An MTV series spotlights the lifestyles of football’s super-rich but, to Helen Duff's dismay, they just don’t know how to squander their wealth properly
Dream Team. Gary Lineker’s crisp adverts. Ron Atkinson’s cultured analysis. Television and sport may have engaged in mutual degradation in the past – but never on the jaw-dropping scale of MTV’s Footballers’ Cribs, a look at the home design choices of professional players. Crass, banal and ill-advised, it is consequently thoroughly wonderful.
Some people are grateful that football pauses briefly in the summer, but not Cameron Carter. Join him on his quest to find meaning to his life on balmy days
Even those among us who are not numerologists can confidently state that years ending in odd numbers are inauspicious. This is because their summers are deserts of non-football. It is barely a month since Liverpool brought last season to a shocking close and already the days, especially the weekends, are feeling pitilessly long. There are three alternatives for the football fan between late May and August in 2005: skirmish like a seagull with a bin liner for any scraps of football-related activity; find another sport to take football’s place temporarily; or – and this is the big one – try to find another form of human activity that can fill up the time.
Ben Lyttleton tells us how Iran forgot their troubles for one glorious night
The celebrations throughout Iran after they beat Bahrain 1-0 last month to become the second team to qualify for the World Cup, one hour after Japan, passed off peacefully in spite of the country’s security forces abandoning their duties and joining fans in the streets.
Being league runners-up and FA Cup winners doesn’t sound too bad, but, as Arsenal prepare for a last close season at Highbury, Jon Spurling reports on a growing sense of unease
After Arsenal remained unbeaten during the 2003-04 season, Arsène Wenger commented: “I enjoy a feeling of fulfilment when I feel the team has deserved its success.” Judging by his beatific grin at the end of the FA Cup final, undeserved success is a more than acceptable alternative. Dogged defending, a packed midfield, goalkeeping heroics, “lucky” and/or “boring” prefixes in tabloid reports, and the Millennium Stadium sound system belting out a tinny version of One Nil To The Arsenal; the “windfall final” was reminiscent of the club’s cup triumphs a decade ago. Short of John Jensen joining the midfield fray at some point in the second half, or Paul Merson indulging in a spot of mock lager swigging after Patrick Vieira dispatched his winning penalty, this was as close to a George Graham-style win as you could get. Yet only the most blinkered Arsenal fan would suggest that Wenger’s tactical genius (playing Bergkamp as a lone striker was never likely to bear fruit) was behind Arsenal’s unlikely victory. He got lucky.
Lies, death threats, mysterious disappearances and a Nigerian youngster at the centre of a transfer wrangle between two of England's biggest clubs. PJ Bakke explains
When Lyn’s Nigerian starlet John Obi Mikel signed for Manchester United a week after turning 18 in a deal worth up to £7 million, everything appeared rosy. The player posed delightedly in his new team’s shirt; Atle Brynestad, who bought the Oslo club for 10p six years ago, recouped some of the money he’s put into the club since; and United had snatched one of the world’s brightest talents from right under Chelsea’s nose. But within ten days the story moved from sport to the front pages with police chases, mysterious disappearances and accusations of death threats.