Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
He was already a veteran supporter of Newcastle, but Matthew Roche remembers the first time he saw them play in Minsk
Sorting through my Newcastle videos the other day I noticed several were missing. Where was the “Abject failure dressed up as excitement” compilation? Who had swiped my record of the abortive 1990-91 campaign? Then a guilty thought struck me – Dynamo Minsk must still have them.
There's nothing quite like the floodlights, reminisces Jeffrey Prest
It wasn’t the normal route to night-time football. There were no alluring floodlights visible above the rooftops; no hordes funnelling expectantly past my window. No, it was down to the Airey brothers, excused the last ten minutes of our Scout meeting every Wednesday so they wouldn’t miss Spennymoor Utd’s kick-off. I grew to envy them. The idea that the heroes I occasionally watched on Saturday afternoons were reconvening in the midst of a working week had the exotic flavour of stolen pleasure. The Aireys had sold me.
Illegal payments are no laughing matter
"Bung" is a comedy word, close to bungling, an activity that generates derision, not to be taken too seriously. Bungs, as the Premier League inquiry established, are passed over in motorway service stations or transport cafes in plastic carrier bags or even, in one case, on an Icelandic trawler. It is a pity that ‘bung’ has become the standard shorthand phrase for corrupt transfer dealings in football because it trivialises an activity that can often involve huge sums of money changing hands.
A new report has been published that analyses the impact of black footballers. Ashley Shaw studies the results
While racism may have largely disappeared from our football grounds, as a recent survey demonstrates the English game is not quite the prejudice-free utopia the FA would have us believe. According to Steven Szymanski, author of Beaten in the Race for the Bell, an economic divide still exists between white and black players in English football.
No Asian footballer has cut it at the highest level yet, but Matthew Brown thinks that could be about to change
Cultural success in Britain was celebrated earlier in the year with the publication of a list of the top 100 Asian businessmen and a flurry of newspaper articles on the country’s Asian millionaires. In December, 2nd Generation, the ‘style mag for Britain’s Asian youth’ celebrated the end of its first year with a list of 1997’s best bands including well-known names such as Asian Dub Foundation, Cornershop and State of Bengal.