Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Central Berlin seemed an excellent place to take in a successful World Cup for Germany. Not so simple, as Karsten Blaas explains
German Team Let Their Fans Down read a headline two days after the semi-final against Spain. It wasn’t the 1-0 defeat by the future world champions that had caused outrage but the news that the players had gone on holiday after returning home rather than showing up on the so-called Fan Mile in Berlin to celebrate their successful campaign.
An anti-climatic exit, injured star player and end of an era – the next World Cup hosts need to improve. Robert Shaw explains
Brazilians don’t anticipate winning every World Cup. But they do at least expect to bask in their technical superiority until a defensive howler denies the assumed divine right to be world champions. Frustration at losing to Holland – opponents overcome in 1994 and 1998 – was compounded by the sense that the Dutch posed the biggest hurdle to Brazil’s fourth final appearance in five World Cups.
Simon Tyers watches ITV and Sky attempt to outdo each other in the calamity stakes as television football coverage slowly becomes a parody of itself
The comedic songwriter Tom Lehrer once said that satire died on the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Seeing Neil Ruddock cast as an expert on a show entitled England’s Worst Ever Football Team, I knew exactly how he felt. At the other end of the scale, ITV’s commentary is the satirical equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
Dear WSC
Simon Goodley’s excellent piece about Notts County (WSC 280) sums up the feelings of many long-standing Notts fans. Following the so-called takeover of the club by the Munto charlatans, the Notts fanbase was taken over by arrogant, intolerant glory hunters. Simon refers to the abuse heaped on the doubters on the internet, I know of two people who were physically attacked for the sin of professing to be less than wholly enthusiastic about the riches supposedly bestowed on us. Many supporters actually turned their back on the club, as a friend of mine said: “This is not the club I have followed for 30 years.” Getting promoted was in many ways the worst thing that could have happened as we may have to put up with these interlopers for a bit longer. Like Simon, I and many others I know actually hoped the team we support would lose matches so that it could regain the soul and good humour that attracted us to it in the first place. Here’s to a long winless run and relegation scrap – let’s see how many of the glory hunters remain then.
Tony Meakin, Nottingham
Ian Plenderleith bursts the bubble of naive writers and big corporations who claim that football can cure the world's ills
“The beautiful game of football is a religion that unifies the people of the world,” Anand Datla of Indian website the Sports Campus blogged a couple of weeks prior to the World Cup. Once every four years this candied, candle-holding view of football enjoys an airing from all quarters of the game – its fans, writers, players and officials. Oh, and its sponsors too.