The Archive

Communism may have been collapsing around them, but Russian football was healthier than ever writes Saul Pope

The long-term significance
By the time the season ground to a halt in November, football was not the first thing on most people’s minds. During August, President Gorbachev had been held under house arrest for three days as his (and Soviet) power ebbed away. A few weeks after the end of the football season, on Christmas Day, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and the USSR was no more. The turmoil that followed spawned a corrupt economic and social system that would soon lead to one former Soviet citizen being able to buy a leading English team and overnight become the richest man in football.

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We're told it often enough, "the Premier League is the most exicting league in the world". But is it worth it?

At any particular moment the state of mind of many football fans is a fusion of cynicism and stoic despair, an outlook (leavened, of course, with brief bouts of bonhomie and joie de vivre) that we try to reflect. It’s not always the dominant view in most sections of the media, concerned more with selling the game, and especially “the most exciting league in the world”, than with reporting on it. But every so often what might be seen as the WSC default position comes back into vogue.

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Thursday 1 “Toshack hates me, I can handle that,” says Robbie Savage, soberly conceding that his international career is over after being left out of the Wales squad and not called up when others pulled out. Northern Ireland drop Jeff Whitley and Phil Mulryne for going on an all‑day drinking session.

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Cameron Carter struggles to see the funny side

It’s been a bit of a month for weak jokes. On September 15, John Helm interrupted his commentary on Bolton v Lokomotiv Plovdiv on Five to make a pun that is even now being investigated by forensic humorists in search of traces of comedic activity. John said: “Lokomotiv look rattled. Excuse the pun – Lokomotiv, rattled.” That was the entirety of his joke. Now we all know that his co-commentator that evening, Terry Butcher, is a brave lad who carries on playing when his head is broken, but even Terry bottled it when it came to asking for some form of explanation. Instead a wondering silence ensued until John returned to his day job.

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A Spanish football-themed thirtysomething comedy? Sounds like a formula for success, but as David Stubbs found out, no one was laughing

As a sometime film critic, I’m usually inclined to opt for foreign movies to review. This isn’t out of some cineaste snobbishness but simple logic. Whereas all kinds of Hollywood or, worse, UK-produced balderdash is liable to get a release in Britain, foreign movies that make it to the distribution stage here will generally have been through a rigorous sifting process, been nominated at one of the prestige European festivals, put up for the Palme D’Or and so forth. Hence, they’re more likely to be good.

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