Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Last season's Dutch champions are having a radically different campaign this year. Derek Brookman looks at an economic crisis
When PSV hammered Ajax 6-2 on April 19 this year, AZ Alkmaar became Dutch champions by default; the Amsterdam side could no longer catch AZ at the top of the table. They were many reasons for this monumental event – the first title not to go to Ajax, Feyenoord or PSV for 28 years – but without doubt the biggest was Dick Scheringa.
Portsmouth appoint yet another new chairman as financial crisis looms
October ended well for Portsmouth with back-to-back 4-0 wins, against Stoke in the Carling Cup and Wigan in the League. They had seemed to be certainties for relegation after losing their first seven matches but on present form may have a good chance of hauling themselves away from the bottom three. While Paul Hart’s team were reviving their season, they acquired a new chairman.
A phone-tapping scandal has reached into most aspects of Italian society and football in particular. Matthew Barker listens in
Christian Vieri announced his retirement from football last month in typically gruff and to-the-point fashion. “I’ve had enough. I don’t want to do it any more,” he told journalists at the Milan Palace of Justice. Vieri was in court to give evidence against Inter, one of his 11 former clubs who he’s suing for €21 million (£18.7m) along with Telecom Italia (€9m from the former, €12m from the latter) after they apparently authorised the tapping of his private phone calls during a two-year period from 2002-04.
Carson Yeung's takeover of Birmingham City results in the departure of a notorious trio
In a month of notable returns, including Avram Grant to Portsmouth and chairman Adam Pearson at Hull, there was also the long goodbye of a famous threesome. After a first takeover attempt failed in November 2007, Carson Yeung finally completed his purchase of Birmingham City on October 6. But the former regime, David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady, did not depart quietly.
The most famous export of Ecuador's Chota Valley is footballers, as Henry Mance discovered on a visit to the region
One day, when football wastes as much of academics’ time as it already does of everyone else’s, some PhD student will spend three years working out which area in the world has produced the most professional players per capita. And he or she will eventually conclude what Ecuadorians already know: that the winner is the Chota Valley, hands down.