Alex Horsburgh investigates the life and times of the Cowdenbeath chairman, a man who sacked his manager the week after they were promoted
Distinguishing features Small and wiry, reminiscent of Granville from Open All Hours.
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 murder conviction of an Atletico Madrid fan has focused attention on Spain's indulgence of far right hooligan gangs. Phil Ball reports
On the night of December 8, 1998, outside one of the turnstiles of Atlético Madrid’s Vicente Calderón stadium, someone shoved a 9cm steel blade into the heart of Aitor Zabaleta, a 27-year-old Real Sociedad fan. Lost in the middle of a ruck of Atlético fans who had suddenly surrounded him and cut him off from his girlfriend, he was dead by the time she managed to get back to him.
The worsening football violence in eastern Europe is out of sight and out of mind for the west, says Simon Evans. But not for long
While possible violence at Euro 2000 occupies the minds and column inches of the west European media, the continent’s other half, as usual, is dealing with much more real and pressing problems. The second weekend of April saw serious crowd violence in St Petersburg, Budapest, Lodz and Bucharest. These were not western-style scuffles or skirmishes. Hooliganism in eastern Europe is proper stuff: rubber batons and tear gas, head-splitting and hospitalising. The most serious clashes were in St Petersburg, where one fan died during the latest in a series of full-scale riots that have greeted the start of the Russian season.
If Howard Wilkinson has his way, professional coaches in England will eventually have to obtain an official qualification. Bernd Huck explains how the system works in Germany
Karlheinz Riedle never wanted to be a coach. But when Mohamed Al-Fayed sacked Paul Bracewell and asked Riedle to take charge at Craven Cottage, he agreed to do the Fulham owner a favour. “But only for a short time, because I’m really not the coaching type.”
Dear WSC
Why is Juninho (and any other Brazilian for that matter) referred to as a “samba star”? We don’t call Spanish players “tango stars” or Italians “tarantella stars”. Dennis Bergkamp has never been a “clog dance star” and I haven’t heard Everton fans heralding Joe-Max Moore as their new “hoedown star”. I wonder what foreign journalists call English players. “Morris dance stars” perhaps?
Nigel Ball, Middlesbrough