Dear WSC
I recently heard Alan Green and Robbie Savage give the customary abuse to Howard Webb during the Man City v Sunderland game. While Green’s job is to commentate on football, Savage, as a current player, is in an awkward position when he criticises officials from the safety of a studio in terms that would get him booked on the field.
Maybe the threat of a disrepute charge would concentrate his mind. As Savage himself commented during the broadcast: “The officials bring problems on themselves. First sign of dissent, bang, yellow card.” Well you said it, Robbie.
Paul Caulfield, Bradford
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Robert Shaw looks at how Brazilian football still has racial issues to resolve, especially once a footballer’s playing career has ended
Botafogo striker Sebastián Abreu put on odd boots – one white, one back – for the club’s derby with Flamengo in the Carioca (Rio state) championship on April 10, while another Rio club, Vasco da Gama, recently launched a shirt with a message on the collar about “democracy and inclusion”.
Bernie Ecclestone’s takeover at QPR and how it nearly cost the club promotion
Roman Abramovich is said to be an enigma because he never speaks in public. In fact he might have done so occasionally but no reporter has been allowed to get close enough to hear him. There couldn’t be a greater contrast with another owner of a west London club, QPR’s Bernie Ecclestone, who seems to announce every thought that has passed through his head. He has had plenty to say about QPR lately, none of which will have impressed Rangers fans.
After José Mourinho and his Real Madrid side received hefty criticism upon their Champions League elimination at the hands of Barcelona, just how special is “The Special one?”
It has been a great month for conspiracy theorists. The death of Osama bin Laden has offered more questions than answers, the timing of the AV vote so soon after the Royal Wedding was viewed by some as a cunning Conservative ploy and José Mourinho, football’s chief polemicist, has been ruminating and ranting about the injustices of the world.
Cameron Carter reviews BBC2’s programmes on the Munich air disaster and questions the use of thematic dramatisation in the build-up to football matches
United (BBC2, April 24) was a dramatisation of the Man Utd story from Bobby Charlton’s breakthrough into the first team to the frantic rebuilding after the Munich air crash.