Search: ' youth'

Mike Woitalla explains why US players are having to cross the Mexican border in order to get their break

José Francisco Torres and Edgar Castillo were born and raised in the US, the children of Mexican immigrants. Both showed signs of great soccer talent from an early age. Both were told that they were too small at the trials that lead to youth national team selection. Neither would have been heard from again as soccer players if they hadn’t moved to their parents’ homeland as teenagers to join Pachuca and Santos Laguna respectively.

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With the release of Darren Anderton’s autobiography, Georgina Turner explains why the former Tottenham player should be regarded as much of an England hero as his Euro 96 team-mates

Most people remember England’s Euro 96 campaign for Gazza’s goal and the dentist’s chair, Psycho going… psycho, Gareth Southgate, another heart-wrenching defeat to the Germans. France 98 is the tournament of Michael Owen and David Beckham each for different reasons. No one can think about them without hearing the Lightning Seeds. But I haven’t met many who remember first and foremost, as I do, how brilliant Darren Anderton was.

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Dear WSC
Congratulations on the article about match-fixing (Crimes and misdemeanours, WSC 283). Paul Joyce did a superb job reviewing the many different cases of corruption in European football. As the German police investigation began, partly because of the controversy around my book, The Fix, I did want to take him up on one issue. He mentioned that “Germany lies second in the match-fixing table” – this is true but it is not because corruption is more prevalent in German football. Rather it is because the German authorities are now, after years of denial, actually taking the issue seriously and are vigorously investigating match-fixing – and the more they investigate, the more they find. This proactive attitude is in stark contrast with British football authorities who seem to have adopted the attitude of “don’t know, don’t want to find out”. The circumstances in British football are similar to other European countries: thousands of relatively badly paid players; lots of poor clubs and lots of interest in the gambling markets. However, the British authorities have not yet fully woken to the dangers. I can only hope that they do before they discover a similar problem to the one in Europe.
Declan Hill, Oxford

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Only minutes from the London 2012 site lies a very different sort of sporting venue. Ian Aitch visits the Old Spotted Dog

As any true football fan knows, even the sight of five ten-year-old kids playing three-and-in is enough to make you watch back over your shoulder as you walk across the park. So, as you can imagine, moving so close to a real football ground that an errant shot of Geoff Thomas proportions could end up in your back garden is the kind of thing that makes you divert the walk to the corner shop, just so you can admire the floodlights peeking up from behind the fence.

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The uses that organised crime groups have for football are changing, in both scope and style. Matthew Barker reports

Stories of organised crime latching onto football are nothing new. Illegal gambling rings, match-fixing, extortion, money-laundering – the globalisation of the game has seen a parallel growth in criminal activity.

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