Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Howard Pattison goes in search of football heritage and asks why more blue plaques aren’t awarded to players
In 1999 the writer Hunter Davies asked: “Why are there no blue plaques for footballers?” Over a decade on, they are still so rare that you begin to wonder if those who administer our heritage simply don’t see football as being part of it. Surely Bobby Moore is worthy of a blue plaque?
Mick Collins observed the closing of the transfer window with unease and distaste, unlike Sky TV or others who stand to profit
The business of football is a complicated one, truly understood by only a special few. Unfortunately, those special few have more sense than to get involved, thus leaving it in the hands of opportunists and incompetents. There’s no longer a mystery about this, with winding-up orders and administrators long since letting light in on the game’s chaos. Even while it steams towards the financial buffers, however, stoking the engine with £50 notes, some of us still look for a defining moment.
This month, Ian Plenderleath takes a look at a football website written exclusively by women
Everyone knows, as the American philosopher Elbert Hubbard once said, that “gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously”. Bearing that in mind, the best way to approach a football site like Kickette, where “multi-millionaire football star shenanigans, exclusive WAG gossip and snarky fashion analysis are the reason we exist”, is just to enjoy its self-knowing appreciation of the contours of semi-clad footballers’ torsos, bitchery about the excessive make-up of footballers’ wives and up-to-speed information on the latest bordello sightings. Because you really need to see those pics of Carlos Vela and his international team-mates hanging loose with blonde transvestite ladies of the Mexican night.
Mike Ticher acknowledges that there are several ways in which to appreciate football. But if we concentrate too much on the view of professionals, we risk missing the point altogether
I was a bit shocked to find out I didn’t know how to watch football, despite years of practice. At least that was the impression I got from Jonathan Wilson’s excellent book on tactics, Inverting the Pyramid. Perhaps a better way to put it is that the book exposes the gulf between two ways of watching: the fan’s way, in which you care about the result and the entertainment; and the coach’s or analyst’s, in which you study patterns and work out what each team is trying to do. The book’s genius is that it successfully explains the second way of thinking to the first group of people.
A show that combined satire, nostalgia and comment on football culture. Rob Hughes revisits a neglected favourite
They say football and politics don’t mix, but Lenin of the Rovers was a rare exception. Aired on BBC Radio 4 between February 1988 and April 1989, it was a sharp, fabulously inventive comedy series written by Marcus Berkmann and Harry Thompson, with an ensemble cast that included Alexei Sayle, Phil Cornwell, John Sessions, Keith Allen, Jim Broadbent and the legendary Kenneth Wolstenholme.