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Marcelle van Hoof's international top ten of awful football songs include examples of the crooning footballer, the hideous cover version by a team, the good cause song and the (unintentionally) funny interview

1. JOHAN CRUYFF: Oei Oei Oei (Dat Was Me Weer Een Loei) (1969, Polydor) When recording this single, Cruyff’s singing voice turned out to be even more out of tune than the studio personnel had expected. They didn’t know what to do. A friend who accompanied Cruyff to the studio suggested they give him a drink. Cruyff, who never drinks, accepted. After a while, when the atmosphere was more ‘relaxed’, they put Cruyff in front of the microphone again and his tipsy singing proved good enough to use. However, a couple of days later he was invited to sing his song (which roughly translates as ‘oh, oh, oh, yet another blow’ and is not about football, but about a friend of Cruyff being beaten up at a boxing match, then during a visit to a pub and then by his wife…) live on national television. Unfortunately he was sober again and only shyly mumbled the words he could remember, while staring at the ground. Cruyff has a reputation for being a know-all. No matter what subject (the weather, politics, cooking), he has a strong opinion about it. This must have been the only time in his life that he was lost for words.

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As part of WSC's tenth anniversary, Richard Newson rummaged through the connections between football and music 

As a Sounds writer in the ’80s I met lots of rock artists. Many of them, like me, had been born in the early or mid 1960s. Very often, after a long hard interview, we’d end up talking football. Again and again these musicians told me how, for them, the game became less important when punk arrived in 1976-77 and made pop exciting again.

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Nothing unusual about a teenage player keeping a record of progress, except when he is a future European Footballer of the Year. In an extract from a feature first published in the Dutch magazine Hard Gras, Hugo Borst describes the contents of Marco van Basten's diary

Joop van Basten now lives alone in the house in Utrecht where he raised his family. His sons Marco and Stanley (named after Stanley Matthews) have moved out. Several times a day Mr Van Basten visits his wife in a mental home – a stroke depriving her of her mind in 1985 – and in Marco’s old room, he maintains a shrine to his son’s career.

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Mick Slatter looks back at one of Liberia's greatest ever role models

George Oppong Weah is a disarmingly nice guy. He may have bagged the hat-trick of African, European and World Footballer of The Year, yet remains humble. He still has a common touch, passes on much of his sizable earnings and still allows journalists to get closer to him than most Serie A sweepers.

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Scotland isn't the only place where football clubs have switched towns lately – it's happened at the top level in Poland this season, as Vaughan Elliot reports

Mid-May of last year was a bleak time for Lechia Gdansk: relegation to one of Poland’s eight regional third divisions had become inevitable and respectable mid-season crowds of 4,000 had dropped into three figures for the first time anyone could remember. Supporters left the stadium after the last game pondering next season and dreaming of miracles, or at least a couple of decent players to lift the gloom of impending local league football.

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