WSC readers keep spotting players in the unlikliest places…
I was humbled when Archie Gemmill spotted me driving into the Forest car park to fetch some tickets, at what he regarded as an excessive speed. Before I had had a chance to park and get out of the car he ran over to me, told me to wind down the window and called me “a bloody moron”, before turning and walking away. James Crosby
Harry Pearson realises that football has changed so quickly that he has become old before his time
“You don’t get the build-up of atmosphere that you used to,” I said to a journalist from the Daily Mail one Saturday afternoon at the Riverside Stadium last season. We looked around the ground. It was ten minutes to three, another capacity crowd, yet, aside from the strip occupied by the away fans, 90 per cent of the red seats remained empty. “The fact that everybody’s buying their tickets in advance has something to do with it,” the Mail man said. “People know they’ll get in so they only turn up 15 minutes before kick off.”
To mark WSC's 150th issue, we invited three critics with different links to the magazine's past to reflect on changes in fan culture since 1986
WSC The term “fan culture”, which barely existed when the magazine started in 1986, has now become commonplace. But it seems as though there is actually less of a unifying fan culture now than there was then. Are there things that still bring people together, from Premiership to the Third Division, as we assumed there were when we started?
John Williams comes off his line smartly to grab a chunk of goalkeeping history
I’m not sure how it is with you, but when I think back to childhood footballing days, things seem decidedly hazy. Detailed accounts of the hours we spent playing and watching are pretty much beyond me now.
A background of Grizzlies and Stompers may prove the right preparation for Portsmouth, says Mike Woitalla
In the USA, Milan Mandaric owned teams called the Earthquakes, Stompers, Storm, Grizzlies and Thundercats between 1974 and 1999.They were outdoor and indoor teams, and covered three different states in four different leagues. They’re all dead. But one made a major impact on the American soccer landscape and another led to his investment in Portsmouth.