Stories | When Saturday Comes

Age of content

Ian Plenderlith has seen what lies ahead and he doesn’t mind at all

There are five ages to being a football fan. In Age One, you are the wide-eyed innocent in your father’s wake, awestruck at every kick, scream and swearword. In the Second Age, you are the young teenager at the game with his mates, gleefully and liberally squawking those same swearwords. In Age Three, in your late teens and early 20s, you are the detached, laconic observer, trying to pretend that you don’t care by laughing at your team’s failures, all the while hurting underneath.

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 - The Archive

In low spirits

Socrates’s illness has highlighted alcohol’s impact on Brazilian football, reports Robert Shaw

Brazilian football legend Socrates left hospital on September 22 after two stays for stomach haemorrhaging and liver-related problems that could yet necessitate a transplant. Given that doctors admit that the 57-year-old’s condition was life-theatening, the relief among friends, family and the better part of 190 million football fans is tangible.

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 - The Archive

Going global

John Duerden on how Lebanon are raising hopes against the odds with a good showing in World Cup qualifying

Lebanon’s German manager, Theo Bücker, was tired of waiting and told the bus driver to leave the Seoul hotel, where the team were preparing for a 2014 World Cup qualifier against South Korea, without one of his players. “If I say five o’clock, I don’t mean two minutes after or two minutes before,” Bücker said. “If a shot hits the crossbar is it a goal even if it had gone in had the shot been two centimetres lower?”

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 - The Archive

Hot off the press

Nick Dorrington on how footballers’ private lives are rich in gossip for sections of the Peruvian media, whether the stories are true are not

On the corner of every third street in every medium-sized Peruvian town people gather to stare intently at newsstands with an awe that suggests the advent of print press is still, to them, a new phenomenon. Very few of them ever buy the newspapers and magazines displayed; it is the headlines on the front and back pages that stick with them for the rest of the day.

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 - The Archive

Celtic crossed

Dave Hannigan on George Best’s brief spell playing for Cork Celtic

Three days after Christmas, 1975, 12,000 fans were shoehorned into Flower Lodge to see George Best make his debut for Cork Celtic in the Bass League of Ireland. At that point in his travels through the world game, Best’s latest club had been Fourth Division Stockport County. They had reportedly paid him £300 per game. Cork Celtic had lured him across to Ireland with the offer of £1,000 per outing and, for his first game against Drogheda United, Celtic took in £6,000 at the turnstiles.

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 - Book reviews