The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Steve McClaren's agent claimed that English football is the most corrupt in Europe, but from abroad it's all a matter of perception, as Gabriele Marcotti of Corriere dello Sport explains
“Who the fuck is Charles Collymore?” That’s what a well known European agent, one who has done dozens of deals in the English game, said to me shortly after 10pm on the night of the BBC’s Panorama documentary. His take, echoed by others, is that, if proved, the latest round of “bung revelations” are destined to fry a whole bunch of smaller fish, while allowing the major players to escape unscathed.
Managers may not like it but there are legal limits to what a footballer can do to an opponent. As the police investigate Ben Thatcher's challenge on Pedro Mendes, Neil Rose looks at where the law stands
“Anything that happens on a football pitch should be governed by the FA and FIFA,” said Stuart Pearce following Ben Thatcher’s challenge on Pedro Mendes. “Once you start involving the police, the floodgates can open and you could end up with a situation where players are arrested during a game.”
Tuesday 1 Steve McClaren begins his first day as England manager by saying: “It will be totally different from Sven and the past five years. I’m going to do it my way.” Liverpool’s Champions League opponents Maccabi Haifa are contesting UEFA’s plan to switch the Israel leg of their tie to a neutral venue. That man Ken Bates is to report Chelsea to the Premier League, the FA, FIFA and the World Council of Churches after claiming they recruited two Leeds youth-team players through an illegal approach. José Antonio Reyes is hoping to tie up a move to Madrid: “Real are like a candy that is difficult to turn down.” Ghana full-back John Pantsil joins West Ham.
As Juventus go kicking and screaming into Serie B, Matt Barker reports on the failure of the new board to realise just how seriously the Moggi match-fixing scandal has damaged the club's reputation
When, in July, the initial sentences in the Moggiopoli scandal were announced, Juventus appeared to take their punishments with reasonably good grace. They would, club officials claimed, co‑operate fully with the legal process and abide by whatever penalties were imposed. There was talk of a club reborn and, in the shadow of sporting director Gianluca Pessotto’s attempted suicide, of a more humble side to La Vecchia Signora. Some people even started to feel a little sympathy for them.