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Five Quick New Year Wishes

Friday, 28 December 07, 04:34 AM

Obviously, in an ideal world I'd say "knickers" to football and go for the alpaca (see left), but this isn't really an option and, besides, this place remains a football blog rather than an alpaca blog (although I'm open to suggestion on this subject as well). Anyway, I'm still a little feverish, so here are a handful of hopes for 2008.

1. That the BBC and ITV take the European Championships as seriously as they should do, even though England aren't there. The big television companies should welcome the opportunity to get away from the jingoistic nonsense that has blighted every major international football tournament since at least 1996. They should grasp the nettle and do something that journalists should pride themselves in doing - telling you things that you didn't already know. Obviously it will be much easier for them to go on and on about how many of the players of view are from the the Premier League and "how much poorer" the competition will be for England not being there, but hope springs eternal.

2. Somebody, please, other than Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool to win a domestic trophy. I am fully resigned to the fact that it is now asking too much for anyone other than the aforementioned foursome to win the Premier League or, indeed, take the top four places in the Premier League table, but I don't think that it's asking too much for somebody else to win the FA Cup or the League Cup. West Ham United bottled it in the FA Cup two years ago, and the jury is still out on whether Spurs are good enough to beat Arsenal's academy team (this is how far we've come).

3. Milan to get knocked out of the Champions League at the earliest opportunity. Everybody knows that Maldini is too old, that Ronaldo is too fat and that there are too many anonymous players in the current Milan team. It's a damning indictment on the current age that a team so average, below half-way in Serie A, have become a trophy winning machine, with just enough genuinely great players (such as Kaka - and even he manages to annoy with me with his seemingly constant exhortations to Jesus) to be able to keep grinding out the major trophies. Over the last two or three years I have come to the opinion that European football ain't all it's cracked up to be, and Milan are living proof of that. If we can get rid of them early on, it will be a sign that there's life in the cadaver yet.

4. Leave Fabio Capello to get on with the job of managing the England football team. Look, I remain steadfast in my belief that the England football team is in a slow, terminal decline but, in taking on Fabio Capello, the FA have at least given themselves a degree of a chance of winning a major trophy. They have got a coach that is of the calibre of the coaches that appear on peoples wish lists - the likes of Mourinho or Wenger. So, this message is for the English press (and I know that it will be ignored), leave him alone, and let him get on with his job.

5. I know that this might be pushing the boat out a little too far, but can we get rid of the two-footed studs up tackles that seem to be happening in every single match at the moment. Look, I know that at the current rate football will have completely converted into competitive pinball by approximately the year 2020, but can professional players stop trying to commit ABH on each other, please? Oh, and while I'm about it, a rule which says that only the captain can speak to the referee or anyone on the opposition team would be nice, as well.

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The Christmas Rush

Saturday, 22 December 07, 06:10 AM

The last few days have been eerily quiet. The week before Christmas is always like the calm before the storm - the League Cup quarter-finals like the first big, inky spots of rain before all hell breaks loose and the storm that is the Christmas schedule starts. In case you're unaware of what I'm talking about (and there are some of you that might not), Christmas is the time of year that football in Britain goes a bit insane. Between today and January 1st (that's just ten days), our footballers will play four matches. One today, one on Boxing Day, one next weekend and one on New Year's Day. Somewhere around one-tenth of the season's league fixtures will be played and, in ten days time, we will all emerge, bleary-eyed and hungover, and everything might just look a bit clearer than it does now.

When foreign players started coming into the British game in the mid-1990s, there were some complaints. An Italian footballer, say, would no more be expected to play on Boxing Day than he would be expected to go water-skiing. On much of the continent, the players are starting to wind down for their Christmas break. The stories of players complaining were probably over-stated (and there are as many British players that complain it as there are foreign players that complain about it), but you do find yourself thinking, "Well, you know, if this is all a little bit too much like hard work for your £20,000 a week, there are other career options available". Similarly, you will get the occasional manager who complains about the poor little dears being over-worked (Alex Ferguson is usually pretty good for this sort of thing), to which you find yourself thinking, "Well, Strawberry Nose, it shouldn't be thatdifficult - after all, you have got a staff of sixty-odd players". There is much to look forward to over the next ten days, not least of which is the Arsenal-Spurs derby, which kicks off the whole thing at lunchtime.

At this festive time of year, we should probably spare a thought for Lawrie Sanchez, who was sacked as Fulham's manager yesterday. Actually, he might have quit. The rumours are somewhat conflicting, but the effect is largely the same. Before you start feel too sorry for him, though, it's worth remembering the cautionary tale of Derek Dooley. Dooley was a Sheffield Wednesday legend. He scored sixty-two goals in sixty-one matches for them but, in 1953, he broke his leg during a match against Cardiff City. This was pretty unusual, even in the 1950s, but gangrene set in and Dooley had to have the leg amputated. So here, then, is a man that has literally given a limb for this football club. It seems right that such a servant should be rewarded with a job for life at Hillsborough, and by 1971 he had risen far enough up the ladder to be appointed the club manager. In the early 1970s, Sheffield Wednesday were a club in free-fall. How much of this was down to Dooley I'm not sure. As a man that had given a leg for his club, though, he probably didn't deserve his fate, which was to be sacked by Wednesday on Christmas Eve in 1973. Pleasingly, the story has a happy ending. Dooley swapped sides and joined Sheffield United in their commercial department. What a magnificent poke in the eye it was for Sheffield Wednesday that he rose up through the ranks, becoming managing director and, eventually, the chairman that took The Blades into the Premier League in 2006. He has since stepped down, but stays on as vice-president in his retirement.

On the off-chance that I don't get back on here over the next couple of days or so, I'll take the opportunity now to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

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Here We Go Again

Thursday, 20 December 07, 03:28 AM

Deja vu is a strange feeling, isn't it? You might be forgiven a double dose of it this week, as the League Cup reached the quarter-final stage. Still, the four matches brought about considerably more than twice the entertainment that "Super Sunday" did last weekend, even though we're not really supposed to care about it very much. Everton had already dumped West Ham United out of the competition, but this week's three ties brought up three tempestuous matches which can only lead the casual observer to believe that, once out on the pitch and playing, every match still matters to the modern professional footballer.

On Tuesday night, Tottenham Hotspur put in one of their best performances of the season to end Manchester City's unbeaten home record with a 2-0 win at the City of Manchester Stadium. Jermaine Defoe had given Spurs an early lead, but Spurs were reduced to ten men when Didier Zokora was harshly sent off (Steed Malbranque, for the record, did deserve to go for a considerably worse tackle a few minutes later. With Defoe withdrawn after the sending off, Spurs tried to soak up everything that City threw at them, but they were still reliant on a newly resurgent Paul Robinson, who made one absolutely stunning save from Darius Vassell. Spurs tried to nick a second on the break, and achieved this with eight minutes to play when Steed Malbranque broke away and scored a second goal.

Meanwhile, Arsenal's kids were given a night off the homework to play out a similarly (though somewhat less surprisingly) bad tempered 3-2 win at Blackburn. They seemed to have the game all sewn up at 2-0, but managed to get themselves pegged back to 2-2 thanks to the very seasonally named Roque Santa Claus (ho ho ho, indeed). Denilson got himself sent off, and it looked as if they might be heading out of the competition, but a late goal in extra time saw them through. In tonight's Battle Of Half Of The Giants Mixed With Some Fringe Players And A Couple From The Reserves (as I presume Sky billed it), Chelsea beat Liverpool 2-0 with a massively fluke-tastic goal from Frank Lampard and a second from Andriy Shevchenko being enough, and Peter Crouch getting himself sent off for an uncharacteristically nasty tackle.

The draw for the semi-finals was made this evening too, and Arsenal will play Spurs, while Chelsea play Everton. Will the Arsenal kids be good enough to beat Spurs over two legs for a second year in a row? Well, there's a question. If Juande Ramos has turned Spurs around in the way they he appears to have done (six wins and just one defeat in his first ten games), they just might. If not, prepare for a battle of attrition between Arsenal and Chelsea (who will surely beat Everton over two legs) in the final next year. Manchester United's players, meanwhile, were using their time off "wisely" by having a massive piss-up in Manchester which has ended with one of their reserve players, one Johnny Evans, being arrested and bailed on suspicion of raping a 26 year-old woman. Is this what the clubs mean when they go on and on about the "need" for a mid-season break?

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Baker and Kelly Offline

Thursday, 20 December 07, 03:27 AM

Now seems like as appropriate moment as any to do this, so I might as well do it now. As most of you are probably aware, the Baker & Kelly podcasts of the last few weeks have come to a shuddering halt with this announcement on their website. I do have an opinion on this (perhaps unsurprisingly), and I'll be putting up a link to that later on, although I'm not posting it on here because it's not strictly football-related. In the meanwhile, I'll put this up, so that you can access all the vintage Baker & Kelly that you need. These are the filenames for the folder that all of the MP3s of their shows are in (there are about five still to be uploaded - I'll get onto that in the new year). You can't click on these (it's just a screen-grab), but it you type:

http://www.twohundredpercent.co.uk/bk/

And then type the last bit on the end of it - so that, for example, the top one reads:

http://www.twohundredpercent.co.uk/bk/1998-03-28-1130.mp3

And, hey presto! More Baker & Kelly than you can shake a stick at.

Edit: Okay, my thoughts on the subject can be seen here, should you be interested.

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There May Not Be Trouble Ahead

Thursday, 20 December 07, 03:25 AM

Oh, to be fly on the wall when Fabio Capello meets the England squad for the first time, if only to see the look on Michael Owen's face. This is, at least, a man that has been there, seen it, done it and almost certainly won it and, in that respect if nothing else, it throws into sharp focus what an amazingly bad appointment Steve McClaren was. It's worth remembering that the people that appointed him are still there, grafting away in the background. Did it really take getting knocked out of the European Championships at the qualifying stages to beat some sense into these people?

First, then, the criticism. Capello may well be no fan of the ego of the modern player, so will this cause major problems in the England dressing room? There's a good chance that it will. However, if he's on a reported £4m a year, he can at least look the players square in the eye and say "I am at least as good at my job as you are at yours", and if David Beckham was hounded out of Madrid by a Real president hell bent on providing a scapegoat for their lack of success over the last couple of years, Capello was the man big enough to realise the mistake and bring him back for one last Indian summer.

You could also make a cogent argument for saying that Capello's greatest triumph of all, the extraordinary Milan side that made Barcelona look like a Sunday League team in the 1994 European Cup final, was a long time ago, and that his record in Europe since then has been mixed. However you have to counter that argument by saying, well, what a team that Milan team was, and it was a team that was at least packed with as much ego as the current England team is.

On the plus side, he is utterly ruthless. There is no question that he will not be interested in the press prying into his private life, and media attacks on him will be like water off a duck's back. It certainly seems to me that England need a coach with a sense of detachment from the position, who isn't going to bow to public or media pressure. Could you, for a single second, imagine Capello having put Scott Carson in goal for the Croatia match? Also, there is the fear factor. Whereas McClaren, somewhat pathetically, always seemed to want the players to be his friends (you don't need me to tell you how, well, weird it looked when he was caught in post-match interviews referring to Steven Gerrard as "Stevie G"), Capello is almost pathological in his desire to bring results and silverware. This is a man that has squared up to Paolo Di Canio. He is utterly fearless, yet never gets blinded by anger.

He's got a year off first, of course. A chance to run his finger over the slim pickings at his disposal and impose his will on a crest-fallen squad. At least you know that, with Capello, it's going to be interesting, and we will know for certain in two years time whether the problems within the current England set up were relating to the coaching staff all along, or whether there are more serious and long-term problems within English football that need to be invested in.

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And The World Champions Are... Milan

Thursday, 20 December 07, 03:22 AM

Perhaps surprisingly, the FIFA Club World Cup left the best until last, with two magnificent matches to mark the end of the 2007 competition. In the first match, for third place, Urawa Red Diamonds came from a goal down to lead Etoile Sportive De Sahel 2-1, before a horrific goalkeeping error pegged them back to a penalty shoot-out, which the Japanese side won on penalties. It's probably fair to say that the experiment of having a side from the home nation in the tournament has been a success. Urawa, in spite of a late season collapse in the J-League, have been far from outplayed in any of their performances in this competition and thoroughly deserve their third place finish. Etoile have been the surprise package of the tournament. Even their win in the CAF Champions League was a major surprise, so their performance in getting to the play-off match and only losing on penalties in what was effectively an away match.

After this match, the two pre-tournament favourites had a lot to live up to in the final. As it turned out, this was a step too far for Boca, and Milan thoroughly deserved their win. Inzaghi gave Italian side an early, but uncharacteristically sloppy defending allowed Palacio to level the scores up a couple of minutes later. Five minutes into the second half, Alessandro Nesta gave Milan the lead again with an outstanding volley from twelve yards out. Ten minutes later a run down the left-hand side by Kaka ended in him putting the ball under the Boca goalkeeper Caranta, and it looked as if this would kill the game dead, but midway through the second half Kaladze was sent off, giving Boca a glimmer of hope. Two minutes later, Inzaghi made it four and this time is really was all over. Even a late own goal from Ambrosini wasn't much of a dent (though there was still time for Ledesma to get sent off for Boca, too), and Milan are the world champions, now.

The European giants will continue to not care, of course, until the format of the competition is changed to be more representative of world football. Few will take anyone's claims of being the world champions seriously when all they have done is won two matches for the honour. As I said in my earlier post on the subject, FIFA should jettison the Confederations Cup and give this competition the make-over that it deserves and needs.

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Television Stand

Monday, 17 December 07, 10:36 AM

Sometimes, you just have to make a stand. I've said on here before that the formation of FC United of Manchester was about more than the issue of the Glazer takeover at Old Trafford. It was a movement which gathered it momentum from a more general disillusionment with the direction that modern football was taking. Whether it was sponsorship, ownership or moving kick-off times to accommodate TV companies, they were sick of it. With the formation of their own club, they were back in control of their own destiny. Or so they thought. FC United have spent much of this season in a battle against the heady mixture of commercialism and petty bureaucracy at bottom end of the football food chain.

Upon promotion into the Northern Premier League at the end of last season, it took about a month for their problems to start. The league insisted that they would have to wear a sponsor's logo on their shirt sleeves. It is written into the FC United club constitution that no sponsors names are allowed on their shirts. A tense stand-off ensued, until an agreement was reached by which United players would wear armbands with the "Unibond" logo on them for matches. This was just the beginning.

You might think that there is no televised football at this end of the game, but the Northern Premier League runs a reasonably successful web site which broadcasts matches live, and on December 29th they had scheduled the Division One North match between leaders Curzon Ashton and FC United, and announced that the kick-off time would be brought forward to 12.00 to accommodate this. Both United and Curzon Ashton objected to this, but the league over-ruled them and the match will now take place at lunchtime rather than at the normal scheduled time of 3.00. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this didn't go down too well in Manchester. The FC United board issued this statement, requesting that their supporters boycott the match. This is a significant decision. FC United take between 1,000 and 2,000 supporters to away matches in a league in which the average crowd is about 300 people. If United's supporters do boycott the match (and it seems highly likely that they will), it could cost Curzon Ashton anything up to £20,000 in lost income.

There is no question in my mind that the club has taken the right decision. They founded their club on certain principles, and should stick to them. It is a shame that Curzon Ashton should lose out on their biggest financial event of the season, but if they are looking for someone to blame, they should be fixing their eyes firmly on the Northern Premier League rather than FC United. United's travelling support don't owe anybody anything, and this is their protest at a league which is aping bigger leagues in the worst way possible. How many people, exactly, do watch the live Northern Premier League matches on this streaming broadband site? Are their interests more important than the supporters of the clubs in the match being played? In a more general sense, at this level of the game, what is the reason for the existence of the league in the first place? There is no floating interest in this league (with the possible exception of cranky loners like me), so surely the whole point of the Northern Premier League is to act specifically in the best interests of its clubs and their supporters, shouldn't it?

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Bosphoric Acid

Thursday, 13 December 07, 05:54 PM

Well, here's a cautionary tale, should Umbro ever take it upon themselves to follow through the increasing amounts of red on England shirts to its logical conclusion. A Turkish lawyer is planning on suing Internazionale for wearing a shirt with a red cross on the front of it. It seems pretty straightforward to me that the man is either desperately seeking publicity or is mad. Let it go, man! The Crusades were 900 years ago! Still, on a relatively slow news day, it gives the likes of me something to talk about.

Elsewhere, if you actually did want to see something that could be deemed as offensive, you could do a lot worse than check out Watford manager Adrian Boothroyd's comments over the apparently imminent deportation of Alhassan Bangura back to Sierra Leone. The young striker was The Hornet's Young Player Of The Year last season and, at nineteen years old, had (or, with a bit of luck, may still have) a bright future ahead of him before the Immigration Service stepped in. I can only say that Mr Boothroyd may wish to dwell upon the fact that it is precisely this sort of thing:

"This country, great as it once was, seems to allow anybody in to send benefits wherever they fancy and we have one young man here who pays his taxes, has a fiancee and a newborn son and somebody somewhere thinks it's a good decision to send him back to Sierra Leone. It's ridiculous."

That is the reason behind Britain's absurdly cruel laws on immigration. I wish Bangura all the luck in the world with his application, but at least the system can't be accused of "political correctness gone mad". This is a case of "Daily Mail politics seen through to its logical conclusion".

This week's FA Cup Second Round replays, meanwhile, threw up a couple of interesting results in the week. It's all over for Horsham, though the Ryman League Premier Division side did take the lead twice before losing 6-2 to Swansea City, The Swans, who lead League One, are at home against Conference South side Havant & Waterlooville in the Third Round. Luton Town, who recently plummeted to the bottom of the League One table after going into administration, might just have been handed a lifeline to secure their short-term future. They beat Nottingham Forest 1-0 at Kenilworth Road on Tuesday night, and are now at home to Liverpool in a Third Round that will be televised live. The money that this match will bring in should help to ensure that they survive at least until the end of the season. Two years ago, you may remember, Luton and Liverpool played out one of the most memorable FA Cup matches of recent times when Liverpool came from 3-0 down to beat Luton 5-3 in the Third Round. It's probably asking too much to expect such excitement again. Finally, congratulations to Chasetown, of the (deep breath) British Gas Business League Division One Midlands, who beat Port Vale 1-0 in their replay to set up a Third Round tie against Cardiff City.

Last but not least, the FIFA Club World Cup has its two finalists - Milan beat Urawa Red Diamonds 1-0 today, with Kaka setting up the only goal of the match for Clarence Seedorf, of all people. Milan play Boca Juniors on Sunday, with Urawa Red Diamonds playing Etoile Sportive Du Sahel in the Bronze Medal match just before them. Here are some brief highlights.

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The Steamroller Is In Town

Wednesday, 12 December 07, 03:44 PM

They might not be the most famous club in the world - that dubious honour probably lies with Real Madrid, Barcelona or Manchester United - but they are one of the most successful club sides in the history of the game. They are a football juggernaut, with a hint of controversy about them and a record both at home and in Europe and at home that is second to none. Now, for the first time, they have touched down in Japan for the FIFA Club World Cup. Can Milan become the world champions? I'll come on to that in a minute, but first of all, a quick history lesson.

The one curio about Milan that every schoolboy knows is the one about their name. Founded by an Englishman, they chose to keep the English spelling of their name, rather than changing it to the Italian spelling of "Milano". In spite of this, the club' name is pronounced differently in Italian as "Mee-lan", rather than simply knocking the 'o' off the end of "Milano", which would leave it pronounced the same as it is in English. Traditionally they are the working class Milan team, with Internazionale (who, as every schoolboy knows, should always just be known as "Inter" - there's no such club as "Inter Milan" in Italian) drawing their support from the city's more affluent areas, though this distinction has become more blurred in modern times.

On the pitch, they've won seventeen Serie A titles and seven European Cups, but the club have been tainted by the stench of corruption as well. In 1980, Milan and Lazio were found guilty of match-fixing in the "Totonero" scandal, which saw over fifty people receiving bans from the game, the most famous of which, Paolo Rossi, had his three year ban commuted by a year and then went on to score six goals in the 1982 World Cup. In 2006, they were found guilty of involvement in the Serie A match-fixing scandal which saw big clubs selecting favourable referees for matches. Initially docked fifteen points and banned from Europe for a year, they had this commuted to an eight point deduction and were allowed into Europe for the 2006-07 season. Making a complete mockery of their involvement, they went on to win the competition.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was more controversy in their run to last year's European Cup final. They won through their group stage relatively comfortably, but were taken to extra-time in the Round Of Sixteen by Celtic, scoring an extra-time goal to set up a quarter-final against Bayern Munich. They looked done for after a mediocre performance in getting a 2-2 draw at home in the first leg, but the Germans froze in the return leg at the Allianz Arena, and Milan won 2-0 to set up a semi-final against Manchester United. Starting as underdogs, they lost 3-2 in the first leg at Old Trafford, but strolled to a Kaka-inspired 3-0 win in return leg to set up a final against Liverpool in Athens, and sparing us all from a Manchester United vs Liverpool at the same time. Two goals from Filippo Inzaghi gave them a 2-1 win against Liverpool.

This season has been a disaster so far for Milan. They won an easy Champions League group with ease, but they are currently sitting in tenth place in Serie A, their lowest position for years, and are without a home win in the league all season. There have been persistent rumours about Ronaldo's fitness and their failings on the pitch have been magnified by Inter having won the last two Serie A titles and being five points clear again this season. It's not an overstatement to say that winning the FIFA Club World Cup would be papering over the cracks of what has been a poor season for them so far.

After my hagiography about them last night, Boca Juniors made a dog's dinner of beating Etoile Sportive De Sahel. You can see brief highlights here.

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Six Great Football Competitions

Wednesday, 12 December 07, 03:41 PM

So, I was sitting at home last night watching the Champions League match between OM and Liverpool, and the thought finally came to me. Who cares about this? Seriously. Who gives a damn about it? The Champions League is now so debased, so much of a mis-match that Liverpool, the fourth placed team in England (by fairly common assent) , can stroll through the group phases, winning matches as if they are pre-season friendlies. Never mind the fact that they put in two of the worst performances I've ever seen in this competition (proving at a stroke why the big clubs like this mini-group format so much - it removes so much of the element of chance), OM were so wretched last night that one got the feeling that even ITV, having spent a good half an hour hyping the match up as a "do or die night for heroes", were slightly embabrrassed at how easy it was for them yet again.

One wonders how long, in a global community with multi-channel digital access, how long UEFA, the big clubs and the televisions companies will be able to continue to pass off this charade as "premium entertainment". It's not football as most of us understand it. It's not a competition. This year's group stage has been a drawn out series of grindingly tedious Harlem Globetrotters exhibition matches. One could be forgiven that the "surprise" results have occurred have been deliberately placed to startle the viewing audience into waking up. They might as well have done, for all the difference that they've made to who has gone through. Sky Sports are so desperate that they're trying to hype up tonight's Sevilla-Arsenal match as being "The Battle For Top Place In The Group". Lord, give me strength. In view of the fact that, as in the Premier League, there is no competition in the Champions League any more, here are six genuinely great football competitions.

1. Copa Libertadores: Vast, sprawling and mad, La Copa Libertadores is, of course, the South American equivalent of the Champions League, and it has everything that you'd want the Champions League to have. You'd expect Brazil and Argentina to have dominated it, but it's worth pointing out that eleven different countries have provided winners to it. Boca have won it four times in the last seven years but other recent winners have included Olimpia of Paraguay, Once Caldas of Colombia and Colo Colo of Chile. It starts in January and runs until June, and promises to be as great as ever this year.

2. The Championship: Forget about the Premier League. If you want a tight, competitive league in which anyone can beat anybody else and in which more than half of the teams in the division are likely to be in with at least the whiff of a chance of getting promoted, The Championship is the only place to look. The myth that there is a gap between it and the bottom of the Premier League is slowly debunked (it's Derby's stupid fault if they choose not to spend any of the money that they get from promotion and spend the wholse of the next twelve months as national laughing stocks), with a number of Premier League clubs having been relegated and not finding it as easy as they thought they would. Just ask Sheffield United about that. All this and, at the end of the season, it hosts its own cup final when the play-off final finishes off the domestic season.

3. The Isthmian League: Somehow, it's easier to laugh at football leagues when you call them by their sponsors' names, so we'll eschew the word "Ryman" in favour of the league's official name. The Isthmian League was a gateway to the Conference until 2004 but, since the restructuring of non-league football and the introduction of the Conference North and Conference South, it has slipped oneplace down the pecking order. It is, therefore, perhaps surprising that the 2007/08 season finds it in rude health. The three divisions (Premier Division, Division One North and Division One South) are all highly competitive, crowds are up and it is jam-packed with clubs that were once big in non-league circles and are fighting their way back such as Chelmsford City and Dartford, as well as those that have be re-born (AFC Wimbledon, Maidstone United, AFC Hornchurch and Enfield Town), and grand old names from the game's amateur past such as Dulwich Hamlet, Tooting & Mitcham United and Hendon.

4. La Coupe De France: The French equivalent has one feature that the FA Cup would do well to adopt. No seeding. Everyone is drawn in together and, with a bit of luck, clubs from the nether regions of French football can enjoy a run to the latter stages of the competition. The final, played at the Stade de France, is an annual sell-out of 80,000 people - unlike the messy, distended end to the season that we have in England, it acts as a fitting end-piece to their domestic season.

5. The Bundesliga: The Bundesliga is the most accessbile top division football in Europe. Not only do the German authorities have a refreshingly progressive attitude to safe standing (most German clubs that play in Europe have terracing for their league matches which they then convert to seating for European matches), but ticket prices show up the Premier League as the rip-off that it is. The recent World Cup updated many of Germany's older stadia, and the crowds are as big as anywhere else in Europe. Also, Germany is the only other country in Europe with anything like the strength in depth that English football has - once famous names such as Borussia Monchengladbach, Carl Jeiss Jena, 1FC Kaiserslautern, 1FC Koln, FC St Pauli and 1860 Munchen currently grace the second division of the Bundesliga.

6. The World Cup: Forget all the hype that the press tries to force down your throat. The World Cup is where the real international action is.

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