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The Italian authorities have reacted hard to recent embarrassments, but are also groping their way towards a more positive ‘English solution’, writes Paul Virgo

The shower of flares that halted Internazionale’s Champions League derby with AC Milan triggered some tough talking from the Italian authorities. Police have been instructed to call off matches at the first sign of trouble, inside or outside the stadium. Likewise, the Italian federation (FIGC) has given referees instructions to suspend matches if fans hurl flares or other missiles. Turnstile checks have been beefed up to make it more difficult to smuggle flares or offensive banners into the grounds. Teams whose fans are responsible for trouble causing a match to be abandoned will automatically lose the game 3‑0. If the trouble involves both sets of fans, both teams lose 3‑0.

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Dave Jennings went to Bradford’s last match of the season in 1985 and lived to tell the tale, but 56 of his fellow supporters died in the fire that engulfed Valley Parade

On the morning of May 11, 1985, it felt great to be a Bradford City supporter. The club had been rattling around in the bottom two divisions of the Football League for 58 years, but at last City were moving on up. The Third Division championship was already ours, so the final game of the campaign was meaningless in competitive terms. But 11,076 turned out anyway for the home match against Lincoln. We Bradford fans wanted to celebrate and watch captain Peter Jackson collect the Division Three trophy.

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Simon Inglis, the acclaimed writer on football grounds, turns his attention in a new biography to the long-forgotten Scot who designed so much we took for granted

Every football writer ends up becoming a bore on at least one pet subject, and I’m no different. Indeed there have been times when I’ve embarrassed even myself by rattling on about Archibald Leitch, the Scottish engineer whose football ground designs dominated the landscape of British football for most of the 20th century. And now I have written a whole book on Archie, as part of a new English Heritage series called Played in Britain, which seeks to put the study of sporting heritage on the same footing as that of other areas of popular architecture (cinemas, housing, retail, industrial and so on). And quite right too.

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The death of 39 fans at the 1985 European Cup final was the culmination of an era when, as Mike Ticher recalls, English football appeared to be in terminal decline

It’s the timeworn right of each generation to complain that things are not what they used to be. In 1983, Geoffrey Pearson’s classic work Hooligan: A history of respectable fears showed how at any given point in the past 150 years public opinion held firmly that society’s current state of violence and mayhem contrasted with a peaceful “golden age”, consistently located about 20 years previously. Oddly, the very time he was writing has proved the exception to his rule. In football at least, no one in their right mind would want to risk a return to the mid-1980s.

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According to Gavin Willacy, Wembley isn't the FA's only major project not going to plan

Most of the Football Association’s many problems at present are dealt with on the back pages. But one major story has slipped through the net. The new Wembley has been beset by industrial action, financial difficulties and schedule set-backs, but these have been forgiven by everyone who catches a breath-taking glimpse of it taking shape.

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