Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
The papers say something nice about an up-and-coming star, for once
It’s been quite a month for Micah Richards: a couple of good games for England, a new contract offer from Manchester City and a chorus of unwavering approval from every sports desk in the land. A certain level of ubiquity is nothing new: Ashley Cole, David Beckham and Rio Ferdinand have all had the treatment in recent times. What makes Richards’ case unusual is the papers are saying nice things about him.
Football has more female fans than ever before but Simon Tindall wonders if they are to likely to take an interest in the women’s game
I’ll watch any kind of football from sons and dads on the beach, pub teams in the park to the Masters tournaments on Sky. But the words “women’s football” get me reaching for the remote as fast as if the continuity man had said Formula One or Open golf. The Women’s World Cup was an opportunity to reassess this position. The manner of the coverage on the BBC and in quality press obliges you to be interested, to view this as a “good thing” – like five fruit and veg a day – as opposed to a “bad thing” to be media‑ignored like speedway, greyhounds or most boxing.
Avram Grant analysed
Avram Grant’s arrival at Chelsea has been confusing on several levels. Questions posed have included: do the players like him? How long is he going to hang around? And, crucially for journalists, what words do we use to describe him? Grant is undeniably exotic. A Jew, an Israeli and a pal of the owner: a first in every sense.
Paul Joyce reports on Austrian clubs selling their indentities
If your average attendance is only 800, it might seem unwise to hint to supporters that there are better ways of spending their free time. Yet this is what happened in March, when Austrian second-division side SC Schwanenstadt changed their name to SCS bet-at-home.com. It could have been worse. “It was important for us to maintain the club’s identity,” enthused Klaus Gruber, marketing manager of the online betting company behind the rebranding. “That’s why we kept their initials at the front.”
Apart from pubs and the stands themselves, internet message boards are the best place to debate your club’s fortunes and praise or criticise in the company of fellow fans. But, as Ian Plenderleith reports, this freedom of expression is increasingly under threat as clubs use lawyers to clamp down on dissent
Many people compare the football message board to their local pub. You can meet your mates there to relax, say anything you like, and the next day no one will remember a word. There’s the odd idiot who gets out of hand and maybe a fight breaks out, but after a while everyone calms down. Sometimes it’s quiet because there’s no one around, so you leave again. And strangers are treated with suspicion until they show they didn’t just come in to cause trouble, but rather gain acceptance by expressing the sort of opinion that’s greeted with knowing nods (the online equivalent of getting your round in unprompted).