Is women's football is due to make a big breakthrough on to the UK sport scene? Two writers have conflicting opinions
Yes ~
“Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys.” So said Oscar Wilde. If the women’s game continues to develop at the pace witnessed during the past decade, this observation could soon gain common currency.
More turmoil has engulfed the biggest club in the country, who carelessly keep losing coaches. Phil Town reports on the shambolic mess that is Benfica
Consider it, if you like, a neat and timely metaphor. After the recent Benfica v Sporting derby (2-2), they began to dismantle Benfica’s grand old Luz stadium. Parts of the stand were pulled down and along with the seats and terracing went the massive eagle that kept guard over the entrance to the stadium, as well as the bronze statue of Eusébio, also at the entrance.
With the acrimonious industrial dispute over TV money settled, John Harding sifts through the wreckage and concludes the PFA have retained important principles
On the surface this year’s PFA dispute seemed an eerie rerun of the TV cash row of a decade ago, when a similarly rock solid vote gave Gordon Taylor a mandate to secure a deal with the newly formed Premier League. However, this time around it’s been a darker, murkier struggle. In 1991, Taylor was football’s White Knight, who had never put a foot wrong, was the saviour of small clubs, a doughty opponent of Thatcher and so on. There were no “dirty tricks” and no club chairmen firing off vitriolic broadsides.
Australia missed out on the World Cup finals yet again. Matthew Hall watched them succumb to mild paranoia – and a better team – in Montevideo
Three strikes and you’re out, and a triple lash from Uruguay in Montevideo was enough to send Australia crashing out of the World Cup without qualifying for the finals for the seventh time in succession. The first and last time the Socceroos made it to the finals was in 1974. On the past five occasions Australia have been eliminated in sudden death play-offs, against Scotland, Israel, Argentina, Iran and now Uruguay. Conspiracy theories, administrative blunders, plain bad luck and the comeback of Diego Maradona have all contributed to past failures.
David Harrison looks back on the life of Bertie Mee – a truly unique achiever
On February 18, 1939, a young man, barely out of his teens, pulled on Mansfield Town’s No 11 shirt and ran on to the Vicarage Road pitch, to make his third League appearance. Fifty years on, he was again observing that same expanse of muddy turf, only by now operating as the home club’s first-ever paid director.