Search: 'Robbie Keane'

Tony Mowbray promised attacking football but lasted only nine months at Celtic Park. Neil Forsyth looks at what went wrong

The car park outside Celtic Park is an influential stretch of concrete. Prominent new arrivals, such as Robbie Keane, are sent out there to receive adoration, while protests in the car park have been synonymous with much of Celtic’s recent history. They brought down the board in 1994, before Fergus McCann arrived to build a new Parkhead and start the process of correcting the club’s finances.

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Dear WSC
I read with interest Paul Joyce’s article concerning the rebranding of SSV Markranstadt as RB Leipzig in WSC 273. Only this summer it was rumoured that my club Southampton would be saved from extinction by becoming co-opted into the Red Bull sporting portfolio. While the team colours, fitting snugly with the brand, would not need to change the adding of the Red Bull moniker seemed a step too far. Surely something would be lost in fusing a global brand, with all its focus-grouped values and marketing spin, to a football club; an act of historic vandalism similar to replacing stained glass windows in a church with double glazing while nailing a satellite dish to the spire. The internet debate suggested, however, that many Saints supporters were happy to trade naming rights in exchange for the club’s survival. The same supporters had several years previously reacted angrily against a corporate branding of St Mary’s Stadium as simply the “Friends Provident Stadium” with the ensuing negative publicity resulting in a U-turn with the addition of St Mary’s to the title. Corporate patronage is not as new as we would like to imagine. The P in PSV Eindhoven stands for Philips, as in the Dutch electrical giants,  with the club’s home games at the Philips Stadion. Indeed, many clubs have benefited from long-term relationships with business which may be far preferable to other ownership and financing options; a quick glance around the leagues reveals several fates far worse than “Red Bull Saints”. Football may be just a game to some but following our team is about being part of a community, feeling a connection with the friends and strangers stood next to us at the ground. It is a thread linking us to people looking out for the score on a TV screen or in a newspaper on the other side of the world. Brands by their nature seek to harness and transform these feelings to translate them into profit, in the process sullying the very spirit of our club. Barcelona’s motto is “more than a club”. Every clubs motto should be “more than a brand”.
Neil Cotton, Southampton

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Barcelona turn up with barely a first-teamer in their ranks, Celtic show off a new away shirt, Spurs struggle in their latest kit abomination, while Al-Ahly make up the numbers. Taylor Parkes welcomes you to the Wembley Cup, summer's latest soporific pre-season tournament

The English summer: airless buses, flies in the wheelie-bin and pre-season tournaments we'll never, ever forget. It's that time of year again (this morning was so summery, a hailstorm set off all the car alarms down my street), so it's off to the Wembley Cup, a star-studded spectacular in the grand tradition of the Araldite Trophy, the Dr Pepper World Shield and the All-England Esso Bauble, or whatever the hell they were called.

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Cameron Carter reviews a documentary on the life and tragic death of Britain's first black outfield player and army officer

We sometimes forget how hard our modern-day players have it – up to two games a week, fans throwing coins at them, contractually obliged to visit an infant classroom to encourage a healthy diet – and yet even this suffering pales in comparison with what one player went through in the early part of the last century. Walter Tull: Forgotten Hero and Walter’s Story (BBC4) were, respectively, a documentary and dramatisation of the life of an almost inconceivably strong-willed man who was the first black outfield player in the Football League and then the first black officer in the British army.

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Directors of football are a little-loved breed. Adam Powley looks at how the role is plainly failing at Spurs

 The various billionaires now carving up the Premier League are not used to deferring power to their employees. Both Roman Abramovich and the new Abu Dhabi-based owners of Manchester City, coming from cultures that tend towards autocratic rule in commerce and politics, view an omnipotent manager of the British variety as a potential obstruction to the way they do business.

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