Football managers get fresh pair of legs with extranet

NEWS A global extranet is set to give football clubs unprecedented access to information on players, according to Dave Richards, chairman of the English Premier League. InterClubNet.com launched this week, and gives club presidents, managers and senior coaches a private communications system to stay in contact, and exchange information on up to 20,000 players. Richards said: "This system will give managers the ability to look all over the world for players." Each club that signs up and pays the £2,000 per month subscription will be provided with a Web-enabled Toshiba touch-screen Portégé notebook PC. Dr Fabio Koff, executive president of the Union of Brazilian Football Clubs, said: "At first, many club presidents were scared of technology but with training they will find this a beneficial tool." Martin Schmidt, security consultant at realTech, the German IT consultancy behind InterClubNet.com, said the system runs on Windows NT but would not disclose which firewalls are used. "We are using the best, the market leader to ensure maximum security for this project," he said.