Sunday 1 Liverpool might enter the Vieira bidding war – “Of course we’d be interested in a player like him,” says M Gérard – though Arsenal continue to insist through collectively gritted teeth that he’s not for sale. Man Utd chief executive Peter Kenyon denies claims that United have been snubbed by several transfer targets. “Listening to all the speculation you'd think we were a club on the precipice. We’ve not had one rejection.” Brazil lose another World Cup tie, 1-0 in Uruguay, which leaves them barely hanging on to South America’s fourth automatic qualifying place.
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 Old Firm's proposal to join the Premier League
Ten years ago this summer, the FA published its Blueprint for Football, which first made explicit its support for the breakaway Premier League, to be formed for the start of the 1992-93 season. At the time it was seen by many, including us, as a radical and damaging step which threatened to undermine the traditional bonds between the top of the game and the bottom. The desire of the Premier League clubs to keep a greater proportion of the game’s revenue for themselves, scandalously endorsed by the FA, seemed likely to send many of the smaller clubs to the wall.
The choice of Colombia as the host nation for the Copa America caused much controversy and country's ability to host the tournament was called into question. Simeon Tegel reports
Allowing Colombia to host the Copa América was either a very brave decision or a very foolish one. Unfortunately for the officials of the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol), it was the second alternative which increasingly looked the more accurate description in the run-up to the July tournament, the region’s biennial equivalent of the European Championship.
Justin McCurry reports on how the rising political tensions in South Korea and Japan should not affect the 2002 World Cup
Logistically, awarding the 2002 World Cup to Japan and South Korea was a classic FIFA fudge, but it did raise hopes that the countries would put aside their historical differences and co-operate to make the tournament a success. With kick-off less than a year away, however, “football diplomacy” is proving no match for emotions stirred up by events of more than half a century ago.
The global trade in young players is reaching disturbing new levels. Neil Wills details some of the cases that have led to European clubs being accused of abuse and then slavery
In June, a 12-year-old, Marco Quotschalla, was sold by Bayer Leverkusen to Cologne for £60,000. Remarkably, it wasn’t even his first transfer, since Cologne had sold him to Leverkusen just a year before. Marco’s signing caused a stir in the German media principally because he is German and there’s a sense that such a thing should not happen to a nice European child. Sadly, much less attention is paid to the thousands of youngsters who are being brought over to Europe from South America and Africa in increasing numbers with promises of big money and stardom.