Leicester’s tussles with Atlético Madrid left fans simmering at injustice but, as Saul Pope recalls, these were heady days
Eleven years ago their fans would have never accepted it, but Leicester City’s UEFA Cup first round tie against Atlético Madrid in September 1997 will probably be as good as it gets. Leicester didn’t win the game, but for a time they were leading thanks to a player once described by the club fanzine The Fox as looking “knackered whenever he ran on to a football field”.
Taylor Parkes reviews two films about football fighting which despite contrasting styles offer similarly dispiriting end products
It’s not hard to see why film-makers are so fond of football hooliganism. Like the slasher movie or the zombie flick, the hooligan film is a ready-made genre that requires little imagination – it comes complete with thrills and spills, a handful of simple and durable plotlines, obvious characters and motivations, and the possibility of redemption. It gives your film, however poor, immediate appeal to people who like this sort of thing (thugs or ex-thugs, thin-armed daydreamers with a prurient interest in violence), and you can deflect criticism by claiming your movie is “authentic” and “gritty” –even when it is, in truth, no more realistic than In The Night Garden. The fact that your product is repulsive on every level need not concern you. Indeed, it’s kind of the point.
Matt Nation’s enjoyment of sixth-tier football in Germany has taken a hit. A long bike ride to the game was just the start of an afternoon of play-acting, clumsy football and dodgy sausages
Just as titles are proverbially won or lost on wet weekday evenings against the league’s dunces, cycling to a football match into a headwind without a handkerchief will make you reconsider whether you attend sixth-tier football because you like it or because you’ve not got the resources to do anything else. After 15 miles on a blustery trunk road, not even the most carefully placed boys’ brigade blow will prevent your cuffs from looking like they’ve been overrun by a battalion of molluscs. Getting to this game has made you look and feel disgusting. Your willingness to turn a blind eye is thus slightly lower than it might otherwise be.
The experiment with goalline officials shows UEFA is attempting to improve refereeing, even if it will never be perfect. Simon Hart reports
“Football will remain, for the time being, a game for human beings… We will try to improve referees but you will never erase errors completely.” So said FIFA president Sepp Blatter on his March visit to Manchester, not long after the International Football Association Board had confirmed that tests with an extra official behind each goalline would continue. The “five-man” experiment began following FIFA’s rejection of video technology last year and the next testing ground may be a professional league next season – both the Italian and French authorities have already offered their assistance.
Admira Vienna won their seventh league title in the year when Austrian football became part of Germany. Paul Joyce looks back
The long-term significance
After Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938, the Austrian Nationalliga was renamed Gauliga Ostmark and became part of the German football pyramid. Jewish clubs such as Hakoah Vienna were disbanded mid-season and all references to Austria in club names were removed. Austria Vienna briefly became SC Ostmark but, uniquely, regained their name in July 1938.The Austrian national team played a final “reconciliation match” against Germany in Vienna in April 1938, which Austria won 2-0, and was then dissolved. After this, Austrian players were reluctantly integrated into the German national side. The glory days of the Austrian Wunderteam were over.