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Search: ' La Liga'

Stories

Where the sponsors hold sway

Paul Joyce reports on Austrian clubs selling their indentities

If your average attendance is only 800, it might seem unwise to hint to supporters that there are better ways of spending their free time. Yet this is what happened in March, when Austrian second-division side SC Schwanenstadt changed their name to SCS bet-at-home.com. It could have been worse. “It was important for us to maintain the club’s identity,” enthused Klaus Gruber, marketing manager of the online betting company behind the rebranding. “That’s why we kept their initials at the front.”

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Grant and Abramovich

Roman Abramovich and Avram Grant go back a long way, says Shaul Adar

José Mourinho would not have expected the Israel v Ireland World Cup qualifier of March 2005 to have a significant impact on his future. But that was the weekend when Israel’s coach, Avram Grant, was first offered a job by his FA’s guest of honour, Roman Abramovich. Israel had just achieved respectable 1-1 home draws with France and Ireland and an impressed Abramovich told Grant that he would buy whichever Israeli club the coach wanted to take charge of. Grant just smiled, apparently not believing that the Russian was making a serious offer.

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UEFA choice

Jon Spurling reports on Michel Platini's ambitious plans

“Football is a game before a product, a sport before a market, a show before a business,” said Michel Platini in January. The new UEFA chairman has since claimed that all his proposals – including his suggestion in August to cut the number of Champions League places allocated to Europe’s leading leagues from four to three and his aim that European finals be played on a Saturday afternoon with 75 per cent of allocated tickets going to the finalists’ supporters – are based on “sporting philosophy and not anything financial”. Others don’t share Platini’s altruistic vision.

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Gagged to order

Apart from pubs and the stands themselves, internet message boards are the best place to debate your club’s fortunes and praise or criticise in the company of fellow fans. But, as Ian Plenderleith reports, this freedom of expression is increasingly under threat as clubs use lawyers to clamp down on dissent

Many people compare the football message board to their local pub. You can meet your mates there to relax, say anything you like, and the next day no one will remember a word. There’s the odd idiot who gets out of hand and maybe a fight breaks out, but after a while everyone calms down. Sometimes it’s quiet because there’s no one around, so you leave again. And strangers are treated with suspicion until they show they didn’t just come in to cause trouble, but rather gain acceptance by expressing the sort of opinion that’s greeted with knowing nods (the online equivalent of getting your round in unprompted).

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Letters, WSC 248

Dear WSC
Who made the biggest blunder on the second weekend of the Premier League season? Rob Styles gave a dodgy penalty for Chelsea against Liverpool, but was this the worst example of a paid professional making a basic error that affected the outcome of a game? What about Jens Lehmann’s rubber wrists against Blackburn? Tony Warner at Fulham flapped at a daisy-cutter, while in the same game Clint Dempsey missed a gaping net from six yards out, a goal even Styles could have scored. Yet these players weren’t endlessly lambasted by the pundits and will not be forced (by their professional body at least) to sit out a game or two until they’ve learned their lesson. This strikes me as a double standard that fans and managers alike should be ashamed of. Either that or Carlos Tévez should be made to sit in the naughty chair at next week’s game for missing a simple far-post header in the derby game
Mark Lewsey, Glasgow

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