Search: 'UEFA'

Rosenborg are no longer unchallenged in Norwegian football and now face new problems caused by their years of dominance. PJ Bakke explains

Acombination of soaring wages and a failure to sell players abroad has created a financial crisis at sev­eral Norwegian clubs. Some are considering going semi-professional. The perennial champions Rosenborg, however, live in a different world, thanks to the distorting effect of the Champions League. Having qual­­ified eight years running, they have built up mas­sive bank reserves and have a lovely new stadium to boot. At the time of writing they are on course for their 11th consecutive league title with four games to go, but there are signs that their total dominance may finally be challenged.

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Sepp Blatter has taken a firmer grip than ever on FIFA since his crushing election victory over Issa Hayatou in May. Alan Tomlinson reports

At the museum of the International Olympic Com­mittee in Lausanne there is a marble display case, containing vivid portraits of the organisation’s mem­bership. They include the longest-serving member of all, an IOC luminary since 1963, Dr João Havelange, president of football’s world governing body from 1974 to 1998. Three years ago, Havelange’s successor Sepp Blatter was also invited on to the com­mittee. Anyone strolling through the IOC museum in the late summer of 2002 would hardly fathom that Blatter, studiously peeping over his professorial-looking spectacles, had been in bitter rivalry with another IOC member, Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, just months before. The FIFA presidential election in late May 2002 had generated unprecedented levels of infighting around the chal­lenge mounted by Hayatou to the incumbent Blatter.

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No luck for the Irish. Paul Doyle studies the basic flaw in the joint bid to host Euro 2008 by Scotland and Ireland

It was only ten years ago that I wrote furiously to UEFA, asking them why they were going to allow England, with their city-trashing “fans”, to host Euro 96. My dismay was real, my pro­test, of course, ignored.

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Sunday 1 Business as usual at Stamford Bridge as Chelsea’s 1-1 draw with Arsenal sees Patrick Vieira sent off and a David Seaman blunder. Bolton move off the bottom with a 1-0 win over non-scoring Aston Villa, thanks to a goal from Birmingham-born Michael Ricketts and a disallowed goal from Juan Pablo Angel. “In this country we have got good referees who are being let down by assistants who are not so good,” says Graham Taylor. Lloyd Owusu’s goal with his first touch for the club puts Wednesday on their way to a 2-0 win in the Sheffield derby.

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Kasper Steenbach recounts Brian Laudrup's short and unhappy spell at Chelsea in 1998

Overall, Brian Laudrup is today a happy man – he lives with his family at an exclusive address on the coast north of Copenhagen and turns out as a striker for the local amateur team. The chief executive of FC Copenhagen, Flemming Østergaard, is also happy. He heads virtually the only European club that is presently in­creasing in value on the stock market. Since he took over in 1997, the club has been turned into a big name in the entertainment business, having hosted the Eur­ovision Song Contest and a Mike Tyson fight. And, above all, he runs a club that has succeeded in attracting the support of most football fans in Copenhagen for the first time in recent history.

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