It's looking grim for Mexico, unitl now perpetual World Cup qualifiers from concacaf. Simeon Tegel looks for clues to the recent failures of the central American giants
If there was ever a country that should have been able to assume automatic qualification for the World Cup, then surely it is Mexico. With a football-obsessed population of 100 million, a league as rich as any in the Americas and a 110,000-capacity home stadium at a height of 2,400 metres, the country seems blessed.
When Holland visited Hudderfield in 1946, they met one of England's best ever teams. But, says Cris Freddi, the result also had more to do with the experiences of the two countries during the war
Like England, the Dutch had started their postwar schedule with a glut of goals, winning their first two matches 6-2 – but no one was unduly fooled. Strictly amateur, with no great international pedigree, a football that hadn’t survived the war as well as England’s – there was nothing false about Holland’s pre-match modesty.
Ian Plenderleith looks at a site celebrating fooball's strange expressions, and has a trawl around Scotland
Kudos is due to the website Danger Here for its documenting of great moments in football language, including nonsensical and little-known quotes from the back catalogues of Kevin Keegan, Glenn Hoddle and the Irish commentator George Hamilton, who merits his own section. His garbled metaphor comparing the Real Madrid defence to a rabbit is too long to reproduce here, but well worth logging on for alone, although my own favourite was: “The midfield are like a chef… trying to prise open a stubborn oyster to get at the fleshy meat inside.”
Despite vocal opposition at the time, the merger in Inverness seems to have worked, says Mark Palmer
Fish and chips. Richard and Judy. Both perfect bedfellows. But try combining two football clubs with years of history and a mutual dislike on a similarly grand scale, and the path to true love is never likely to run smoothly. Such was the scenario for Caledonian and Inverness Thistle, two of the three clubs in Inverness until the early Nineties, who did the unthinkable in football circles – not only sleeping with the enemy, but going full steam ahead to marry them as well.
Rushden & Diamonds are the first recently merged club to join the League since Torquay in 1927. But, as Mark Pacan explains, that hasn't pleased everybody in Irthlingborough
Unlikely as it may seem, Northampton Town have benefited from the rise of the region’s new League club by picking up former fans of Irthlingborough Diamonds, unhappy at the absorption of their club by Rushden. I am one of those people.