Playing for England at youth level doesn’t always herald a glittering future. QPR’s Kevin Gallen tells Barney Ronay about life after Patrick Kluivert

I dropped down a league to come back to QPR because I love the club – it’s where I’m from. I would definitely still love to have another crack at the Premiership. But I started going to QPR around the time of the team that reached the FA Cup final in 1982 and got promoted under Terry Venables the season after. Then when I got older there were players like Ray Wil­kins, Roy Wegerle and Les Ferdinand, whom I ended up playing with.

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 Simon Inglis mourns the loss of traditional floodlights from the horizon due to the changing trends in stadium construction

We’ve all been there. Driving to a game, negotiating the ring-roads and roundabouts of Awaysville, then growing hotter and more bothered as you realise the back streets in which you’re mired are nowhere near the ground. What’s worse is you’ve never had to look at a map before. All you’ve ever done was take more or less the right turn-off from the motorway and then drive blithely toward that distant set of floodlights on the horizon, like a moth homing in on a night light.

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After playing in front of thousands, having a first date watched by millions didn’t seem too strange to Celtic’s former Portugal star, as Dan Brennan reports 

Jorge Cadete is remembered at Celtic as one of the Three Amigos, the forward line that bedazzled and delighted the Parkhead public during 1996-97. He and his two compadres – Paolo Di Canio and Pierre van Hooijdonk – also had manager Tommy Burns and chairman Fergus McCann reaching for the valium. It was McCann who first coined the epithet – more a sour reference to their fanciful wage demands and antics off the pitch than their buccaneering exploits on it.

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As Iraq gets used to life after Saddam, Hassanin Mubarak recounts what his rule meant for football – and hopes all Iraqis can now enjoy the game in peace

When Saddam Hussein took over as president in 1979, Iraq had one of the most successful nat­ional teams in Asia and some of the continent’s strong­est clubs. The regime quickly asserted its authority over the nation’s favourite sport, appointing Saddam’s personal body­guard, Sabah Mirza Mahmoud, as head of the Iraq Football Association (IFA). His predecessor, Faleh Akram, was later executed on charges of opposing the regime.

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Ian Plenderleith explains why he believes Stoichkov's horor tackle in a friendly game in the US should have seen him banned for life

In a friendly between DC United and American University, a couple of weeks prior to the 2003 Major League Soccer season, DC’s new striker and assistant coach, Hristo Stoichkov, 37, broke the leg of AU’s 18-year-old midfielder Freddy Llerena. For his trouble the Bulgarian received a red card, while the MLS Disciplinary Commission served him with a $2,000 (£1,250) fine and a two-match suspension.

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