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The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

 

Match postponed due to war

The current Middle East crisis has plunged Lebanon back towards chaos and badly damaged a football culture that had been a symbol of renewal after decades of strife. Hassanin Mubarak reports

On July 3, the Lebanon squad played a warm-up game at the Amin Abdel Nour International Stadium in Bhamdoun, a popular tourist area in the mountains east of the capital, Beirut. Their opponents were Iraqi club side Kirkuk, from a volatile city in the north of Iraq ravaged by sectarian violence. The Iraqi club’s officials had hoped to use the training camp as preparation for the new 2006-07 Iraq league season, while the Lebanese were gearing up to host the fourth edition of the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) Championship, a tournament featuring part of the “Axis of Evil”, Syria and Iran, as well as former member Iraq. A few days after this match, won 2-0 by Lebanon, planes and missiles ranged over the country, killing more than 600 civilians and wounding thousands, with more than a million displaced from their homes.

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Segregate score

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.

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Men of influence – Real Madrid

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.

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Men of influence – Chelsea

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.

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Stars and gripes

Ian Plenderleith reports on what the United States' mixed fortunes and performances mean for the future of the game in America

For USA fans, this was a story of serially thwarted joy. At the opening game against the Czechs, the war-lust words of The Star Spangled Banner were still hanging in the muggy evening air when they found themselves 1-0 down. After fighting back against Italy to equalise, they then had to absorb the impact of the red-card rush and were, within minutes, one man fewer instead. And hardly had they ceased screaming to celebrate Clint Dempsey’s levelling strike against Ghana, than host referee Dr Markus Merk awarded a penalty against Oguchi Onyewu for an offence as yet unrecognised by the rule book (“A remarkable call at this level,” coach Bruce Arena said diplomatically).

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