Search: 'Paul Ince'

Futsal has become a professional game in some countries and improves the basic skills of players but England is still not interested, writes Jon McLeod

It is the game that produced Ronaldinho and Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet despite it having fostered some of the world’s finest talents with skill, ingenuity and tactical astuteness, England has neglected futsal. From its constricted origins on the streets of São Paulo and Montevideo in the 1930s, this five-a-side version of football has spread throughout Europe and the Middle East and across the rest of Asia. In 1989 FIFA confirmed it as the official small-sided form of the game and, in the internet age, players such as Brazil’s Falcão (aka Alessandro Rosa Vieira) are becoming YouTube regulars, rivalling the most flamboyant exponents of 11-a-side football.

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Gillingham's success in recent years has come at a cost and now the club are paying the price, writes Haydn Parry

In a BBC Radio Kent interview in March, Gillingham chairman Paul Scally said: “We’re all judged by results in football, unfortunately. If we could take away the football, then the club is actually doing very well.”

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São Caetano weren’t founded until 1989 yet rose rapidly to the pinnacle of the South American game, only to fall at the last hurdle and slip back as the richer giants reasserted themselves. Robert Shaw reports

Brazil’s most consistent club at the start of this decade were not one of the major names. Instead it was Associação Desportiva São Caetano, a club that rose from the third division of the São Paulo state league to upset the establishment before returning to near obscurity six years later.

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The words “Football League” must evoke painful memories for all concerned on a bleak afternoon in Cumbria, with the limelight just a fading memory for the hosts and the visitors struggling one year on, writes Harry Pearson

In the Borough Park clubhouse, a ­middle-aged woman in a yellow-and-black Boston United scarf leans across to a vast, elderly Pilgrims fan who is tucking into a polystyrene tray of pasty and chips like he hasn’t eaten since the end of rationing. “You been here before?” she asks. The man shakes his head, cheeks bulging with potatoes and pastry. The woman glances quickly from left to right. “Bit bleak, isn’t it?” she whispers. The big man grins sadly, nods and stuffs more food in his mouth.

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Having a famous dad can be good for your job prospects but sometimes a name is simply that. Caroline Bailey looks at the stuttering career of a stubborn footballer

When it comes to pushy parents, Kenny Dalglish may not be up there with Joan Crawford, but his son Paul’s privileged career in football has become something of a byword for nepotism. Despite not being able to get into the first XI at college, Dalglish Junior signed schoolboy forms for Blackburn while his father was the manager. He went on to serve his apprenticeship at Kenny’s old club Celtic, spent two barren years at Liverpool where Kenny had won three European Cups, and was then signed for Newcastle by – well, you can guess the rest.

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