1 Lupe Fiasco becomes the music director of US Soccer

It being the United States, they don't have pre-World Cup friendlies, they have the "Send-off Series", with Google+ Hangouts with players, public training sessions, invitations to the public to share messages of support via social media, an intriguing event called "Men in Blazers at the Town Hall", and – lest we forget – three games, against Azerbaijan, Turkey and Nigeria. Naturally, that needs a music director. And who better than Chicago MC Lupe Fiasco, who "will be creating Spotify playlists, in collaboration with his DJ group the SNDCLSH, and handle in-game music programming during the Send-off Series". Because, as everyone who's ever been to a football match knows, the best part of the experience is the music that gets played over the PA at half-time, the crowd sitting in rapt silence (though there's a fighting chance Lupe might buck the trend and play neither Tina Turner's The Best nor the Fratellis' Chelsea Dagger). But what else will he do? "Fiasco will appear in Times Square, in New York, during Fan Appreciation Day on 30 May, and he will hold a music set in Chicago at the US Soccer Fan fest prior to the USA’s match against Ghana on 16 June." But for all this work, what does the poor man get out of it for himself? How selfless must he be? "US Soccer is working to promote Fiasco’s new single, Mission, during the Send-off Series." Ah, as you were.

2 The England Players' Playlist Album

Truly, the 2014 World Cup is shaping up to be the grimmest collision of music and football yet. While the US has at least hired an MC, England's effort is to invite 18 players to pick their favourite "upbeat chart hits and dance anthems" for a compilation album. We know Joe Hart picked Sonnentanz by Klangkarussel, and Phil Jones went for Duke Dumont's I Got U. Even better, MTV will be broadcasting a special show on 1 June "in which they exclusively reveal the rest of the players' picks". Well, thank God for that. It's a magnificently inclusive exercise, too: Tom Cleverley got to pick a song despite not being in the World Cup squad. And have there ever been more inspiring words than Steven Gerrard's announcement that the lads "are proud to partner with Universal Music on this unique album". We shouldn't scoff, though, because a whopping 10% of proceeds from physical and download sales will go to charity, specifically the England Footballers Foundation. So that'll be about 50p, then, with album sales the way they are.

3 The Three Degrees Meet the Three Degrees

You've got three talented young black players in your team – Laurie Cunningham, Cyrille Regis and Brendan Batson. There's a trio of black singers doing well in the charts, so what could be more natural than to nickname your players after the group. Even if the group were all women, and the players, very definitely, were not. And so Ron Atkinson, manager of West Bromwich Albion, dubbed his trio "the Three Degrees". And then, with an eye for the main chance, organised a photoshoot in which players and singers posed uncomfortably together. At the time, it appeared sweet, funny and unremarkable. But imagine a manager now calling a group of black players at his club Destiny's Child. Yeah, right.

4 Kevin Campbell sets up a record label

Journeyman striker Kevin Campbell was nearing the end of his career with Everton when invested in the 2 Wikid label. "I want to be in the music business – it's always been a case of when, not if," he told the BBC. A friend of the player asserted: "This is the real deal. When Kev retires from football, 2 Wikid will be his main livelihood." His big signing was R&B bad-boy Mark Morrison, who recorded an album for 2 Wikid – then went to release it on a rival label, setting in train legal action. Still, first steps and all that. So how did the label fare afterwards? Well, it filed an extraordinary resolution to wind up on 1 August 2005, and the company was dissolved on 6 February 2008. Its last accounts, filed in 2003, showed it with £75,333 of assets – and £384,712 of liabilities. Kevin Campbell does not currently hold a senior position with a major label.

5 Diana Ross takes a penalty

It's the opening ceremony of the 1994 World Cup. Diana Ross pauses her perfomance of I'm Coming Out to dance down the pitch, a sea of white-clad dancers parting before her, to face the goalkeeper from 12 yards. She strides up, swings – and shanks the ball gently wide. The goal collapses under the force of her fierce shot anyway. The world laughs. Eighteen years later, in a move that was in no way a publicity stunt, Bradford City – who had won nine successive penalty shoot-outs – invited Ross to come and train in penalty taking with them. She has not accepted the offer.

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6 Dion Dublin invents a new musical instrument

It's journeyman-strikers-go-music part II. In which Dion Dublin makes a cube, and calls it the Dube (do you see what he did there?). Every side makes a different sound! "The sounds you get from the Dube is endless," Dublin explains in his promotional video. Well, endless, so long as the only sounds you want are the ones you can get from hitting a cube. It's the story of its invention that is truly inspiring, though: "During the latter stages of my playing career I visited a hardware shop, bought some wood and nails, went home and put the six sides together." Rarely has the creation of something so wonderful been conveyed with such passion. To be fair, it does sound pretty good.

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7 Mark E Smith reads the football results

The BBC studios. 19 November, 2005. Time for the classified football results. And instead of the normal well-modulated tones of the BBC announcer, we get … Fall frontman Mark E Smith. It only takes six results for things to go offtrack, as he gets a postponement and a pools panel prediction mixed up: "Tottenham Hotspur postponed, West Ham United 1H." In the the Championship, Southampton – after a pause – get a Town added to their name, as do Chesterfield in the division below. He audibly laughs at Bournemouth's 4-2 loss at Doncaster. Even better, though, is the post-scores interview by Ray Stubbs, who kicks off by asking how Smith came to write Theme From Sparta FC. "I don't know," comes the reply. And then, "I wanted to ask you, Ray, why you've got a No 1 haircut. It's like murderers in Strangeways get. You look like you escaped from Strangeways. I'm serious."

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8 Terry Venables, the crooner

Never content with being just a football player and then manager, Terry Venables turned his hand to many things. He was a novelist, co-writing four novels with Gordon Williams that became the basis of the ITV series Hazell. He co-devised a board game. He has been disqualified by the high court from acting as a company director for mismanaging not one but four companies. He was always a keen singer, claiming to have sung with the bandleader Joe Loss as a teenager, and has periodically returned to music. In fact, he has a recording career spanning five decades. In 1974, accompanied by the Billy Amstell Jazz Band, he released a version of What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at me, and released further singles in 2002 and 2o1o. Stardom, sadly, was as unforthcoming as glowing endorsements from high court judges.

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9 QPR – the powerhouse of classical music

One tends not to associate Loftus Road, that homely ground in west London, with the vanguard of contemporary classical music. But one should. In the early 1970s, one particular group of supporters comprised Michael Nyman, John Tilbury, Tom Phillips and Gavin Bryars. As Nyman told me in 2005: "I maintain that the best writing about QPR - and possibly about football - was a piece I commissioned from Tilbury for Vogue. It was a musicological analysis of the descending minor third in the 'Rod-neeeee!' chant that QPR fans of the early 70s sang for Rodney Marsh, based on the differences in the chant when QPR winning and when they were losing." Nyman himself has written music about the Rs, notably 1992's The Final Score, his musical love letter to Marsh's successor in the No 10 shirt, Stan Bowles. Rumours that he is currently working on a piece entitled "Jesus Christ, Redknapp, what the fuck is Morrison doing on the bench?" are believed to be untrue.

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10 The Watford first team squad sing backup for Elton John on a song about gay pick-ups

One of the things about owning a football team is that you can make them do things for you. So the poor Blackburn Rovers team of a couple of years back had to appear in adverts for Venky's chicken. When he owned Watford FC, Elton John went a stage further, getting the squad to appear on Big Dipper, from his album A Single Man. Big Dipper, however, doesn't appear to be about a fairground ride, but the appendage belonging to a sailor: "He's got his own big dipper/ But he's got his eye on yours." It might be a breakthrough in football's fight against homophobia, but it seems more likely the players just didn't pay much attention to the lyrics.

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