Sasha Goryunov looks at how attempts to improve youth development don't always have the desired effect
What attracted Zenit St Petersburg, runaway leaders of the Russian league, to Aleksandr Bukharov? It wasn’t his knee – which has a history of cruciate damage. It may have been his 16 goals in 23 games in 2009 for reigning champions Rubin. But those goals would have been insufficient without something else – Bukharov’s Russian passport.
Just four months after facing West Germany in the World Cup final, a fiery defender arrived in Wiltshire. Graham Davidson remembers
Before the Premier League era, what few foreigners there were in England often arrived after a World Cup. Nico Claesen came to Spurs in 1986, while Ricky Villa and Ossie Ardiles more famously arrived on the back of Argentina’s 1978 triumph. Italia 90 was the last tournament before overseas players became commonplace in the English game, and saw the aforementioned Ardiles, by then managing Swindon Town of the old Division Two, pull off a notable transfer coup in the shape of countryman Néstor Lorenzo.
Neil Andrews tracks the development of the bench and can't help but feel shortchanged by its most recent incarnation
Change is meant to be a good thing but it can go hideously wrong. Take the humble substitutes' bench. Once the bastion of the 12th man and his manager, it is now an overcrowded, characterless affair packed full of reserves in club tracksuits who look like they're serving double detention after being caught smoking behind the bike sheds.
The former European champions spent heavily throughout the 1990s and ultimately suffered after floating on the stock market. A similar financial fate is unlikely to befall the cash-rich visitors. Uli Hesse reports
Somehow I knew they were English the moment I spotted them. They were selling so-called friendship scarves – half yellow for hosts Borussia Dortmund, half sky-blue for visitors Manchester City – like so many other people have done along this paved passageway that leads from the station to the stadium. And they looked like any of the other guys here who hope to make a few euros when Dortmund have a home game, even if it’s a meaningless pre-season friendly, by selling canned beer or fan gear. One was holding a scarf aloft, the other stood with a huge nondescript sports bag slung over his shoulder. Still, I would have bet a fiver they were English.
Paul Joyce reports on the growth of match-fixing at every level across Europe, and how the authorities are working to combat it
In November 2009, news broke of the biggest match-fixing scandal in European football history. With the support of UEFA, investigators working for the public prosecutors’ office in the German city of Bochum identified 200 matches in nine European countries where manipulation was believed to have taken place. The Bochum commission, codenamed Flankengott, had intercepted phone calls, SMS messages and emails from 200 suspects throughout Europe.