In this exclusive WSC Supporters’ Club edition of the podcast, magazine editor Andy Lyons, writer Harry Pearson and host Daniel Gray talk unlucky footballers, classic team line-ups and local derby miscellany. They also discuss half-time entertainment from crowd-invading police Alsatians to inflatable sumo wrestlers and a despised garden shed, strange shirt sponsors and annoying football TV innovations of the 1990s. Meanwhile, Record Breakers takes us to Perugia, Sicily and Blackburn. Expect Billy Cock hats, Flamingo Land and Vic Mobley.
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Stories
With another transfer window almost done we look back to November 2000, when Pierre Lanfranchi and Matthew Taylor argued it was time for a new system
With uprisings across the Arab world dominating the world press, can change be sparked in football’s most powerful regime?
The popular uprisings in the Middle East are now receiving more coverage than football in the UK press. Even the Arsenal v Barcelona Champions League tie, apparently regarded by some pundits as the most momentous event in the history of the game, couldn’t keep the revolution in Libya off the front pages. So it’s surprising that no one has yet asked the keen Tweeter Jay Bothroyd for his views on the implosion of the Gaddafi regime.
In a global game, it shouldn’t be a surprise that clubs such as Arsenal have so many foreign youngsters. But, wonders Barney Ronay, where are the youthful English expat stars?
Alan Pardew’s complaint was that not one of the Arsenal side that eliminated Real Madrid from the Champions League was born in this country. Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the PFA, was similarly exercised: “It’s not an English success. It’s tinged with disappointment. It would be more enjoyable if we saw Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell as part of it.”Alan Pardew’s complaint was that not one of the Arsenal side that eliminated Real Madrid from the Champions League was born in this country. Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the PFA, was similarly exercised: “It’s not an English success. It’s tinged with disappointment. It would be more enjoyable if we saw Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell as part of it.”
Simon Tyers tells the story of one of this summer's more unique characters
Next June Australia will, more than likely, be officially anointed as 2006’s equivalent of the 1998 Jamaica side, the qualifiers full of unlikely UK-based players that will do in the Republic of Ireland’s absence. All five penalty takers against Uruguay have played in England, as has (and does) keeper Mark Schwarzer. The Boro man’s understudy, Zeljko Kalac, has played here, too, but is a rather more unlikely World Cup player, from the point of view of many in Leicester.