Search: ' World Cup 2006'

Arsenal fans worried that they hadn’t heard of Champions League rivals Thun shouldn’t be embarrassed. Paul Joyce explains the rise of the tiny Swiss side, with players whose annual salaries are less than many Premiership stars get in a week

Having hosted West Germany’s World Cup final victory over Hungary in 1954, the recently rebuilt Stade de Suisse Wankdorf witnessed its second “Miracle of Bern” on August 23. Nine years after gaining promotion from the semi-professional third division and a mere three years after arriving in the top flight, FC Thun 1898 became only the third Swiss side to reach the Champions League, by completing a 4-0 aggregate victory over Swedish side Malmö.

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Forget about dodgy bounces at Kenilworth Road, plastic is back and, if it can get past a bit of red tape, could be the answer to football’s problems. As Steve Menary explains, they’re even complaining about the quality of the grass in Amsterdam

This was supposed to be the year of the artificial turf revolution, so where is it? Not that awful plastic stuff that left players with terrible burns, but a hi-tech mixture of man-made fibre and real grass has been allowed in the Champions League, UEFA Cup and Intertoto Cup for the first time this season.X

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After another incident-packed transfer window, is there any shred of club loyalty left?

If Chelsea were going to make Lyon an offer for Michael Essien they couldn’t refuse, you would think they could have hurried up about it a bit. Far too much newsprint was expended on a depressingly inevitable saga. Lyon’s point of view – that if they were going to lose their best player to a team with a bottomless pit of cash then they would take every rouble they could get – was understandable. Essien, too, cannot be blamed for wanting more money than he could dream of

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Ian Plenderleith takes a mischevious delight in a site dedicated to ugly players, assesses the mixed credentials of players seeking to blag themselves a club on another, and savours a Gaillic nostalgia trip

Ugly Footballers is puerile and pointless. The perfect football website, in fact, and my favourite to feature this month. Taking the tired old concept of footballers’ haircuts a few steps further, the site shows and shames the worst of the game’s gurners, including current and past domestic and international stars, referees and players’ wives too.

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The Homeless World Cup, held this year in the streets of Edinburgh, plays a valuable social role for its participants, as Dianne Millen reports

“Scotland To Face Italy in Semi-finals!” Not the most plausible of footballing headlines, you might think. But Scotland’s national team of homeless players did indeed reach the last four of the recent 3rd Homeless World Cup although they ultimately failed to overcome the eventual tournament winners.

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