Football and the rising sun simply don't mix, says Al Needham. The 2002 World Cup was all well and good, but it should never be allowed to take place at that time of the morning again

Once upon a time, the World Cup was like a dog. A big, fluffy, waggy-tailed dog who would wait for us to come pegging it out of the school gates. It would wait patiently for us. We would make time for it. All our friends loved it, and would talk about it incessantly. It was heartbreaking when the dog went away, but we knew it would be back another day, wagging its tail and licking our faces.

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Dear WSC
Thanks for digging deeper into the faceless consortium that are attempting to transplant Wimbledon FC to MK. Although the “stadium” would be on my door­step, I naively assumed that the FA would fulfil their responsibility to the sport and dismiss the move out of hand. Having lived in MK most of my life I’ve hardly been deprived of reasonable live football action. As a child, Saturdays were down to Kenilworth Road (at ten,Luton was an exciting day out). Now I take my son to Sixfields, and both Northampton Town and, if we’re really going on sa­fari, Rushden and Diamonds provide good entertainment, and more importantly teams and clubs that we can feel part of and be passionate about. It’s spurious and irrelevant to try to justify the project by stating that we’re the only city in Europe without a major football club. Firstly, MK is not a city and secondly, so what? The primary consideration should be how this move will benefit Wimbledon FC, and then let’s hear some quantifiable benefits for the area. It’s a small point but it looks like the ice-rink in MK will be closing despite being home to a reasonably successful Ice Hockey team, the MK Kings. The result of this commercial decision by the rink’s owners is that the Kings are likely to be playing out of Birmingham next year. So how long might it be before a more affluent club than Wimbledon decides to realise the capital locked up in their current piece of potential prime retail development land and offer the MK stadium landlords a deal for some “temporary” accommodation. This could be the top of a very slippery slope.
James McAuley, Milton Keynes

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In May, an arbitrarily appointed FA body sanctioned Wimbledon's move to Milton Keynes. Ian Pollock reorts on the staggering logic of a hugely damaging ruling

Just before the World Cup started, a special three-man commission of the FA came to one of the most profound decisions any foot­ball authority in England has ever made by giving permission for Wim­bledon to move 60 miles north to Milton Keynes. With most fans’ at­tention firmly fixed on events in Japan and South Korea, it is not surprising that hardly any scru­tiny has been given to the ruling handed down by the commission on May 28. After all, it only concerned Wim­bledon, so who cares?

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Alan Duncan reflects on the uneven performances of the African countries at the World Cup, tantalising and disappointing in equal measure

The scores of Senegalese vendors who mill around the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris for once looked every bit as elated and carefree as the wind-up paper birds they release into the air and, very occasionally, back down into the arms of some un­suspecting tourist.

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Phil Ball looks back on a strange tournament for the Spanish team, in which they missed out yet again, but for once did not take the rap

Getting beyond the World Cup quarter-finals would have represented a major image problem for Spain. The whole country would have been required to change its mind-set, from might-have-been-if-it-hadn’t-been-for-the-refs to something else less com­plicated, less open to the historical shrug. There had been signs that the country had been preparing for this, the press beginning to break its self-imposed vow to keep all op­timism and flag-waving to a minimum.

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