Dear WSC
All of the articles in the last edition relating to the events in Rome were very illuminating but I can’t help feeling that just about every one of your commentators, not to mention David Mellor and the FA, seem to have missed one vital point. Is it not the case that the Italian police (and for that matter, police in this country) should be told by their masters that if somebody has done something which contravenes the law of the land then they should be arrested and dealt with accordingly? If they haven’t then they should be left alone. The overriding image that has stayed with me since the match (apart from of course the dire football played on the pitch) was of police officers battering English fans in a frenzy of sadistic pleasure. In particular I remember watching, mouth agape, as about half a dozen helmeted meatheads set about one man who just happened to be caught behind their lines. The poor man curled up into a ball while they set about him with their truncheons. I don’t know what they thought he had done, but nobody deserves that sort of treatment, least of all from members of the constabulary. It seems to be a growing attitude amongst the authorities, the police, and some of your writers that if you go to a football match, then you open yourself up to a possible battering from the police – that’s just your bad luck. Let’s get this event into some kind of perspective. Police the world over like hitting people – that’s why they become police officers – and football matches (like picket lines) gives them the perfect opportunity. To my mind it’s as simple as that. The responsibility for the mayhem inside the ground belongs undoubtedly to the police authorities who clearly told their men to go and crack some heads. It matters not a jot whether other fans were drunk, abusive or whatever. The fans inside the ground were used for a bit of fun by the Italian police, which is something that should be deplored by everybody, not just football fans.
Jeffrey Lamb, Brighton
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Where have all the interesting characters in football gone?
Strange times when you find yourself agreeing with a well-worn cliché, but there simply aren’t the characters in the game anymore. What other explanations can there possibly be for television’s continued obsession with John Burridge? Over the past 12 months he has been beamed into living rooms, firstly in the Tyne Tees region, then nationwide, sporting comedy sideburns, singing, asking Fabrizio Ravanelli if he liked fish and chips and, more recently, embracing his old mum on Match of the Day.
Aside from the bad memories it holds, Roy Chuter examines why Heysel is not safe enough to stage major football matches
Of all the places you’d think you have a right to expect to find the latest planning and technology, and where the lessons of eighties disasters would have been most thoroughly learnt, the Heysel Stadium has to be top of the list. But for many of the Irish fans who visited the redeveloped stadium in November, it was obvious that problems remain.
The Brazilian league is structured so it's nearly impossible for the big clubs to lose dominance, but Brian Homewood notes that Fluminense have remarkably been relegated
If you want to meet somebody worse off than yourself, get on the next flight to Rio and go and talk to any Fluminense supporter. Fluminense fans have just gone through the agony of seeing their team accomplish the unprecedented feat of getting relegated from the first division of the Brazilian championship for the second year running.
Drug taking may be a problem in English football, but Tim Springett wouldn't recommend random testing
A further wave of revelations of professional footballers in England testing positive for drugs is, predictably, leading to a clamour for the football authorities to get tough on drug use and follow the example set by the International Amateur Athletics Federation. It is to be hoped that, instead, the FA and their international counterparts learn from the IAAF’s mistakes.