Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Designing football stadiums has become big business for architechts, reports Matthew Foreman
When Derby and Bolton fans arrive at their new stadium for the first Premiership match of the season, they’ll find bars to tempt them away from the local, catering to put the hot-dog stand out of business and that symbol of 90s football, the revamped club shop. And as soon as the ground is empty the club can start preparing for the next business conference.
Although France '98 will have representatives from North and Central America, Neil Dixe Wills predicts that they won't upset the applecart
At the turn of the century Mexican president-cum-dictator Porfirio Diaz quipped, in what passed for wit in those days, “Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States.” Had he not shuffled off his mortal coil 82 years ago he might now be tempted to add, “But thank goodness we’re in the CONCACAF region.”
Never before have women been so interested in football. Anne Coddington thinks that clubs need to realise this quickly
“90% of males are happily married. To eleven men,” say the posters from Carling. Who’d have thought, then, that the fastest growing section of support was actually young women, and that we no longer stand out at football matches like the proverbial sore thumb. Though there’s plenty who still find us more than a minor irritant. “See you’ve brought the wife along,” is still a regular welcome, though that’s enlightened compared to the treatment handed out to female golden goal sellers venturing along the touchline with a modicum of confidence.
The Lionesses may have been particularly successful recently, but Roy O'Brien asks if the Lions even care
Two perspectives on women’s place in football, both provided by Millwall FC. In May, the Lionesses football team are given a civic reception by Lewisham Council to celebrate their most successful season ever, which included winning the Women’s FA Cup. “They’re helping to raise the profile of the sport and continue to push the standards of women’s football higher and higher,” says local MP, and minister for women, Joan Ruddock. A few days later, the press are invited to see Millwall’s new strip modelled by the club’s “latest international signing”, Anne Marie Foss, L!ve TV’s Norwegian weather girl. Anne Marie reads the weather in Norwegian with a subtitled translation. It’s quite a giggle.
Dear WSC
It’s hard to say which of the many depressing scenes from Channel 4’s Football Dreams documentary carried the most negative message for the future of the English game. Was it the sight of the Chelsea YTS kids spending their days scrubbing boots and cleaning toilets instead of playing football? Or the tin-pot sergeant-major’s approach favoured by coach Graham Rix, so reminiscent of bullying school teachers? Or perhaps it was the lack of self-confidence and immaturity of the boys themselves, reduced to mumbling self-pity by Rix’s ranting? It seems to me that the responsibility of the club towards YTS trainees is two-fold. First, to equip the players who are taken on as professionals with the skills to cope with the game at the highest level. Second, to give the ones who will be rejected the best possible chance to make a different career for themselves. It would be nice to think that the kids received some practical training in something useful (as they are compelled to do in other countries, such as Germany). But in essence the two jobs come down to the same thing: teaching the youngsters to think and act for themselves, whether on or off the football pitch. It seemed that at Chelsea all they were trained for was to follow orders, and the more ridiculous the orders were, the more slavishly they were enforced. True, the programme was made a year ago. Perhaps since then Ruud Gullit has encouraged a more enlightened regime, which encourages the trainees to question their coaches and develop their own judgment as he did himself in Holland. But if this is how things are done at the club which has been most receptive to continental influences and systems of play which depend on a certain degree of intelligence, then what on earth are the rest of them like?
Colin Sullivan, Lincoln