Major League Soccer just can't get noticed, but it's not for a certain wealthy man's want of trying, reports Mike Woitalla

The world’s 54th richest man spends his cash in various ways. He helped fund a senator who advocated hanging criminals in the street. He donated to a campaign against allowing the use of marijuana by people suffering from AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis. He sup­ported a Colorado referendum designed to prevent civil rights protection for gays. His name is Philip F Anschutz. He spends very much money on Major League Soccer.

Read more…

Carolyne Culver watches a film aimed at dispelling a myth or two

“Anyone can cook aloo gobi, but who can bend it like Beckham?” From this bizarre strap line emerges a comedy drama about women’s foot­ball that kicks many celluloid efforts about the men’s game into touch. The tale of a British As­ian teenager who outclasses her male coun­terparts in the park and has a shrine to David Beckham in her bedroom, Bend It Like Beck­ham takes two British obsessions – foot­ball and race – and produces a pacey comedy-dra­ma that takes the women’s game seriously.

Read more…

Darlington's chairman is going to unfounded lengths in a bid to break free from football. Jon Lymer reports

It used to be said that the north east was a hot­bed of football talent. These days it’s equal­ly true to say that it is a hotbed of eccentric foot­ball chairmen. In recent times the region has enjoyed a series of revelations about its chairmen, including brothel visits, cocaine abuse, High Court action and even (if you stretch the geographical parameters a bit) an alien abduction or two. But the prime mover throughout all this fuss has been Darlington’s convicted safecracker-cum-business magnate, George Reynolds.

Read more…

Shaul Adar reports on a team that has inspired hope and relief in a beleagured Israel

It has been an annus horribilis, for Israel in general and for Israeli football in particular. On one recent Saturday evening, during the broad­­cast of a live game from the local league, a suicide attack took place in an Orthodox part of Jerusalem. For 12 minutes the shocked view­ers could see the game continuing on one third of the screen, while the other two thirds carried live pictures from the carnage scene.

Read more…

Football managed to soldier on without the devious involvement of television, and the Football League does not have to lie down and die when the money is taken away

The Football League are getting all kinds of advice from the press about what to do in their dispute with ITV Digital, most of it accompanied by fingerwagging. The News of the World, for one, wonders why lower division clubs “think they have a right to such money in the first place” given that they have “wallowed in a swamp of debt for too long”.

Read more…