Stephen Wagg reflects on the achievements of the first man to manage England in a World Cup finals and how he cultured a generation of managers

Walter Winterbottom lived until he was nearly 90, so a lot of English football lovers below a certain age have probably never heard of him. Still fewer among the club’s global “fan base” will have known, until this month’s obituaries, that he played for a season in Manchester United’s first team. He coached England when the team was no more than a series of grainy and occasional black and white images on the nation’s TV screens and he was gone before the medium got seriously involved with Eng­lish football.

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Former professional footballer Dai Thomas is given a custodial sentence in Cardiff v Leeds FA Cup fall-out, reports Paul Ashley-Jones

The aftermath of the Cardiff v Leeds FA Cup tie has seen the conviction of a number of Cardiff fans including one hooligan, David (Dai) Thomas, who received a custodial sen­tence for his part, which included throwing an advertising hoarding at Leeds supporters. What has made Dai Thomas the subject of media attention is that he was a former professional footballer with Cardiff City. It was also not his first offence.

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Matthew Garrahan examines how the potential collapse of a German media company could affect English football

It is rare that English football has to take notice of what is happening overseas. The Bosman case overhauled the way players were bought and sold in 1995, but there have been relatively few in­stances since which have threatened sim­ilar instability. Until now.

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England fans are forced to ticket touts for World Cup 2002 tickets as allocations fail to meet expectations, Mark Perryman reports

“Avez-vous des billets?” It was the one French phrase all who followed England to the 1998 World Cup learnt. The market for touted tick­ets in Ja­pan and Korea this summer will of course be much smaller, with few if any fans turning up just on the off chance of a spare going cheap. But those applying through englandfans, the Official England Supporters Club administered by the FA, have nevertheless been sur­prised at the barriers in the way of those who do want to get tickets.

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Arsène Wenger and David O'Leary have a moan

As we know, David O’Leary and Arsène Wenger are as fiercely competitive as their players. Just now they are locked in competition to prove that their club is the most unpopular, and therefore the most put upon, in the Premier League. David O’Leary seems to have been stopping every passing reporter in recent weeks to tell them of his despair at Leeds’s declining reputation. “From the being the second favourite club of most neutral supporters,” he says, “we seem to have become the most hated club in the country,” a development he ascri­bes partly to the Bowyer-Woodgate trial and its aftermath, since which “nobody misses the chance to criticise and condemn us”.

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