Unless something is done to improve grassroots facilities, we will never be able to improve standards of play, writes Gavin Willacy
I’m all for selling off playing fields. The majority of our pitches are good for nothing but walking a dog or building houses on. That suggestion may be considered heresy by callers to phone-ins and fellow feature-writers, but selling them off could be the answer to one of English football’s biggest barriers to progress.
Respect reaction
On March 18, the FA launched a new strategy entitled “Respect”, designed in part to address bad behaviour at all levels of football. Within 24 hours, Ashley Cole was given only a yellow card for a dangerous tackle in the Spurs v Chelsea match, a punishment strongly disputed by his team‑mates. It had scarcely been mentioned in the immediate aftermath of the game, but Cole’s disrespectful reaction to referee Mike Riley soon assumed prime importance. By the time of Grand Slam Sunday three days later, the new FA chairman Lord Triesman was making personal appeals to Alex Ferguson to “show some respect” towards referees.
Fidel Castro has resigned and his island republic is opening up more and more to the world – and that includes embracing football, formerly a failure in a sea of sporting success, writes Matt Norman
When Fidel Castro officially stepped down as president of Cuba on February 18, the debate over his legacy began instantly, with detractors and supporters in equal numbers queuing up to declare his half-century reign as one of either tyranny or triumph.
São Caetano weren’t founded until 1989 yet rose rapidly to the pinnacle of the South American game, only to fall at the last hurdle and slip back as the richer giants reasserted themselves. Robert Shaw reports
Brazil’s most consistent club at the start of this decade were not one of the major names. Instead it was Associação Desportiva São Caetano, a club that rose from the third division of the São Paulo state league to upset the establishment before returning to near obscurity six years later.
The US market is not exactly enthralled with the prospect of another foreign football circus passing through town as they see plenty of them already. Mike Woitalla reports from the land of opportunity
Forgive us if the prospect of English Premier League games in the United States didn’t get us all giddy. We’ve got so much soccer here already that a couple more games just wouldn’t be a very big deal. In 2007, the USA hosted more than 60 matches between foreign clubs. Include games that pitted visiting clubs against American teams and the figure passes 100. Besides the touring clubs, 40 national-team matches – not including the USA’s own 12 games – took place on our soil in 2007. And that’s not counting when Haiti, Fiji and China played against club teams.