Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Don't make players pay for failure
It has been reported that Gary Megson has taken to bringing a giant cheque, of the type normally reserved for pools winners’ photographs, into the West Brom dressing room to remind his players how much they would make in deferred bonus payments if the team stay up. It hasn’t worked – to date he has brought out the big cheque three times and the team have lost each match.
Brazil win again, but are the other sides there just to make up the numbers? Robert Shaw reports
You won’t find the likes of Jorginho, Junior Negão and Benjamin complaining, as Charlton did, that they have to play on a beach. That is because they form part of Brazil’s triumphant squad that sealed the country’s eighth win at the World Beach Soccer Championship held in Rio this February. And with corporate sponsorship funding them as full-time professionals and an established circuit in Brazil it was little surprise that they took the title by beating Spain 8-2 in the final. In fact the only time that it has eluded Brazil was in 2001 when Portugal recorded a win in the north-eastern state of Bahia.
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.