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The long-running referee-bribery scandal is still a matter for the courts, but the football authorities are not allowing the legal niceties to get in the way and the casualties are mounting. Phil Town reports

While the so-called Apito Dourado (“Golden whistle”) bribery case continues to trundle through the criminal courts four years after the events, the Portuguese League have taken some decisive action. In what has come to be known as the Apito Final (“Final whistle”), various clubs, club presidents and match officials have been found guilty of dirty deeds and dealt a range of penalties, including fines, suspensions, point-docking and, in one high-profile instance, relegation.

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The home team have suffered in semis, the visitors lost at the last step in Europe and their title challenge has gone awry. One more disappointment is coming to someone in the SPL's Thursday night climax, in front of Dianne Millen

The romance of the cup. Sometimes a welcome distraction from poor league form, sometimes merely a chance for plucky minnows to be patronised, the source of memories we either can’t stop talking about or can’t bear to repeat. In Scotland, where the league is a binary battle, the cup competitions assume greater importance – and while tonight’s game is the league climax, the cups are what has truly defined the ­season for both teams.

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Zenit St Petersburg may be suddenly popular in one half of Glasgow, but the manner of their success means they have been losing fans in Russia. Saul Pope explains

Not many people outside Russia know it, but the country has two capitals. Moscow, the official capital, is the centre of business, politics and power; its people are seen elsewhere as being arrogant and pushy. St Petersburg, the “Northern capital”, is the country’s centre for culture and the arts; its people are considered to be polite and intelligent, although Muscovites see them as provincial. This dichotomy has largely been true of post-Communist Russian football: Zenit St Petersburg have played a stylish and attacking game, and have become popular among fans outside Moscow, but have always been outshone by the capital’s big guns. Until now, that is.

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FC Vaduz have become unwelcome guests in the Swiss top flight, writes Paul Joyce

The 35,365 citizens of Liechtenstein, the principality of only 62 square miles wedged between Switzerland and Austria, barely raised an eyebrow in March 2007 when Swiss troops on exercise mistakenly wandered into their country. An invasion in the other direction, however, is currently proving more controversial.

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The complaints of the traditional media that the internet has lower standards is turning out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, Ian Plenderleith discovers, as major organisations sully their brands

It’s well documented that the traditional print media were suspicious of this whole internet thing for years. Despite the worry that sub-standard but low-cost online journalism was going to take away all their readers, they were slow to respond to the ink-free new world, as though by competing they would taint themselves with product deemed to be a mediocre shadow of the revered printed word.

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