Search: 'Fan culture'

Non-League football in the north-east was once a rich source of playing talent for the professional game, but many of its clubs are in crisis now. Harry Pearson reports

Shotton Colliery Recreation Ground on a damp Saturday in January. Shotton Comrades are taking on Ferryhill Athletic. Beyond the perimeter fence on one side of the pitch is a small airfield. Every fifteen minutes or so light planes take off to drop sky divers. During dull moments of play you can watch the parachutists spiralling slowly earthward.

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Patrick Harverson of the Financial Times explains why football clubs are suddenly eager to become listed on the Stock Exchange

Six years ago, Newcastle United tried to sell shares, but the club couldn’t give them away such was the lack of interest among fans and financial investors. In the next few months Newcastle will try it again. Only this time things will be a little bit different. The queue to buy shares in NUFC plc will stretch from St James’ Park, across the Tyne Bridge and down the M1 to London where pension funds, insurance companies and other blue-chip City institutions will be lining up around the block for a piece of the Toon pie.

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The odd detractor (they're always odd) occasionally accuses WSC of devoting too much space to articles about obscure countries such as Outer Mongolia. This one's for them. Charles Philpott takes up the story

No account of Mongolia would be complete without a reference to Ghengis Khan. There, it’s out of the way now. For, when talking Mongolian football, there will be no story of Mongol hordes emerging out of the East to take the football world by storm, no parallels to the exploits of the Great Khan.

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Mike Woitalla reviews the opening season of Major League Soccer and suggests that football followers in the US may have got what they've been hoping for

For roughly two-thirds of the money that Newcastle United spent on Alan Shearer, Sunil Gulati acquired enough players for an entire league – Major League Soccer. Gulati teaches economics at Columbia University – is there room in the class Mr Keegan? – but is better known as the deputy commissioner of MLS.

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Following Mark Bosnich's "Heil Hitler" salute, David Cohen offers an insight into his experience of the joys and perils of being a Jewish football fan

It isn’t often that a major Premier League controversy relates directly to me or those of my faith. Racism and football are nearly always in black and white, while Jewish players in England’s top flight can be named on the thumb of one hand. But ploughing through the acres of newsprint dedicated to Mark Bosnich’s Tottenham wind-up – a harmless bit of fun or a war crime of Adolf Eichmann proportions depending on which paper you read – I felt strangely detached from the proceedings.

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