Dear WSC
At the time of writing it is Thursday, September 11, 2003. Last night I along with 8,815 others ventured to Windsor Park, safe in the knowledge we could finally put to rest the 11-game goal drought. After all, we only lost 1-0 away to Armenia and we hit the post and crossbar and we missed a few chances. Two hours later we had lost 1-0 again and we hit the crossbar and hit the post and missed a few chances. The media has generally chuckled at our plight, and who could blame them. BBC Northern Ireland is running a phone poll on whether or not we should scrap the Northern Ireland football team in favour of an All-Ireland -Team. This in itself is a quite ludicrous, deliberately contentious and politically loaded question from a supposedly public service broadcaster. I don’t recall a similar poll in favour of a British and Irish Lions team poll when the Irish rugby team lost to Argentina in a World Cup game. A plus point about the goal drought is that for the first time in years what little publicity we have received hasn’t been about problems with sectarianism and the national team. To an outsider it probably seems that Northern Ireland home games are a seething cauldron of bigotry and hatred.In fact, anyone attending a game without preconceived ideas would be surprised at how good the atmosphere is given the terrible ground, poorly performing team and crowd size. We are now just known as being useless, not useless bigots. I hope one day soon to look back and laugh about when we couldn’t score as Andy Smith nods another past a hapless Barthez on our way to automatic qualification for the World Cup in Germany…
Jim Lockhart, Banbridge, Co Down
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Paul Pomonis examines the bribery allegations that have tainted football in Greece
On September 7, Greece beat Armenia 1-0 in Yerevan in a Euro 2004 qualifier. A few hours later, Suren Baghdassarian, press officer with the Football Federation of Armenia, alleged that the Hellenic Football Federation (HFF) had unsuccessfully attempted to buy the game. According to Baghdassarian, in the days leading up to the game, former Armenia international Yervard Sukassyan had repeatedly phoned the national manager and the chairman of the federation, offering $1 million (£600,000) on behalf of the HFF chairman Vassilis Gagatsis in order to secure victory. The Armenian officials had taped the incriminating phone calls and, prior to the match, notified UEFA’s match delegate, who decided to give the match the go-ahead and look at the case afterwards. Based on the evidence collected since, UEFA have appointed a disciplinary inspector, Austrian Gerhard Kapl, who is expected to report back ahead of the final series of qualifying matches on October 11.
Tom Davies examines the day to day struggle for survival of three clubs in the lower leagues
The wheels have well and truly come off at Barry Town. Mounting debts have caught up with the seven-times League of Wales champions, forcing the club into administration and the team to the bottom of the Welsh Premier table. The crisis came to a head shortly after shy and retiring John Fashanu quit in August. As reported in WSC 192, Fashanu took over at the end of last year with talk of using the club as a gateway to European football for African players for whom he acted as agent. But none of this came to pass and fans now see his tenure as just a publicity stunt.
The United States’ most famous victory, perhaps England’s most famous defeat, is being made into a film and, as Dave Hannigan reports, a rock star plays Stan Mortenson
Discovering Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of Bush, husband of No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani, will play Stan Mortensen in a forthcoming movie about America’s 1-0 victory over England at Belo Horizonte in the 1950 World Cup was initially worrying. So soon after Bend It Like Beckham grossed over $25 million (£16m) in 18 weeks at the US box office, this sounded perilously like the beginning of some horrendous Hollywood attempt to cash-in on the game’s perceived current trendiness.
England may have lost twice to the United States but have inflicted frequent and often quite heavy revenge, beginning, as Gavin Willacy relates, with Tom Finney in 1953
Three years after their humiliation by the United States in Belo Horizonte, Alf Ramsey, Billy Wright, Jimmy Dickinson and Tom Finney were given the chance to gain some sort of revenge on those pesky Americans when the FA sent England on their regular tour of the Americas.