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David Wangerin explains why Euro '96 at Villa Park was a dazzling experience in the stands as much as on the pitch

It was fun, it was interesting, and it was orange. Dutch orange. What Birmingham’s inhabitants are likely to remember most vividly about their city’s participation in Euro ’96 is the number of visitors who came to town wearing tangerine. If not a replica kit (from any era), then a T-shirt, or overalls, or a big hat, or spray-painted clogs. The Dutch must have the most conspicuous fans on earth.

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What will be the lasting effect of Euro '96 on the culture of England fans?

So, the parts of England where most of the domestic trophies go finally saw some competitive international football for the first time in thirty years. England played well in a couple of games and might even have won it. Most of the visiting supporters seemed to enjoy themselves and German fans celebrated in Trafalgar Square after the Final without there being a riot. Things went so well, in fact, that the FA have announced that it intends to mount a bid for the 2006 World Cup. 

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Craig Thomas explains why some Chesterfield fans are dismayed by the club's decision to move to a new site

When you’ve dragged yourself to Edgar Street, Springfield Park and the like on Tuesday nights for five years and seen your beloveds regularly stuffed at Rochdale, simply winning promotion to Division Two becomes your Holy Grail. Since last May at Wembley, when Chesterfield elbowed their way past Bury, it’s been broad, sunlit uplands all the way with the team pursuing a play-off place for the second successive season. But good results on the pitch have been mirrored by disaster off it: the chairman wants a ground move.

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A version of football has been played in Japan for over a millenium, but no one has managed to win a match yet, as Jon Watts explains

Half a world away from Wembley, a crowd of about 500 people have gathered in the grounds of a small temple on the outskirts of Kyoto. In front of them a group of seven men and women, dressed in elaborately-patterned and brightly-coloured robes, stand in a small circle facing inwards. One of them, an elderly Japanese man, holds in his outstretched hands a round white football.

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Responding to the article in last month's WSC about Wimbledon's proposed relocation to Dublin, Colm McCarthy insists that such a move would be welcomed by many football fans in the Republic of Ireland

Robert Rea, in WSC No 108, voices opposition to the proposed move of Wimbledon FC to Dublin. The FA, he writes, should say “. . . loudly, clearly and immediately, that they will be opposed” Robert would love the FA of Ireland, who have said precisely that. But the proposed move has no shortage of supporters in Dublin, and I am one of them. There is a crisis in the senior professional game in this country, and it has its origins in the structure of league football presided over by various national associations and UEFA.

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