When Saturday Comes is Britain’s leading independent football magazine. Launched in 1986, it aims to provide a voice for intelligent football supporters, offering both a serious and humorous view of the sport. WSC has always sought to include contributions from readers as well as a number of football journalists and award-winning authors. In each issue we aim to cover most of the major topics that fans are likely to talk about.
Within two years of its launch, WSC had developed from a bi-monthly, photocopied, hand-stapled production into a monthly magazine with national distribution. WSC also helped to publicise the hundreds of club fanzines that sprang up around this time. It is estimated that such publications were selling a total of more than a million copies each year by 1989.
Our public profile increased off the back of regular media publicity, such as that generated by a trip organised by the magazine to Senegal for the 1992 African Nations Cup, subsequent Nations Cups in Tunisia and South Africa, and the South American championship in Ecuador in 1993. The magazine increased in size to 48 pages and went full colour in early 1995.
During the mid-1990s boom in football publishing, When Saturday Comes established a niche in the then crowded magazine market. WSC has become recognized as a source of informed comment on all aspects of British football, featuring on major current affairs programming and in newspapers in this country and on radio and television around Europe.
Among the many When Saturday Comes books are the first English language histories of football in Spain and Germany and a book of football writing co-produced with Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch. Up Front collected together our favourite WSC covers. In addition we have produced and marketed a number of popular T-shirts.
Alongside the printed magazine WSC has an expanding online presence. Our digital archive is free to access for subscribers, is fully searchable and contains every magazine we have published. On our website we regularly publish a small selection of articles from each issue, to give readers a flavour of the full WSC magazine experience. We are active across social media, including on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We also assemble a weekly newsletter which delivers despair and enlightenment to your inbox every Friday – sign up at the bottom of this page.
For decades WSC has been proud to feature independent photography that shows off all aspects of the sport. Through the work of a dedicated team of photographers, Colin McPherson, Paul Thompson and Simon Gill, we have built up an incredible archive that specialises in images of football culture. The archive is available online and always expanding, while many of the photos are available to buy as prints.
In late 2019 we launched the WSC Podcast, in which magazine editor Andy Lyons and columnist Harry Pearson join host Daniel Gray for some topical football chat. Alongside this we also introduced the WSC Supporters’ Club, a growing community on Patreon that helps us to continue to produce the magazine and also includes bonus podcast episodes and exclusive merchandise. In 2022 we began running live events, bringing WSC‘s magazine and podcast to non-League clubhouses around the country.
For over three decades WSC has provided the best independent football writing in the UK and there is a lot more to come, but don’t just take our word for it – here’s what a few people have said about WSC over the years:
When Saturday Comes – eyes and ears of football, and voice of the fans ~ Guardian
When Saturday Comes: Philosophy football ~ Independent
Why football needs fanzines ~ Financial Times
The Beautiful Games – When Saturday Comes at 30 ~ Creative Review
When Saturday Comes still shooting from football’s fringes ~ Guardian
Happy birthday, WSC – the football fanzine that helped give supporters a voice ~ Independent