Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Gabby settles in at the Beeb. Cameron Carter watches
Of the many shocking defections of the last two centuries, Gabby Logan’s appearance on BBC1’s FA Cup coverage ranks right up there with Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West, Burgess and Maclean’s to the East and Des Lynam’s moves, first to ITV and then all the way to the bank.
In the dying days of George Graham’s Arsenal reign, the Scot signed a player as far from his own image as imaginable. Jon Spurling remembers a Dutch enigma
As fortysomethings waxed lyrical about Geordie Armstrong’s “magnificent engine” and Brian Marwood was voted the club’s greatest ever short-term acquisition, debate raged among Arsenal fans on a website over who was the club’s greatest recent wide player. Anders Limpar – rather harshly – was described as a “poor man’s Robert Pires”. So what, I wondered, did that make Glenn Helder. A destitute’s Marc Overmars, perhaps?
Soheb Panja reports on the evolution of sponsorship
At the time of its announcement, Vodafone’s termination of a £9 million-a-year sponsorship deal with Manchester United was viewed as a symbolic moment in the club’s fortunes. In hindsight, it wasn’t the moment the United empire crumbled, rather a turning point for sponsorship in football and sport generally, one reflected in Emirates’ deal with Arsenal and that may see Liverpool’s new home also named after a company rather than a place.
The murder of a Sicilian policeman at a game led to new measures to combat Italy’s ultra culture. But, as Vanda Wilcox explains, everyone from the government down sees politics as the cause of the violence
On February 2, Inspector Filippo Raciti was killed by a blow to the stomach, during a deliberate ambush of the police planned and carried out by CC Catania ultras at their Sicilian derby by Palermo. The fatal weapon was a piece of sink wrenched from the wall of a stadium toilet. The police were attacked with rocks, metal bars, baseball bats, flares and – last but not least – home-made bombs, one of which stuck the dying inspector, causing further injuries. Before the match, Catania ultras had collected a huge arsenal of weapons in a stadium storeroom.
There should be an air of panic around Elland Road, but it’s hard to locate. Have the past few years been so traumatic that no one can yet admit that a season ticket starting in August could be for League One? Al Needham investigates
Norris. That’s who I think of automatically when Leeds United’s glory years come to mind. Not Don Revie with his reams of dossiers, or sock-tags, or the Smiley badge, or seats on the pitch of the Parc des Princes. I think of horrible, devious, pill-pushing Norris, the ginger vermin of Slade prison who conned poor Blanco out of his treasure map in that episode of Porridge, only to find himself desperately scrabbling away in the dead of night in front of the imperious East Stand with the floodlights at full glare and the police advancing.