Search: ' Portsmouth'

Matthew Barker on how one player’s story has offered some respite amid the depressing Last Bet match-fixing scandal

Simone Farina looked a little lost at the Ballon d’Or presentation last month. But the 29-year-old defender, caught blinking under the bright lights of the Zürich Kongresshaus and nervously glancing over at Marco van Basten, sat in the same row, had as much a right to be there as any of the shortlisted superstars.

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Adam Bate considers why so few former goalkeepers have been managers in the Premier League

Joey Barton may have felt he was insulting Neil Warnock by likening him to the eponymous film hero Mike Bassett, but there is no identikit for the football manager. All sorts of folk have trodden the touchline in England, but only two goalkeepers have ever managed in the Premier League. Nearly two decades on from Mike Walker’s sacking at Everton, it is surely high time we asked the question: where are all the goalkeeper managers?

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The crises faced by Portsmouth and Darlington call into question the way in which of some our clubs are run, argues Tom Davies

Past failures of regulation are rebounding on perhaps the two most persistently crisis-plagued English clubs of the past decade, Portsmouth and Darlington. The legacies of years of debt, unsuitable ownership and mismanagement have pushed both closer to the brink than ever.

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Dear WSC
The article on the FA Cup’s longest tie (Draw to a close, WSC 298) reminded me of what I believe is still officially the longest single match between two English sides – the second leg of a Division Three cup tie between Stockport County and Doncaster Rovers on March 30, 1946. After extra time, the score stood at 2-2 – which was also the score following the first leg. Having checked with the local authorities, the referee let the game carry on until one team scored, the original Golden Goal. After 203 minutes and with darkness setting in, the match was finally brought to an end. The story goes that fans left the match to go home for their tea and returned later to carry on watching. The replay at Doncaster was won by the home team 4-0. This might not be quite as impressive as the longest football match ever, which I believe currently standards at 57 hours. This epic encounter between Leeds Badgers and Warwickshire Wolves in 2010 was played to raise money for charity.
Alan Bredee, Enfield

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League meetings between the two Hampshire clubs have been relatively rare but their derby matches are as keenly contested as any local rivalry in English football. James de Mellow reports

On April 29, 1939, as Portsmouth pulled off a surprise 4-1 FA Cup final win over Wolves at Wembley, only 4,000 Southampton fans showed up for a home league game on the same day, preferring to cheer on their neighbours while listening to the radio. When the trophy was brought back to the south coast, it was displayed for a short time at Southampton Guildhall and even paraded around The Dell for Saints fans to salute Pompey’s achievements. One wonders, then, what Hampshire’s pre-war football supporters would make of Operation Delphin, which the police deemed necessary to prevent trouble before and after the south-coast derby on December 18. As a condition of purchasing a ticket, all travelling Saints fans agreed to be bussed in a “bubble” under police escort between the two cities, while eight-foot-high barriers were erected north-east of Fratton Park in order to keep a minority of idiots from both sides coming into contact with each other.

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