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Under political pressure, UEFA are looking into the murky rules surrounding club ownership and finance. But, as Steve Menary reports, some want to stop them

Over the next few months, UEFA is supposed to be reviewing how European football is run. The study of the game’s corporate and social governance was announced by the sports minister, Richard Caborn, on December 8, towards the end of the UK’s six-month presidency of the European Union. But the results of this review are far from certain and plenty are willing to debate its purpose.

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David Stubbs on how the AFC Wimbledon story has been brought to the stage

Written by Matthew Couper, a local government arts officer and sometime stand-up comedian, A Fans’ Club is a modest theatrical undertaking but a worthy addition to that invidious yet strangely resilient genre – the football musical. It tells the story of a group of four Wimbledon fans who look on in passive astonishment as their beloved club is snatched from them by the seemingly larger, inevitable powers of commercial interest and dumped in Milton Keynes, their wishes ignored “like a tramp’s coat”. In the second act, however, moved by the spirit of the club that still lingers and pull together to form AFC Wimbledon. Commentating on this heroic turnaround are two “footballing Gods”, Hun-Batz and Hun-Choen, one of the play’s better devices, the “monkey twins” taken from Mayan mythology, who add both levity and a sense of the wider world of events.

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Tuesday 1 “I think Arsenal are out of the title race,” says Sir Alex after a Cristiano Ronaldo double spurs Man Utd to a 4-2 Highbury win. Another vindictive encounter starts in the tunnel with Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira squaring up to each other; later Wayne Rooney breaks the UK all-comers record for swear words yelled in under a minute during a disagreement with referee Graham Poll and Mikaël Silvestre is sent off for butting Freddie Ljungberg. Fernando Morientes gets his first goal for fifth-placed Liverpool as they prevent Charlton moving ahead of them by winning 2-1 at The Valley. Middlesbrough are still without a league win in 2005 after a 2-1 defeat at Portsmouth. There’s a dramatic end to West Brom’s match against Palace, with the home side taking a 2-1 lead in injury time only for Aki Riihilahti to equalise; Iain Dowie’s side had played with ten men for 80 minutes following the dismissal of defender Gonzalo Sorondo. Fredi Kanouté is sent off at Bolton, after which Spurs concede two late goals to lose 3-1, their third defeat in a row. Motherwell reach the Scottish League Cup final for the first time in 50 years after a 3-2 extra-time win over Hearts.

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UEFA’s quotas for home-grown players could simply increase the trade in teenage players and lead to more switches in national allegiance, argues Michael Dunne

Where, ask those who condemn the record number of foreigners in British football, will the next generation of England players come from if young English talent is not given its head in the Premiership?

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A decade after their defeat in the Bosman case, UEFA are back with regulations they claim will promote home-grown players rather than restrict foreigners. Matthew Taylor outlines the rules and the clubs’ likely response

UEFA president Lennart Johansson clearly relishes a fight. His plans to try to restrict the number of foreign players included in squads for his club competitions from the 2006-07 season was always bound to provoke the wrath of the continent’s premier clubs. Lined up against him are most of the big hitters of the European game: the G-14 clubs and representatives of the more influential national leagues and federations. Behind them stand the financial backers, sponsors, corporate interests and media groups who have helped to make top-level European football such a lucrative business. Among the potential adversaries are those clubs who would have broken away from UEFA a few years ago had the governing body not agreed to expand the Champions League.

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