Search: 'UEFA'

The Atlantic islad has two thriving teams in Portugal's top flight but, as Jon Spurling explains, some want to wreck that by recreating the Faroe Islands, only with sunshine

On the face of it, football on Madeira, 500 miles south-west of Portugal, is enjoying a boom. In late September, Maritimo, the island’s only fully professional side, were joint top of the Portuguese league. Nacional, the island’s second team and not yet full time, were in mid-table. But if certain political groups get their way, the golden era may be brief.

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  Neil White on the pros and cons of UEFA's plans for football's future pitches

When an irate Gerry Collins launched into a vitriolic rant at a post-match press conference last week, it had nothing to do with his Partick Thistle side’s insipid performance in their defeat by Dunfermline. Collins’ ire was dir­ected exclusively at Dunfermline Athletic’s new artificial pitch – UEFA’s view of football’s future.

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In the dizzy heights of the Premier League when emotions run high things can get out of hand

Millions of neutrals will have watched the recent Manchester United ver­sus Arsenal match and greatly enjoyed its conclusion – even people who dislike the Premiership for what it represents will have been entertained. They may have been surprised, therefore, to learn that civilisation itself was undermined by what followed a late penalty miss. Sky, of course, were shock­ed by the hounding of Ruud van Nistelrooy and made sure we saw why, repeatedly, from every angle. Revulsion swept through the media – phone-ins were jammed, the tabloids brought out extra large point sizes for their head­lines and the letters pages were full of tearful letters from parents about how their poor children were shocked by what they saw (while they were outside, argu­ing over who was going to play Mar­tin Keown in their reconstruction).

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Paul Pomonis examines the bribery allegations that have tainted football in Greece

On September 7, Greece beat Armenia 1-0 in Yerevan in a Euro 2004 qualifier. A few hours later, Suren Baghdassarian, press officer with the Football Federation of Armenia, alleged that the Hellenic Football Federation (HFF) had unsuccessfully attemp­ted to buy the game. According to Baghdassarian, in the days leading up to the game, former Armenia international Yervard Sukassyan had repeatedly phoned the national man­ager and the chairman of the federation, offering $1 million (£600,000) on behalf of the HFF chairman Vassilis Gagatsis in order to secure victory. The Armenian officials had taped the incriminating phone calls and, prior to the match, notified UEFA’s match delegate, who decided to give the match the go-ahead and look at the case afterwards. Based on the evidence col­lected since, UEFA have appointed a disciplinary in­spector, Austrian Gerhard Kapl, who is ex­pected to report back ahead of the final series of qualifying matches on October 11.

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Monday 1 On transfer deadline day, Chelsea finally snap up Claude Makelele from Real Madrid for, ooh, £80 million or so. Everton fans might be pleased by the arrival of James McFadden from Motherwell, but possibly less excited by that of Kevin Kilbane and the return on loan of Franny Jeffers. Among other loan deals, Marcus Bent leaves impoverished Ipswich for Leicester and Portsmouth take Jason Roberts from West Brom.

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