Football Artistry and Political Intrigue
by Tim Hanlon
Peakpublish, £12.99
Reviewed by Dermot Corrigan
From WSC 293 July 2011
A Catalan Dream opens in 2003 with the coming to power of new FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta, who – along with then sidekick Sandro Rosell – sets about modernising a club which had been on the slide. They appoint Frank Rijkaard as manager, negotiate new merchandising and TV deals, renovate the fabled La Masía youth academy and on-field success soon follows.
The digits on the back of footballers' shirts seem to be getting higher and higher. Seb Patrick examines a recent trend
Australia’s Asian Cup qualifier against Kuwait in March of this year drew attention for a number of reasons – namely that the side was made up entirely of A-League players and that it slumped to a shock 1-0 defeat. To the eye of someone with an interest in shirt numbers, however, the game was notable in an entirely different way – as starting winger Daniel Mullen and substitutes Fabian Barbiero and Mitch Nichols took to the field sporting three-digit numbers on their backs.
Altrincham have a history of cup upsets. But as Richard Pulford argues they never seem to get the credit they deserve
The 2009-10 FA Cup began on August 15, just ten weeks after Chelsea’s win last season. The press will again be looking for this season’s giantkillers and again we’ll all have a bout of collective amnesia about the greatest giantkillers of all. People always mention Yeovil Town when this comes up. The most famous giantkilling moments? A close run thing between Ronnie Radford’s goal for Hereford in 1972, Blyth Spartans’ run to the fifth round in 1978, or Sutton United beating Coventry in 1989 – yawn.
Cameron Carter assesses the latest flickerings on football's moral compass
Just over this short summer, several individual events or trends have been declared “good for the game” by journalists, managers, bloggers and FIFA presidents. Sepp Blatter used the phrase to describe Real Madrid’s surely booze-fuelled spending binge. In the British press, a series of journalists running on empty queued up to declare that John Terry’s transfer to Manchester City, if it actually happened, would be “good for the game”. Elsewhere it was ventured that a second powerful spending force in Manchester would benefit pretty much everyone in the living world. It is all very well bandying this phrase about when your editor requires a 500-word opinion piece by lunchtime but it doesn’t appear that anyone has done a scientifically applied cost-benefit analysis on the subjects. Here, three arguable propositions are measured in brutally clinical conditions in order to determine whether they are, empirically speaking, actually good for the game.
Brazil’s quest for Olympic glory fell short once more, adding to the pressure on Dunga in the World Cup, writes Robert Shaw
A new film called 1958 – The Year in Which The World Discovered Brazil has the team fondly recalling how the blue shirts worn to beat Sweden in the World Cup final were hurriedly bought at a local shop. The badge of the football federation was then stitched on. Fifty years on and Brazil’s Olympic team turn up to collect their bronze medals with sticking plasters over offending badges – the full national football team wear Nike shirts, while Olympikus sponsor the Olympic team,