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Search: ' La Liga'

Stories

Standing innovation

Borussia Dortmund are a modern and corporate club but that hasn't stopped them constructing a huge new standing terrace. Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger reports

It started to rain a few minutes into the game. No drizzle, mind you. Real, heavy rain. Thick, grey clouds. Chilly gusts. The works. We had been promised the roof would be ready in time for this, the first home game of the season but, meticulous planning being what it is, there were gaping holes above our heads. I always wear my lucky baseball cap and my old leather jacket on match days, so the weather didn’t bother me, but those around me who were either less superstitious or too trustful when it comes to workmen’s promises got soaking wet within seconds. What was more, the roofers had left piles of tiles lying around. They dammed up the water until it periodically came crashing down on our heads like a torrent from a giant bucket.

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Super Troopers

Amazingly, not everyone in Europe has welcomed the proposed super league. WSC correspondents sum up reactions in three of the key countries

Germany
When the plans for a European super league were first presented in the German media, reactions were as vague as the proposals themselves. Most Bundesliga club officials grieved over the loss of morality in sport in a rather populist manner, knowing that the vast majority of German teams would be excluded from the feeding troughs of the ESL and may have their very existence threatened. But even for those who will be involved in it, the new era may bring about just as many problems as advantages.

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Letters, WSC 139

Dear WSC
There wasn’t room on the questionnaire (WSC No 138) to record my favourite World Cup moment. Given the paucity of the “entertainment”, the presence of the Paraguayan defender, Arce, was a blessing. Credit must be given to Barry Davies, who never slipped up with his pronunciation, as the rest of us surely would have. Thus, Arce was constantly announced as “Ah-Say!” in the grand manner of the blustering cartoon rooster, Foghorn Leghorn, and never once degenerated into “Aaaarse” like the yokel in The Fast Show sketches.
Martin Callaghan, Wakefield

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Spotter bother

You'd think with a heavy police presence at least one of the officers would arrest any violent football fans, wouldn't you? Well as Paul Mathews discovered, not even the policemen want to hear about trouble at games

It’s five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in October. You return to your car after a typically fiery local derby, comforted by the presence of a number of uniformed police officers, who stay close to the main contingent of away supporters. However, at some point you must peel off from the main group and negotiate the side streets. Seconds later, a rival supporter suddenly comes alongside you. Seeing several police officers in the distance, you decide to ignore him and keep your head down. The rival fan decides to exorcise his frustration at his own team’s 4-0 stuffing by acquainting his right fist with your face.

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Pointless exercises

World Cup hosts of the immediate past and future lost all their games in France. Rich Zahradnik & Sam Wallace sift the debris

USA I sat in my living room on July 4th safe from Paris and the Germans, safe from Nantes and the Yugoslavs, and, praise to the heavens, safe from Lyon and the Iranians. I watched the day’s two quarter-final matches as any American fan should expect to watch them, a neutral connoisseur enjoying some of the best in the game (Argentina, Holland, Croatia) along with some of the luckiest (Germany).

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