Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Cedric Anselin played with Zinedine Zidane in a UEFA Cup final. So how did he come to paint doors at a caravan site near Lowestoft? Jon Welch investigates
To say Cedric Anselin’s career has been a bit up and down would be a masterpiece of understatement. Aged 18, he played in the same Bordeaux side as Christophe Dugarry, Bixente Lizarazu and Zinedine Zidane, collecting a 1995-96 UEFA Cup runners-up medal.
If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, then Taylor Parkes has the unpleasant answer: in Goal! they have created a football film so bad that David Beckham is not the worst actor on display
A brief synopsis; you’ll get the idea. Santiago Muñez is a young Mexican midfielder whose name sounds like it was auto-generated by Championship Manager, incapable of running four inches without flipping the ball over his head and balancing it on his nose. Rather than getting his pretty face kicked in, this attracts the attention of a wily Scots ex-pro who spots him playing amateur football in Los Angeles (the Muñez family are illegal immigrants to California, as we learn from a pre-credits border-dash sequence that adds nothing to the film but crowbarred-in American locations, like some Seventies Italian zombie flick – a pointless expense considering the chances of Goal! making a nickel in the States).
He’s given the outrageously irresponsible assurance that if he saves up and flies to Newcastle (“They’re a huge club!” “Yes, a massive club”) he will get a trial with the Toon. “What, like Looney Toons?” says the adorable hot-shot. “Bugs Bunny?” Against the wishes of his misery-guts dad, he does just that, and I’m pretty sure I’m not spoiling the film by telling you it ends with him scoring the last-minute goal that ensures Newcastle’s Champions League qualification. The only real surprise is that he doesn’t do it with a penalty, like Sean Bean did for Sheffield United.
It may be no surprise that you can get great English coverage of football in Ireland, but Ian Plenderleith tracks down individual sites that cover Poland, Slovakia and even the whole of South America
Sometimes a Google search of your club’s name can take you to interesting places. Sligo, for example. If I hadn’t been looking for an obscure fact about Lincoln City, I would likely have discovered too late that the Imps were scheduled to play Sligo Rovers in a pre-season tournament in July. As it was, I was able to cancel my summer holiday in Tuscany and reschedule for the Emerald Isle instead (some parts of this paragraph are a lie).
How do you buy votes if you are a club chairman in Buenos Aires? Hire Maradona and try to avoid falling out with your star striker, as Martin Gambarotta explains
That football and politics mix in Argentina is nothing new. But rarely has there been such an explicit case than the recent events at Boca Juniors. Mauricio Macri, the club’s millionaire president who runs his own centre-right party, is running for the lower house of congress in Buenos Aires in the election scheduled for October.
Dear WSC
I was browsing through the 2005-06 predictions in WSC 223 when I chanced upon the Birmingham City entry. I have to say that, as a Fulham fan of many years standing, a broad and satisfied grin played across my lips when I read the City fan’s disliked team was none other than Fulham – “How are they still a Premiership side?” he demanded. For us Fulham fans this is proof, if proof were ever really needed, that our friends from the “second city” never emotionally recovered from when little, poorly supported, Second Division Fulham dumped them out of the FA Cup in the semi-final replay in the dying seconds, some 30 years ago. We have come to terms with our subsequent failure to turn up for the 1975 final (I occasionally watch the video in the hope that I might spot some element of a spirited performance that has escaped me on previous viewings). I sincerely hope that those kindly, good-natured City supporters can somehow find some “closure” over their failure in 1975, as it’s clearly long overdue.
Ashley Manning, via email