With ground criteria set too high for Falkirk and rivals Inverness, the Scottish First Division champions could be going nowhere this summer, reports Neil White

As soon as the Scottish Cup third-round draw handed Hearts a trip to Fal­kirk’s dilapidated Brockville Park, the tie was flagged up as a possible shock. The Edin­burgh side sat third in the Scottish Prem­ier League, but this was their first game back after the win­ter break. Falkirk were leading the First Division and in fine form. More im­portantly, the tie was at Brockville, the sym­bol of their ongoing struggle against the footballing elite.

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Sergei Rebrov is off to Istanbul – and his former translator, Dan Brennan, hopes the Ukranian will be better looked after at Fenerbache than at Tottenham

And so, finally, the Sergei Rebrov saga has drawn to a close. Just as it seemed he would be playing his football in West London, he has bid the Premiership a sad farewell and opted for Istanbul. It has been two wast­­ed years for the player, and an opportunity missed for Spurs and English football.

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Fulham fans are desperate to return to Craven Cottage, but maybe it is not viable. Neil Hurden investigates

Braving Arctic weather and pavements more slippery than Nicolas Anelka’s agent, 400 Ful­ham fans attended the Back to the Cottage Campaign’s public meeting on January 30. The venue, Hammersmith Town Hall, is a place intimately linked with the struggle for Craven Cottage’s survival: 16 years ago it saw the noisy birth of the campaign which fought off the Fulham-QPR merger plan. Now we were back, a little more subdued and confused but not without hope that London’s oldest and, in our view, finest ground can still be preserved.

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The official Italians blame for their World Cup exit has defended his decisions and now entered the world of politics. But not, as Ben Lyttleton writes, to good effect

Ecuadorean referee Byron Moreno took ad­vantage of a suspension recently to confront the critics that blamed him for Italy’s World Cup defeat to South Korea. Moreno appeared on RAI TV’s Stupido Hotel carrying a briefcase stuffed with bank-notes before claiming he was right to dismiss Francesco Totti and disallow a Damiano Tomassi golden goal in the sum­mer. “I don’t think I was the major cause of Italy’s World Cup exit, and I don’t need to apol­ogise,” said the man nicknamed El Just­iciero – The Sheriff – in his homeland. “I’ve always fought against dishonest players and dangerous play. After the Portugal v USA match I was marked 8.5 out of ten and I got an even better mark for the Italy v Korea match. The Italians were looking for excuses.”

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Ivan Campo moved to Bolton Wanderers to escape the torture of Real Madrid, but as Sid Lowe writes, he may have gone to the wrong place

When Iván Campo swapped Madrid for Bol­ton, few tears were shed – least of all by Campo himself. “Leaving meant I could start enjoying life again,” he said after his goalscoring Prem­iership debut. With Rodney Marsh’s words ringing in his ears, Campo may wish to revise that opinion now, but it was born of the sad truth that his Real Madrid career was as troublesome as his English adventure has turned out to be.

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