Search: ' Euro 68'

A phone-tapping scandal has reached into most aspects of Italian society and football in particular. Matthew Barker listens in

Christian Vieri announced his retirement from football last month in typically gruff and to-the-point fashion. “I’ve had enough. I don’t want to do it any more,” he told journalists at the Milan Palace of Justice. Vieri was in court to give evidence against Inter, one of his 11 former clubs who he’s suing for €21 million (£18.7m) along with Telecom Italia (€9m from the former, €12m from the latter) after they apparently authorised the tapping of his private phone calls during a two-year period from 2002-04.

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Adrian Mutu failed a drugs test in 2004 but is still being pursued by Chelsea. Matthew Barker examines the case

Adrian Mutu was in pre-season training with Fiorentina when the news came through. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne had rejected an appeal against a FIFA ruling that the Romanian should pay €17 million (£14.9m) to former employers Chelsea. In a public statement, the player called the punishment “profoundly unjust”, while Viola patron Diego Della Valle talked of arranging a sit-down with Roman Abramovich in order to solve the matter in a more civilised fashion.

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The 1974 World Cup fixture between East and West Germany was a unique encounter during the Cold War era – but meetings were more frequent than the official history suggests. Paul Joyce looks back to the little-known Olympic qualifying competitions and reveals the political manoeuvring behind the remarkable Geisterspiele (ghost matches) of 1959

Most history books refer to East Germany’s 1-0 victory over West Germany at the 1974 World Cup as the only game between the two countries. Strictly speaking, however, it was already their sixth encounter. Before this, the Federal Republic and the GDR contested a series of pre-Olympic qualifiers with a Cold War intensity that made disputes about the composition of the 2012 British Olympic football team look like a vicarage tea-party.

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Dear WSC
Regarding Simon Cotterill’s article in WSC 269. Indeed it is rare that many J‑League clubs sell out tickets for many games but this doesn’t tell the whole story about Japanese football. First of all, the World Cup crowds were different to those at ordinary J-League games. I’m not sure if it’s the same case in England but the media strongly encouraged people to cheer on the national team, which is followed on a four-year cycle only at major tournaments or in qualifying.  Secondly, J-League attendances did decrease quickly after the initial boom but a football culture is developing and the supporters who go regularly understand the game a lot more. This can be seen at Urawa Reds and Albirex Niigata who both use stadiums built for the 2002 World Cup and sell out all their home games.  It’s not just Japan and Korea where there are problems with attendances – English football has them too, as can be seen at the half-empty Ewood Park or Riverside Stadium.
Kazutaka Watanabe, Atsugi, Japan

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There is a section of Italy that it using football as a way of campaigning for independence. Matthew Barker tells all

Last month’s European and local elections saw the Lega Nord increase its support base beyond the traditional heartland of the Veneto and Lombardy in the north-east of Italy, reaching as far down as Emilia Romagna and the northern edges of Tuscany. The Lega, seeking to break away from the national government in Rome and the Mezzogiorno south, forms a strong coalition with Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling People of Freedom party, and has been steadily winning over disgruntled voters with far-right policies based exclusively around twin obsessions of immigration and security.

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