Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
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.
Amid the gloom, some hope that the staging of the 2012 European Championship could be Italy’s Euro 96. Matthew Barker reports on the hopes invested in a bid and the new stadiums that may result
In the weeks leading up to the death of Filippo Raciti, the Italian sporting press was quietly optimistic of a successful bid to host the 2012 European Championship. Ahead of the announcement on April 18, so too were the clubs, with some, notably Juventus and Lazio, unveiling plans for new or rebuilt homes, set to benefit from generous tax concessions and credit deals from a government keen to be seen to back the bid, if reluctant actually to bankroll it.
As well as being involved in violence, Italian fan groups have been about flags, flares and noise. Pete Green looks at attempts to improve the atmosphere at UK grounds by importing the best of ultra culture
“It’s not about copying the nutters in Italy,” insisted one supporter as a Leicester message board recently heated up over the formation of a local ultras group. Those involved may be quick to dissociate themselves from the nastier extremes of their counterparts on the European mainland, but with Italian authority figures calling for a more English approach to crowd control after the recent death of police officer Filippo Raciti at the Catania v Palermo derby, it is difficult to miss the irony of UK fans seeking to co-opt a notorious aspect of Italian football culture.
Trevor Brooking is an unlikely evangelical but, as Barney Ronay reports, the mild-mannered one has come down off his fence with a vengeance in a bid to improve the basic football skills of children
“When it comes to skill levels, we are lagging behind the other major European countries… Unless this culture is changed, we will continue to slip behind.” So said Trevor Brooking last month, in one of his frequent and always deeply pessimistic dispatches from Soho Square. In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the same cheery old sit-on-the-fence Trevor you might have become used to from his “to be fair the ball took a bit of a bobble” appearances on Match of the Day. Two years in charge of the FA’s youth programme have taken their toll, transforming Brooking, the director of football development, into the game’s Cassandra, repeatedly mongering the imminent doom of our national sport.