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Dynamo Kiev's Soviet Supreme League triumph in 1975 put the club on the way to being the most successful team in league history. Saul Pope reports

The long-term significance
Dynamo Kiev were midway through a run that would ultimately see them win more Soviet league titles than any other side. Spartak Moscow picked up six titles through the Fifties and Sixties but Dynamo accumulated eight through the Seventies and Eighties, leaving them with a total of 13 titles to Spartak’s 12. A large part of Dynamo’s success could be attributed to manager Valeriy Lobanovsky, a pioneer of football science who used physical and psychological testing to evaluate players’ potential and blended the total football of the era’s Dutch sides with tactical discipline. As well as winning the league in 1975, Lobanovsky’s Dynamo won the Cup-Winners Cup. They would repeat this feat in 1986 before Lobanovsky led the USSR to the Euro 88 finals and Dynamo to the Champions League semi-final in 1999. The English FA’s forthcoming National Football Centre is partly based on the training centre he built for his Dynamo side in the Seventies.

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Relegation, a much-loathed owner and an uncertain future. Dermot Corrigan examines troubled times at Real Betis

Since Real Betis’s relegation on goal difference on the last day of last season, the club’s fans have been directing waves of anger and frustration at the club’s majority shareholder Manuel Lopera.

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The Sven circus has rollled into town and pitched up at the league's oldest club. Dave Evans explores the ramifications

The day before Sven-Göran Eriksson was unveiled as the Director of Football at the sixth worst League club in England I said to a friend “we are in danger of turning into a circus”. His reply, echoed by around 90 per cent of fellow Notts fans, was: “I’d rather pay £20 to see a circus than the rubbish I’ve been watching for the past ten years.”

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Neil Rose looks at a ruling which looks to have given clubs some power back from the players

When Andy Webster used an obscure FIFA rule to buy himself out of his contract with Hearts for a relatively nominal sum and then sign for Wigan, it was seen as a contract-breaker’s charter. But a recent ruling involving Brazilian Matuzalem appears to have restored some balance in the never-ending power struggle between players and clubs.

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Phil Town analyses the plight of Boavista in the last decade

The turn of the century was very kind to Boavista FC. They had finished second two years earlier but still surprised everyone in Portuguese football by winning the title in 2001 – only the second team outside the Três Grandes (FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting) to do so, the other being Belenenses in 1946. Around this time, they were also putting in very respectable performances in Europe, the highlight a UEFA Cup semi-final in 2003 which Celtic just shaded. Paradoxically, however, it was this purple period that was a key contributing factor to Boavista’s current plight.

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