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This Italian season is different from its predecessors in at least one significant resepct. Filippo Ricci reports

Castel di Sangro is a village in the centre of Italy. Not far from Rome, heading east, lost in the mountains. There are 5,635 inhabitants. There is a football stadium, obviously, named Teofilo Patini, that can hold 2,100 people. At the end of last season Castel di Sangro were promoted to the second division, Serie B. Never in the history of Italian football has a small village team got so high up the league. When they beat Ascoli away in the final of the promotion playoff, the entire population waited to greet the team on their return.

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Dear WSC
Continuing on the debate about those heartbroken fans of Newcastle, one has to ask where these ‘devoted’ supporters were a few years ago. Commentators frequently reminisce about the dark old days of Newcastle when the club was on the verge of bankruptcy on gates just above 10,000. There is the same fickle element at Middlesbrough – at Ayresome Park back in 1993, matches attracted around 8,000. Now they’d expect 28,000 for a League match against Wimbledon!  I can only have limited sympathy for the Toon Army, and even less for the tens of thousands of supporters on the season ticket waiting list. If they’d bought one in 1990, they would have one by now.  If would seem that Newcastle’s chums Sunderland are the only ‘North East giant’ with fans of any loyalty: they brought 5,000 to Watford this year – and that was on a wet Tuesday night!
Will Ginster, Chesham

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Rich Zahradnik came over from America for Euro '96 and, much to his surprise, found himself in a Catholic country

I arrived on the morning of the first match of Euro ’96 to find a nation still recovering from “The Shame!!” Members of the England team had had some drinks in a dentist chair then, played rough with the interior of an airplane. Shame was everywhere, the same shame felt by the entire British nation when one of its politicians, vicars, talk show hosts, policemen, soldiers, dogs, cats or royals does something the rest of us probably do all the time anyway.

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A view on the media and public reaction in France to Euro '96. Neil McCarthy reports

Two big news stories in France before Euro ’96 were Mad Cow Disease and the arrest of football hooligans in Birmingham and Newcastle. Some suggested that the shaky relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe coupled with England’s hooligans were a recipe for trouble.

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A view on the media and public raction to Euro '96 in Spain. Phil Ball reports

Until the Daily Mirror’s outbreak of cultural sensitivity on Thursday 20th June, the Spanish press had, by and large, been serving up a positive view of all things English – describing in drooling terms the facilities on tap at the team’s hotel on the outskirts of Leeds, publishing photos of Zubizarreta signing an autograph for a smiling “bobbie” and of Caminero wolf-whistling at his English (female) security guard.

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