Kasper Steenbach recounts Brian Laudrup's short and unhappy spell at Chelsea in 1998

Overall, Brian Laudrup is today a happy man – he lives with his family at an exclusive address on the coast north of Copenhagen and turns out as a striker for the local amateur team. The chief executive of FC Copenhagen, Flemming Østergaard, is also happy. He heads virtually the only European club that is presently in­creasing in value on the stock market. Since he took over in 1997, the club has been turned into a big name in the entertainment business, having hosted the Eur­ovision Song Contest and a Mike Tyson fight. And, above all, he runs a club that has succeeded in attracting the support of most football fans in Copenhagen for the first time in recent history.

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From the Stade Louis II to Alloa and Queen of the South in three years, St Johnstone fan Gary Panton charts his club's sharp demise

Why did the team collapse so emphatically last season?
Sandy Clark’s inability to find suitable replacements for the players that achieved third place in the SPL, a League Cup final and a UEFA Cup run earn­ed him the sack back in October. His replacement Billy Stark – whose perennially folded arms and monotone drawl must make him one of the least animated managers in Scottish football hist­ory – struggled to prove he could do much better.

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Dear WSC
I must respond to Simon Bell’s assertion (Letters, WSC 187) that Hugh Dallas gave an “incomprehensible display” in the Germany v US World Cup quarter-final. He is probably referring to two incidents, the first one involving Frings’ hand­ball on the line. Dallas explained his decision in the Scottish press, stating that in his opinion Frings’ handball was completely accidental – in other words the ball played him – and referees could not give a penalty or send a man off in these circumstances. I watched the incident again at normal speed and I completely agree with him, Frings could not have done anything other than handle the ball, or arm it if we’re being pedantic. Just because a goal would have undoubtedly resulted had Frings not been positioned where he was does not mean that a penalty and a sending off should have been automatic. Hugh got it right. The second incident was the mistaken identity booking of Oliver Neuville. Dallas admitted he got this one wrong but he was not the only guilty party as he had firstly run over to consult his linesman, an Englishman incidentally, before booking Neuville instead of Jeremies. Personally, I thought Dallas was one of the best refs at the World Cup and was on a par with Collina and Anders Frisk, a view obviously shared by FIFA when they appointed him fourth official in the final.
Scott Harrison, Hamilton

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David Murphy looks at the problems facing Africa's most successful World Cup performer as it tries to build on the achievement of the national team

Beating their former colonial masters, France, on the way to the quarter-finals at their first World Cup produced a wave of public euphoria in Senegal that has still not fully died down. Football has a major ally in the country’s president Abdoulaye Wade, who was el­ected in March 2000, bringing an end to 40 years of Soc­ialist party rule. A wily 76-year-old with a populist touch, Wade associates himself with the success of the team on every possible occasion, having made a big show of funding their trip to the World Cup and guar­anteeing win bonuses.

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Colin Peel searches in vain for a long history of exciting derbies in the Second City, as Aston Villa and Birmingham City prepare to resume hostilities

Blues v Villa is the derby that football forgot. No other big city rivalry has had to wait as long for its protagonists to renew the duel for league supremacy. December 12, 1987, was the date of the last clash, in the Second Division, which saw Villa triumph 2-1 in front of 28,000 at St Andrews. Both Villa and their man­­ager that day, an enterprising chap called Graham Taylor, were bound for promotion. For Blues, things got much worse before the current owners began the transformation which has the put the club where it is today.

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