Stories | When Saturday Comes

Conflicting views

The military’s presence in football is over the top

Now that Colonel Gaddafi has left us, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has no rival as the UK media’s favourite international hate figure. He cemented this position last month with startlingly crass comments about racism in football. Racist abuse between players on the pitch, he declared, should be forgotten about at the end of the match and resolved with a handshake. Coming as close as he ever has to admitting a mistake, Blatter then sought to “clarify” his comments, but the damage had been done.

Sunday, January 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Star struck

Alex Anderson enumerates the different ways clubs symbolise their trophies and the confussion it can generate

During the TV coverage of the Premier League’s finale last season, I was puzzled that Manchester City had three stars on their jerseys when they were going for their third title. It turns out that the stars are purely decorative, not above the City crest but part of it. I am no longer confident about what’s symbolised by any stars sewn onto any jersey.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Breno Vinícius Borges

A struggle to adjust to life abroad and cope with a career-threatening injury led to a dramatic fall from grace for one young Brazilian star, as Paul Joyce recounts

When Bayern Munich signed Breno Vinícius Borges for €12.3 million (£9.6m) in December 2007, they appeared to have landed a major coup. The 18-year-old central defender had just been voted “Discovery of the Year” by journalists after helping São Paulo FC to become Brazilian champions. Already an Under-20 international, Breno had been nominated captain of Brazil’s 2008 Olympic team by national coach Dunga.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive

The life of Brian

Harry Pearson reviews the latest biography of Brian Clough, that includes an analysis of the great manager’s approach to tactics

Just as evangelical Christians are supposed to address difficult situations with the words “What would Jesus do?” there is an apparently burgeoning legion of football folk who react to any player-related crisis at a club by asking: “How would Cloughie have handled this?”

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Silverware jubilee

After 26 years of “failure”, Manchester United’s success in the Premier League era is due to the influence of one man, writes Joyce Woolridge

“Guess what, Mum, Manchester United never won the League once between 1967 and 1993. That’s 26 years!” To my numerate nine-year-old, this statistic is mind-boggling. He just cannot conceive how that could have happened. I could have fobbed him off with the platitudinous “no team has an automatic right to win anything, son” spiel by way of explanation. But it is an unfair world and big clubs, with all their advantages, should win big titles. Over that quarter-century of “failure” (in inverted commas in a vain attempt to mollify those supporters of clubs who never win anything and are doubtless chewing the carpet while reading this), Manchester United had the wealth, the players and the opportunities to be League champions but only rarely even came close. The inescapable conclusion is that the difference between then and the subsequent pot-laden decades is simply, as I informed junior, the arrival of Alex Ferguson.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - Book reviews