Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Leicester’s tussles with Atlético Madrid left fans simmering at injustice but, as Saul Pope recalls, these were heady days
Eleven years ago their fans would have never accepted it, but Leicester City’s UEFA Cup first round tie against Atlético Madrid in September 1997 will probably be as good as it gets. Leicester didn’t win the game, but for a time they were leading thanks to a player once described by the club fanzine The Fox as looking “knackered whenever he ran on to a football field”.
Tim Springett looks at the latest edict from the World Anti-Doping Agency and its implications for football
If ever there was a topic that cried out for rational debate, it is the issue of drug use by sports people. Sadly, rationality has long since been buried under a tidal wave of self-righteousness. Even though football has far from the worst record of participants seeking to gain an illicit advantage through drugs, it seems constantly to be first in line for the bile of commentators and opinion-formers whenever the subject is raised. The usual mantra – that football’s procedures for drug testing lag way behind other sports – has been repeated so often it seems almost pointless to question it. To this can be added the well-known fact that every professional footballer is an overpaid prima donna.
Having slid to the fifth tier Fortuna Cologne are looking to a web-based model to revive the club, explains Paul Joyce
Under their dictatorial president Jean Löring, Fortuna Cologne were possibly Germany’s least democratically run club. Löring once fired manager Toni Schumacher at half time during a match in 1999 with the words: “I, being the club, had to react.”
Bruce Wilkinson looks at government attempts to control how football tickets are sold
Football supporters are making a growing number of complaints about the ticketing industry and the huge expansion in secondary sales. In response the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has combined with another clumsily titled ministry, that of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, to produce a consultation paper on the issue. Modern technology has revolutionised ticket buying in many positive ways, such as giving a wider range of purchasing and payment options, but it has also democratised touting on an unprecedented scale. This ranges from supporters buying extras in order to make a bit of cash to organised gangs hoovering up blocks of seats and agencies offering big match entrance at extortionate rates. Internet-based auction sites have radically changed resales, giving the opportunity to make a quick buck to anyone with good broadband access and limited scruples. As a consequence, legislation is struggling to keep pace.
Two decades on from the Hillsborough disaster John Williams looks back to April 15, 1989 and how the day’s events came to shape the very identity of Liverpool FC
Twenty years. Is it really that long ago? Where exactly did those two decades go? Squandered, in the main, I hear Reds fans say, by Messrs Souness, Evans and Houllier, our chaotic managers, and by various erratic (and worse) board members and owners. The current manager – one European Cup already won, but by glorious default – is trying hard to show he is more than a free-spending complainer and fiddler: a match at last for the fearsome Ferguson. Maybe he really is.