Search: 'UEFA'

In preparation for Euro 2008, several stadiums are being remodelled and rebuilt. Unfortunately, tickets in these modern but small venues already seem scarce. Graham Dunbar looks towards next summer

Getting all passionate about sport – or just getting passionate at all – is quite an untypically Swiss thing to do. Congratulations then, Team Alinghi, on successfully defending the America’s Cup in July and reminding us that sport matters in an emotionally restrained nation that will co-host Euro 2008 with Austria. The Nautical Society of Geneva clubhouse – nominal home to Team Alinghi, despite the sailing taking place off Valencia – will never make anyone’s list of great sporting venues, but neither, too, will the Stade de Genève, one of four Swiss venues next summer.

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Racist incidents in games between Serbian and British sides have rightly led to condemnation – but not always of the right people, argues Jonathan Wilson. Some of the outrage is counter-productive, too

There is no subject more certain to set forth tidal waves of sanctimony than racism. Discussion has become impossible, largely because British football has been so successful in its campaign against racism that it now feels compelled to lecture the rest of the world on the subject. It isn’t helping.

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Ciudad de Murcia have been taken over and relocated in the manner of Wimbledon moving to Buckinghamshire – while their fans have been ignored, writes Phil Ball

When I was a kid, a mate nicked a bike that was propped up on a lamp-post. I asked him why and he replied: “It’s not tied up. It’s mad not to nick it.” It was a brutal sort of logic, but I shrugged and let him get on with it. I’d forgotten about the incident till this summer, when Carlos Marsá, a 57-year-old industrialist from Granada, bought the shares, footballing rights and contracts of Spanish second-division club Ciudad de Murcia, and changed them into his own Granada 74, thereby effecting an MK Dons-like take-over – or, more prosaically, nicking the bike. Needless to say, as with Wimbledon, various bodies, among them UEFA, have shrugged their shoulders and let him get on with it.

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Gordon Smith takes charge at the SFA, Neil Forsyth reports

When the SFA announced their choice for a new chief executive in June, few expected to hear a name that would cause a flicker of recognition, let alone debate and a degree of bewilderment among followers of the national game.

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Russia in 1992 and Spartak Moscow begin their era of dominance. By Saul Pope

The long-term significance
To a background of hyperinflation, widespread poverty and rocketing alcohol-related deaths, Russia held its first national championship for almost 80 years. That previous championship ended in controversy; Odessa were not awarded the 1913 title due to fielding too many foreigners. Now, with the country in chaos, football was hardly a priority – attendances were down almost 50 per cent on 1991. However, these were the first shaky steps towards creating what is now one of Europe’s richest leagues, the Russian Premier League, thanks largely to the vast amounts of money pumped in by those who got rich during the privatisation of former state industries, which started in 1992.

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