The Archive

December 2007 ~ England’s failings and Sepp Blatter’s plans could combine to produce a lengthy wailing about how it’s all the fault of foreign players. But before the inquest begins, Barney Ronay points out the flaws in this view

Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly who you are supposed to blame. With England’s hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008 all but extinguished by the complex series of injustices and frustrations visited by the defeat to Russia in Moscow, the building blocks are already being shouldered into place for a major inquest. And what an inquest it looks like being. Should the final cut be administered this month, English football is already geared up for a masterpiece of introspection, an epic of self-reproach born aloft on the twin pillars of the too-many-foreign-players and let’s-revamp-the-under-sevens lobbies.

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Dear WSC
The substitutes’ bench at a football stadium should be exactly that – a rickety, splintered wooden structure, also housing an elderly physio with a smoker’s cough, that players will be only too keen to get away from. Yet several Premier League clubs, including Newcastle and Spurs, have comfortable seats for the substitutes that look like something from the executive class on an aeroplane. These players won’t feel motivated to leave their padded headrests with optional vibro-massage function in order to run around in the wind and rain. What next – soothing music piped in through headsets? Treat them mean to keep them keen, for God’s sake.
Glyn Teasdale, via email

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A night of European glory has given Tampere United, from their country’s third city, a major lift. But football in these climes has its own particular challenges, as a well wrapped-up Egan Richardson reports

When Tampere United clung on to a 1-0 lead at home to Levski Sofia in the Champions League second qualifying round in July, they shocked themselves, their fans and Finland’s journalists. Levski qualified for the group stages last season and nobody had given Tampere much of a chance. It was still unclear whether the return leg would be televised in Finland until the day before it was played, as most channels had thought the tie would be over by then and hadn’t bothered bidding for the rights beforehand. In the end, a small free-to-air sports channel cobbled together a sponsorship deal with a local hotel and paid the rights fee in the nick of time. A good job too, as the game in Sofia was a famous victory with Jari Niemi scoring the only goal in another 1-0 win.

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Why does he persevere? Huw Richards reports

You have to wonder about John Toshack. He’s 59 in March, has earned big money all his adult life – and everything we know about him suggests that cash will have been sensibly deployed. He could be putting his feet up in the French Basque country or on the Gower coast, breaking off every so often to broadcast in Spain, where tactical sophistication is a must rather than an optional extra. Instead he continues to wrestle with turning Wales into a half-decent football team. It is, admittedly, not like running a club. Coaching a small nation is like being a senior civil servant or university vice-chancellor who becomes head of an Oxbridge college, a pleasant way of easing towards retirement. The president of St John’s College is not, mind you, required to hold regular press conferences, sit in cold dugouts or submit to regular contact with Craig Bellamy. This, though, is Wales, where the man in the national coconut-shy is the rugby coach.

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To mark our 250th issue, here are some reflections on memorable moments in WSC’s history

A reader in Stockport once told us what he thought football was essentially about. On a grim Friday night at Edgeley Park with the home team losing 4-0, he had seen an irate spectator walk down to the perimeter wall and yell: “For God’s sake, fizz it around a bit.” Most fans, it has always seemed to us, experience each season as a succession of disappointments, enlivened by momentary fizz.

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