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Stories
Swedish travel agencies selling up to five times as many package deals to Old Trafford
11 July ~ In spite of both Sweden’s and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s underperformance at the Euros, the latter’s status and commercial drawing power is just as strong as it was before the tournament. After a decade of pilgrimage to Milan, Barcelona and Paris it is now time for Manchester to be the hottest destination for the relatively well off among Swedish football fans. It’s fair to assume that the weak British pound will also contribute to the stream of travellers.
An extract from a new book about the 1966 World Cup looks at how exotic visitors to that tournament inspired England’s own fans to travel abroad
29 June ~ The England squad that travelled to the 1962 World Cup in Chile had to endure a flight with two separate changes to Lima where they played a warm-up game against Peru before moving on to Santiago, then Rancagua where they would play their group games and then bus to their base at the Braden Copper Company staff house in Coya, some 2,500 feet up in the Andes. The journey of over 7,500 miles would have taken them more than twenty four hours. Hardly an ideal preparation for the tournament.
Dear WSC
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the article on footballing statues (Striking a pose, WSC 294) it did miss out one rather infamous example – the Ted Bates horror show of a few years back. This short-lived “tribute” to the former Saints player, manager, director and president was astonishingly inept, with legs roughly half the length they should have been. To add to the indignity, more than once a resemblance to dignity-phobic Portsmouth owner/asset-stripper Milan Mandaric was pointed out. The overall effect was of a top-heavy, inebriated and besuited dwarf waving at passers-by. Not really the ideal summing up a lifetime’s service to a club.
Keith Wright, Cheltenham