Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
No one knows how much money hosting a World Cup makes (or loses). Ernst Bouwes reports
FA conservative analysis by [auditors] PWC calculates the economic benefit to England of hosting the FIFA World Cup™ at over £3.2 billion, creating thousands of new jobs and opportunities for the entire country.” So says the England 2018 bid on its website.
Matt Nation enjoyed a tournament with 1,500 teams from 60 countries, but was disturbed by the precocious antics on show
After a month of the corporate-heavy stodge served up in South Africa, the 2010 Gothia Cup appeared to be just the right sort of light and fluffy dessert to cleanse the football tournament attendee’s palate. In the world’s largest youth team competition, many games took place on what looked like an expanse of waste ground converted into astroturf pitches in the heart of Gothenburg (there was some talk of the playing surface being “the best astroturf in the world”, but only in the same unfounded way as Danish-brewed lagers and English top-flight football are touted as being peerless).
In an era of phone-hacking, are footballers treated unfairly by the tabloids?
If all the allegations about extra-marital affairs among the current England squad were to be printed, the tabloids would have enough material for a daily supplement each. No matter how many times players are caught up in such stories, there are always more on the way. The saga of Wayne Rooney’s three-month affair in the summer of 2009 was plastered across the press for several days at the start of September, while injunctions are currently preventing the publication of stories about three other players
Cameron Carter explores the absurdity of behind-the-scenes football coverage on television and shares his views on ITV's World Cup coverage
Football Focus’s obsession with going behind the scenes is becoming a little tiresome, like a small child substituting “poo” for every noun over the period of a year. When ITV were forced to focus on the Football League, they had Matt Smith prowling around terraces, boot rooms, the referee’s toilet – all to give the impression that ITV preferred to cover these divisions actually because this was roots football, not that phoney Premier League nonsense where you can only get to within 30 feet of the players if you have four wristbands and a very recent CRB check.
Paul Joyce reports on the growth of match-fixing at every level across Europe, and how the authorities are working to combat it
In November 2009, news broke of the biggest match-fixing scandal in European football history. With the support of UEFA, investigators working for the public prosecutors’ office in the German city of Bochum identified 200 matches in nine European countries where manipulation was believed to have taken place. The Bochum commission, codenamed Flankengott, had intercepted phone calls, SMS messages and emails from 200 suspects throughout Europe.