Football diary: The stories that really matter

·Serendipity corner: Grimsby Town this week celebrated their biggest sponsorship deal, struck with the government favourite Jarvis. In the week the construction company made a bold leap into the education business (and it is a business), it sealed a three-year contract with the Mariners. Believed to be worth a six-figure sum, the agreement will mean a change in away strip colours (to Jarvis grey) and, with the kind of expertise that can only be found in the private sector, a performance-related payment clause. Government modernisers take note.

·A bad week for unfortunately named managers. In Portugal the headline read: "Sporting tire of Boloni" after the former Romanian national coach got the boot in Lisbon. Meanwhile, without a competitive win in a year, the Angolan federation had to deny reports that it had sacked its coach, Ismael Kurtz. However rumours of a summer training camp somewhere up the Congo remain afloat, as do tales of a horrific offside trap.

·Vladimir Smicer took over as captain of the Czech Republic during their midweek friendly against Turkey, an honour only slightly diminished by the fact that he had to pay for it. Smicer had agreed with his team-mates that he would get the armband when Karel Poborsky went off in a pre-arranged substitution on 55 minutes. Smicer told the Czech press he stumped up £220 for the privilege, roughly £11 a minute. Value-minded Liverpool supporters may wish there were a similar deal for pulling on a red shirt.

·Paul Robinson, in Leeds Leeds Leeds magazine, offering one of the more colourful transfer denials of recent years: "I've got no plans to move. I've just bought a new house in Yorkshire. I've got a bit of land and my dogs, two boxers, run around on it. My dogs love running around. I'm not going to put two boxers in a [London] apartment with no garden." That he wouldn't have to deny his precious dogs to join Manchester United is, of course, just coincidence.

·It's well known that most referees need glasses but the Norwegian official Per Arne Brataas has taken things to new heights by suffering from dyslexia too. Brataas told the newspaper Verdens Gang that he avoided carding players in Norwegian fourth division games "so then I avoided having to write the reports". A place on the FA's video advisory panel surely beckons.

·Donald Rumsfeld's victory tour didn't quite make it to Najaf, where a team of US servicemen lost 9-0 to the local Najaf Poets. Part of the problem may have been that the forces played in full combat gear. "We practise soccer all the time. The Marines practice fighting," said the referee, Furat Kashkool. "They need to practise more soccer." And that is the moral of this week's diary.