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Dynamo Kiev's Soviet Supreme League triumph in 1975 put the club on the way to being the most successful team in league history. Saul Pope reports

The long-term significance
Dynamo Kiev were midway through a run that would ultimately see them win more Soviet league titles than any other side. Spartak Moscow picked up six titles through the Fifties and Sixties but Dynamo accumulated eight through the Seventies and Eighties, leaving them with a total of 13 titles to Spartak’s 12. A large part of Dynamo’s success could be attributed to manager Valeriy Lobanovsky, a pioneer of football science who used physical and psychological testing to evaluate players’ potential and blended the total football of the era’s Dutch sides with tactical discipline. As well as winning the league in 1975, Lobanovsky’s Dynamo won the Cup-Winners Cup. They would repeat this feat in 1986 before Lobanovsky led the USSR to the Euro 88 finals and Dynamo to the Champions League semi-final in 1999. The English FA’s forthcoming National Football Centre is partly based on the training centre he built for his Dynamo side in the Seventies.

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The 1974 World Cup fixture between East and West Germany was a unique encounter during the Cold War era – but meetings were more frequent than the official history suggests. Paul Joyce looks back to the little-known Olympic qualifying competitions and reveals the political manoeuvring behind the remarkable Geisterspiele (ghost matches) of 1959

Most history books refer to East Germany’s 1-0 victory over West Germany at the 1974 World Cup as the only game between the two countries. Strictly speaking, however, it was already their sixth encounter. Before this, the Federal Republic and the GDR contested a series of pre-Olympic qualifiers with a Cold War intensity that made disputes about the composition of the 2012 British Olympic football team look like a vicarage tea-party.

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Saul Pope reports on Euro 2012 developments, and in some cases lack of development, in co-host nation Ukraine

Apparently there were tears of joy on the streets of Kiev when Ukraine was awarded the opportunity to joint host Euro 2012 two years ago. The surprise decision was seen as an opportunity for Ukraine to develop its crumbling infrastructure at the same time as boosting its standing within European football. However, UEFA’s recent warning that the country has until November 30 to prove that three of its cities are capable of hosting any matches suggests that the tears in the near future may be of a different type.

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Tim Springett looks at the latest edict from the World Anti-Doping Agency and its implications for football

If ever there was a topic that cried out for rational debate, it is the issue of drug use by sports people. Sadly, rationality has long since been buried under a tidal wave of self-righteousness. Even though football has far from the worst record of participants seeking to gain an illicit advantage through drugs, it seems constantly to be first in line for the bile of commentators and opinion-formers whenever the subject is raised. The usual mantra – that football’s procedures for drug testing lag way behind other sports – has been repeated so often it seems almost pointless to question it. To this can be added the well-known fact that every professional footballer is an overpaid prima donna.

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John Morrow examines a season in which football took a backseat to politics as Derry City were forced to resign from the league

 The long-term significance
The Northern Irish Troubles, which had broken out in earnest in 1969, cast a long shadow over football in the province as nationalist-supported side Derry City resigned from the league during the course of the season. Derry, whose Brandywell ground is located near the city’s Bogside area – the scene of fierce rioting in 1969 and Bloody Sunday in January 1972 – had been forced to play home games at Coleraine’s Showgrounds since September 1971 due to the fears of unionist-supported teams entering the area. Unable to sustain senior football, Derry City were put on the road to joining the League of Ireland in 1985 and remaining outside Northern Irish football to this day.

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