Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
While Bosnia's national team continues to improve, their federation is under attack from fans, as James Taylor reports
Late at night on September 3, after Bosnia’s victory in Luxembourg, one of the presidents of the Football Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BFF), Bogdan Ceko, was attacked by unidentified assailants. This has nothing to do with safety in Luxembourg; it is an unsurprising symptom of the off-field troubles that plague Bosnian football.
By the time it was scrapped in 2008, the Intertoto Cup had little respect. In 1995, when English sides were first made to enter, it had even less. Owen Amos looks back at that first season
From 1961 to 1995, the Intertoto Cup was a summer tournament for mid-ranking, mainland European clubs. It offered pre-season football, modest prize money and – most importantly – kept the pools companies happy (Australian state league games having the same function here). By the mid-1990s, according to the November 1994 Intertoto newsletter – yes, there was one – the tournament was stagnating. The pools companies wanted better games, and bigger names. The organisers asked UEFA for help and, after some discussion, the Intertoto was made the fourth UEFA club competition.
Steve Bradley explains why the opening night of a new national stadium led to unnecessary embarrassment
Wednesday August 4 should have been a proud day for Irish football. With the covers lifted from Lansdowne Road to reveal the new 50,000-capacity Aviva Stadium, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) threw a housewarming party to celebrate. But the invite list and guests’ behaviour left a sour taste for some fans.
The uses that organised crime groups have for football are changing, in both scope and style. Matthew Barker reports
Stories of organised crime latching onto football are nothing new. Illegal gambling rings, match-fixing, extortion, money-laundering – the globalisation of the game has seen a parallel growth in criminal activity.
No saviour arrived for Grimsby last season but Jack Johnson remembers the brief appearance of a goal-scoring international defender a decade ago
Ten years ago Division One strugglers Grimsby Town were in the midst of a defensive crisis. The club's only senior centre-backs – Peter Handyside, Richard Smith and Paul Raven – were all spending more time on the treatment table than the training ground, so Grimsby boss Lennie Lawrence decided to make a few phonecalls. The fans expected a rookie Premier League reserve or two; what they didn’t expect was a Chinese international.