Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
The power truly is with the people according to Tom Davies
It’s a new season, hopes spring eternal (for a while anyway) and it’s time to dwell on some positive developments at embattled clubs. The fan takeovers at Stockport and Rushden over the summer bring the number of British clubs now owned and operated by supporters’ trusts to 12, with another, Brentford, run if not yet owned by fans.
It takes something special to transcend rivalries and unite fans. But as Neil Forsyth says, Scotsport SPL is doing just that
It takes a lot to unite a nation’s football fans, and when that is achieved by a television highlights programme it would usually be a cause for celebration for those responsible. Yet for the producers of Scotsport SPL, a weekly offering by Scottish Television (STV), there has been no revelling in the news. Why? Because every man, woman and child of football bent in Scotland are united not in admiration but in a deep and depressing disdain.
Forget about dodgy bounces at Kenilworth Road, plastic is back and, if it can get past a bit of red tape, could be the answer to football’s problems. As Steve Menary explains, they’re even complaining about the quality of the grass in Amsterdam
This was supposed to be the year of the artificial turf revolution, so where is it? Not that awful plastic stuff that left players with terrible burns, but a hi-tech mixture of man-made fibre and real grass has been allowed in the Champions League, UEFA Cup and Intertoto Cup for the first time this season.X
Arsenal fans worried that they hadn’t heard of Champions League rivals Thun shouldn’t be embarrassed. Paul Joyce explains the rise of the tiny Swiss side, with players whose annual salaries are less than many Premiership stars get in a week
Having hosted West Germany’s World Cup final victory over Hungary in 1954, the recently rebuilt Stade de Suisse Wankdorf witnessed its second “Miracle of Bern” on August 23. Nine years after gaining promotion from the semi-professional third division and a mere three years after arriving in the top flight, FC Thun 1898 became only the third Swiss side to reach the Champions League, by completing a 4-0 aggregate victory over Swedish side Malmö.
Strange brown envelopes at Genoa, ominous red ink at the bank for Torino, taxing times for Messina: it has been an angry summer in Italy, as Matt Barker explains
It’s difficult to know for whom to feel the most sorry. The long-suffering fans of Genoa who, still bleary-eyed from celebrating their return to Serie A after ten years, discovered that the club had been accused of match-fixing. Or maybe the Torino tifosi who, having survived a play-off against Perugia, were looking forward to life back in the top division, only to be told that Il Toro were to face charges of false accounting.