Search: 'UEFA'

Bayern Munich will have a new coach next season. For now, everyone is happy. But, as Karsten Blaas reports, the club’s relations with Jürgen Klinsmann haven’t always been cordial

Bayern Munich are always big news in Germany. Thanks to Franz Beckenbauer’s and Oliver Kahn’s womanising, Mario Basler’s drinking and Stefan Effenberg’s obnoxiousness, the club did their best to earn the nickname FC Hollywood. But when they announced that Jürgen Klinsmann would be their new coach – a two-year contract starts in July – the public response verged on the lunatic, even by Bayern standards. Half-a-dozen TV stations rescheduled programmes in order to cover the press conference and the broadsheets commented in their politics sections. Even chancellor Angela Merkel stated how happy she was about the return of the prodigal son.

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Liverpool’s American white knights have become the focus of protests after less than a year, so fans including John Williams are dreaming of the day that 100,000 of them will buy out Hicks and Gillett

Sat, irritably, on the Kop at the recent home match against Sunderland, I hunched, as always, next to the man now charged with raising some £500 million for a Liverpool fans’ buyout from the current, unloved, American co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Rogan Taylor enjoys ambitious projects. Back in 1985, after Heysel, he formed the national Football Supporters Association to give fans a public voice that the press and the authorities might listen to, before later setting up a football MBA at the University of Liverpool. Today, he thinks this club are in even greater danger than back then, when the fans were labelled beasts and the English game seemed spent. “The biggest crisis in over 40 years,” he says. Since Bill Shankly first arrived, in fact, with Liverpool languishing in the old Second Division.

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Graham Dunbar reports on the formation of the European Club Association

Eight years after its creation, the G-14 is dead: long live the European Club Association. It was created at UEFA headquarters in January and hailed by its elected chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge of Bayern Munich, as nothing less than the “reunification of the football family”.

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Many people would struggle to place the home city of CFR Cluj on a map, but the club could be hosting Champions League matches next season. Andy Hockley reports on an unlikely stirring in Transylvania

As Romania’s league enjoys its two-month winter break, an unfamiliar name occupies top spot in the table. The club are 100 years old, but their recent rise has been nothing short of dramatic.

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Non-League crowd-pullers FC United played Curzon Ashton in front of empty stands in late December, after the game was moved so it could be shown live on the internet. Michael Whalley reports

First came the Manchester United boycott. Now the FC United fans who stayed away from Old Trafford as a result of the Malcolm Glazer takeover have boycotted their new team, too. On December 29, FC’s board and all but a handful of their supporters stayed away from their side’s 2-0 victory at Curzon Ashton in the Unibond League First Division North. The reason? A dispute over the league’s decision to move the kick-off time forward from 3pm to 12.45pm, so that the match could be shown live on the internet.

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