No need to abandon hope just yet if you missed out in the World Cup ticket lottery, as long as you’re rich enough or gullible enough to buy your passport to Germany online. Ian Plenderleith reports
While millions of fans have faced disappointment in their applications to FIFA for World Cup tickets, there are some organisations that seem to be swimming in excess. If you’ve money to light cigars with, you might just make it to Germany after all.
Cup fever is often a passing affliction, but Colchester will move to a new ground thanks to the passion created by the Chelsea game, as Graham Dunbar explains
For Colchester United these are the best of times being played at the worst of places. Since the demise of Cambridge United a year ago introduced the Conference to the Abbey Stadium’s old-school charms, the unofficial mantle of “League’s worst ground” has passed on to Layer Road – and that is just the home-town opinion. (Which also points out that Layer Road’s immaculate pitch is a perfect stage for Champions League football while the Stamford Bridge surface would suit most League One sides.)
A Sheffield derby matches two sides with eyes on other divisions, one team playing in hope of a reawakening and the other living in fear of a continued slumber. Pete Green reports
They populate the middle divisions of English professional football. They draw four or five times more supporters – who invariably believe themselves to be the longest- and hardest-suffering of any in the world – than most of the teams who beat them. They average one managerial sacking per year. Their snores roar through the midlands and reverberate round the hills of Sheffield. They are the sleeping giants.
The joy felt in Togo and Angola at World Cup qualification risks turning to fear of humiliation after a poor continental championship. Ghana also have little to cheer about and, as Chris Taylor reports, only Ivory Coast of Africa’s five teams in Germany did really well in Egypt
It was an exciting African Nations Cup tournament and when the champions were crowned in Cairo’s International Stadium they approached their debut in the forthcoming World Cup on German soil with high hopes. Little did they realise that disaster awaited them.
The top two teams in the Deloitte Football Money League are Real Madrid and Manchester Utd. But as Roger Titford finds out, the income they rely on differs greatly
We live in an era when there are prizes for everything: player of the season, calendar of the year, the best pie, the most improved website and many more self-regarding baubles. Combine this with the obsession to put a value on anything in football – press red now for a cost-benefit analysis on that through ball – and we have (hopefully tongue in cheek but probably not) the Deloitte Football Money League (DFML).