Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Jeffrey Prest reflects on his day out at the football roadshow
“Anyone who’s coming will be here by now,” said a voice behind me. “It’s all over bar the shouting.” It was late on the final day of the BBC Match of the Day Live exhibition and the owner of the voice was either flogging classic football shirts or clichés of a similar ilk. Rest assured, he was selling something.
Richard Mason reports on the scandal of the season in Serie A
There is a crisis in Italian football. An unprecedented series of refereeing errors (or “favours”, as many would prefer to believe) nearly all of which have benefited Juventus, has led to a degree of soul searching rare even in a country so frantically passionate about football as Italy.
A controversial game in New York provided a taste of what we can expect from referees at the World Cup, as Nick Patience explains
Watching the New York/New Jersey Metrostars play the San Jose Clash on April 25th, it quickly became apparent the referee – literally, for once – was watching a different game to the rest of us. There were seven goals, three red cards, eight yellows and 17,380 fans in Giants stadium wondering what would happen next, and why what had happened previously had happened at all. In a game that swung one way then the other, the much-maligned Alexi Lalas, in his first season with New York, scored the winner with just 11 seconds to go, which in most fans’ opinion was the only thing he did right in the entire game.
In Germany the debate over players' wages has been conducted in public during Bundesliga matches, as Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger describes
On A day in late March, Schalke 04’s business manager Rudi Assauer stormed through the corridors of power at UEFA headquarters. Grey-haired functionaries ducked out of his way, detecting a take-me-to-your-leader glint in the man’s eyes that heralded trouble. And they were right: Assauer was on a mission to save the world of football all by himself.
Ian Plenderleith recalls an usual cup tie consisting of flares, invading fans and a surreal amount of goals
Have you ever had your home stadium taken over by away fans? I don’t just mean being outsung by supporters of a victorious opponent, or having your end steamed in on by a bunch of future novelists. We’re talking here about an occupying army, a cacophonous, flag-waving force running on the adrenalin of new-found nationalism, a rabble which banged, bayed and basked in its superiority of numbers for 90 minutes and more while the awe-smitten home supporters barely squeaked.