Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
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
Bolton's final day defeat was enough to hand Forest promotion and set them on their way to their first league championship, writes Geoff Wallis
The long-term significance
Ian Greaves’ Bolton narrowly missed out on promotion for the second season running, this time on the last day. Third-placed Forest learnt of Bolton’s defeat to Wolves as their holiday-bound plane landed in Palma, Mallorca. Within the next two years Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s team would win the League championship for the first (and probably only) time, win the League Cup twice and become European champions. Bolton finally went up in 1978.
Will Ferrell's back, and Helen Duff takes a look at his latest effort, Kicking & Screaming
Imagine if film genres were ranked, according to goodness, as football divisions. Allowing for the fact that mafia sagas and Vietnam epics would probably be tussling for Champions League spots – and that anything with Billy Crystal in it would be propping up League Two – American “soccer” movies would be groping for credibility within the Sheffield and Hallamshire Girls County League.
After another incident-packed transfer window, is there any shred of club loyalty left?
If Chelsea were going to make Lyon an offer for Michael Essien they couldn’t refuse, you would think they could have hurried up about it a bit. Far too much newsprint was expended on a depressingly inevitable saga. Lyon’s point of view – that if they were going to lose their best player to a team with a bottomless pit of cash then they would take every rouble they could get – was understandable. Essien, too, cannot be blamed for wanting more money than he could dream of