The last week or so has said a lot about England, the state of the country, its sporting culture and the team that is supposed to represent it on the stage of international football. Apathy levels with the national team, however, are growing to the point at which it may become pertinent to ask the question of what the England national football team is actually for.

The last week or so has said a lot about England, the state of the country, its sporting culture and the team that is supposed to represent it on the stage of international football. Apathy levels with the national team, however, are growing to the point at which it may become pertinent to ask the question of what the England national football team is actually for.

At the Heysel Stadium in Brussels on the eighteenth of June 1972, West Germany lifted their first major tournament trophy since the 1954 World Cup. Two years later, at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, they lifted the World Cup. Yet it is sometimes said that the team of 1972 is more fondly remembered than the team of two years later, and it is certainly fair to say that the road to these twin victories was not without its problems.

"Check that's not Jackie Chan, will you?" after one particularly high challenge in the African Cup of Nations (ACN) semi-finals. Ah yes. Gary O'Reilly was back on Eurosport. And welcome back too. However, the most telling comment of any international football tournament is "no goals against." And that's a quote from Cote D'Ivoire.

It has, as many of you will already be aware, been a long few months for the supporters of Kettering Town Football Club. During this period, their club has been uprooted to the former home of their defunct former local rivals, they have been promised the earth and have seen only the delivery of unpaid bills and an uphill battle to avoid relegation from the Blue Square Bet Premier.

Welcome to English football in 2012. The captain of the national team faces a criminal charge for the use of racially aggravated abuse during a Premier League match. Five months after the event, the FA announce that this player will be stripped of the captaincy without, it would appear, having consulted the manager.

So, Fabio Capello quits as the England national coach. This is, perhaps, unsurprising considering the dog's abuse that he has taken while leading the national team through an almost flawless qualification campaign, before finding that the decision over who would take the England captain's arm-band was taken away from him without consultation.

We have something a little different for you today on Twohundredpercent, as Paul Grech meets Ben Perry Acton, a player that forsook the English game to pursue a career in Malta. In addition to this, Ben had a grandfather whose name will be more than familiar to the supporters of Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers Bill Perry, who scored the winning goal in The Matthews FA Cup Final match between the two clubs in 1953.

In December of 1970, the Italian playwright Dario Fo released a play entitled "Morte Accidentale Di Un Anarchico" ("The Accidental Death Of An Anarchist"). Based on the aftermath of the 1969 Piazza Fontana Bombing in Milan, which killed seventeen people, it was a play that shone a light upon the subsequent death of Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist activist and railway worker who fell from the fourth floor window of a Milan police station under suspicious circumstances after having already been held for longer than Italian law specified was legal without being granted by a judge.

They huffed and puffed. And Cote D'Ivoire and Ghana, Africa's two best footballing nations according to Fifa's rankings (so it must be true), are looking good to contest Sunday's African Cup of Nations final, without looking good in getting there. That said, they form half of what was nearly a semi-final line-up that some (i.

The weather has not been a friend to football supporters of late. The cold snap did for a majority of matches scheduled below the Premier League, and this evening, an hour before kick-off at Anfield, there is a possibility that it might strike again, with a thick fog over Liverpool. The fog clears in time for kick-off, though a lack of clarity will turn out to be a common feature of the evening.

As you are probably already aware, the weather took an axe to this weekend's non-league fixture list and only a handful of matches took place anywhere. The FA Trophy Third Round matches were completely called off and will be played at a later date, so the draw for the quarter-finals, which is to be made tomorrow, will have a somewhat odd look about it.

Over England way, John Terry has been stripped of his national team captaincy. The move comes in the midst of Terry's ongoing prosecution for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, with a trial on the incident set for the summer. Terry's leadership of England was under question before, but the controversy surrounding what he allegedly said to Ferdinand was the tipping point for removing him as captain.

When questions about your football club are raised in Westminster and the Prime Minister agrees that the situation needs investigation then you know you are in a bad way. Not because you might be investigated but because the Prime Minister actually knows what Penny Mordaunt, MP for Portsmouth North, is talking about.

There's something in the air at The Emirates Stadium. Arsenal Football Club has had a difficult 2012 so far, and patience for some, at least is starting to wear thin, leading to a protest that has brought puzzled expressions from elsewhere. At this lunchtime's match against Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League, a group of supporters plans to place black bin bags on seats at the ground prior to the match.