Search: 'European Union'

Sympathy for Ashley Cole has been hard to find in his battle for the right to talk to Chelsea behind Arsenal's back. But, as  Neil Rose points out, the rule cole is battling costs less well paid players dear and he might yet win on principle in the courts

To most people, the Ashley Cole affair, with meetings in posh hotels and squabbles over whether an extra £5,000 a week really was promised, seem far away from everyday life. It was Shaka Hislop’s evidence to the disciplinary commission that brought it down to earth. He was called by Cole’s lawyers to show the unfairness of Premier League rule K5, which prevents a contracted player making an approach to another club without the consent of his employer and under which Cole was fined. Near the end of his career at 36, Hislop did not know at the time whether his contract, expiring on 29 June, would be renewed by Portsmouth.

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Chelsea’s conduct during the Ashley Cole affair has raised questions about the extent to which rich clubs can now push at the game’s rules. Mike Ticher wonders how much further they can go – and whether anyone will be able to stop them

To say that Roman Abramovich does not play by the rules is not necessarily an insult. Most men who describe themselves as “self-made” are happy to put their success down to a certain amount of, shall we say, unorthodox behaviour. But since taking over at Stamford Bridge Abramovich, ably assisted by Peter Kenyon and Jose Mourinho, has managed the difficult task of making Chelsea even more unpopular, not just by winning the Premiership but also by riding roughshod over the codes and practices of the football authorities.

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Dear WSC
The story about Croke Park in WSC 220 failed to point out that one of the main reasons why the Ulster GAA delegates voted against allowing the IFA to use the stadium, is the presence of a British army base yards from the endline at Crossmaglen Rangers (a picture of this can be viewed here). The Ulster GAA has always said that while this base remains, they would continue to vote against “soccer” games at Croke Park. Perhaps, in the interest of balance, a statue of Bobby Sands could be erected along the new Wembley Way. I’m sure that this would go down well with the moronic England fans who continue to sing “No surrender” at every single game. I just pray that England and Ireland are kept apart in the Euro 2008 qualifiers, as I can’t imagine that their presence at Croke Park would be very well received.
John Rooney, via email

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Thanks to the bitter legacy of English rule it has always been impossible to play association football in Ireland’s finest stadium, Croke Park – until now, as Robbie Meredith reports

Describing football grounds as shrines or cathedrals is fairly commonplace; a lazy marketing trick exploiting a supporter’s passion for their team. One stadium in Dublin, however, explodes the cliche.

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The death of 39 fans at the 1985 European Cup final was the culmination of an era when, as Mike Ticher recalls, English football appeared to be in terminal decline

It’s the timeworn right of each generation to complain that things are not what they used to be. In 1983, Geoffrey Pearson’s classic work Hooligan: A history of respectable fears showed how at any given point in the past 150 years public opinion held firmly that society’s current state of violence and mayhem contrasted with a peaceful “golden age”, consistently located about 20 years previously. Oddly, the very time he was writing has proved the exception to his rule. In football at least, no one in their right mind would want to risk a return to the mid-1980s.

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