He helped keep Luton up and won Euro 92 with Denmark, but then some even more unlikely things started happening. Neil Rose takes a sympathetic view

You know what you are getting with Scan­dinavian imports, by and large. They like British football and settle in quickly, sharing our admiration of work rate and commitment. And they speak the lingo, even adopting local accents in an amusing way. But then there is Lars Elstrup, who played merry hell with this stereotype by chucking in the game and embracing anar­cho-Buddhism. Elstrup’s fire burnt briefly but, for Luton Town fans, brightly.

Read more…

David Wangerin looks not too far back and remembers when Tony Barton's Villa were the the Kings of Europe. If only they had built upon that success

Twenty years on, it still makes for a hell of a story. Eng­lish underdogs face German superstars in the final. They see their injured goalkeeper come off with the match barely under way. His substitute, with one first-team appearance to his name, proceeds to keep Rum­menigge and Co at bay for 81 minutes, thanks to a combination of deft goalkeeping and a four-leafed clo­ver he must have tucked into a sock. With 23 minutes to go, a team-mate shins in a goal, and Aston Villa hang on for dear life to lift the 1982 European Cup.

Read more…

Aside from the chevron on their shirts, Filippo Ricci explains that Sampdoria are now unrecognisable from the team that came so close to European glory just a decade ago

On April 21, Sampdoria lost 2-0 at home to Serie B’s bottom club, Crotone, a team from a tiny town in Cal­abria. The result left the once-mighty club just four points above the relegation zone with six games to go. Ten years ago, Sampdoria lost the last the Euro­pean Cup final before the start of the Champions League, 1-0 to Barcelona at Wembley. On paper, it’s a long jour­ney, on the pitch, a quick and irreversible plunge.

Read more…

Next season the Bosnian league will finally include clubs from all parts of the fractured country. Nedim Hasic reports on the slow process of unification

Next season Bosnian football will be united for the first time since the war. After the Dayton peace agree­ment was signed in November 1995, Bosnia be­came the only country in the world with three different football leagues. The Premier League, organised by the Bosnian Football Federation (BFF), was recognised by UEFA and FIFA, while the Croat-controlled part of the country maintained its own tournament, as did the “ethnically cleansed” Bosnian Serb enclave, Re­publika Srpska.

Read more…

Ian Plenderleith burrows through the heaving mass of World Cup sites to discover the debut official song and the meaning of Korea's "intangible cultural assets"

Predictably enough, there has been a huge amount of cyberspace set aside for online coverage of the coming World Cup. The following is an attempt to help you focus on the least drivel-ridden websites.

Read more…