The Archive

Justin McCurry on Japan’s continuing love affair with English football, despite the Premier League shifting its focus to other Asian markets

When Harry Redknapp brought Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi to Portsmouth for £1.8 million in 2001, detractors spied a case of commercial considerations taking precedence over footballing ability. Sure enough, the Japanese goalkeeper departed under a cloud less than two years later after a series of hapless performances that saw him lose his place to the 42-year-old Dave Beasant.

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Dear WSC
In answer to Jamie Sellers’ enquiry (Letters, WSC 296), no, David Needham and I are not related, although I pretended he was for a while at junior school. Also, when I went to Forest games and the Trent End chanted “Needham! Needham! Needham!” during corners (he was renowned for nodding them in), I would step forward, raise a hand, shout “Thank you, fans!” and then do that breathing-on-the-fingernails-and-buffing-them-on-the-lumber-jacket thing that boastful kids were wont to do in the late 1970s.
Al Needham, Nottingham

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It is not just the so called big teams who attract international support. Janice Allen-Brade reports on Norwich City’s global fanbase

The global popularity of the big Premier League clubs is an unmistakable aspect of modern football. But one of the unwritten stories about the League’s international popularity is how many of the so-called smaller teams have foreign fanbases. Locations include Norway where Blackburn have a strong following largely cultivated in the 1990s, and Iceland where a supporters’ club for Wolves was set up in 2000. And then there’s my team, Norwich City. Why would someone living in Europe or the Far East support a club that has no real international exploits to speak of – save one golden albeit short-lived spell in Europe – and an eccentric TV chef at the helm?

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Thom Gibbs on footballers’ love affair with video games

On Manchester United’s impeccably marketed, sickeningly luxurious and unimaginably profitable summer tour of the US the squad were kept busy. Rafael da Silva caught salmon at Seattle’s Pike Place fish market, Patrice Evra and Park Ji-sung were taught how to make deep dish pizza in Chicago and the squad visited the floor of a glass-blowing factory, with Alex Ferguson the only visitor who looked remotely interested in being there.

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Ed Parkinson on how Darlington’s demise means Hartlepool need a new local rival

For the best part of a century Hartlepool and Darlington were bound together through shared derbies that added a couple of high points to what were, more often than not, long and dreary seasons. Holding little hope of any more substantial achievement, fans of both clubs focused intensely on beating “them” once or twice a year. There was the occasional season apart but the breaks never lasted long as both clubs quickly returned to their natural habitat of the fourth division.

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