Search: 'Paul Ince'

Football and pop music used to be largely separate. David Stubbs has mixed feelings about their rapprochement

In manlier days of grit and ore, when footballers were hewn from the same quarry stone as the two up, two down terraced houses in which they lived their entire lives, football and rock’n’roll were considered entirely separate provinces. One was a world of dubbin, screw-in studs, short back and sides and thick-knit, hooped socks. The other was a world of floppy fringes, cappuccino froth, portable Dansette players and young men on motor scooters up to no good.

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For half a century, celebrities have risked making fools of themselves with no need for reality TV, by playing football. But, as John Harding explains, it’s all in a good cause

The lure of the football pitch for theatre folk has always been strong. Ever since professional football became a mass working-class attraction, variety artists have craved some of the allure attached to the game. Before the First World War, comedian George Robey, “The Prime Minister of Mirth”, organised charity fund-­raising matches involving top football stars and music-hall favourites, which drew large crowds. After the war, the tradition continued in intermittent form with teams representing actors, the cinema trade and pantomime artists, dance bands and the pioneering women’s team, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies.

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Loftus Road has become a must-see destination for A-list celebs and reclusive billionaires, apparently – but this mysterious turn of events is yet to make much difference to facilities for fans or to the quality of the team, even if QPR are strong enough to see off promoted rivals, writes Taylor Parkes

When I was six, too young to have a team but old enough to understand, someone approached me in the playground and asked who I supported. In the late Seventies, any answer other than “Liverpool” was going to invite derision, but for once in my life I was determined to avoid the easy option. “Queens Park Rangers,” I replied, randomly, and was almost blown over by forced, hysterical laughter. “Hahahahaha – they’re rubbish!” This may have been true (they went down that year), but it struck me as somewhat ungracious coming from a six-year-old glory hunter. Ten minutes later, a stranger approached me and said: “I heard you support Queens Park Rangers.” I played along: “Yes, I do.” “Hahahahaha,” they said. “Hahahahahaha!”

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Olympiakos’s Champions League qualifier against Anorthosis did not go to plan for the Greeks. Paul Pomonis reports on Cypriot joy

The elimination of Olympiakos in the third qualifying round of the Champions League at the hands of Cypriot champions Anorthosis Famagusta was greeted in Greece with the traditional mixture of disbelief and outrage reserved for national sporting disasters: “Grief and unending sorrow”, “Crime and punishment” screamed two Olympiakos-friendly Athens sport papers. Although Anorthosis were grudgingly recognised as worthy winners, they were offered scant credit for their qualification, which was instead blamed on Olympiakos’s “bad luck” and “fatal mistakes”. As Anorthosis veteran Stefanos Lyssandrou noted: “It is as if Olympiakos were alone on the pitch.” Even at the hour of Cypriot football’s biggest triumph, the Greeks chose to completely ignore their “brethren”.

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On October 15, England face a Belarus team whose coach used to be an informer for East Germany’s secret police. Paul Joyce reports

“Football trainers shouldn’t mix work and politics,” Belarus coach Bernd Stange stated in March. “That is dangerous.” His critics would argue that Stange has often used this tenet as an excuse to pursue his career while closing his eyes to the political and human consequences of his actions. A media-friendly, yet curiously elusive, figure, Stange was known in the former East Germany as “der Lügenbaron” – a modern-day Baron Münchhausen whose tall tales about his exploits needed to be taken with copious pinches of salt.

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