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The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

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

Alexander Hleb

Damian Hall tells the sorry tale of a a fragile winger who valued the art of passing over the business of winning and made a mistake leaving Arsenal

Alexander Hleb was a classic Arsène Wenger signing. He was relatively unknown in England, technically excellent, yet cursed with a pathological preference for a pass over a punt at goal. When the six-time Belarus player of the year and sometime captain of the national team arrived in 2005, he did not look like a footballer. Hleb was scrawny, too thin for his shirt – which always went untucked – with socks around his ankles. But he could play.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

A new ball game

Andrew Crawford believes that an influx of money, famous players and foreign managers could help football become China’s most popular sport

The Chinese Super League (CSL) season gets underway on March 15. Most of the country’s big clubs receive substantial funding from various wealthy business tycoons or state-owned enterprises, and several teams have recruited expensive foreign reinforcements. Shanghai Shenhua started things off last December in spectacular fashion by snapping up Chelsea’s Nicolas Anelka for £190,000 a week. Since then, Beijing Guoan have spent around £1.9 million to secure strikers Andrija Kaludjerovic and Reinaldo, while Shandong Luneng have paid a reported £830,000 for their own Brazilian forward, Gilberto Macena.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Common ground

As fans of Manchester United and Liverpool traded insults the clubs looked more similar than ever

Liverpool and Manchester United will not play each other again until August at the earliest. We should all be thankful for that. The fallout from last October’s confrontation between Luis Suárez and Patrice Evra lasted for more than three months, incorporating secondary flare-ups at an FA Cup tie and the reverse league fixture. New developments were announced on an almost daily basis. Liverpool were accused of harbouring a fascist. Callers to radio phone-ins turned into linguists when debating the difference between “negro” the adjective and “negro” the noun. A pre-match handshake was subject to more forensic analysis than anything since the Zapruder film footage of the Kennedy assassination.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

Quality Control

John Duerden says that despite an influx of money across the continent, clubs and governing bodies remain haphazard in their organisation

“A team that has scored just one goal in four matches has eight points. I am simply too amused to try and find an explanation to this,” said Uzbekistan’s Olympic coach Vadim Abramov of United Arab Emirates’ resurgence in the qualifying group. Amusement was not the general reaction after the worst of the wildly varying standards of professionalism in Asian football were revealed once again.

Sunday, April 1st, 2012 - The Archive

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