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27 June 2008 ~
All manner of statistics have been assembled during Euro 2008. A company called Information Builders have been monitoring instances of referee bullying, tantrums on the pitch, injury faking and the number of players who have failed to sing their national anthems (laudably, there have been 130 of those). You can even see all this material represented as pie charts. WSC statisticians are also compiling a report on behalf of a secretive but influential global organisation that we are not at liberty to name. Findings include: Simone Perotta's birth in Ashton-under-Lyne has been mentioned a total of 15 times by the two TV channels and national radio; the local TV directors have missed live action while running a slow motion replay 23 times; the BBC panel have offered truisms disguised as analysis on 65 occasions; Alan Shearer has appended “for me” to his half-time comments on 19 occasions, conclusively establishing that the views expressed are his alone rather than those of the entire BBC production team in Vienna, or Geordies everywhere.
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 Badge of the week
SC Heerenveen are an Eredivisie club who have nicked their badge wholesale from the national symbol of Friesland, the Dutch province in which they’re based. They haven’t even bothered to chuck a football in there as an afterthought, just copied it straight across. Some clubs think that having a rampant lion or portcullis on your crest lends instant gravitas and elicits instantaneous respect in the beholder. Not Heerenveen, though. Eschewing the more traditional images associated with municipal history, legend and warfare, the club's owners plumped for a five-year-old-girl’s-birthday-cake look with the additional promise of communal love. Without actually stating categorically that the people of Heerenveen are a bunch of swingers, it may be possible to deduce from their team’s badge that the populace is a liberal and a hospitable one. We may further assume that Heerenveen’s defence does take prisoners and when an opposition player takes a throw-in the fans breathe words of brotherhood to the back of his head. In short, this badge is the type of thing that reignites the pilot light of human compassion in one’s darkest recess. Cameron Carter ---
Historic Football Websites No 10 ~ Goalkeepers Are Different
I’m not sure how old this site is, but it’s been around at least five years because we reviewed it in May 2003 and then again as a WSC Top 25 site a couple of years later, lauding it as “both funny and factual”. Find out how Andy Dibble suffered chemical burns while playing for Barry Town, or immerse yourself in the history of the goalkeeper’s jersey and learn why the woolly polo-necked sweater died out. Mart Poom features a lot – not only did he score for Sunderland with a late header against his old club Derby, but he once suffered genital injuries in a charity match against an Iron Maiden XI. A site for keeps. Ian Plenderleith ---
Could it be that Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon is the process of tuning in, turning on and dropping out? Earlier this week he described the club’s involvement with a new chain of football coaching schools in America as “part of the holistic approach that is central to Chelsea's philosophy as a club and a business”. Then on Thursday, the tribunal hearing former Chelsea director Paul Smith’s claim for £370,000 in unpaid wages was told that Kenyon was “hungover and mellow in a Munich beer hall” when he apparently offered Smith a pay rise of £300,000 a year, later withdrawn. At least there is little likelihood of him letting his hair just, you know, grow.
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WSC Trivia ~ No 21
The figure on the cover of WSC comes from 19th-century advert that was included in a sample of facsimile documents called the Jackdaw Football Collection, published in the early 1970s. (It also included Bob Wilson’s contract with Arsenal, with the amount of his wages blanked out.) We have a lifesized cardboard cut-out in the office, made for a book launch in the early 1990s. The book publishers initially had a six-inch high version made, due to a sequence of misunderstandings reminiscent of the mini Stonehenge incident in Spinal Tap. The lifesize figure has a damaged neck, reinforced with tape, and his head tends to sag noticeably whenever Jamie Redknapp appears on TV.
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Stickipedia
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
 Joachim Löw, Karlsruher SC Fussball 85 & Luis Aragonés, Atlético Madrid Campeonato de Liga 1971-72
Joachim Löw spent most of his playing career in the German second division with SC Freiburg whom he left twice for brief spells in the Bundesliga, first with Stuttgart, then at Karlsruhe. The moustache that was an integral part of many a footballer’s personal philosophy in the 1980s has long since gone. Luis Aragonés was a striker for Real Madrid’s youth side but left without playing for the first team. He made his name with Real Betis before spending the bulk of his career at Atlético Madrid with whom he won 11 Spanish caps in the mid-1960s. As you can see, the glowering stare much in evidence at Euro 2008 was in place a long time ago. ---
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