Dear WSC
I am glad that Leeds’ 15-point deduction has been upheld, but not because I am “too busy taking pleasure from their fall from grace to give it a moment’s thought” as claimed by Neil Rose in WSC 256. I actually like Leeds, having watched them frequently in the Revie days when they were the object of much opprobrium from the London press despite producing great football, and so I understand why Leeds fans think everybody is against them. Yes, the number of points deducted is arbitrary, but I think everyone agrees that it is wrong for a club to climb the table by spending other people’s money and then being allowed to write off their debts yet not suffer in terms of league position. But that is precisely what Ken Bates tried to do. He was ready to put Leeds into administration at any time, but waited until the club were effectively relegated anyway and then did it instantly, knowing that the automatic ten-point deduction would make no difference to their season. It’s not often I hear myself saying this, but I think the League were perfectly right in their reaction. What they in effect said was: “Yes, you get the automatic points deduction but, as it hasn’t made any difference to you, we will take it off you next season as well and we will take another five off you for trying to manipulate the rules.” If Ken had put the club into administration a week earlier than he did, I suspect this wouldn’t have happened. And you are not “better off going into administration in the Premier League (nine points docked) than in the Football League (ten)”. Nine points in a 38-game season means you have to make up the difference at a rate of 0.237 points per game, while ten points in a 46-game season is a comparatively trivial handicap of only 0.217. It would have been nothing to Leeds if Ken Bates hadn’t made it worse by trying to play the rules.
Mick Blakeman, Wolverhampton
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
The long-running referee-bribery scandal is still a matter for the courts, but the football authorities are not allowing the legal niceties to get in the way and the casualties are mounting. Phil Town reports
While the so-called Apito Dourado (“Golden whistle”) bribery case continues to trundle through the criminal courts four years after the events, the Portuguese League have taken some decisive action. In what has come to be known as the Apito Final (“Final whistle”), various clubs, club presidents and match officials have been found guilty of dirty deeds and dealt a range of penalties, including fines, suspensions, point-docking and, in one high-profile instance, relegation.
They reached European semi-finals in five consecutive seasons in the 1990s, but Paris Saint-Germain are in a sustained slump. Their fans aren't making them very popular either, writes James Eastham
Sympathy for Paris Saint-Germain is often in short supply in France, yet you had to feel a little sorry for them after the 2008 French Cup final. They dominated but ended up losing 1-0 to Lyon in extra time. It was, admitted winning goalkeeper Gregory Coupet, “un joli hold-up”.
Once upon a time Chivas were just a Mexican club. Now they are part of an international branding exercise involving football, cola and dietry supplements, reports Martin del Palacio Langer
Football fans in Mexico were suspicious of Jorge Vergara when he announced his intention to buy the country’s most popular club, Chivas of Guadalajara, in 2002. Not least because his nutrition company, Omnilife, had sponsored Chivas’ arch-rivals Atlas the season before. When Vergara became interested, Chivas, whose large following stems from their policy of fielding only Mexicans, were in crisis. They were owned, like Barcelona, by their members, but for eight years had been run by a separate entity, the Promotora Deportiva Guadalajara, which initially injected large amounts of money but ran out of funds.
In South Africa, tradition has taken on a whole new meaning as clubs are traded off as franchises as a means of preserving a top flight status, reports Gunther Simmermacher
A synthetic club will almost certainly be crowned South Africa’s league champions when the season ends in mid-May: Supersport United or Ajax Cape Town. There ought to be widespread jubilation at the failure of South Africa’s Big Three – Orlando Pirates, Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns – to put up even a token challenge, but, since South African football fans tend to support one of these three, anguish and anger prevail. While the detached observer may enjoy the (doubtless temporary) fall of the giants, for the purist there is little satisfaction in the accomplishments of the two main challengers.