Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Richard Maguire assesses whether the South Africa bid has what it takes to win
Should South Africa win the right to host the 2006 World Cup, the success of their bid can be traced back to ten nerve-wracking minutes at a Paris airport in May. That was when Sepp Blatter turned to Emmanuel Maradas, the editor of African Soccer, and said: “That’s it, if the telephone doesn’t ring, it’s over, I’m pulling out.”
Oliver Butler explains how South Korea pulled off a coup in co-hosting the 2002 World Cup finals
The decision in June 1996 to share the hosting of the 2002 World Cup between Japan and South Korea showed what could be achieved by a bidding committee’s political know-how and expertise in manipulating the process, regardless of the merits of the bid itself. Despite starting four years later, South Korea succeeded in matching the claims of a bid that was palpably superior to its own and had received support from the highest levels of FIFA.
Gennady Fyodorov explains how Russia's Euro 2000 campaign stalled at the starting gate
The 1998 season can hardly be called a memorable one for Russian football. It was a season of dashed hopes, broken promises, failures on and off the pitch and the worst financial crisis in recent memory.
Call yourself a real football fan? If so, Ian Plenderleith would like a word
I used to live with an Arsenal fan. He knew sod all about football and had only started going to watch them in the mid-1980s because that’s what all the people he met at college did on Saturday afternoon. When Arsenal won the Cup-Winners Cup in 1994 he told everyone that Arsenal had won “the European Cup”. And asked to name his current England XI he put down Niall Quinn. On the left wing.
FIFA's proposed world club championship is likely to involve teams from Asia and Africa as well as Europe and South America, we look at how the Champions League format is spreading around the word. Justin McCurry reports from Asia, while Alan Duncan examines the situation in Africa
The Asian club championship has some way to go in terms of sponsorship, prestige and public and media interest before it can rival similar competitions in Europe and South America.