Dear WSC
I think it was William Shakespeare who once said “Don’t believe everything you read in newspapers. Or fanzines.” At any rate, unless someone corrects a few of the fallacies in Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger’s article about German football (WSC No 110), WSC readers will be suffering from some pretty serious misconceptions. How on earth can Ulrich claim “Matthäus, Klinsmann, Völler – they all come from the Ruhr”? Oh yeah, and Kenny Dalglish is a Cockney, I suppose? According to my copy of the 1996 edition of ‘The Sad Person’s Guide to the Date and Place of Birth of Every Famous German Footballer’, Rudi Völler was born in Hanau near Frankfurt and began his career with local team Offenbach Kickers. Lothar Matthäus comes from Herzogenaurach, a little place near Nuremberg whose other claim to fame is that it is the home of the Adidas empire. Jürgen Klinsmann is proud to be a Swabian and played for both major Stuttgart clubs before experiencing such huge success with Inter Cardiff and Scarborough. His career was resurrected by David Dein of Arsenal, but he later returned to Germany to play for Borussia 1898 Dudeldorf. Surely everyone ought to check his facts carefully before submitting anything to you for publication?
Derek Megginson, Scarborough
(birthplace of Bobby Charlton, Savo Milosevic and Pelé)
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Rob Trent reports on how many rebuilt grounds fail to take into account of the interests of disabled fans
Since the forced implementation of the Taylor Report, top English football clubs, and indeed Southampton, have spent millions of pounds redeveloping their stadia, but some of these same clubs have blatantly ignored the needs of disabled spectators. Manchester United, one of the richest clubs in the country, are nearing the completion of a new stand, raising the total capacity of Old Trafford to 55,000. In this new stand, no spaces have been allocated for wheelchair users, other than in the most expensive executive boxes.
Manchester City need all the help they can get. In recent matches the referees have not come to their aid. Steve Parish muses on the inconsistencies of referees – and of the TV watchdogs
Alan Wilkie’s penalty award in the Manchester FA Cup derby, and Martin Bodenham’s failure to spot Asprilla’s elbow at work when Newcastle met City at Maine Road the week after, were both well examined by Match of the Day.
Neil McCarthy explains why French football fans may be tempted to stay at home on matchdays from the start of next season
As from September, every single French First Division match will be shown live on television. A new interactive satellite channel will allow viewers to choose from one of nine matches played simultaneously – there is even the possibility of watching them one after the other, or all at once.
As part of WSC's tenth anniversary, Richard Newson rummaged through the connections between football and music
As a Sounds writer in the ’80s I met lots of rock artists. Many of them, like me, had been born in the early or mid 1960s. Very often, after a long hard interview, we’d end up talking football. Again and again these musicians told me how, for them, the game became less important when punk arrived in 1976-77 and made pop exciting again.