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The papers were pleased by the trouble at West Ham v Millwall – it gave them a reason to get angry

“We hoped it had disappeared forever but deep down we knew it was still out there festering, simmering.” Unfortunately Ken Dyer of London’s Evening Standard was not speaking about the hypocritical moralising of the great British newspapers, but rather the shocking, photogenic and highly lucrative stories about football hooliganism in the wake of the violence at West Ham v Millwall. “Today, when the blood is washed from the pavements of east London and the ripped seats, coins and debris are cleared from the pitch, questions will be asked,” mused Dyer evocatively. Perhaps, prior to writing about the “violence we prayed had left our game for good”, he ought to have questioned his paper’s marketing team’s use of billboards plastered with the gaudy advertisement: Football riots – all the pictures inside.

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Hooliganism is not attractive, but the media are more than willing to exploit its financial potential

We received a call at the WSC office from a researcher at the BBC. He was canvassing views about football violence for a forthcoming programme. He had an angle, prompted by recent events: “It’s never really gone away, has it? Should we not be concerned about what might happen at the World Cup?” This was in 1990. 

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One club's promotion to the Argentine top flight also means the return of an infamous hooligan gang, as Sam Kelly writes

It was, perhaps, fitting that when Mariano Echeverría scored the only goal of the match away to Platense, which confirmed Chacarita Juniors’ promotion back to Argentina’s top flight, he celebrated in front of empty stands. The match was played behind closed doors – and in La Plata, well away from Platense’s stadium in the north of Buenos Aires – because of security fears surrounding the Chacarita barra brava (hooligans).

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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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Marseille's late owner has left the club with a legacy of big investment but underachievement, as James Eastham reports

Did Robert Louis-Dreyfus die an unhappy man? In his role as owner of Olympique de Marseille, he was certainly unfulfilled. The Franco-Swiss billionaire (rated the fifth richest man in France this year, with a family fortune of €7 billion) passed away on July 4, 2009, succumbing to the leukemia he had suffered from for more than a decade. He became OM’s owner on December 14, 1996 but failed to win a single trophy during his 12-and-a-half-year reign. Marseille came close on several occasions – runners-up in the French League three times (1999, 2007 and 2009) and losing finalists in the UEFA Cup (1999 and 2004) and French Cup (2006 and 2007) – but are still seeking their first piece of silverware since 1993.

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