Dear WSC
I notice that Steve Ducker (WSC 203) believes that UEFA will be “100 per cent responsible” for any crowd trouble that occurs in Portugal as a result of the England v Croatia game being moved from Coimbra to Lisbon. Funny that, as I always thought xenophobia and heavy drinking had a role to play in these situations. UEFA’s decision seems to make sense on this occasion (as does the moving of the Germany v Holland game to Porto’s stadium). The Lisbon and Porto police forces are the only ones with any real experience of large crowds with a potential for trouble (the so-called classicos when Porto, Benfica and Sporting play each other) and those cities have had virtually all the dealings with foreign football fans in recent years. Furthermore, as Coimbra is only just over an hour from Lisbon and with limited accommodation, it would be safe to assume that many England fans will be basing themselves in Lisbon for the tournament. Incidentally, weren’t UEFA criticised for holding the Engand v Germany game in Charleroi in 2002, as the ground was too small and the size of the town ensured that it was easy for large groups of fans to congregate together? However, if there is trouble then there may be other people for us all to blame. How about the Portuguese bar and cafe owners for selling their beer too cheaply and for making their outside tables and chairs too easy to throw around?
Matthew Guest, Porto, Portugal
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Rwanda as a nation state was close to extinction a decade ago, but the mixed-race side will line-up against the hosts Tunisia in the opening game of the ANC after financial backing from the country's president, as Alan Duncan writes
If we are to believe FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s assertion that “the philosophy of football is to offer hope”, then it goes without saying that some nations are more in need of football than others. While it is unclear exactly when Blatter started to spread the word, it would be hard to believe that the minute-long silence that followed his laying of a wreath at Rwanda’s genocide memorial in the central African country’s capital, Kigali, on April 10, 2002, did not help in shaping this view.
Despite only recently joining England's elite in the Premier League, Birmingham City are a club with big ambitions. Blues supporter Kenneth Jones explains why their rivalry with Villa has been all the more intense recently and why the rapid increase in ticket prices has dissuaded some supporters
Could City’s crowds get much bigger than now?
Undoubtedly. City have big local support and, since promotion, more season-ticket holders than Villa. With the team on the up, the only problem might be the mystifying decision to increase standard ticket prices by £10, meaning tickets for games which would have been rapid sell-outs last year have been available on general sale leading up to the match. Any increase in crowd sizes is also constrained by the 30,000 capacity at St Andrew’s, but many would agree there is little point having a brand new £12 million main stand in Division One.
And you think rebuilding Wembley was a saga. Paul Doyle reports on the homelessness crisis that could bring the Republic of Ireland to a ground nearer than you would think
Can Irish football recover from its current crisis? A nation that was last year trying to convince the continent it should co-host Euro 2008 is set to admit that it cannot, in fact, host its own home matches.
In the face of claims that this is the dullest season in years, Stephen Wagg contends that the true heart of football is beating strongly and not represented by the “big three”
Lately there has been quite a lot of talk to the effect that the Premier League, as currently constituted, is “boring” and “not value for money”. Paul Wilson of the Observer caught the mood when his article led the paper’s Sport section beneath the headline Yawn… It’s the worst ever Premiership. I wondered if I was the only one to find Wilson’s article unpleasant. I talked to people and found, predictably enough, that I was not. But Wilson, sounding closer to the saloon-bar traditions of Daily Mail or Daily Express sports commentary than to the more measured style of the broadsheets, was on a roll. The following Sunday, buoyed apparently by a bulging postbag of supportive correspondence, he declared: “We all agree. The Prem is boring.” This, I feel, is a dismal argument. But it’s been a long time coming: it seems grimly inevitable now that people would begin to make this kind of judgment ten years into the life of the Premier League.