Sheffield Football Club vs. Queen's Park, Centenary Celebration
This match, the world's first ever club centenary celebration, marked 100 years from the day of
the founding of Sheffield Football Club, generally recognised as the world's oldest club who still
play today.
Programme cover courtesy of the excellent Footysphere.
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Wolves' infamous game with Honved of Hungary was one of the classics of the twentieth century,
and one of the first intra-European games played under floodlights. See inside the full programme
at Footysphere, with an awesome interactive feature.
Related posts:
- Classic Programmes: #1, Birmingham City vs.
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This week the football world was shocked by the suicide of Hannover 96 goalkeeper Robert Enke.
Seemingly at the top of his career Enke was firmly established as the first choice stopper at one
of Germany's most respected clubs, and looked the favorite to be his country's number one heading
into the World Cup next summer in South Africa.
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Our Thursday programme series last week went back 56 years, to the first ever floodlight
match at Tottenham Hotspur's White Hart lane. Today, we hop across North London to Highbury, and
Arsenal's first major floodlit fixture against Hapoel Tel Aviv.
Programme cover courtesy of the highly-recommended Footysphere.
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Carlos Alberto Parreira
The recent re-appointment of Carlos Alberto Parreira as coach of South Africa, replacing fellow
Brazilian Joel Santana who had been hired on Parreira's recommendation, ignited that perennial
question: is a national team, particularly one on the periphery of world football, better served by
a local or an outsider?
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Hajduk Split have had a terrible start to the season in Croatia, especially by their elite
standards, sitting 14 points behind leaders Dinamo Zagreb after 12 games up until this weekend. Fan
anger though with no reports of any incidents or threats prompted police to step-up security during
training and at matches this week.
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Our new Thursday series looks at classic football programmes, that perfect accompaniment for
a trip down memory lane. This week: we go back 56 years, to the first ever floodlight match at
Tottenham Hotspur's White Hart lane, with the programme's cover promising Spurs were in for "very
attractive visitors" and "very sporting opponents" with the visit of Racing Club de Paris.
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On FIFA's web-site promoting the start of the U-17 World Cup in Nigeria the event is hyped as a
chance to "discover the stars of tomorrow."Â And while there is an impressive list of former
participants (including, for example, Ronaldinho, Michael Essien, and Luis Figo) another look at
the history of the U-17 World Cup offers more cautionary tales than burgeoning stars.
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I love a World Cup (any World Cup) for the rare opportunity of putting whole imagined nations on
public display. Though the main event in South Africa is still eight months away, one junior
version (U-20) just finished in Egypt and another (U-17) is just about to begin in Nigeria.
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Our new Thursday series looks at classic football programmes, that perfect accompaniment for
a trip down memory lane. Today, an NASL team visits England gets rowdy.
Birmingham City vs Tampa Bay Rowdies, October 1st 1983.
Programme cover courtesy of Footysphere.
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Their players have only just received their first income since July, and even that is still not
enough to make a decent living: this is not the Premier League, not even Portsmouth. But even this
small mercy for the players was all thanks to one fan, whose last will was to donate some money to
his beloved club.
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The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named
people.
- Eric Hobsbawn
One of the many intriguing things about a World Cup is the rare but vivid display of
nationhood. When else do countries from all corners of the world have the chance to present
themselves as one coherent entity?
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So often as fans we take a team's name for granted. We grow up up with them, they're a part of
the landscape in a fairly unobtrusive way and we only occasionally wonder at what they mean or why
a team is called what it's called. It's a shame, really. The name of a team, as well as its
nickname or emblem or colors or any other traits, can often tell a great story, can give
interesting history lessons or sometimes are just downright bizarre.
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Shane Supple
Why are we always so shocked when professional footballers quit the game for a similar reason
many other people quit their jobs? Shane Supple was the latest to "shock" the football world with
his decision to quit Ipswich Town at the age of 22 to pursue another career, rumoured to be in
catering.
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"Who do you support?"Â For your average American that question, particularly without any
context, is almost impossible to make sense of. But as I learned on a tour of Uganda and Kenya
with a group of American educators in the summer of 2008, for a surprising number of Africans
(particularly the teenage students we met) it is among the first questions a Western visitor will
be asked.
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A gnawing and suspicious paradox lies at the heart of African national team experiences in world
competition: African teams tend to do much better at the youth level than they do at the senior
level. Take the fact, for example, that African teams have won 5 of the 12 FIFA U17 World Cups
(with the 2009 version scheduled to be hosted by Nigeria in October and November), but not a single
African team has ever made it as far as the semi-finals of a full World Cup.
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Apart from transfer rumours, commentary on managers probably forms the bulk of football chatter.
Before, during and after every game, every decision is scrutinised; every minute move debated;
tactics, strategy, man-management, motivation, appearance all feed into an endless discourse
debating whether any given manager is succeeding or not.
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France's Champions Trophy took place with some success in French Canada a couple of weeks ago,
the regular preseason contest between the French league and cup winners held outside France for the
first time. Most of the impressive crowd of 34,000+ present in Montreal would have instantly
recognised the winners Bordeaux, of course, but their opponents may have been less familiar to fans
when they first read about the contest En Avant Guingamp are hardly a household name around the
world, after all.
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"Ref in seattle just cheated the dynamo. What a joke. Not even close. Ref is a cheat" Not the
usual ranting of a fan of the Dynamo after a controversial decision in an MLS game. No, this was a
now-infamous tweet by Brian Ching, U.S. national team player and star of the Houston Dynamo, after
he'd watched what he saw as some disgraceful refereeing of his MLS team on television.
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Matthew Booth
You don't run into a lot of Irish folks in Africa. Lots of Canadians, Norwegians, Japanese,
and Australians but very few Irish. Maybe that helps to explain why Sport Against Racism Ireland
was among the groups who, during June's Confederations Cup in South Africa, were quick to assume
that predominantly black crowds were booing the lone white player on the South African national
team Matthew Booth.
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Friendlies are fun. It can be enjoyable to watch your team play an opponent that wouldn't
usually visit in the regular schedule; especially if it's a high-profile team from overseas. It's a
chance for your manager to try something new, and see some younger players get some minutes.
Usually they take place before the season starts, so it's a good warmup for your vocal chords as a
supporter, a way to get back into the swing of things.
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His house was petrol-bombed, his father was attacked, and he was called the "Salmon Rushdie of
football". It was twenty years ago this week that former Celtic star Mo Johnston became the first
well-known Roman Catholic to sign for Rangers, and Glasgow erupted. One enraged Rangers fan said
that, "My blood is boiling.
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I never met Steven Wells. I always figured I would some day, but that it would be totally random
I'd be in some dive bar on a road trip to Philly to see the Fire play the new team there that he,
in a small way, helped make happen, the Philadelphia Union. I presumed we'd end up shooting the
shit about the Sons of Ben and Section 8 and the good fight to keep American grassroots fan culture
alive in the face of the McBeast.
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The outcasts are on the world stage again: the third Viva World Cup, for associations
unaffiliated with FIFA, got underway this week. It's being held in the northern Italian cities of
Verona, Brescia and Varese. You might remember our post on the 2008 Viva World Cup hosted by
Sápmi in Gällivare, Sweden won by Padania and featuring five teams.
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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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Red Bull has rebranded yet another club in its attempt to establish itself as a global football
power. Red Bull are the backers behind the rebranding of SSV Markranstädt as RB Leipzig, who will
begin play under that name next season in the fifth tier of the German league.
Markranstädt is located a few miles from Leipzig, the largest city in the Saxony state in
eastern Germany, and home to a World Cup venue (Central Stadium)Â in need of a top tier tenant
though Leipzig is a region rich in football history, it has no team above the fourth tier of the
German league.
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Commentators groaned. Minute-by-minute reporters fell asleep. A man in Scotland put over a
hundred thousand pounds on England to win and pocketed just over six hundred quid. It was England
versus Andorra, and by the time Peter Crouch jigged the ball past Andorran keeper Alvarez to make
it 6-0, the old debate on whether the Andorras, the Lichtensteins, the Faroe Islands deserve a
co-equal berth against larger nations in World Cup qualifying was raging once again.
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In a follow-up piece to our discussion on whether soccer to have more statistics to thrive
in the States, Josh Crockett looks at the history of American sports culture and concludes it's the
stories behind the numbers that matter.
[America has] had, after all, a century of the most extraordinary and compelling sporting
stories to savor and reflect upon.
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What motivates a supporter to spend every game with his back turned to the action on the pitch?Â
To spend the game imploring other supporters to sing, chant, jump in unison? To be the man on
the stand, above the fray, to be recognised by all in his end of the stadium?
Capo, Zenit Saint Petersburg
That man (I've yet to hear of a female capo worldwide) is typically known in ultras
circles as the capo, which is (roughly speaking) Italian for "leader".
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This week marks the fourth anniversary of the opening of the Allianz Arena (or FuĂźball Arena
MĂĽnchen for UEFA-organised matches), home to FC Bayern MĂĽnchen and TSV 1860 MĂĽnchen and made
famous during the 2006 World Cup. A number of remarkable photos of the stadium's unique aesthetic
have appeared on Flickr over the years, so today we take a look at it from up close, afar and in
all its colour-shifting glory.
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Poland is preparing to host (half of) Euro 2012, and campaigns by the Polish FA and government
to crack down on ultras groups at clubs across the country are producing a visceral backlash.
We've covered Polish fans' protests before here, but events have taken a further turn with the
recent news that new legislation this summer means ultras caught lighting pyrotechnics inside a
football stadium will face up to five years in prison.
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Paul Gascoigne was detained today under the Mental Health Act. How did England's superstar get
where he is today?
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