The English Premier League has attracted players from all over the world – except Africa, it seems. Mike Ticher looks at the reasons why
You might be forgiven for thinking after the last few seasons that no country in the world was safe from the all-seeing eyes of desperate English football clubs. With Brazilians at Bradford and Bulgarians at Reading, it seemed no club was too modest nor any nationality too exotic to be persuaded of each other’s merits.
Although Yugoslavia's players are in other European leagues, the state of the game back home is in crisis. Simon Evans reports
Having spent decades just missing out on glory, the Yugoslavs looked set to finally make a decisive impact in a major tournament. Red Star Belgrade had been crowned champions of Europe and the national team – with stars such as Prosinecki, Savicevic and Stojkovic – was among the favourites for the 1992 European Championships in Sweden.
Cris Freddi looks at the history of the hairless footballer, and whether they are still around abroad
A bald fact: there weren’t many of them in the very early days of the game, partly because relatively few players won any caps after leaving university. Only when international careers grew longer did hairlines began to recede.
Dear WSC
Matt Nation (WSC No 122) clearly wasn’t among the hardy souls that witnessed a quite literally stomach-churning performance by Leeds at Shrewsbury in the early ’80s. Having led 1-0 at half-time, Leeds collapsed spectacularly in the second half to lose 5-1. All this was clearly too much for one John Donnelly, a midfield journeyman for whom the epithet “He can’t be worse than…” would be praise indeed.Midway through the game he just about made it to the touchline before bending double and throwing his guts up. Any suggestion that the permed Scottish bruiser had been out on the raz the night before would be completely scurrilous, but let’s just say he left on a free transfer at the end of the season. And while going for a 40-60 ball with Roy Keane may not count as heroics in Matt Nation’s eyes, there’s every chance of seeing any player who does try and ‘compete’ with Roy quite literally shitting themselves on the pitch. I know I would.
Andy Limb, Brixton
Neil Rose wonders if the high profile involvement of lawyers in the administration of the game may be causing more problems than it solves
Graham Kelly and the ‘Gazza Rap’. An unsavoury pairing if ever there was. The connection? Lawyers. As a breed, lawyers may have committed many sins on this earth over the centuries, but these two surely rank among the greatest.