Search: ' grounds'

Jeff Hill pays tribute to a famous building that is about to disappear

The Wembley that we all love to hate – the dog track with a football ground in the middle – will soon be no more. Next year it will be pulled down, and by 2002 or thereabouts only the famous twin towers are likely to remain of the present structure. Barring last minute hitches, the rest is to be transformed into a multi-sports National Stad­ium. So England will have a site to equal the Stade de France and all those other sporting venues which are supposed to symbolise “the nation”.

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Alan Tomlinson explains how the seemingly insubstantial David Davies managed to blunder his way to a dominant position in England’s governing body

David Davies is the man some tip to succeed Graham Kelly as the top man at the Football Association. He has emerged from the inside and as the FA has stum­bled from one crisis to another, he has been seen as the man most likely to restore some sense of order to the chaotic proceedings at Lancaster Gate.

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Rather then follow the general consesus of an uphappy team, Argentina's national squad have taken a different approach. Peter Hudson investigates

Any strike is a rarity in Argentina these days, given the weakness of the local labour movement. But the latest is doubly unusual in being led by professional footballers, hardly noted for their revolutionary fervour. What’s more, the players are not looking for higher wages or better conditions. Rather, they are withdrawing their labour in defence of their poorer colleagues, who have been prevented from plying their trade by a court order late last year suspending all matches outside the First Division.

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Two men, one backside and a whole lot of controversy

Such is the intense spotlight trained on Premiership football these days, we are told, that nothing escapes the attention of the action replay cameras and the press provocateurs who feed on their evidence. In a limited way, the theory is perfectly true. Yet for all the microscopic detail now available to the media and the authorities alike, football still has blind spots about certain subjects, which go unmentioned even when they are shouting to be heard. One such came up, but only very slowly, after the Chelsea v Liverpool match on February 27th. The repeated clashes between Ro­bbie Fowler and Graeme Le Saux were highlighted on Match of the Day and splashed all over the Monday papers, but the issue at the heart of the matter was not made plain until the Tuesday.

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Karsten Blaas explains why a proposed new citizenship law could have major repercussions for football in Germany, at both professional and amateur level

Last September, the Germans got themselves a new government. After a few months in charge, however, the envisaged red and green restructuring of the country turned out to be not much more than old Helmut Kohl with a few squirts of fresh paint. In fact, the only real reform likely to be passed in the near future is a modernisation of Germany’s citizenship law.

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