Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Derided in England, worshipped in Belgium, the much travelled injury-prone sweeper has a novel approach to being axed by Australia, as Matthew Hall writes
In late August, Paul Okon was telephoned by Australia coach Frank Farina and told he would not be called into a training camp the next month. Nor would he be in a 25-man squad for the 2005 Confederations Cup play-offs against the Solomon Islands in October.
Wednesday 1 Middlesbrough insist that Steve McClaren is not in the frame for the Newcastle job. Bolton likewise say Sam Allardyce is staying put. “Sam is committed to rewriting the history of this club,” says chairman Phil Gartside. Clive Woodward, who is about to step down as England rugby coach, may be offered a role at Southampton, waving a clipboard and shouting.
Friday 3 Terry Venables is believed to be having talks with Newcastle (keep the receipts, Freddie). “That was real Scottish football,” says beleaguered Berti as his side secure a moral victory in Spain, their friendly being abandoned at 1-1 due to floodlight failure, torrential rain and a plague of boils.
A team on the slide with a glorious football past visits a city with a glorious maritime past whose club are on the up – at least until the 77th minute, as Cameron Carter describes
The six stages of grief following a home defeat are well known: shock, disbelief, anger, homicidal anger, blame, and resignation while watching Casualty. Plymouth fans should never have had to go through these on this weekend, but in the last 20 minutes Wolves snatched this game from them like the Childcatcher figure they had come to represent during the course of 90 minutes.
Despite UEFA clearing the oligarch of a conflict of interest, Roman Abramovich still has significant influence at Chelsea's Champions League oppenents CSKA Moscow, writes Kevin O'Flynn
The story may sound familiar. A wealthy Russian benefactor invests huge sums in a football club, outstripping league rivals by millions and hiring a Portuguese European Cup-winning coach to take them to Champions League glory. This is not Chelsea, however, but Russian champions CSKA Moscow. The money smells the same; of Russian oil and Roman Abramovich. Despite UEFA clearing the Chelsea owner of a conflict of interest, some are still asking whether the billionaire or his associates are trying to create two super-clubs. The similarities between the two stories received wider attention when CSKA were drawn against Chelsea in the Champions League – no one is allowed to have a majority stake in two clubs in the same competition – but the connections had long been known in Russia.
Ian Plenderleith trawls the web for minnows and finds that the smallest European football associations and their clubs are, like their teams out on the pitch, willing but not always particularly able
Like it or not, small and mostly useless European footballing nations are now an integral part of the game’s landscape. This month’s column tackles the highly charged question that many have asked but few have been able to answer – can countries such as Luxembourg and Liechtenstein compete on the web any better than they do on the field?