With the Football League struggling to keep in touch with the Premiership at one end, closing the door on the conference at the other, and coping with the fallout from the Chesterfield affair, chief executive David Burns speaks to Andy Lyons and explains how fans can expect the league to fight its corner

The Football League has vastly increased the amount of money it earns from TV, but the gap with the Premier League is still growing. What, if anything, can be done about that?
I don’t believe the gap can be closed. The TV deals that are struck are superb for football, and that money will be spent within the game. But while the financial gap grows on the income side, it also grows on the expense side, so the bottom half of the Premiership don’t have a great financial advantage over, say, the top half of the First Division.

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In the first of a series on players who have had an unusual appeal to fans, Al Needham mourns the failure of his schoolmate to hit the heights

It’s a galling experience when you realise you’ll never make it as a football star, but even more of a kick in the nuts when you live vicariously through someone else and they don’t manage it either. Only two people I grew up with made it in football; one was a call girl pictured on the front of the News of the World with Alan Hudson. The other was Wayne Fairclough. 

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Two fans debate over whether Sol Campbell's controversial move from Tottenham to north London rivals Arsenal was a betrayal

Yes ~
The reaction of Spurs fans to Sol Campbell’s decision to join Arsenal has been taken as more evidence of our taste for whingeing. But I’d argue we have a point, and one that should concern all football fans. I’m not condoning the pond life who strung an effigy of Campbell up outside White Hart Lane. But while it’s important to get the reaction in proportion, it’s also vital to see why anger is a justifiable res­ponse to football’s own Shaun Woodward.

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The global trade in young players is reaching disturbing new levels. Neil Wills details some of the cases that have led to European clubs being accused of abuse and then slavery

In June, a 12-year-old, Marco Quotschalla, was sold by Bayer Leverkusen to Cologne for £60,000. Re­markably, it wasn’t even his first transfer, since Co­l­ogne had sold him to Leverkusen just a year before. Marco’s signing caused a stir in the Ger­man media principally because he is German and there’s a sense that such a thing should not happen to a nice European child. Sadly, much less attention is paid to the thous­ands of youngsters who are being brought over to Eur­ope from South America and Africa in increasing num­bers with promises of big money and stardom.

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Justin McCurry reports on how the rising political tensions in South Korea and Japan should not affect the 2002 World Cup

Logistically, awarding the 2002 World Cup to Japan and South Korea was a classic FIFA fudge, but it did raise hopes that the countries would put aside their historical differences and co-operate to make the tournament a success. With kick-off less than a year away, however, “football diplomacy” is proving no match for emotions stirred up by events of more than half a century ago.

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