Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Julius Bergmann reports on where the Germans stand on terracing
The last official report into the possibility of allowing standing areas in UK stadiums came in 2001, when then Sports Minister Kate Hoey dispatched the Football Licensing Authority on a fact-finding mission to Germany. Not only were new stadiums being constructed for the World Cup, Germany was then, and remains, the only major European footballing nation where standing areas are allowed in top-flight arenas.
Goalkeepers have always been slow to admit responsibility for any goal their team concedes, but the way they demonstrate this has changed across the ages. Cameron Carter charts the history of these complex blame-shirking gestures and what happens when it all gets too much for them
The Fatalist
If you consider footage from the 1960s and 70s, you will notice that the goalkeeper of this era is a more mild and resigned sort of person in the face of personal failure. After Georgie Best or Jimmy Greaves has sashayed round him and slipped the ball home, our isolated chum will invariably plod into the back of the net and simply tidy up his goal by kicking the ball downfield for the restart. It is as if he is thinking: “Well, this was bound to happen sooner or later. The ball is round, several people out there are intent on getting it into my net. I’m surprised this type of thing doesn’t happen more often.” There is no finger-pointing, no petit mort of the goalmouth lie-down, just a gentlemanly acceptance of the inevitable. Gradually, pioneering individuals such as Gary Sprake would introduce a bit of hands-on-hips action as an aperitif, but it was still a case of fumbling around for the ball afterwards and getting on with the game.
New owners and a new ground loom for Liverpool. Robert Fordham reports
“In a strange way, it was also oddly reassuring. The whole soap opera signalled that, even as European Champions, Liverpool Football Club could still act like an unsophisticated local diners’ club or a parochial village-hall committee. We were still more of a flawed community than a slick corporation.” This (along with the player staying) is the bright side author John Williams finds in the surreal saga that saw Steven Gerrard come so close to leaving Anfield six weeks after lifting the European Cup. But the club Williams has followed all his life are on the brink of the biggest overnight change in their history. Slick corporation here we come.
The Tynecastle soap opera becomes more incredible by the minute, as the increasingly erratic Vladimir Romanov takes a chairman’s megalomania into uncharted territory. Neil Forsyth reports
It’s difficult to convey accurately the sheer absurdity of the current state of affairs at Hearts. Journalists have revelled in comparisons with the festive pantomime season, while it’s hard not to read about how late Turkmenistan dictator Saparmurat Niyazov ran the country without your mind wandering down Gorgie Road.
With the autumn crisis all but forgotten, Glenn Roeder’s side face up to one of his former clubs against a backdrop of takeover rumours that could make one man, somewhat undeservedly, even richer. Harry Pearson looks on
The experienced approach Newcastle on the penultimate Saturday before Christmas with caution. The city is the scene of such frenzied shopping that the unwary football fan can easily find himself swept away by a tidal wave of present-hunters outside Central Station and deposited without warning in Fenwick’s ladies’ gloves department.