What was your club's never-to-be-repeated greatest moment? For Limerick fan Emlyn Begley it was almost beating Real Madrid, as he recalls in the first of a series
There was a time when Real Madrid didn’t spend £40 million on a galáctico every summer. There was a time when Limerick FC were not bottom of the Irish First Division. There was a time when these two sides met.
As Raymond Domenech steps up from the Under-21s, some believe the national team just don't pay enough to lure the country's top coaches, writes Ben Lyttleton
In a rare moment of candour, France’s football federation president Claude Simonet recently admitted that, in an ideal world, Arsène Wenger would have replaced Jacques Santini as France’s national coach. “He would be the perfect choice but he is light years away from the job,” Simonet said. “There’s no way we could get him, not only because of his club but also because of his salary.” Santini was paid a basic annual salary of £300,000 and Raymond Domenech, the new coach who was promoted from his post as Under-21 boss on the sixth anniversary of France winning the 1998 World Cup, will earn the same. “For me it’s not a question of money,” said Domenech. “I work for the federation and have done for the past 11 years. They’re just offering me a different post.”
The idea used to be that clubs paid players to play for them; now they subsidise their opponents to get unwanted 'stars' off their books. Barney Ronay reports
Michael Stewart “took a gamble” this month (according to the BBC football website) by cancelling the remainder of his contract at Manchester United to have a trial with Rangers. Unfortunately for Stewart this wild leap into the dark didn’t pay off. Alex McLeish decided to let him go, leaving the Scotland international with only the £400,000 lump-sum pay-off from United to tide him over – paid for his waiving the two years left on his £12,000-a-week contract.
With Atlético Madrid plumbing new depths of design disaster, David Wangerin traces the history of kit advertising from Kettering Tyres to Spiderman 2 and wonders if club identity has been lost along the way
Look at any football photograph from the mid-Seventies. The glue-pot pitch, the plain white ball and the wild sideburns of some of the players certainly call to mind an almost primitive era, as does the enormous terrace of fans crammed into the background. Yet one anachronism in particular reveals just how the visual elements of British football have changed: the remarkable austerity of the playing strips. There are no manufacturer trademarks and no league logos or appeals for fair play on the sleeves. Most conspicuously of all, nothing is displayed across the chest. It’s undeniably an outdated image, yet one that happily draws the eye closer to the tiny club crest, instead of toward some gargantuan commercial message. An age of marketing innocence, some will bewail, but one certainly to be admired for its aesthetic appeal, to say nothing of its integrity.
The football hasn't always been dramatic but, as Mark Douglas explains, there's been quite a song and dance this summer just to keep Valley Parade open
For supporters of most clubs, the worst thing that can happen in the summer break is the odd player scandal, a dodgy new away kit or the possibility that you might sign Brian Deane. Not so Bradford City. Just four years ago, Valley Parade basked in the glory of Premiership survival. Now, the dwindling Bantams support are just happy to have survived the summer months with a club at all.