The most famous export of Ecuador's Chota Valley is footballers, as Henry Mance discovered on a visit to the region
One day, when football wastes as much of academics’ time as it already does of everyone else’s, some PhD student will spend three years working out which area in the world has produced the most professional players per capita. And he or she will eventually conclude what Ecuadorians already know: that the winner is the Chota Valley, hands down.
The Andorra national team faces a number of challenges, from a lack of players to grumpy British pundits. James Calder explains
Andorra’s latest stab at World Cup qualifying was a familiar exercise in damage limitation, the principality’s low expectations largely being met when they failed to pick up a single point in finishing bottom of Group Six.
Tom Davies examines the financial crises at Chester City and Southend United
It’s already been a season of high-profile financial crises and ownership murkiness, as recent developments at Portsmouth, Notts County and Leeds demonstrate. It’s no brighter further down the scale either. Chester City continue to dangle tortuously over the precipice, a threat of expulsion from the Conference delayed until November 16.
With Setanta gone, ESPN has immediately stepped into the gap. Cameron Carter reports
It is confusing to start to grieve for a lost channel only to find that its replacement fills the gap completely. No sooner had Setanta politely dropped off the twig than ESPN took its place, offering a Premier League match on Saturday, an Italian game on Sunday and European Cage Fighting and Bundesliga Review filling most hours in between.
Having acquired sporting representatives in Austria and the US, Red Bull have turned to Germany. Paul Joyce assesses the fallout
No city exemplifies the decline of East German football since reunification more starkly than Leipzig. Lokomotive Leipzig, European Cup-Winners Cup finalists in 1987, went bankrupt in 2004 and had to restart at the bottom of the league pyramid. They now play in the same fifth division as former GDR champions Sachsen Leipzig, who entered insolvency in March with debts of €3 million (£2.7m).