Search: ' La Liga'

Bohemians of Prague return to the top flight. Frantisek Bouc reports

In mid June, the Czech Republic’s football community had a few significant issues to deal with. National coach Karel Bruckner came under pressure after his team’s mediocre Euro 2008 form continued with a goalless draw in Wales; rumour had it that former German international Lothar Matthäus could soon take over. At the same time, the Czech Under-21 team was taking part in the European Championship in the Netherlands, where they didn’t get past the group stage. However, this was all overshadowed by the return to the top division, the Gambrinus Liga, of one of the country’s most popular clubs, Bohemians of Prague.

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A long-running corruption investigation seemed to be going nowhere fast, until some remarkable claims against Porto’s president were made by his ex-wife. Phil Town wonders where it will all end

Apito Dourado (Golden Whistle) is the code name for an ongoing investigation by the judicial police into corruption in Portuguese football. The investigation has its roots in the 2003-04 season, when widespread phone-tapping was conducted by the police, following up tip-offs from as yet anonymous sources. There has always been a vague notion of a “system” in the Portuguese game, with, depending on your allegiances, Benfica and FC Porto at the forefront of suspicions, but Apito Dourado is effectively skewering actual protagonists left, right and centre.

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Friday 1 Leeds’ administrators are to recount the votes taken at a creditors’ meeting, which appeared to narrowly favour Ken Bates’s proposed takeover. Nigel Worthington is to manage Northern Ireland until the end of their Euro 2008 qualifiers in November. England concede a last-minute equaliser in a 1‑1 draw with Brazil, John Terry having put them ahead in their return to Wembley. “The key thing was the amount of passion that the players showed,” says Steve McClaren, as desperate as ever.

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The league that produced the European champions in its final season. By Jonathan Wilson

The long-term significance
Given the political situation, 1990-91 is remarkable for having passed off so smoothly. The previous season had been overshadowed by the riot at the Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb between Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys and Red Star Belgrade’s Delije, hooligan firms that would end up serving at the front and who later saw that clash as the first battle of the Yugoslavian Civil War. However, although political violence flared across the region, crowd trouble remained relatively low-key.
It was, though, the last season of a truly pan-Yugoslav league. The Croatian clubs – Dinamo Zagreb, Hajduk Split, Osijek and Rijeka, as well as NK Zagreb, who would have been promoted – withdrew to join the league of the newly independent Croatia, while Olimpija Ljubljana, Slovenia’s only top-flight representatives, also withdrew. No sides were relegated, with OFK Belgrade (third), Sutjeska Niksic (fourth) and Pelister Bitola (sixth) joining second-placed Vardar Skopje in being promoted from the second division. The season also saw the continuation of the experiment whereby drawn games went to a penalty shootout, with only the winners taking a point, something that was widely seen as having helped Crvena Zvezda – Red Star – in Europe.

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In Argentina, football and politics were already linked before the banners appeared proclaiming “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”. Rodrigo Orihuela explains how the sport operated under the military regime

Twenty-five years after the Falklands War, Argentines still feel strongly about the islands and consider that they were victims on two fronts – first of the British armed forces, second of their country’s dictatorship. The most important political and social legacy of the war was that it brought down the bloodiest military government in Latin America – some 12,000 people are officially listed as having been murdered by the regime that ruled from 1976 to 1983 and thousands more are still “disappeared”.

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