Club about to enter administration

19 June ~ After running up debts of £25 million, Hearts have declared their intention to enter administration. Needing to raise £500,000 just to maintain the running of the club over the summer and having put the whole playing squad up for sale, for Hearts fans the prospect of beginning next season on minus 15 points must feel a lifetime away. As a result of the debts, the majority of which are owed to Lithuanian-based companies formally owned by Vladimir Romanov, the club are in need of new ownership and face losing their home, Tynecastle.

#Ekstraklasa Magazine free to download

19 June ~ Issue 4 of #Ekstraklasa Magazine, a free English-language online guide to Polish football, is now available to view online or to download as a PDF. This latest issue includes a review of the Ekstraklasa season as well as articles by WSC contributors Ryan Hubbard and Marcus Haydon on topics such as the departure of two legends of Polish football and the return of Dariusz Wdowczyk.

GIF Sundsvall are based at the Norrporten Arena (formerly Sundsvall Idrottspark), which is located just outside the small city in Sweden. Opened in 1903, the stadium underwent major redevelopment between 2001 and 2002 and can now hold 8,500 supporters. It has also had an artificial pitch since 2009.

July issue available online and in stores

The new WSC is out now, available from all good newsagents or dispatched on the day of order from the WSC shop.

Football League season
Man City move to New York
England left behind
Sepp Blatter set to fall?
Bundesliga takes over Wembley

14 June ~ This Saturday sees the opening match of the Confederations Cup with hosts Brazil facing Japan. While Brazil have won the tournament a record three times (1997, 2005 and 2009), they fell just short in 1999 losing a sensational 4-3 final to hosts Mexico in front of 110,000 fans at Estadio Azteca. Despite a few star players missing for the Brazilians, such as Ronaldo and Rivaldo, it was still a shock when Mexico won their first Confederations Cup.

Notable kits of yesteryear

13 June ~ The season when CSKA Kyiv wore this shirt was a high-water mark. They finished sixth in the Ukrainian Supreme League (now the Premier League) and were also finalists in the Ukrainian Cup. The club's second string, CSKA-2, were playing just one league below them. For a club with a nomadic history and no fewer than 16 name changes, things were about to alter drastically.

12 June ~ "Community" is a word that induces immediate and profound ennui, partly because it never appears in the same phrase as anything interesting. One never, for example, sees a sign for "Community Lion Fight" or "Community Tapdancing-On-Rice-Paper Centre". Do you think Jean Harlow was ever "At Work In The Community"? Of course she wasn't. Read more

The life of Stanley Matthews

Stanley Matthews is one of those figures who looms so large in the consciousness of the nation there's a tendency to think we already know all there is to know about him. The truth, which becomes apparent while reading Jon Henderson's vivid biography, is that what most of us actually know about a player whose career spanned 29 seasons is confined to the salient facts about a couple of famous matches and a whole heap of the sort of cliches (including the one about how he always crossed the ball so that the laces didn't hit the forward's head) that were the 1960s equivalent of YouTube. Read more

by Ashley Williams

The first memory of Ashley Williams remains vivid. Late season 2008, driving a clearance down the right wing at the Liberty Stadium but checking his follow-through so that the ball dropped perfectly for a team-mate. This was clearly not your usual lower-league defender. Five years on he is vastly more familiar but retains the capacity to surprise. Prospective purchasers may (as this one did) quail at a 376-page diary and replace it on the shelves. Swansea fans or not, they should think again or miss something pretty impressive. Read more

by Richard Gordon

Even now, 30 years on, if you mention the date May 11, 1983 to any Aberdonian, even the coldest north-eastern eyes will mist over as we mutter affectionately "Aye, Gothenburg". For it was on that night that Aberdeen, led by Alex Ferguson, beat Real Madrid 2-1 to lift the Cup-Winners Cup. BBC journalist and lifelong Dons fan Richard Gordon has now commemorated the 30th anniversary of the club's most famous triumph in this engaging account. Read more

Campaign to end uniformity

6 June ~ The locations of some of the greatest goals of all time are identifiable not by the players involved but by the nets the ball ends up in. The History of Goal Nets blog celebrates how clubs and countries created an individual identity with the way they suspended their nets. It includes plenty of videos from yesteryear and a campaign to scrap uniformity in time for next year's World Cup in Brazil.