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  An attempt to measure racism in the politically charged world of Israeli football appears to be back-firing, reports Shaul Adar

With Maccabi Haifa on their way to a third consecutive championship, the Israeli league isn’t the most exciting, bar daily news about Russian oligarchs pumping in money. But every Monday another Israeli football league is a source of drama and shocks. Every week, 50 observers from New Israel Fund, an über-liberal institution for promoting democratic values, go to the premier league grounds and file reports on racist chanting. All those chants are calculated by a complicated mathematical equation based on the severity of the events, their length and the number of fans taking part; they end up negative points published in a league table.

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After years of coughing up whatever it cost to watch Preston, Gavin Willacy has had enough. Or rather, too much, as ticket prices spiral beyond common sense

Last August Bank Holiday was a pivotal day for me as a football fan. For the first time, I decided against going to watch my team, Preston, solely because of the ticket price. We were away at Ipswich – a relatively local game for me, living in Hertford – and I was away on holiday when we won down the road at Watford on opening day. So surely I would go to Portman Road? Not with tickets at £25 a pop (plus an extra two quid on the day!), especially as it was live on Sky. Instead I watched it in a pub and celebrated our astonishing 4-0 win with friends at a barbecue.

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Update on clubs in crisis from Tom Davies

You can tell a club is in trouble if fans protest throughout a 5-1 home win, as Derby’s did during last month’s thrashing of Crewe at Pride Park. Supporter protests against a board of directors presiding over a debt thought to be more than £44 million and the inevitable depletion of playing resources that has entailed have escalated in recent weeks and many fear for the club’s existence, especially if they are relegated. Subsequent embarrassing defeats by Coventry and Colchester will scarcely have improved morale and led to the dismissal of manager Phil Brown late last month.

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While a site devoted to the football itself may be the best new discovery, Ian Plenderleith finds himself strangely drawn to the world of groundsmen by memories of a difficult career choice

It’s often been said that 90 per cent of the internet is a load of balls, but the “site of the month” award goes to a domain that has taken this to new and detailed extremes. Soccer Ball World is a football anorak’s long wet dream of history, stats and specifications centred around just one spherical object.

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As the World Cup approaches, the possibility of violence is a concern but so is the ability of the German police to tell the difference between a fan and a hooligan, writes Paul Joyce

On November 27, 53 Polish hooligans drove to a wood in Briesen in north-east Germany for a pre-World Cup fight with 45 hooligans drawn from the region’s Hell’s Angels and nightclub bouncer scene, one of whom had been involved in the assault on French policeman Daniel Nivel at the 1998 World Cup. Although German hooligans had previously been keeping a low profile at home, fears of a resurgence of organised violence had already surfaced last March, when more than 40 Germany followers were arrested after rioting during a friendly in Slovenia. 

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