Graham Hughes recounts the only season of English League football to have been played during war time
The long-term significance
This was the only time that a full English League programme has gone ahead during wartime. Since its formation 26 years earlier, the Football League had been growing in membership and popularity. It now faced its first real setback, with a barrage of criticism over the decision to play on while Britain’s young men were being asked to go to war.
Paul Joyce reflects on the tragic death of German goalkeeper Robert Enke and examines football's poor record when it comes to helping players with mental illness
Unlike many of today's players, people felt like they genuinely knew Robert Enke. An ambassador for children's heart charities and anti-fur campaigns, the German national goalkeeper embodied a new generation who rejected the combative machismo of Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehmann in favour of an unspectacular integrity. Yet it turned out that no one knew Robert Enke at all, not even his Hannover 96 team-mates. "You learn over time how to trick the media," he once said, tellingly. "You talk a lot, but say nothing."
For half a century, celebrities have risked making fools of themselves with no need for reality TV, by playing football. But, as John Harding explains, it’s all in a good cause
The lure of the football pitch for theatre folk has always been strong. Ever since professional football became a mass working-class attraction, variety artists have craved some of the allure attached to the game. Before the First World War, comedian George Robey, “The Prime Minister of Mirth”, organised charity fund-raising matches involving top football stars and music-hall favourites, which drew large crowds. After the war, the tradition continued in intermittent form with teams representing actors, the cinema trade and pantomime artists, dance bands and the pioneering women’s team, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies.
Germany’s former captain believes he is destined for managerial greatness. No one else agrees. Paul Joyce reports on the coaching career of the German Bryan Robson
Lothar Matthäus is by no means the only former player to harbour delusions of managerial adequacy. Yet after five posts in six years, the coaching career of Germany’s most-capped international has a uniquely self-destructive trajectory. Convinced that he is not getting his fair dues, in terms of respect, money or a position that befits his stature, “Loddar” manages to talk his way out of jobs with the misplaced confidence of a cartoon labrador about to step on a rake.
Dear WSC
Thanks for digging deeper into the faceless consortium that are attempting to transplant Wimbledon FC to MK. Although the “stadium” would be on my doorstep, I naively assumed that the FA would fulfil their responsibility to the sport and dismiss the move out of hand. Having lived in MK most of my life I’ve hardly been deprived of reasonable live football action. As a child, Saturdays were down to Kenilworth Road (at ten,Luton was an exciting day out). Now I take my son to Sixfields, and both Northampton Town and, if we’re really going on safari, Rushden and Diamonds provide good entertainment, and more importantly teams and clubs that we can feel part of and be passionate about. It’s spurious and irrelevant to try to justify the project by stating that we’re the only city in Europe without a major football club. Firstly, MK is not a city and secondly, so what? The primary consideration should be how this move will benefit Wimbledon FC, and then let’s hear some quantifiable benefits for the area. It’s a small point but it looks like the ice-rink in MK will be closing despite being home to a reasonably successful Ice Hockey team, the MK Kings. The result of this commercial decision by the rink’s owners is that the Kings are likely to be playing out of Birmingham next year. So how long might it be before a more affluent club than Wimbledon decides to realise the capital locked up in their current piece of potential prime retail development land and offer the MK stadium landlords a deal for some “temporary” accommodation. This could be the top of a very slippery slope.
James McAuley, Milton Keynes