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Clubs must stop chasing glamorous players and remember they have a duty to their youngsters, warns Jon Spurling

The prize for this summer’s most revealing soundbite must surely be awarded to Dutch defender Michael Reiziger. Shortly before the 31-year-old completed his transfer to Mid­dlesbrough, he commented: “I’m getting to the end of my career and I want to be able to say that I have played in the Premiership.” Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s views on moving to Tee­sside also spoke volumes: “This move will make my family financially secure.” Avoiding any mention of future challenges – much less the possibility of actually winning trophies – the pair neatly encapsulated the prevailing attitude that exists at the top level in English football. Many Premiership chairmen, ever-conscious of season-ticket and replica-shirt sales, would rather spend large sums of money on a seasoned continental star, than invest time and patience in nurturing young British talent.

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With Euro 2004 and the G-14 slumping in the Champions League, it's time to send European football for a medical. To assess the game in their own countries and across the continent, Andy Lyons talked to Spanish journalist Guillem Balagué, Holland's Ernst Bouwes and France's Xavier Rivoire

This season’s Champions League last four contains only one G-14 club, Porto. Would they still consider a league of their own if their members were to fail regularly?
GB The new format is a compromise. It protects the big clubs, gives them second chances, while keeping the number of matches down. But the G-14 are not united. Real Madrid want to take one direction, Man Utd and Bayern want to do something slightly different. There is a new middle class coming in – Lyon, Valencia – who may decide differently. Bayern also wanted to stop Depor getting in to the G-14 because they fell out over the transfer of Roy Makaay. The Depor president, Augusto César Lendoiro, was one of the first to say clubs should be paid when players go on international duty. He will try to make it an enclosed league – and that sort of thing has been stalled.

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It’s taken a while, but African players are finally beginning to thrive in England. Alan Duncan charts the changes in both English and African football that have made this possible

A popular African adage says that “pushing stops at the wall”. For the best part of the last decade, Af­rican players have seen the inexorable push of their compatriots across Europe tending to break down at the formidable wall presented by English football.

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There's a World Cup coming up, apparently, so we invited three well-travelled journalists to make some rash predictions about what will happen. As a Swede based in London Marcus Christenson has ties to two of the countries in Group F. Gabriele Marcotti has lived in Japan and how tries to explain English football to Italians and vice-versa. Alan Duncan reports regularly on Nigeria and Cameroon, who face England and Ireland respectively, as well as the three other African qualifiers

Are playing styles and tactics are becoming more homogeneous throughout the world, because most of the top players are playing in the same leagues? If so, does that make the World Cup less interesting?
Gabriele Marcotti There’s a greater uniformity. Not just in the way teams play, but also in how they train. If you look at the size of the Italian or Spanish players, they are now as big as the northern Europeans are expected to be. Everybody’s an athlete. Some of the English play­ers still get drunk and irresponsible but the impression I get with players like Beckham and Owen is that they train seriously and take care of their diet. In some ways it has become more uniform, but in a positive way – the level of fitness has definitely increased everywhere.

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David Stubbs reviews Mike Bassett: England manager as Ricky Tomlinson takes England to the World Cup

So, England’s manager has had a heart attack during the qualifying stages of the World Cup, to be held in Brazil. In a smoke-filled room at FA headquarters, the powers-that-be realise that for want of better applicants, they must approach Norwich City man­ager Mike Bassett (Ricky Tomlinson) for the England job. They need one win from their last three games to qualify. However Bassett, whose tactical nous doesn’t appear to extend beyond blustering about pressure, com­mit­ment and 4-4-2, very nearly makes a balls-up of it.

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