Burnley have nurtured a community-conscious image, but their response to this summer's riots confirmed the club's blind spot over racism, says Andrew Firmin

The last few years have been strange ones for Burn­ley. We no longer fight relegation to the Third Div­ision, but instead hold plausible hopes of a top six finish in the First. A new regime runs the club, sea­son ticket sales are through the roof and our manager has put together a team that wins a lot. Supporters are, therefore, mostly happy. They also have an opportunity to feel more involved. Representatives from Burnley’s diffuse network of supporters’ clubs are treated to regular meetings with the chairman and chief executive. Compare to the infamous days when one director asked: “What can a fan tell us that we don’t know?”

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Gabriele Marcotti explores the stories of some of the less celebrated Italian imports

There is a world beyond that of the Zolas and Dii Canios, one generally inhabited by Italian foot­balling refugees who, rarely by choice, take the plunge into the muddy waters of non-Premiership Britain. It is difficult to categorise them, beyond the fact that all had very compelling reasons to leave the world of calcio. Why else would you walk away?

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He has been at Chelsea since before the fall of the Berlin wall, yet has played barely 100 games. Mike Ticher looks at the enigma of the underemployed keeper

“Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish that man would go away.”

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Every club now has a community scheme, but some are much more effective than others. We looked at how two first division clubs have tried to balance ambitions on the field and engagement with their local area. Millwall chairman Theo Paphitis outlines his strategy to Andy Lyons

Is there a tension between trying to get Millwall into the Premiership and trying to maintain the community pro­grammes the club has established?
No, they go hand in glove. Without the community you haven’t got a football club. The community scheme is about remembering your roots. If we get some success on the playing side along the way then that’s great too, but it shouldn’t happen in a way that prejudices the connection with the community. Without the club funding our community scheme couldn’t operate but it is run separately from the club as a charitable trust. We have just taken on the Lions Centre, which is what used to be the council leisure centre around the corner and that is the hub of our operations. What we’ve got here dedicated to community is probably more than what a lot of people have got dedicated to their entire football club. That’s been key from the day I arrived. It means we can get kids to come to us. Going to schools with a couple of people in club tracksuits giving away a few freebies is fine, but actually geting them here to let them spend a day at the club, see the stadium, see the changing rooms, play on the five-a-side pitches with some professional FA qualified coaches – that’s totally different. Also, it allows us to have classrooms and computer equipment. Football is the key, but we don’t bring them in just to knock a ball about.

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Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger explains why most German fans were not quite as upset by the result in Munich as their English counterparts would have liked

All German Sunday papers have sold out at Mun­ich’s main railway station, that’s why everybody on the train to Frankfurt is now hunched over the Observer or the Sunday Times. Or maybe it’s because, in this coach, they’re all English. Apart from me. The two men from Leicester at my table have im­mersed themselves in pieces on a cricketer called Keith Par­sons and the Ryder Cup, respectively. The six or eight fans from near Liverpool behind me are dis­cussing with gusto an article that mentions “drunken English football fans”, “baton-wielding German riot police” and “blood pouring from wounds”.

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