Search: ' Club World Cup'

Justin McCurry on Japan’s continuing love affair with English football, despite the Premier League shifting its focus to other Asian markets

When Harry Redknapp brought Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi to Portsmouth for £1.8 million in 2001, detractors spied a case of commercial considerations taking precedence over footballing ability. Sure enough, the Japanese goalkeeper departed under a cloud less than two years later after a series of hapless performances that saw him lose his place to the 42-year-old Dave Beasant.

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Cornwall’s flagship team have risen quickly through the football pyramid. James Taylor reports on the challenges Truro City now face

Cornwall has never had a Football League team but this season sees Truro City playing in Blue Square South, just two steps below League Two. Since chairman and local property magnate Kevin Heaney started investing in 2004, the club have won five promotions in six seasons, collecting an FA Vase at Wembley along the way and the nickname of “the Chelsea of non-League”.

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Dear WSC
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the article on footballing statues (Striking a pose, WSC 294) it did miss out one rather infamous example – the Ted Bates horror show of a few years back. This short-lived “tribute” to the former Saints player, manager, director and president was astonishingly inept, with legs roughly half the length they should have been. To add to the indignity, more than once a resemblance to dignity-phobic Portsmouth owner/asset-stripper Milan Mandaric was pointed out. The overall effect was of a top-heavy, inebriated and besuited dwarf waving at passers-by. Not really the ideal summing up a lifetime’s service to a club.
Keith Wright, Cheltenham

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Al Needham takes great delight in London’s footballing failure

Sometimes it comes early in the spring, with the unfurling of fresh leaves. Sometimes it comes as late as the very cusp of summer, while the musk of the first barbecues still hangs in the air. Every year you doubt that it will come at all, and every year, without fail, it does. It’s called Nottingham 2 London 0 Day, and it happens the day after the last London club has inevitably slunk out of the Champions League.

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While the other World Cup winners celebrated the competition’s first 50 years, England stayed at home, writes Neil Andrews

The Mundialito tournament – or Little World Cup – that kicked off in December 1980 was one of those rare occasions when FIFA managed to get everything right. Designed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first ever World Cup, all six previous winners of the trophy were invited to Uruguay, the first hosts in 1930, to contest the title of Champion of Champions. All seven games were to be played at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo and the organisers were determined to set a celebratory tone. However, the English FA seemed to misunderstand this wave of nostalgia and declined to take part, just like they did first time around.

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