Tuesday 2 An exciting night for several teenagers at Highbury, where 16-year-old Francesc Fabregas is among the scorers in Arsenal reserves’ 5-1 Carling Cup thrashing of Wolves. Two James Beattie goals, one a last-minute penalty, settle the first Hampshire derby for eight years. Joe Cole is banned for two games for his spat when West Ham played at Bolton last April. Ken Bates is steaming: “Those responsible for keeping him waiting seven months should have their wages withdrawn for three months, or be sacked.”
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
The team with most points winning the league? The teams with fewest going down? As Robert Shaw writes, that hasn’t been the way in Rio and São Paulo – until now
In the highly political world of Brazilian football, two developments received universal acclaim in 2003. First, Palmeiras and Botafogo, two traditional powers, were promoted back to the 24-team top flight a year after relegation. Earning a return on the field, rather than through negotiations in a smoke-filled room, won plaudits for both clubs, who had not been expected to tolerate the humiliation of second division football.
We boast about the Premier League being 'the best league in the world', but the domestic superiority of England's elite clubs is not reflected in their European form
At least once a year there are rumours of a breakaway “Atlantic League” or some such, a competition for the dominant clubs in smaller football countries where the domestic title is only ever contested by at most three teams. The next time it’s floated expect to hear that Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea have been approached about joining, on the grounds that they, too, would get stronger competition from, say, Porto, Anderlecht and Ajax than from any of the other 17 clubs in the Premiership.
The Miracle of Bern was a massive commercial success in Germany, and its London viewing was a sell-out. Errol Lawrence, who despises many other samples of sport on the big screen, believes it could be the best film ever of its kind
Soenke Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern stopped over in London at the end of November to open the annual German Film Festival. The film has become a huge commercial success in Germany and won praise across Europe and such is its reputation that the film’s single screening in London was a sell-out, attracting a polyglot audience of native Germans, students, film buffs and even the odd football fan.
As a survey reveals the extraordinary sums the game has paid some people for doing very little, Barney Ronay hopes one man can be persuaded to put a little back
As Woody Allen once said, money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. English football currently has both in equal measures: the League is rife with talk of exactly how many clubs are toting around life-threatening debts; meanwhile, the Sunday Times Pay List 2003, published last month, reveals that, of the 500 best-paid individuals in the United Kingdom, 56 made their money from football, 44 of them players.