Fener





Paok






Grasshoppers - Steaua Bucharest

Steaua

Trabzonspor-Liverpool

PAOK (Greece), first training session:

Apoel Nicosia (Cyprus) first traing session:

Very representative for the state our football is in is t the sittuantion at Feyenoord, where the club put ticket for the first training session. Some ultra elements didn’t comply, singing and lighting torches in front of the stadium:

VIOLENT Cardiff City fans brought a major London street to a standstill as they clashed with Chelsea supporters while bystanders shopped on a sunny afternoon, it was revealed yesterday.

Videos and photographs of a fight between the two sets of fans after the sides met in the FA Cup in February were revealed yesterday as police launched an appeal for information.
In angry scenes on the upmarket Kings Road in West London, more than 200 football fans taunted each other, threw missiles including bricks and clashed with each other and police on foot and on horseback.
On a police video recording that has been posted on YouTube, a London bus is seen being forced to stop as police officers with batons try to control the fans.

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Disgruntled Singapore football fans said they are planning a public demonstration Saturday against high subscription fees the country’s two television providers are charging for the World Cup starting June 11.

The rally, a rare event in the tightly controlled city-state, is set to be staged at Speaker’s Corner in Hong Lim Park, a venue for public protest, which was created in response to criticism of the government’s policies on free speech.
“We have booked the Speaker’s Corner for our group gathering on June 5,” the organizers said on the social networking website Facebook.
After Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel) and StarHub announced that viewers would be charged a minimum of 70.62 Singapore dollars (50.22 US dollars) to watch the games live, up to seven times the price for the 2006 tournament, fans of the game formed a group on Facebook calling for a boycott of the companies.
Currently, the group counts more than 27,200 members, according to its website.
On Friday, SingTel and Starhub justified their price policy, saying they were not profiteering from the World Cup.
“In fact, all we are hoping for is to break even,” they said in a joint statement run by the Straits Times newspaper.
For their boycott campaign, the organizers printed red cards saying “You are Off! SingTel, Starhub,” imitating the cards referees use for sending players off the pitch.
On their website, they called on football fans to join the “2010 World Cup Celebration” at Speaker’s Corner and “be part of the first red card wave in Singapore.”

“What are football clubs? Some see them as businesses, but aren’t businesses purely about profit? Clubs are about more than their private owners, or the players and coaches who come and go; they are the accumulated trove of memories, meanings and identities that generations of fans have bestowed upon their sporting glories and disasters. Without this a football club is just a balance sheet and some very meagre assets.”

He adds:

“Clubs may be owned by the powerful and quixotic, managed by the shrewd and the Machiavellian, but in the end the people who really know the club are the fans. In this series, we travelled to four different games to talk to supporters and to find out about the history, passion and fervour that underpin these fixtures”.

The series premieres as follows:

Episode one – The Milan Derby – Inter Milan v A.C. Milan.
Monday 7th June, 19:00 GMT*

David travelled to the citadel of Italian football on 14 January 2010, Milan, to follow the build-up to the Derby della Madonnina. It’s a fixture that grips both city and nation. Inter Milan – the Nerazzurri – play their city counterparts A.C Milan – the Rossoneri in the gigantic San Siro stadium, which the two clubs share. At this point in the season, and for the first time in years, both clubs had a chance of winning the championship.

For decades, Inter seemed to be the unlucky ones, in the shadow of A.C. Milan’s domestic and European glory. A.C. Milan is also a club whose recent glamorous fortunes have been intimately linked to those of Silvio Berlusconi. But since 2006 and the fall-out from the far reaching Calciopoli scandal, Inter have gone on to win successive championships on the back of a formidable transfer budget, whilst Milan’s power has begun to wane.

In the company of Calcio historian John Foot, David meets with fans and members of the football community and discovers that, in Milan, football is a public theatre of operatic intensity, shot through with neuroses and a touch of poetry. Yet, unlike so many other derbies characterised by intense rivalry and loathing, friends and even families support both sides, and walk alongside each other to the match.

Episode two – The Secret Policeman’s Football – Zamalek v El Ahly
Monday 14 June, 19:00 GMT

Often billed as one of the world’s most violent derbies, David finds a very different game of football and politics when El Ahly play their Cairo rivals Zamalek - the two oldest clubs in Egypt.

This game, which took place on 12 December 2009, is a clue as to the significance of football in the lives of millions across Cairo and the nation and is one of the few legitimate arenas in which politics can be cautiously expressed and pent-up emotions given a raucous escape.

The game takes place against the backdrop of the bitter fall out of Egypt’s failure to qualify for the World Cup, just days earlier. Now a kind of football fever has fallen upon Cairo, full of anger, frustration and paranoia. The ultra fanatics of both teams plan in secret and, come match night, the National Stadium is surrounded by worried police and the army. As David arrives to follow the build-up to the game he begins to doubt he’ll ever be allowed in.

Episode three – The King’s Men – Asante Kotoko v Accra Hearts of Oak
Monday 21 June, 19:00 GMT*

Asante Kotoko and Accra Hearts of Oak have been contesting ‘bragging rights’ for decades. The two teams are the traditional source of players for the national team, otherwise known as The Black Stars.

But Ghanaian domestic football is not well. Stadium disasters, corruption and governance have bitten into its soul, but even more damaging, as David discovers, is the massive talent drain of the best players to the money-rich leagues of Europe.

As a result, the games of the English Premiership, Serie A and La Liga attract huge and passionate crowds to bars and shacks across Accra and the nation, often at the expense of domestic football attendance. This domestic fixture is one of the few that still draws a large and boisterous crowd.

In the company of local football journalist Jerome Otchere, David Goldblatt hears from the founder of Circle O, the musical voice of Hearts of Oak, who is still traumatised by the tragedy of 2001, when 126 people lost their lives during a Hearts of Oak v Kotoko game.

Episode 4 – The Geordie Nation – Newcastle United v anyone
Monday 28 June, 19:00 GMT*

This episode starts on 11 May 2009, when Newcastle United are playing local rivals Middlesbrough. At this late stage in the season, both clubs were in deep trouble and fighting to avoid relegation. In the event, Newcastle, backed by an unbroken wall of noise, won the game. But the fans relief proves short-lived, as even temporary manager and Newcastle hero Alan Shearer’s legendary aura fails to save them from relegation to England’s second tier, the Championship.

Newcastle United’s recent woes form a tragicomic litany– scandal, sackings and mismanagement and now relegation –some of the club’s fans have even written their own play, You Couldn’t Make It Up, to chart Newcastle’s misfortunes.

The black and white hordes of the ‘Toon’ army have often been portrayed as blindly loyal in this one club city, but at this point many were extremely angry at the club’s relegation and resentful towards the club’s American owner Mike Ashley, who bought the club in 2007. David also speaks to former Newcastle United owner Sir John Hall, a key figure in the regeneration of the club in the 1980s, who reveals the impossible dream of The Geordie Nation.

By the time David returns to Newcastle United in April 2010 hope has returned. This solitary season in the lower league has bonded fans and club together, and now they face Ipswich, the result almost irrelevant, for Newcastle have already clinched both promotion and the Championship title. But, even in their hour of triumph, already fans are beginning to air their doubts and wonder at what the future might bring.

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