Dear WSC
After “sick as a parrot” and “early doors”, it seem we must now brace ourselves as another football cliche takes root. Apparently, no one in the game can now refer to the patently obvious without reach- ing for a little spurious gravitas by des- cribing it as “well documented”. In case it is not yet well documented just how irritating this affectation has become, I thought I’d get the ball rolling.
Jeffrey Prest, via email
Ian Plenderleith has happy memories prompted by a shrine to Aberdeen's European heroes and toasts some hard-drinking yet non-fighting Vikings, but is distinctly unimpressed by the efforts of the G-14
Certain teams capture a boy’s imagination no matter their colours or home town. I’d never been to Aberdeen by the early 1980s, but the last Scottish team to win a European trophy (the 1983 Cup-Winners Cup) boasted one of those long-lost line-ups – crammed with talented native names that never seemed to change – and rarely seemed to lose.
They are simple in theory but increasingly contentious in practice, believes Philip Cornwall, because so much more can be at stake when a spot-kick is awarded today
That you have never seen everything the game has to offer was underlined once more in Istanbul on October 11. Something as simple, in theory, as a penalty produced a variation that was new to me.
Matt Nation celebrates an unkempt concrete corner of Hamburg where watching the game was far less entertaining than pushing your neighbours into the nettles – unless a visitor lost his rag
For some ears, Adolf-Jäger-Kampfbahn sounds resolutely and undeniably Teutonic, evoking images of combat drills, marching and Oliver Kahn-lookalikes with their faces set in neutral jumping over vaulting horses. However, in the mid-Nineties, the touchline terrace at Altona 93’s games was more playground than parade ground. People used to go there simply to muck about.
Nigeria's dance of the seven veils with new national coach Bryan Robson should come as no surprise to students of the west African country's football, such as Alan Duncan
Listen to any Nigerian footballer talk for any length of time and you will notice how his every football-ing fantasy peters out with a “God willing”, or an “inshallah”. While it is tempting to read into this no more than a case of fatalism, this idiosyncrasy says much of a lifetime’s experience spent learning not to take anything for granted.