Search: ' Spain'

Sepp Blatter can try all he like, according to Ben Lyttleton, the FIFA World Player of the Year award is still a farce

Ronaldinho’s success in becoming FIFA’s World Player of the Year was sealed the day before the announcement, when FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Thierry Henry deserved to win the award. Blatter was pre-empting claims that he and his cronies work behind the scenes to give the prize to his chosen player. It’s a clever wheeze: Blatter publicly backs Henry and then – shock horror! – that rascal Ronaldinho pips him to the crown. Sepp then spends the rest of the night trying to look surprised.

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Monday 1 How long do you go on waiting for results?” asks Wolves chairman Rick Hayward after sacking Dave Jones with the club 19th in the Championship. Bradford’s Dean Windass has the second yellow card shown to him during a 4-0 defeat at Luton rescinded – he had protested at the referee allegedly taunting him about the score.

Tuesday 2 “There is no need to get dramatic because we are still unbeaten in Europe,” says Arsène as the Gunners are held 1-1 at home by Panathinaikos. Pascal Cygan, now firmly established as the new Frank Sinclair, contributes an own goal for the visitors’ equaliser after the Greeks miss a penalty. Chelsea are through to the Champions League knockout stages, though, after a 1-0 win at CSKA Moscow who also squander a spot-kick. Celtic can still avoid elimination after beating Donetsk 1-0. In the Championship, managerless Wolves are only three points above the relegation zone after a 3-1 defeat at Sunderland and West Ham lose to Cardiff for the first time since 1952, 4-1 at Ninian Park. The top two, Wigan and Ipswich, both win, the latter setting a club record by scoring in their 29th consecutive game, a 5-1 victory over Sheffield United.

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Before the Old Firm sealed up the Scottish league for good, there was time for Aberdeen to take home the title as David Ogilvie recalls

The long-term significance
The end of an era. Aberdeen were the last side to wrest the title away from the Old Firm, but Graeme Souness’s momentous arrival at Ibrox was not far away and Alex Ferguson stayed just another season and a bit at Pittodrie before being tempted to Old Trafford. Twenty years ago, Aberdeen, Dundee United and Hearts were all serious title contenders, but those days seem a lifetime away. Hearts mounted a decent challenge in 1997-98 but the Old Firm have not been split since 1994-95 when Motherwell and Hibs finished ahead of a sorry Celtic side but behind runaway champions Rangers.

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Milan Mandaric has taken Pompey to a crossroads – and while the club head in one direction, Harry Redknapp chooses another after this straggly defeat. David Stubbs reports

The first time I saw Portsmouth play was in the first game I ever attended – September 1971 at Hull City’s Boothferry Park, a post-holiday birthday treat en route back home from a drizzly week at the Golden Sands Chalet Park in Withernsea. Hull City won 3-1, I vividly recall, except that they didn’t – a check on Soccerbase has confirmed that my lifelong belief to that effect is erroneous. In fact, it was Pompey who won by the same score. Still, what has stuck is the allure of what was doubtless a dismal occasion for the reg­ulars. The combined stench of drifting cigarette smoke and fried onions acts like one of Proust’s cakes on me even now. I remember the bloke two rows down shouting “You Portsmouth pigs!” – the height of terrace in­vective to me. Mostly it was the floodlights that im­- ­pressed me: tall, imposing and HG Wellsian, they were like giant cyber-sentries from another world.

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Anti-racism initiatives in football should be applauded, but it's only scratching the surface

The press lounge at a Premiership ground one evening a few years ago. Journalists gathered for a midweek game are looking at a TV screen that is replaying goals from the previous weekend. Dwight Yorke scores against a team supported by one of those watching, who walks up to the screen and says loudly, in mock indignation: “Yorke, you black twat!” In the wake of last month’s friendly in Mad­rid, the journalist in question was one of many who set about suggesting various forms of action that might be taken against Spain for the Bernabéu crowd’s racial abuse of black England players. It is fair to assume, then, that he has long since seen the error of his ways.

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