jasoñ voorhees wrote:
I love the mag, but I have the feeling that I would agree with alyxdr about the website had my computer programming career not stalled at age 8 with BASIC.

Site upgrade due by the end of March. We're looking forward to your comments.

Wouldn't Big Dave Gussett's work be perfect for WSC, or is it too much with a full page?

Been a reader for over 20 years now and its changed, thats for sure. Would love to see the Diary back and always enjoyed the coverage of the big tournaments on a match-by-match basis. The latter especially has some great humour in there and hopefully this will be expanded to include the Copa America and African Nations, especially as many more people are watching these now on TV.

Personally, I felt that a few years ago it was drifting a bit. Articles (not all I must add) were a bit dull and not many laugh out loud bits. However, I do feel that recently its improved. The world view articles are excellent in giving opinions to things that I would never have known about (Peron's and match fixing as a good example) and the UK based pieces are usually worth a read. Agreed with the poster about increasing the Clubs in Crisis bit, and certainly enjoy the pomposity of football on TV being pricked a bit by WSC.

Always a good day when the new issue arrives.

Sam Kelly wrote:
Indysleaze wrote:
I love the foreign stuff, the more obscure the better!

That reminds me, I need to pitch Andy an idea for a piece about the sale of TV rights for the Bolivian Women Dwarves' Third Division.

Don't you think that story has been overdone already?

Yeah, that stuff is so-o-o clichéd, Sam.

Lots of support for the return of the Diary, I see. For me, what made it worth reading was the engaging way in which it was written. The World Cup and Euro recaps were often eye-wateringly droll.

Don't you think that story has been overdone already?

Only once, as I recall, when dalliance tediously postured on OTF Football.

I like the foreign obscure stuff, too, but that might be because as an American growing up in the seventies and eighties, an interest in football was by definition an interest in the foreign and obscure.

Anyway, I only discovered WSC a few years ago, so I can't speak about how it's changed over the years. But I think it's an excellent magazine. The quality of writing is high, the perspectives are usually interesting, and the design and photography are sharp. Most sports magazines, both British and American, aim themselves at bros/lads and collude uncritically with the commercial party line of wealthy leagues and team owners, that it is a great joy to find an alternative. (Though admittedly that has become easier thanks to various bloggers and websites, but I think it's clear that WSC was a trailblazer along these lines.)

Real footballing Dwarfs:

I've been thinking a lot about this thread because I just don't have enough to think about, and I've come to a clearer sense of what I tried to say upthread about longer pieces. The thing that's missing for me in any print publication is writing that is a bit more literary, and perhaps that's why I dug that piece about football addiction (for lack of a better summary). The Blizzard and Champions both feature(d) high quality long-form journalism but most of those contributors aren't very literary, although I am, 2 issues behind on The Blizzard and might be surprised as I work my way through the other issues. And the contributions to those publications are written by reporters, not writers. The two can certainly overlap but not always. For example, I really like Jonathan Wilson's work; his piece on football nets in WSC was very cool. But he's not a writer that puts me in a scene in away that Tim Parks does in A Season in Verona or his piece about WC 94 in the Thinking Fans book that came out just before WC 2006. Similarly, many of the contributions to My Favourite Year or the Always Next Year series featured contributions that were more literary. This "new" football writing of My Favourite Year/Nick Hornby's work (before he started churning out the same club vs. country article over and over again)/All Played Out/etc. may no longer be new but good literary journalism is always good, which is tautological I know, but y'all get the point.

I assume that finances have dictated WSC's move away from the steady release of books that came out in the past, which is a shame, but it would be nice if some of those types of pieces could find their way into the magazine. This would mean, as I noted upthread, that space needs to be made for such work. I'm not arguing that every month should feature 3 long pieces; rather, I'm saying that a few months each year could see less shorter pieces about fan violence in Argentina, racism in Croatia, and clubs in crisis and those stories could be replaced with something that we would have found in WSC's edited collection books in the past. But maybe what I'm asking for exists on blogs somewhere and I just don't know it because I'm also perpetually behind on games I want to watch and so end up avoiding Web sites that would give away scores.

Hopefully this makes sense. Whether folks agree or disagree is another story.

And I should add that I appreciate the stories about the craziness of the barra bravas, racism in Croatia, and clubs in crisis, but I only need to read those stories once or twice a year.

I always find it really hard, when reading A's criticism of B's writing, to stop myself looking for instances of, you know, A being hoisted by A's own petard.

Would you like to see my criticism of this piece of writing?

Sure.

I have been reading since 1987, and I was on goalnet (ask your dad)

still an excellent read, one criticism is could the front page gags actually go back to being funny

I'd buy a kindle subscription if it was going.

As someone based far from the madding English media crowd, I say Bring back the Diary! Bring it Back!

Long may it survive.

My favourite bits (I start reading from the back): the new article on the inside of the back page, the letters, the book reviews, the Bolivian-lady-dwarves-type articles, Doug Cheeseman's photo feature, the TV review ... ah, all of it really (but see below).

Changes?: Yes, bring back the diary. And I'm not particularly a fan of the match of the month feature, though the accompanying photos are usually very good.

I like the Match of the Month feature as a way of communicating the match-going experience. I could do without the match reports, and with more about ambience, chants and so on.

I thought this month's foreign articles were really good. I can ascribe the resistance to them only by reference to that insular football culture that made it virtually impossible to find the scores of international leagues in England in the 1980s.

Yes. Match of the Month. We really don't need to see match reports that are just a repeat of something in the newspaper from a few weeks previous. The whole thing could be cut in half, or, dare I say, replaced with something that isn't akin to something that can be seen in every other form of media.

Bringing back the diary and getting rid of match of the month would get my vote. The latter is one thing I almost never read.

I always start with the letters, which are always great. Then I move to the opening essay and read from front to back, skipping match of the month. After I finish everything else except Season in Brief and Match of the Month, I read Match of the Month and then Season in Brief. I like Season in Brief and seems to be a good way to end the read, which perhaps explains why it's last. I wait on Match of the Month because it does tend to be my least favorite section. But it's hit and miss--depends on who writes the piece and how much they go beyond the basic description of game action. If there's little description of game action and a lot about the experience of the match (especially pre- and post-match details) then I'm usually glad I read the section.

The only part I never read is now gone: the summaries of media reports.

BTW, since I'm a few months behind, I just want to point out that although imp took some criticism here, it's worth reminding everyone that in June 2011, the letters section featured a letter praising his nostalgia piece, which I also quite liked. Had I not admitted to being months behind, I could have appeared as a guy with a really good memory for minor details.