To say Cedric Anselin’s career has been a bit up and down would be a masterpiece of understatement. Aged 18, he played in the same Bordeaux side as Christophe Dugarry, Bixente Lizarazu and Zinedine Zidane, collecting a 1995-96 UEFA Cup runners-up medal.

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As you’re reading this, a report on the future of the FA is being debated, no doubt in a secret chamber a mile under Soho Square. Roger Titford analyses the proposals made by Lord Burns and wonders if they will be acted upon or shelved

In 1884 the thoroughbred amateurs of Upton Park FC successfully appealed to the Football Association for Preston North End’s expulsion from the FA Cup for fielding professional players. This started an argument about the soul of English football that never has and never will cease. Lord Burns’ structural review of the FA is another episode in the long saga, one that its author all too readily acknowledges may well gather dust on the shelf. The seeds of significant change, however, lie within.

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Why would anyone spend £48 to watch a foregone conclusion? The champions could guarantee a win, but that seems to have hit their chances of a full house Barney Ronay was sufficiently intrigued to go along

Chelsea fans are an unusual breed. But then, Chelsea is an unusual place. A house here will cost you upwards of £2 million. As for renting – unless you’re considering where to station the consulate building for your oil-rich Middle Eastern state – probably best to forget about it. In spite of which Chelsea FC remain wedged in between some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Consider the Chelsea fan in these circumstances. If you actually live anywhere near the place you’re either a) extremely wealthy; or b) someone forced to spend their whole life with their nose pressed up against the über-consumption, the impossible lifestyle, of your extremely wealthy neighbours. Or you could be someone who lives nowhere near the place but wants to support the most successful team. Either way this is a club, a place and a brand name that carries serious economic weight for ten million class-conscious Londoners. Shouting out the name “Chelsea” every Saturday – that’s got to do something unusual to you. Particularly when suddenly you’re winning everything in sight. And there is, definitely, something about Chelsea fans.

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