Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Gavin Willacy compares his experiences as a young player with those of kids today, and finds an obsession with emulating the boys at the top
Early this season, Radio 5 Live’s morning phone-in got all in a lather about a youth league in Huntingdonshire that was unhappy at the FA banning them from publishing under-eight league tables in their local paper. The story subsequently ran in several other national media outlets.
Forget DVDs: the proper way to watch classic matches is on super 8 films. Marcus Davies describes his collection and what makes this forgotten format so special. No projector required
I have a large, and ever increasing, collection of super 8 football films. Some were acquired as a Christmas present in 1975, but most have been bought on eBay in the last few years. There is a possibility, even at this early stage of serious collecting, that it is already the single largest anthology in existence. This may not be a major claim to fame, though, because I rather suspect that I am the only person collecting them.
Their 1990 victory over Austria traumatised the opposition and the Faroese have been reopening old wounds, reports Paul Joyce
The Faroes’ first competitive international, on September 12, 1990, has passed into football folklore. As none of the 18 islands that comprise the North Atlantic archipelago had a suitable grass pitch, their opening Euro 92 qualifier took place in Landskrona, Sweden. Their opponents, an Austria side that had just played at Italia 90, were so dismissive of the Faroese amateurs that striker Toni Polster predicted a 10‑0 landslide. The Austrians even cancelled their final training and went to watch Denmark play Wales in Copenhagen.
Media reaction to the violence that followed the north-east derby
In the aftermath of crowd trouble at the Stadium of Light following Sunderland’s derby win over Newcastle on October 25, the comments made by Northumbria police were at distinct odds with the majority of press reaction. There were 29 arrests on the day, 11 of which were prompted by a pitch invasion at the final whistle. A police spokesman said that more arrests would follow based on CCTV evidence, suggested that drunkenness played a major role in the disturbances and expressed concerns about behaviour outside the ground. He believed the pitch invasion was not premeditated violence but a “spontaneous celebration which spilt over into confrontation”.
AC Milan looked to Sweden for inspiration and three players came to help them lift the title, by Luca Ferrato
The long-term significance
Most of the foreign footballers in Italy in the 1930s had come from South America, often from migrant backgrounds that enabled them to be selected for the national team. After the war clubs widened their search for playing talent, notably into eastern Europe and Scandinavia. In 1950-51 Serie A featured nine players from Denmark and 13 from Sweden. Seven of the latter had been gold medallists at the 1948 Olympics, including a trio who went on to play for AC Milan: midfielders Gunnar Gren and Nils Liedholm plus striker Gunnar Nordahl. Often referred to collectively as “Gre-No-Li”, these three were to play key roles in Milan’s title, the club’s first since before the foundation of city rivals Internazionale in 1908. Liedholm and Nordahl had previously played under Milan’s Hungarian coach Lajos Czeizler when he was in charge of their Swedish side, IFK Norrköping.