David Stubbs on how the AFC Wimbledon story has been brought to the stage

Written by Matthew Couper, a local government arts officer and sometime stand-up comedian, A Fans’ Club is a modest theatrical undertaking but a worthy addition to that invidious yet strangely resilient genre – the football musical. It tells the story of a group of four Wimbledon fans who look on in passive astonishment as their beloved club is snatched from them by the seemingly larger, inevitable powers of commercial interest and dumped in Milton Keynes, their wishes ignored “like a tramp’s coat”. In the second act, however, moved by the spirit of the club that still lingers and pull together to form AFC Wimbledon. Commentating on this heroic turnaround are two “footballing Gods”, Hun-Batz and Hun-Choen, one of the play’s better devices, the “monkey twins” taken from Mayan mythology, who add both levity and a sense of the wider world of events.

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Ashley Shaw assesses the challenges ahead for FC United of Manchester, freed from the clutches of Malcolm Glazer and now starting out at the botom of the pyramid

A new season, a new club and an entirely fresh set of problems for Manchester United’s disaffected supporters. Having seen their club narrowly fail to lift the FA Cup last May, following a season where failure meant third place in the Premiership and defeat to AC Milan in the San Siro, Reds disgruntled to the point of anarchy with the Glazer takeover have turned their backs on their life-long devotion to form a new club, FC United of Manchester (FCUM) at the foot of the football pyramid.

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In our third piece on anti-poverty initiatives in football, Paul Virgo reports on the unlikley circumstances that have brought together the corporate giants of Internazionale and the anti-capitalist rebels of the Zapistas in southern Mexico

Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos and Internazionale owner Massimo Moratti make an odd couple. The first spends his time fighting for the rights of indigenous people in the Chiapas region of Mexico, while the other spends his oil bucks on expensive footballers who don’t win many trophies.

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Robert Shaw tells us how in Brazil, increasing numbers of the country's star players are ploughing some of their riches back into community projects

Alongside top of the range sports cars and (something) every leading Brazilian footballer these days wants to have a pet social project. Jorginho, the right back in Brazil’s 1994 World Cup winning team, was already thinking of setting up an education schheme as he extended a playing career that had included spells with Flamengo, Bayern Leverkusen and Kashima Antlers. It eventually came to fruition when Bola pra Frente (Move the Ball Forward) was launched on June 29, 200 in his birthplace of Guadalupe in Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling northern suburbia, overlooked by the spartan block of flats where he grew up. “When we brought the site where Bola pra Frente is today it was an area overgrown with bushes, with horses and pigs running around, he says. “What makes me happy is to look at the same place now and see a very different picture: children playing sport, learning about citizenship and building a better future.”

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The Homeless World Cup, held this year in the streets of Edinburgh, plays a valuable social role for its participants, as Dianne Millen reports

“Scotland To Face Italy in Semi-finals!” Not the most plausible of footballing headlines, you might think. But Scotland’s national team of homeless players did indeed reach the last four of the recent 3rd Homeless World Cup although they ultimately failed to overcome the eventual tournament winners.

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