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Every club now has a community scheme, but some are much more effective than others. We looked at how two first division clubs have tried to balance ambitions on the field and engagement with their local area. Millwall chairman Theo Paphitis outlines his strategy to Andy Lyons

Is there a tension between trying to get Millwall into the Premiership and trying to maintain the community pro­grammes the club has established?
No, they go hand in glove. Without the community you haven’t got a football club. The community scheme is about remembering your roots. If we get some success on the playing side along the way then that’s great too, but it shouldn’t happen in a way that prejudices the connection with the community. Without the club funding our community scheme couldn’t operate but it is run separately from the club as a charitable trust. We have just taken on the Lions Centre, which is what used to be the council leisure centre around the corner and that is the hub of our operations. What we’ve got here dedicated to community is probably more than what a lot of people have got dedicated to their entire football club. That’s been key from the day I arrived. It means we can get kids to come to us. Going to schools with a couple of people in club tracksuits giving away a few freebies is fine, but actually geting them here to let them spend a day at the club, see the stadium, see the changing rooms, play on the five-a-side pitches with some professional FA qualified coaches – that’s totally different. Also, it allows us to have classrooms and computer equipment. Football is the key, but we don’t bring them in just to knock a ball about.

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In the aftermath of the world trade centre attacks, Charles Armitage explains how social issues and football are very much interlinked

The recent atrocities in the US have thrown the spotlight on the changing way in which football is regarded as a public event. Football was once a diversion from “real life”. Now it seems to be taking on the role of representing real life. Society, the media and the game itself may even be on the way to according it a quasi-religious role.

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Dear WSC
Martin Cloake and Paul Kelso’s contributions to the Sol Campbell debate (WSC 175) highlight the head versus heart struggle most Tottenham fans have had to go through. I’m sure that every one of the 30,000 of us who gave him a standing ovation both on and off of the pitch at Old Trafford in the Cup semi-final were left feeling like mugs when we heard that he had finally signed for Arsenal. But to characterise Sol as a symbol of player disloyalty is ridiculous when there are a thousand other candidates who have made taking the money and running an art form: Collymore, Sutton, Anelka etc, etc, etc. The man was at the club for ten years and gave his all in every game he played. To expect more than that, or even half of that, is self-delusion on the part of fans. Fans are loyal, players aren’t. They can’t allow themselves to be. A change of manager, an injury, a loss of form can all see a player thrown out of a club in no time at all. No, what Sol was symbolic of – for Spurs fans anyway – was the idea that Spurs could recruit and keep top international players in their prime and not just those on their way up or down. This idea has taken a major knock now. On top of that, by going to Arsenal he is a symbol of how much they are in the ascendancy – as if we needed any reminding! – and how the board has mismanaged the club over the last ten years. Having said all that, if we’re honest, those of us who have watched Sol week in, week out since 1993 know that he’s not as good as the press would have everyone believe; his poor passing and lack of confidence going beyond the half-way line have been there for anyone to see. Would he get into the Italian national side? Perhaps he’s also a symbol of something else: the way players are hyped beyond recognition by the TV companies and press.
Patrick Brannigan, via email

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John Williams argues that the efforts of the police to keep hooliganism in the spotlight are masking the real progress that has been made combating violence

Notice the signs, recently, of a new football season approaching? Press stories complaining of too much TV football coverage; fierce debates on player wage hikes; Deloitte and Touche’s annual lecture on the booming financial power of the Premier League and how the market is good for football – but watch out for that nasty club overspend; and now, slotted nicely into the week leading up to the big kick-off, the Nat­ional Criminal Intelligence Service report on the arrest figures related to football. This, too, has become some­thing of an annual media event.

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Roger Titford leafs through responses to our survey on TV football and concludes that viewers are overwhelmed and irritated by the sheer volume on offer

Even before the first remote control of the new sea­son had been punched in anger, the backlash ag­ainst the “surfeit” of TV football had begun, with two muted BBC voices, John Motson and Kenneth Wol­stenholme, to the fore. Our survey (WSC 174) looked back to our readers’ ex­periences of the past season’s TV football. Our read­ership, of course, is not representative of all viewers, but the 700-strong sample is bound to include a higher proportion of dedicated, active and informed fans than your average sofa-full.

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