Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Despite their recent victory over England, Australian football is still desperate for reform to enable a more competitive national side. Mike Ticher explains
You could perhaps forgive Remo Nogarotto for a bit of hyperbole in the excitement of Australia’s 3-1 win over England at Upton Park in February. “This is the first chapter in the renaissance of Australian soccer,” the chairman of the sport’s governing body enthused. “The team has come of age and so has the sport.”
Jimmy Hill has been at the forefront of the evolution of post–war British football. Barney Ronay reviews the Hill effect
Picture the scene: four middle-aged men are seated around a mahogany-effect dining table. Beyond them a window looks out on to trees and green fields, but on inspection it turns out to be just a large photograph on the wall. One of the men has glasses and a protuberant chin; across the room from him a complacent-looking man with extravagantly bouffant hair says: “Well Jimmy. It’s certainly been a busy weekend for referees.” A deep lethargy descends.
The most annoying fan in Brazil and quite possibly the world meets the women of Iran and Scotland star Lord Bron in Ian Plenderleith's latest surfing review
There are always new and arguably useless things to learn about football. Once you’ve been to Futebol, a website founded by writer Alex Bellos to promote his acclaimed book about Brazilian football, you’ll discover that no one in Brazil has any idea how many professional clubs there are in the country because new ones open and close every week. One sports paper lists almost 800 in its encyclopaedia, while another claims that “only” around 300 are actually operational.
Today, Chile; tomorrow, the world. Dave Hannigan reports on the roundabout route but boundless ambitions of the Palestinian Authority's national side
Counting down towards the start of the qualifying campaign for next year’s Asian Cup in China, Palestine are hopeful that an influx of some South American flair via the parentage rule will yield success on the field and positive publicity off it.
In this extract from the BBC book Football Confidential 2, the reporters from Radio 5 Live show On The Line quiz agent Paul Stretford aout his company's shareholders, people with familiar names like Souness, O'Neill and Keegan
The first thing to meet you after walking through reception into the light, modern offices of the Proactive Sports Group plc is a life-size, waxwork figure of Peter Schmeichel, in full kit, poised to make a save. Initially it is a strange and disconcerting sight but the Dane has been an important figure in the rise of Proactive, one of the UK’s leading football agencies, which its current chief executive, Paul Stretford, started in his basement in 1987. High-profile Schmeichel is just one of the 260 clients the company now has worldwide.