Stories | When Saturday Comes

Club v Country

Mike Bayly on why England’s warm-up match against non-League opponents might not have been the best way to prepare for Euro 88

One of the more curious international friendlies of recent times took place in June 1988. England had just qualified for the European Championships in Germany. A year earlier, on the return journey from a qualifying match in Turkey, the journalist Frank McGhee had approached Bobby Robson, suggesting England play a non-League team in their build-up to the tournament.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Party music

Jack Lang argues that since his big-money move to Flamengo, which angered his hometown club, Ronaldinho has not profited as expected

“Don’t throw coins at Ronaldinho: he’ll only start collecting them” read one handmade sign. Hundreds of others simply bore the words “crook” and “mercenary”. Some pioneering fans even went to the effort of printing fake R$100 notes with his face on them. This was not the homecoming Ronaldinho had hoped for, but he could have expected nothing less. His return to boyhood team Grêmio in October was always going to be a tense affair, following his decision to snub the club earlier in the year.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Tongue tied

Poland, the Euro 2012 co-hosts are struggling to find a common language in the dressing room, writes Liam Nolan

During the past six months, Poland’s coach Franciszek Smuda has faced a barrage of domestic criticism for trying to lure footballers with Polish ancestry to play for the national team. Five of Smuda’s starting 11 were either born or raised abroad. French born Ludovic Obraniak (Bordeaux) and Damien Perquis (Sochaux) cannot speak Polish, and three German-Poles – Eugen Polanski, Adam Matuszczyk and Sebastian Boenisch – feel much more at ease speaking in German.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Hereford United 1 Swindon Town 2

A late rally cannot prevent a deserved defeat for struggling Hereford United, as Paolo di Canio’s slick Swindon Town team edge closer towards promotion from League Two, writes Taylor Parkes

I am from the Welsh end of the Midlands – barely 40 miles away – but Hereford is a mystery to me. A town that can only be reached by train from London via Abergavenny, it is one of those places everyone has heard of but no one knows that much about. A rather olde-worlde town centre; some tasty estates round the edge, most probably. Cider and cattle and Mott The Hoople, or were they from Ross-on-Wye? This part of the country is a strange place, anyway, lacking the South’s self-confidence, the North’s reflexive pride or even the cheery irreverence of the West Midlands proper. It is very pretty in parts, but – as I recall – prone to a quiet pessimism, a sense of being nowhere in particular. Especially here; especially today.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Word of mouth

Zlatan Ibrahimovic spares no one in his hugely popular, highly readable and uncompromising autobiography, writes Marcus Christenson

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, it turns out, tells a story the way he plays football: he pulls no punches. The player, who has kung-fu kicked his Milan team-mates Rodney Strasser and Antonio Cassano, punched Jonathan Zebina and reportedly kicked Mark van Bommel on the shins several times during a half-time interval, published his autobiography in Sweden at the end of last year. It did not disappoint.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - Book reviews