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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.

Balance of power

The continent’s richest clubs are attempting to wrestle wealth and influence from more traditional places, reports Alan Tomlinson

In the context of Sepp Blatter’s stated intention to push through reform of FIFA practices, various groups have been claiming to be the true voice of football, none more robustly than the European Club Association (ECA). This is the self-proclaimed “nuclear family of the football society”, the successor to the elite G-14 group established in 2000, which was expanded to 18 in 2002 and disbanded six years later.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive

Champagne supernova

A man with new ideas and a “clean” reputation could have a major football future, writes Steve Menary

On October 21, FIFA president Sepp Blatter unveiled a series of plans to combat the seemingly endemic problem of corruption in international football. Blatter proposed to reopen an investigation into the collapse of former marketing partner ISL, raising the possibility that senior FIFA figures could be shown to have taken bribes. Last year, FIFA paid CHF 5.5 million (£3.9m) to settle the case, but Blatter has now said: “We will give this file to an independent organisation outside of FIFA so they can delve into this file and extract its conclusions and present them to us.”

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive

Brighton & Hove Albion 0 Hull City 0

It might not have excited Manish Bhasin, but for David Stubbs this scoreless draw at Brighton’s corporate new ground proved to be an historic occasion

The first professional football match I ever attended was just over 40 years ago in September 1971. A treat for my ninth birthday, en route back from a late summer holiday at the Golden Sands Chalet Park in Withernsea. It was at Hull City, as it happens, at the old Boothferry Park. In later years, with Kwik Save and Iceland stores embedded into its queasy, dirty yellow structure, it cut a grim spectacle indeed (it was home to Hull until 2002) but back then, to my young eyes, it was a veritable Humberside Xanadu, wreathed in the alluring odour of fried onions, a mass plumage of hats and scarves, the floodlights towering with Wellesian awe like gigantic alien overlords at all four corners of the stadium.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive

Transfer calls

Questions are being raised about the influence one agent has over La Liga’s biggest deals, reports Dermot Corrigan

Given the financial difficulties Spanish football faces, the summer transfer market was mostly quiet, with the majority of deals either free transfers or loans. However, this general trend was bucked by Portuguese super-agent Jorge Mendes and former Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon, whose dealings drew attention from the Spanish media and even FIFA, raising questions about just who makes the important decisions at some of La Liga’s biggest clubs.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive

Without prejudice?

Positive action is required to back up anti-racism initiatives

If it is possible to gauge the extent of a problem by the number of organisations that exist to counter it, then racial prejudice is still a pressing issue in British football. Scarcely a week goes by without news of an anti-racism  initiative somewhere. There are regular conferences on the subject, annual action weeks, supportive visits to schools by famous players, T-shirts, stickers, newsletters and banners unveiled at grounds. Every season spectators are evicted for racist abuse and barred for life by their clubs. Although, as most people who go to games on a regular basis will be aware, some stewards and police forces are more diligent than others in rooting out abusers.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive

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