Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Gonzalo Anton's is a typical rags-to-riches story. Phil Ball tries to establish exactly who he is
Distinguishing Features Tubby but tough, slicked-back hair with blazer and tie – more British Legion than Savile Row. With the flattish nose of an ex-boxer, not the sort of chap you’d cross too often. Cuts a respectable figure, without looking as though he’s been dressed by his wife. Anyway, he’s divorced.
FIFA's favourite marketing company, ISL, is in trouble. Alan Tomlinson assesses the damage its demise may do to the world governing body and its leader.
Jean Marie Weber is a tall, imposing man with a mane of white hair. At most big world and European football tournaments and a number of Olympic Games he’s been there, patrolling in the background, making sure the big sponsors are secure in the swankiest hotels of the world’s glitziest cities. He looked pleased in the Paris convention hall in 1998 when Sepp Blatter strolled to election victory to take the FIFA presidency.
Greece escaped a FIFA threat to throw them out of the World Cup at the end of April. Paul Pomonis explains how they got in such a mess
When the newily appointed junior minister of sport Giorgos Florides declared his intention “to intervene institutionally and dynamically in football” in March 2000, few people took notice. A year later the Greek FA was seriously threatened with expulsion from FIFA. Florides, a 44-year-old lawyer, took over his post with the aim of achieving the often announced katharsi (cleaning up) of Greek football. It soon became obvious that for him katharsi meant the removal of Victor Mitropoulos, head of EPAE, the Greek FA.
Shrewdness is the key to success
Bear with us, this month’s issue isn’t entirely about Tottenham. But the current state of the club does raise some intriguing questions about where English football has come from and where it’s going to. When WSC started in 1986, the three men in charge at White Hart Lane were Irving Scholar (chairman), David Pleat (manager) and Glenn Hoddle (lead artiste). Strange, then, to see them all together again, even if it was at Highbury in an atmosphere that was both sombre because of David Rocastle’s death and frosty because of the long-standing differences between Pleat and Hoddle.
The sanitised Premiership fan experience is increasingly an exception around Europe. Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger expalins why German clubs have insisted on keeping terraces open
He looked like somebody out of an American movie about college nerds: the thick spectacles, the greasy hair, the slight speech defect and the frail body. Still, he was a pretty good long-distance runner, and that’s how my brother had come to know him. He was always standing right behind us at games, next to that bunch of bikers who called themselves The Ghostriders.