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The lovable chaps at the G-14 have a new, familiar face in charge. Steve Menary wonders whether David Dein will preside over a winning team or is resigned to fighting a rearguard action.

Anyone confident of winning a court case would not start publicly discussing a settlement a year before they were due in court. Yet that is what David Dein began doing on taking over as president of the G-14 group of clubs in late October. G-14 are backing Charleroi’s case against FIFA for €615,000 (£413,000) compensation for an injury Abdelmajid Oulmers suffered while playing for Morocco in 2004. He took eight months to return to action for the Belgian club. G-14 also threw their weight behind an action by one of their own members, Lyon, for €1 million in compensation from FIFA over an injury to France defender Eric Abidal in a friendly last year.

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The FA's reaction to the Burns Report

Several mysterious half-seen creatures are said to exist in the UK. There’s the Beast of Bodmin, a giant cat that’s held responsible for the death of livestock in south-west England. The Loch Ness monster lurks in various hazy photographs, lovingly reproduced on early-hours TV documentaries. And, perhaps the most spectral of all, there’s Geoff Thompson. He’s a bearded man in late middle age, occasionally sighted getting in and out of taxis, and is said by some to be the chairman of the FA. Many doubted his existence, but suddenly at the end of October 2006 he both appeared in full public view and made a useful contribution to an important matter. Thompson voted to abolish his own post, one in a series of measures for reforming the FA proposed by the Burns Report.

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The current Middle East crisis has plunged Lebanon back towards chaos and badly damaged a football culture that had been a symbol of renewal after decades of strife. Hassanin Mubarak reports

On July 3, the Lebanon squad played a warm-up game at the Amin Abdel Nour International Stadium in Bhamdoun, a popular tourist area in the mountains east of the capital, Beirut. Their opponents were Iraqi club side Kirkuk, from a volatile city in the north of Iraq ravaged by sectarian violence. The Iraqi club’s officials had hoped to use the training camp as preparation for the new 2006-07 Iraq league season, while the Lebanese were gearing up to host the fourth edition of the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) Championship, a tournament featuring part of the “Axis of Evil”, Syria and Iran, as well as former member Iraq. A few days after this match, won 2-0 by Lebanon, planes and missiles ranged over the country, killing more than 600 civilians and wounding thousands, with more than a million displaced from their homes.

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With only one promotion left until the Football League beckons, St Albans City now have the money on board for required ground improvements. Steve Menary reports

To most non-League clubs, a marketing officer is an unaffordable luxury. John Gibson tends to agree. When Verry, a £100 million turnover construction firm owned by Gibson, opened a new office in St Albans four years ago, he decided that instead of hiring a marketing man he would buy the local team. “Their manager played for a pub team I ran. He said, ‘The club’s in real trouble, can you help?’ ” says Gibson. “I was going to get a marketing manager but decided to spend the £50,000 to £60,000 a year that would cost on a club.”

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Marseille were first crowned League champions, then European Champions. They were stripped of the former though, reports Aaron Donaghy

The long-term significance
The best-supported and richest club in French football, Olympique de Marseille, beat AC Milan to win the first-ever Champions League on May 26, 1993. Twenty-four hours later, news broke that Marseille’s vital league match against Valenciennes just six days earlier had been fixed. It emerged that three Valenciennes players had been paid to “go easy” on Marseille, who were chasing a record fifth consecutive league title. Valenciennes defender Jacques Glassmann claimed that he and two of his colleagues were offered £30,000 to throw the match. Marseille were thus barred from the 1993‑94 Champions League by UEFA and stripped of their league title by the French FA, while three players and a Marseille director were banned from football. A year later they were further punished with enforced relegation, bankruptcy and the imprisonment of club president and millionaire entrepreneur Bernard Tapie. The whistle-blower Glassmann claimed to have been shunned by French clubs subsequently and wound down his career playing on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion.

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