Fancy a game anyone? Andrew Hockley tells the tale of one of the most bizarre international fixtures you'll ever encounter
We’ve all seen it happen. A match is organised, there is confusion among the participants as to whether it will actually take place, no one is quite sure when it kicks off and finally the visiting team show up late without enough players to make up a team.
Have Roman's billions bought Chelsea millions of fans? It depends what you mean by "fan", as a sceptical Adam Powley explains while calculatng which are our best-supported clubs
Of all the many eyebrow-raising comments Chelsea’s chief executive Peter Kenyon has made in his eventful career as a football mover and shaker, one of his more surprising claims barely caused a ripple. Last spring, when welcoming Chelsea’s new sponsorship deal with Samsung, Kenyon proclaimed: “In the last 12 months, our domestic fan base has increased by 300 per cent to 2.9 million.”
Paul Gascoigne becoming manager of Kettring sounds like an April Fools joke or a publicity stunt, but, as Toby Skinner reports, the man behind the appointment means business
A month into Paul Gascoigne’s first spell as a manager, things are looking rosy at non-League Kettering Town. The team have been solid since Gazza took charge and have lost only once in the Conference North. The FA Cup defeat to Stevenage saw this century’s highest attendance at Rockingham Road – almost 4,500, compared to the usual 800 or so – and was followed by the slightly over-awed players receiving new boots and the team getting new balls.
Why would anyone spend £48 to watch a foregone conclusion? The champions could guarantee a win, but that seems to have hit their chances of a full house Barney Ronay was sufficiently intrigued to go along
Chelsea fans are an unusual breed. But then, Chelsea is an unusual place. A house here will cost you upwards of £2 million. As for renting – unless you’re considering where to station the consulate building for your oil-rich Middle Eastern state – probably best to forget about it. In spite of which Chelsea FC remain wedged in between some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Consider the Chelsea fan in these circumstances. If you actually live anywhere near the place you’re either a) extremely wealthy; or b) someone forced to spend their whole life with their nose pressed up against the über-consumption, the impossible lifestyle, of your extremely wealthy neighbours. Or you could be someone who lives nowhere near the place but wants to support the most successful team. Either way this is a club, a place and a brand name that carries serious economic weight for ten million class-conscious Londoners. Shouting out the name “Chelsea” every Saturday – that’s got to do something unusual to you. Particularly when suddenly you’re winning everything in sight. And there is, definitely, something about Chelsea fans.
The comprehensive corporate makeover of Austria Salzburg has brought in big money and big promises but has alienated supporters, as Paul Joyce reports
The Austrian Bundesliga has always been highly commercialised. Club names can be altered at the behest of new investors – hence FC Superfund in Pasching, or SCU Seidl Software of Untersiebenbrunn. With players plastered from head to arse in sponsors’ logos like motor-racing drivers, it’s fitting that Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz followed his acquisition of a Formula 1 team with that of SV Austria Salzburg in April.