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Jörg Haider’s attempts to use football to further his own political career led to the destruction of three Austrian clubs, writes Paul Joyce

The Austrian state of Carinthia (Kärnten) is best known for being the political stronghold of Jörg Haider, the right-wing populist who died in a car accident in 2008. That the region is less well known for its football is also Haider’s legacy. The attempts by the former governor of Carinthia to use local sport as a publicity tool led to the demise of three different clubs and a series of criminal investigations.

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Instead of trying to mimic their richer neighbours, small clubs in Switzerland can succeed by serving their local communities, says Paul Knott

The normally sober francophone Swiss newspaper Le Temps was recently moved to ask whether there is any point in continuing with domestic professional football. The editorial in question was partly a howl of anguish at a calamitous season for the clubs in the paper’s catchment area. But it also raised a valid question about how clubs in the smaller European countries can remain viable when bigger outfits from elsewhere offer greater glamour by exploiting their status as “the most indebted clubs in the world”.

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As domestic football improves in Ireland, players are earning professional contracts later in their careers, says Ciaran McCauley

James McClean is one of the finds of the season, a £350,000 steal for Sunderland from Derry City. Depending on what you read, he is now worth anywhere between £10 million and £200m and could yet be on his way to Euro 2012 after winning his first cap in February’s friendly against Czech Republic.

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The fortunes of Sheffield Wednesday and the club’s former chairman, Dave Richards, have differed wildly in the past 20 years, writes Tom Hocking

When Bert McGee, who had been the Sheffield Wednesday chairman since the mid-1970s, stepped down in 1990, it was left to a local businessman and fan of the club, Dave Richards, to continue his predecessor’s good work. Over the following two decades, Richards’s rise in football was as meteoric as Wednesday’s fall. The contrast has been so remarkable it prompted the Guardian’s David Conn to call Wednesday “the picture of Dorian Gray in Sir Dave Richards’s attic”.

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Dear WSC
Trevor Fisher (Letters, WSC 301) is nearly right. When Alex Ferguson was accused of driving on the hard shoulder in 1999, he hired Nick “Mr Loophole” Freeman as his lawyer. They argued successfully that he should not be punished as he was
suffering from an upset stomach and needed to get to the training ground quickly to use the toilet. I have always slightly suspected he got away with it because nobody in the courtroom wanted to spend a moment longer than necessary with that gruesome, messy mental image in their head. Which is now in your head. No need to thank me.
Jim Caris, Prague

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