The MLS seemed intent on turning its back on millions of Hispanic potential fans but, as Mike Woitalla relates, there is now an LA offshoot of a top Mexican team

Walt Whitman once offered his opinion on the USA’s cultural mix: “The British and German, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Something outside them, and to counterbalance them, is seriously needed… To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts.” Walt said that in 1883, but it could be applied to the history of American soccer throughout its evolution. Not until 1996, when Major League Soccer launched, was America’s ever-increasing Hispanic population finally recognised as a key to success. MLS made sign­ing Latin American stars a priority – to lure Hispanic fans and to create a skill-based style of play that would be more likely to entertain than the northern European game.

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Ian Plenderleith trawls the web for minnows and finds that the smallest European football associations and their clubs are, like their teams out on the pitch, willing but not always particularly able

Like it or not, small and mostly useless Euro­pean footballing nations are now an in­tegral part of the game’s landscape. This month’s column tackles the highly charged question that many have asked but few have been able to answer – can countries such as Lux­embourg and Liechtenstein compete on the web any better than they do on the field?

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A team on the slide with a glorious football past visits a city with a glorious maritime past whose club are on the up – at least until the 77th minute, as Cameron Carter describes

The six stages of grief following a home defeat are well known: shock, disbelief, anger, homicidal anger, blame, and resignation while watching Cas­ualty. Plymouth fans should never have had to go through these on this weekend, but in the last 20 min­utes Wolves snatched this game from them like the Childcatcher figure they had come to represent during the course of 90 minutes.

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Where were you when you heard the news about Jimmy Glass's goal? In an excerpt from his autobiography, the goalkeeper recalls Carlisle United's JFK moment

We were well into added time when Scott Dobie hit a cross from the right. It came off a Plymouth defender and went out for a corner. I looked across at the manager, Nigel Pearson. At other times when I’ve wanted to run up the field, people have told me to go back. No faith in football to come up with a wonder moment. But now I thought, “Sod it.” What was there to lose? Nigel shrugged his shoulders and waved me up. I began my 100-yard dash up the pitch, hoping to arrive in the penalty area before Graham Anthony took the corner.

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Derided in England, worshipped in Belgium, the much travelled injury-prone sweeper has a novel approach to being axed by Australia, as Matthew Hall writes

In late August, Paul Okon was telephoned by Aus­tralia coach Frank Farina and told he would not be called into a training camp the next month. Nor would he be in a 25-man squad for the 2005 Confederations Cup play-offs against the Solomon Islands in October.

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