A new football film is in production in Scotland. Geoff Leonard went along to see what all the fuss is about
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, Escape To Victory, Sean Bean’s When Saturday Comes. The link? As I’m sure you know, all were attempts at football films which turned out to be trite rubbish. Robert Duvall’s new movie The Cup, however, promises to be rubbish on an altogether grander scale.
Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram – from cult hero to alleged terrorist and extremist. Alex Anderson looks for reason and logic
For Rangers fans who would like their club to ditch its sectarian image, the second last weekend in February contained an extreme high followed by extreme low. Saturday: a Scottish Catholic helps us annihilate Dundee and the fact is only reported on the back pages, in purely football terms. Sunday: an ex-Ranger cannot face Celtic because of front-page headlines associating him with organised murderers.
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.
Part -time TV soap star look alike, part-time adventure explorer – Craig Gurney looks at Swindon Town's chariman
Distinguishing Features He used to look a bit like Coronation Street’s Les Battersby in a sharp suit. But not even Tricky Rikki can cheat the ageing process and he is now starting to look like the middle-aged businessman he surely is; more bloke down the golf club than bloke down the pub. The Battersby motif still has some mileage though. Les, you may recall, has made a fool of himself over professional blonde scouser, Margi Clarke. Hunt has a love of all things scouse; himself for a start. He stood by another blond (if receding) scouser, Steve McMahon, much longer than he should have. Even now, Hunt will not hear a bad word spoken against the manager who brought us two years of disastrous mid-season slumps.
The relaxation of restrictions post-Bosman has seen clubs across Europe experimenting with bulk importation of foreigners. Some have got their fingers burned, but Spain's Celta Vigo are a surprising success story. Phil Ball sizes them up
As you drive on west from the lush dairy pastures of Asturias in the north of Spain, the road sign that greets you with “Welcome to Galicia” seems like some kind of joke. Ahead stretches a bleak and barren countryside, about as welcoming as the blasted heath where Macbeth met his witches. The settings were not lost on Luis Buñuel, who shot two particularly depressing films using the region as backdrop. No phony weather sets were needed in a region that boasts an average of 320 days of rain a year, plus swirling mists, howling winds and a western seaboard called “The coast of death”. As if all that weren’t enough, General Franco himself was born a Gallego, in the ugly little town of Ferrol, and the region, unsurprisingly, is not exactly renowned for its ultra-liberal persuasions.