As the Thierry Henry story rumbles on into its fourth day, a story is starting to break which
might begin to put it into perspective. It is a story that is breaking from Germany and involves
the arrest of seventeen people in connection with what would be the biggest, most systematic
match-fixing ring that European football has ever seen.
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I have a huge amount of respect for Frank Lowry. Five years ago Frank was the driving force behind
the rebirth of football in this country. The creation of the A-league, the move to Asia and the
recruitment of Guus Hiddink all contributed to a resurgence of the game here in Australia.
However I do wonder if Frank understands that all of this new found love for the game may evaporate
if a few missteps are made.
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Fifty years after it first went on air, Tyne Tees Television is now a mere relic. A name from
the past. Along with almost all of the other ITV regions, the company name all but vanished from
our screens in October 2002 when ITV did away with its regional network and finally merged together
as one lumpen mass.
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This year's annual Supporters Direct conference found the organisation at something of a
crossroads. The high profile failure of Supporters Trusts at Notts County and Stockport County have
caused a deal of unwanted attention to be cast upon SD (even though they are obviously not for
responsible for the goings on at specific trusts) and, with continuing concerns about the
credentials of some of the owners coming into the game, this year's conference was always going to
carry an underlying theme about two subjects: foreign ownership and the question of whether
supporter ownership of clubs is always a good thing.
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Now that the United States national team has assured itself a place in the 2010 World Cup, the
American soccer community can turn its attention back to the domestic game. This season has been
unlike any other in any other in recent memory, as both Major League Soccer and the United Soccer
Leagues have produced compelling story lines throughout 2009.
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Lincoln City supporter Keith Duncombe stepped into the murky world of the football internet
forum and, in spite of warnings from his doctor about the ill-effects that it is all having on his
blood pressure, he is still there.
In 1997 I coined my first ever internet "handle", and I'm still using it today.
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English football's "fit and proper persons" test, I would submit, has failed, and here are just
four reasons why:
1) Tom Hicks and George Gillett still co-own Liverpool.
2) Sulaiman Al-Fahim owns Portsmouth.
3) The Gods alone know who owns Notts County, even now "they" have "told" us
4) It isn't really a "test" at all.
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The BBC's text service Ceefax celebrates its thirty-fifth birthday today, but it's a celebration
that is tinged with sadness as it is to be the last significant anniversary celebrated by the
antiquated service, which is to be phased out in line with the stopping of the analogue television
signal in Britain in 2012.
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It is an uncomfortable truth that every club seems to have its achilles heel, a bone of
contention that shows up the true colours of a certain section of its support, and in the case of
Tottenham Hotspur it's Sol Campbell. Campbell's defection from White Hart Lane to Highbury in 2001
continues to infuriate Spurs supporters to distraction, and the extent to which this still seems to
boil over should be an embarrassment to the club.
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From 1998 to 2001, Juande de la Cruz Ramos Cano coached Rayo Vallecano, leading them into Spain's
Primera División after the 1998-99 season. In the first season of Rayo's return to the top
flight, they finished ninth. The next season they fell to fourteenth, after which Ramos took the
job at Real Betis - a bigger club that had just been promoted from the
Segunda.
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There was a time when devotees of the Pro Evolution football series looked down their noses at
devotees of EA Sports' FIFA series of video games. Pro Evolution, it was said, was the authentic
football experience while FIFA, hamstrung by the costs of obtaining licences for every single
league and player that there is, sacrificed gameplay for making everything look shiny.
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The BBC's veteran radio commentator Alan Green has been at it again, this time insisting on
Graham Taylor's removal as co-commentator for the recent England vs Croatia match. Mark Murphy
wonders aloud whether it is time to put Green out to pasture.
BBC Radio Five Live's Alan Green has been at it again, having a spat with a fellow
co-commentator and demanding his removal.
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One wonders how it got there.
I mean, you've seen the things before, usually chucked en masse in old, grainy videos from town
squares across continental Europe whenever the English national team passed through. But you know
where they've been culled from; probably from under the patio table of a nice Dutch family on
holiday who vacated mere seconds before to a nearby telephone booth, wondering why they didn't
spend a bit more to visit New York instead.
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Albion Road 10 September @ 07:17 PM EST
The United States is sometimes derided for its lack of football culture and traditions. For at
least one night, the Lamar Hunt U.S Open Cup filled that void admirably as Seattle Sounders F.C.
defeated D.C. United 2-1 in the 96th edition of the oldest competition in American football.
Spurred by a war of words between the two team's front offices, the game drew more interest than
the U.
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England beat the Netherlands 2-1 on Sunday evening to move into the final of the 2009 European
Women's Football Championships in Finland, where they will play Germany on Sunday night. Perhaps
predictably (and exactly as they did when the under-21 team made similar progress during the
summer), the English press have reacted hysterically to the news.
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The ball is passed out to the wing. The winger controls the ball with the outside of his foot
and runs towards a full back with a look upon his face that reminds you of a rabbit stuck in front
of car headlights. Momentarily, it looks as if the winger can't remember which leg is which but
this is all an act, and he jumps away from the tackle.
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MIKE JACOBS 25 August @ 02:14 PM EST
The 4-4-2 Diamond Midfield has started to become more en vogue all over the world, with both
Chelsea and Inter establishing the strengths of this alignment in the early stages of the 2009-10
season.
Jonathan Wilson of the Guardian has an outstanding article where he outlines the strengths and
weaknesses of that alignment.
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Earlier this year, we sent Ted Carter to the cinema with a paper bag containing some crab
paste sandwiches and a ticket for the movie version of David Peace's 2006 novel, "The Damned
United". The film is released on DVD next Monday, so we thought that it was time to revisit this
interpretation of Brian Clough's forty-four days at Leeds United.
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The Premier League started last weekend and it's still a couple of weeks until La Liga
begins in Spain but this weekend Serie A kicks off in Italy and Paul Grech has been generous enough
to offer us a full run-down of the chances for the runners and riders in Italy this season.
If you can't get enough of Serie A, feel free to drop by at
Paul's blog www.
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Football in Malta has started to make a real impression in European competitions over the
last couple of years but, as Paul Grech reports, the new season starts under a cloud amid
controversy over match-fixing allegations involving two of the clubs in the Maltese Premier
League.
Days before the Maltese football season is due to start and still the future of Marsaxlokk FC
and Vittoriosa Stars, the two clubs at the centre of corruption charges, is unknown after hearings
were repeatedly postponed.
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Dennis Bergkamp played England three times in the orange jersey and wore the Arsenal shirt eleven
seasons. "I feel totally at home in the English football culture," the 79 times capped
international says, looking forward to tonight's clash. Playing against England "My first one was
the 2-2 in 1993. That game was
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It is only very seldom that we re-run articles on here but, in view of the fact that today
is the day of the Brighton Gay Pride festival, we thought that it would be appropriate to run a
piece that first appeared on here in March 2007 on the subject of football and homophobia. It was
our intention to run more articles on this subject and we will do in the future - if you can help,
feel free to get in touch.
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It has been a very sad day for football on the eve of the new season. We have lost one of
us. It is, perhaps, a reflection of the the hole in the heart of English football that we should
mourn a football man whose greatest single attribute was nothing more or less than a sense of
common decency.
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See The Cup 30 July @ 02:45 PM EST
I think I can turn that question into a statement. With the World Cup in South Africa
approaching, I am inclined to be against the vuvuzelas because, like we saw during Confederations
Cup, it allows absolutely no space for chanting which is one of the beauties of being at a football
match and screaming your lungs off.
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WVHooligan 29 July @ 03:44 PM EST
Editor's Note: Geoff Reid appears on WVHooligan.com each week. Today he is back to discuss
the state of the world's game in New York. Feel free to leave him a note below.
On Saturday evening, the New York Red Bulls were on the end of a 4-0 thrashing at the hands of
the Colorado Rapids in what was a perfect example of their 2009 season up to this point.
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Britain isn't the only country in which football clubs are prone to occasional financial
collapse. Paul Grech, from the Italian football blog Il Re Calcio, writes on the rise, fall, rise
and fall again of the Italian club Pisa AC.
For a city that has been made famous by its gravity defying leaning tower, there's a bit of
irony in Pisa AC's penchant for tragic and spectacular crashes.
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A long time ago, the venerable football magazine "When Saturday Comes" used to keep a directory
of fanzines tucked away at the back of its pages every month. It fell from view at some point in
the early 1990s, and has been sorely missed. It is with this in mind that we have decided to launch
"The Great Twohundredpercent Directory Project".
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The match between LA Galaxy and Milan was always, in view of the recent goings-on between David
Beckham and the Italian giants, going to be something of a powder keg, and the global media
reaction to the events at the decidedly unromantically named Home Depot Center has said a lot about
how Beckham has managed to control the public perception of him.
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EPL Talk 20 July @ 11:57 AM EST
It's the little things.
I've been fully enamoured with the concept of the shirt swap since I first saw it in action.
Mind you, I'm an American and a latecomer to world football, and we don't have anything like this
in American sports. I've never seen a baseball pitcher record the last strike of the last out of
a playoff game and then trot to home plate, unbutton his shirt and give it to the batter.
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You wouldn't know it from the absolute lack of media coverage in the UK, but the CONCACAF Gold
Cup - North & Central America's equivalent of the European Championships - is currently being
played out in the USA, and one of the minor surprises of the competition so far has been the
progress of the Canadian national team, who have comfortably qualified for the quarter-finals with
two wins from their three group matches against Jamaica and El Salvador.
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Seeing as how the Ashes have started and England aren't - at the time of writing - being
thrashed seven shades of black and blue by Australia (though there is plenty of time for
that to happen over the next few weeks or so), we thought that now would be an appropriate time to
have a quick look back at the (now dying) breed of sportsman that combined their summer sport with
their winter sport.
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Regular users of the network of independent websites, Rivals.net, were in for something of a
surprise when they logged in last week only to find a blank page with only the cursory message,
"‘Rivals.net is currently unavailable" replacing their unofficial fan site. Rather than being a
temporary blip, however, this was permanent.
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Criticism of Newcastle United has long since passed from being some form of sport into being a
sadistic ritual, but their new change kit for next season is surely worthy of some comment. The
two-tone yellow striped number from Adidas has already been described as "custard and cream with
yellow shorts" (When Saturday Comes), "the worst football strip ever" (The Sunderland Echo, perhaps
unsurprisingly and a "garish orange and yellow stripe number" (The Sun) but, whilst it may well be
the worst offender of the summer, it certainly isn't the only terrible football kit that has been
designed over the last few months or so.
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The current controversy over the vuvuzela at the Confederations Cup in South Africa is hardly
the first debate about "artificial" noisemakers used by football fans. In different forms, their
use has been common across the world for over a century. So is the vuvuzela an organic instrument
of South African football culture we should respect, or a commercialised nuisance that should be
banned?
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