Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Recent incursions that sparked alarm in the media are trivial (so far) compared to the trouble that led to fences going up in the 1970s. Mike Ticher looks back
While “friendly” pitch invasions had been relatively common for decades (Kenneth Wolstenholme was famously unconcerned) the late Sixties and early Seventies saw a rash of high profile incidents that eventually led to the erection of fences at almost all big English grounds.
The headlines were about English infiltration after trouble at Pittodrie. But the Scottish game would do better to take a long, hard look at itself, says Dianne Millen
Never mind Afghanistan – hold the front page for the Battle of Pittodrie, billed as the biggest Scots skirmish since Culloden. The coins had barely been picked up from pitchside before SPL chief executive Roger Mitchell had fallen back on that old stand-by, blaming the violence on “mindless morons”, a description later repeated by the police, press and both clubs. Idiots there most certainly were at the game, but not all of them were throwing things.
Radio 5 Live gives football fans the chance to air their views on their post-match show 6.06 but are such shows just outlets for inane opinion?
Yes ~
You end up feeling sorry for the presenter. By the end of every football phone-in, I just want to hold the hand of the caged beast, as he has had a combination of heavy fatalism and non-punchlined anecdote poured into his ear for hour after hour.
Tuesday 1 Plenty of encouragement for Man Utd as would-be contenders Liverpool draw 1-1 (“You always feel with Bolton you need the extra goal,” says Phil Thompson) and Chelsea collapse 4-2 at home to Southampton. “It is very strange,” says Claudio Ranieri, rubbing his chin as though he had discovered a new phenomenon. Leeds stay top after disposing of West Ham 3-0. Newly buoyant Ipswich spring a leak, losing 3-2 at Charlton after Marcus Bent scores twice in the first five minutes. “You always remain optimistic,” says Walter Smith unconvincingly after Everton’s fifth defeat in a row, 1-0 at Middlesbrough. Nicky Law leaves Chesterfield to take over at Bradford City.
Did football really have a golden age? A new photo collection seems unsure when it was, says Doug Cheeseman, though it definitely took place in London
This is a giant airbrick of a football photobook, comprised of black and white documentary pictures from the start of the 20th century to 1985. The notional theme of the book is football in its broader social context, in the period before commercialism took over and photographers swapped their black and white films for colour. In other words, football in all its sepia, if sometimes rose-tinted, glory.