Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Female football fans in Iran have been denied their kicks by the religious authorities, inspiring, as Simon Creasey explains, a film by a director acclaimed elsewhere but whose work is unseen at home
In March this year security forces stopped 50 women attempting to enter Tehran’s Azadi (“Freedom”) stadium to watch a football match between Iran and Costa Rica. Some of the women were beaten – one had her leg broken – and they were eventually ferried away in a bus escorted by the military.
José Mourinho can count himself lucky that he doesn't answer to Real Madrid's president. Phil Ball reports
Can’t somebody just ban Real Madrid, for ever? Their behaviour since the resignation of president Florentino Pérez in February has defied all codes of both sporting and business practice – an assault on basic decency so serious that it is only surpassed in surrealism by the fact that no one saw fit to do anything about it. Arrogance and a certain disrespect for others have always been the hallmark of Real Madrid CF, traditionally a curious mixture of market-led imperialism and the worst type of insularity. But the recent goings-on have stretched the club’s credibility to limits beyond the known galaxy, from where many of their players were originally rumoured to have come.
James Brandon reports on how Roman Abramovich's increasingly hands-on approach is making life difficult for José Mourinho
Sporting a new shaven-headed look, José Mourinho claims he is “ready for the war”. The posturing and the rhetoric are typically gladiatorial. But recent developments suggest that, like Samson, he may be losing his powers, in the transfer market at least. It seems like the biggest battle the Special One faces is finding a way to integrate his employer’s vanity signings into a winning and potentially job-saving formula.
The long decline of the mighty Magyars is reflected in club football, too, as the country's only European club competition winners descend into financial chaos. Jonathan Wilson reports
When things in Hungary are really bad, they are said to a béka segge alatt – under the belly of a frog. Football was generally held to have reached that point about 15 years ago. Since then, it has kept falling. Every summer the league descends into chaos, as clubs merge, move towns looking for sponsors, change names and go out of business. Matters seemed to have hit rock-bottom in 1999 with the farce that surrounded a bomb hoax at second division Dunakeszi. The hoaxers were foiled by a recorded message, advising them that Dunakeszi’s phone had been disconnected, but they could leave a message at the factory next door. And then came this summer.
What Nottingham needed, Al Needham decided, was a different kind of World Cup venue, without the usual nonsense and with better food and music. Did Nottingham agree?
Back in 2004, I realised that I’d outgrown standing in an Australian theme pub watching England, surrounded by meatheads bellowing “No Surrender to the IRA” (even though three months earlier you’d seen the very same people in town on St Patrick’s Day in those stupid Guinness hats). I vowed that I’d have a completely idiot-free 2006 World Cup. I’d get my own pub sorted out, get my mates in there and watch England without worrying about random violence.