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If you’ve ever been enchanted or mystified by foreign chants, then Ian Plenderleith has found your dream site. Learn Polish raps and Russian ragtime numbers, but steer clear of PSG and Sampdoria 

While football and music may attract the same kind of slightly sad, trivia-driven fan, these two cultural staples have always seemed ill at ease when they’ve overlapped. Yet the website Soccerclips.net , which has gathered more than 1,000 football songs from around the world, proves that while many attempts to fuse the two cultural staples have hopelessly failed, there are a ton of surprising gems that would probably make up a fat and eclectically pleasurable double compilation CD to stick on the car stereo for away trips.

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No goals, no away fans, only one proper team – fears of violence made the recent match between PSG and Marseille remarkable, as Neil McCarthy reports 

For their recent away match against Paris Saint-Germain, Olympique de Marseille travelled without supporters and fielded a B-team made up of reserves and youth-team players. The boring 0-0 draw was described as a winning hand for OM in a game of poker between the two clubs that has lasted for the past 15 years – they earned a point from PSG and spoilt a match broadcast on the TV station of PSG’s owners, Canal Plus. However, the media and the French League have played down the fact that the game was probably boycotted by OM simply because their fans are sick of risking their lives to go to the fixture, the league going so far as to dock both teams their point.

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It says a lot about Germany that they managed to reach the 2002 World Cup final in the middle of a prolonged slump but, as Paul Joyce explains, the expectations for this summer’s hosts and poor recent results leave their long-distance coach under pressure

After a 4-1 mauling by Italy in February left Germany without a victory over a top-ranked nation since defeating England at Wembley in October 2000, CDU politician Norbert Barthle demanded that manager Jürgen Klinsmann be hauled before the national sports committee “to explain what his concept is and how Germany can win the World Cup”. With a mere three per cent of the populace believing that a side ranked three places below Iran could now win the tournament, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel herself felt obliged to give the under-fire Klinsmann the dreaded vote of confidence: she was convinced that he and his team were “on the right path”.

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Eighteen years after the last tournament in Germany was hit by hooliganism, the hope is that if it happens again it won’t involve the English. Mark Perryman reports

Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Thomas is not a happy policeman. Recently appointed as the officer in overall charge of policing England fans, in March he held his first press briefing in this role. Thomas rattles off the statistics he had provided the media with: “Five English arrests at England’s last nine games, just one at a match involving England at Euro 2004.” But the reporters weren’t interested. Instead they ran stories focusing on the disorder in Marseille at France 98, Charleroi at Euro 2000, respectively of eight and six years’ vintage, to preface their speculation for more of the same in Germany. 

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Steve Menary sees that teams on the continent could learn a great deal from the systems of fans' trusts we now have in the UK

The fans’ trust movement has so far been just a British phenomenon, but may not be so for long, if an investigation by the European Union into how football is run concludes that the continent can learn from the UK model. 

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