The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Guy Oliver thinks the English-speaking world should take a more mature attitude towards football’s governing body
England has become the Millwall of world football. No one likes us and, judging by the coverage in the press and the posts on the internet, we really don’t care. To read the comments on the BBC website since the Sunday Times first “exposed” corruption in the FIFA executive committee last November is to enter a delusional fantasy land that only the English could have dreamt up.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - The Archive
Sepp Blatter’s native country is inextricably linked to FIFA. But Paul Joyce has noticed a hardening of the mood in Switzerland
Sepp Blatter has always marketed himself as a humble Swiss patriot who has transformed Zürich into “the capital of FIFA, the capital of football”. Yet his compatriots are growing increasingly disenchanted with the self-made man from the canton of Valais. In a survey conducted by the Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten in May, 86 per cent of its readers thought that Blatter was guilty of corruption. And, as his organisation lurches from crisis to crisis, pressure is mounting in Switzerland for regulationson football’s governing body to be tightened dramatically.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - The Archive
The Europa League has had a bad press recently. Georgina Turner sets out to defend the tournament and dispel some myths
It’s May 9, 2012. About 10.30pm local time in Bucharest. Tottenham captain Ledley King looks embarrassed as he turns away from UEFA president Michel Platini, raises the Europa League trophy not much above chin height and quickly hands it down the line. Around him the Stadionul National is silent except for the noise of television crews packing up, litter being picked and the runners-up heading back down the tunnel – their supporters have already filed out of the ground and Tottenham’s were never here. Some of them have seen the result on the news and some received texts from friends. But who cares?
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - The Archive
A dramatic season finale lives up to the pre-match hype. Swansea wobble but survive Reading’s comeback as the Welsh fans look forward to top division games and being patronised by Gary Lineker. Huw Richards recalls the events at Wembley
The essential character of this Championship play-off final was determined 13 days earlier when Reading won the second semi-final. With Cardiff’s elimination it became, as a Swans-supporting friend texted, “a football match, not a civil war”.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - The Archive
This month’s 25-year retrospective takes on the thorny issue of ownership at three contrasting clubs. Mike Ticher begins with Chelsea, unrecognisable from 1986 but difficult to love for very different reasons
In about 1996 I interviewed a pleasant man in a suit from Deloitte & Touche about its work on the finances of football clubs. He patiently took me through one of their early annual surveys, explaining why the industry was unsustainable. If clubs could not rein in players’ wages, there would be a disastrous crash within years.
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Thursday, July 21st, 2011 - The Archive