The FA enquiry into the Soho Square sex scandal comes to an end – but, seriously, who really cares?
Tradition has it that the Football Association is run by a bunch of buffoons. Not least on this issue when they have decided to announce their findings of their inquiry into the (gasp) Soho Square sex scandal on the day after we have gone to press.
One part of football still believes the game is about fun, not finance. Gavin Willacy celebrates the volunteers whose predecessors created the schools' FA 100 years ago
Despite the major upheavals in both professional football and the education system in this country over the past decade, the English Schools’ Football Association has survived to celebrate its centenary this season. In November 1904, encouraged by the National Union of Teachers, a group of local association secretaries met in Birmingham to form the ESFA. The founder members included the major football metropolises of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bolton, Bradford and Derby, along with Northampton, Herts and Luton, St Albans, Wordsley, Hickley and Aston Manor.
While the tabloids are busy 'celebrating' the England manager's 'infidelity' when it came to speaking to other clubs, perhaps we should stop and realise that the fact that Sven-Göran Eriksson is in demand can only be a good thing for the national team
Sweden 1 Wapping 0. The tabloids had been so certain of victory in this grudge match that they began celebrating a bit too early. Sneaky Sven was the Sun front-page headline on a Saturday morning as it revealed that he had had a secret meeting with Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon two nights before. Stupid said the same day’s Mirror, equally confident that he was about to leave England in the lurch.
Football’s history remains largely untouched by the marketeers – but FIFA are determined to do something about that. Barney Ronay ponders Pelé’s official hot 100 selection
History is written by the winners. Pelé, twice a World Cup winner and the highest-earning 20-years-retired sportsman on the planet, is in the process of taking this process to a ludicrous extreme. As part of FIFA’s centennial celebrations the great man has been commissioned to draw up – possibly in biro on the back of an envelope – the “FIFA 100” list of the greatest living players, due to be unveiled this month after a mildly snowballing web-centred publicity campaign. As FIFA-run website The-100.com explains: “For the 100 years of FIFA, Pelé has chosen a living footballer that represents the best, most outstanding, creative, players of their generation.”
The number of Australian players in Britain has turned from trickle to flood, fuelled by an army of agents. Neil Forsyth traces this all back to a very English wheeler-dealer
Ten years ago it was Scandinavians. Every United Kingdom team, it seemed, had one. Cheap, professional and highly adaptable to the British playing style (apart from Tomas Brolin, on all three counts) they streamed across the North Sea. It wasn’t a coincidental occurrence, a sudden outbreak of itchy feet. Rather, it was down to the emergence in those countries of an ambitious and inventive breed of a relatively new football phenomenon, the modern agent. Well educated, fluent in English and with a largely untapped resource to market, the fledgling Scandinavian agents found the UK a fertile market. One, Rune Hauge, brought a novel business approach to his dealings with then Arsenal manager George Graham, leading to the Scotsman’s sacking.