Darron Kirkby profiles one of the Hammers' boardroom members
Distinguishing features: Looks like the Fat Controller on Thomas The Tank Engine.
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
It was an unhappy captaincy debut for Vinnie Jones as Wales are torn apart by a classy Holland. Chris Hall reports from Eindhoven
10:30: While their supporters shake off some well earned hangovers and prepare to catch up on sleep during the one and a half hour journey south from Amsterdam, the Welsh squad stroll purposefully into PSV Eindhoven’s Herdgang training complex. New captain Vinnie Jones is lost in his own thoughts, coming to terms with his surprise elevation from hod carrier to standard bearer. Had the group included some of its missing stars – Giggs, Hughes, Rush, and er, Horne – it’s unlikely they would have created much more than a ripple of mild curiosity apparent in the faces of the onlookers. One of PSV’s many youth teams were waiting to take the field, hoping to impress the ex-internationals who coach them, and the gallery of parents cooing encouragement from the safe confines of the cosy clubhouse. Bobby Gould looks tense and wary, perhaps still clinging to the belief that those absent talents would have made a difference to tonight’s daunting encounter.
Looking at aspects of maleness and football, Joyce Woolridge explains why the New Lads beloved of the media have little in common with the lads who actually go to watch matches
A few weeks ago at 6am I began a solo train journey from Bristol to Manchester to watch Manchester United lose to Chelsea. I’ve never been to a match alone before, but it happened that this time I was the only one with a ticket. As a solo traveller, I thoroughly expected to observe at first hand some spectacular displays of laddish boorishness, given that football is where the ‘new lads’ are most at home; where they gather to worship the cult of curry, boozing and birds whilst rejecting all standards of decent behaviour.
In the build up to the 1998 World Cup Simon Harris assesses whether Hungary's fortunes may be changing for the better – and explains how they came to sink so low in the first place
Poor old Ferenc Puskas. It doesn’t matter which Hungarian team is playing in Europe, his old club Honved, Ferencvaros, Ujpest or lesser names like Videoton or MTK, the foreign press are there waiting for their Puskas quote.
Manchester bids to become the new natioanl football centre even though the odds are firmly stacked in Wembley's favour. Adam Brown reports
It is now a year since the Sports Council made the curious decision of asking Manchester and Wembley to revise and re-submit their bids for the national stadium. The ‘race’ for the national stadium saw the final, final bids re-entered on 6th November.