South America’s beaten semi-finalists were neither of the teams you might have expected. Sam Kelly reports
At around 10.30pm on Monday July 12, the Uruguayan World Cup squad touched down at Carrasco International Airport just outside Montevideo to a country which, when it bade them farewell, could scarcely have imagined the circumstances in which they’d return. World Cup semi-finalists? Uruguay? It’s not meant to happen in the 21st century, surely?
Dear WSC
I was very interested in the letter (WSC 276) discussing the topic of the Duckworth-Lewis of football that is stoppage time. Are there any WSC readers who are aware of stoppage allowance for cheating ball boys? I attended Colchester v Southampton in December 2009. The home side took a two-goal lead before the Saints slowly clawed their way back into the game. However, our momentum was thwarted by a series of ingenious defensive set-pieces that can only be attributed to hours of practice on the training ground. They went like this: ball goes off for a Saints throw or goal-kick, ball boys strategically placed around the ground retrieve the ball in exaggerated slow motion or, if the pressure was really on, then not at all. One very clever set-piece saw the ball rest at the feet of the ball boy. He then sat motionless on his stool causing Kelvin Davis to have to race 20 yards to retrieve the ball. Should the fourth official have added stoppage time to thwart this cunning plan? And have any other away teams been subjected to such coaching genius?
Tony Cole, Leigh on Sea
It would be unimaginable in the Premier League, but in League 1 a promoted side are challenging at the top. James Eastham reports
French football fans must have wondered what the fuss was about when Birmingham City went on a 12-match unbeaten run from October to January. In Ligue 1, there’s a newly promoted club challenging for the championship.
by Kevin Drinkell
Black and White, £14.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 293 July 2011
Kevin Drinkell was a great centre-forward whose career never quite hit the top. There's a credible argument that he was unlucky not to have made the England squads of the late 1980s. This was partly down to the wrong transfers at the wrong times, admits the player in this autobiography, and partly due to the intransigence and skulduggery of Robert Chase, his chairman at Norwich, in handling approaches from Manchester United and Tottenham.
Once famous for their success in Europe, Celta Vigo have suffered a dramatic reversal of fortunes. James Calder explains
Few areas in Spain are feeling the effects of the economic crisis more keenly than Galicia, its remote north-western corner. As companies go to the wall and the region’s dwindling number of workers try to make ends meet on salaries among the lowest in the country, its football clubs find themselves in an equally parlous state. Fourth-tier Ciudad de Santiago have just gone bust, unable even to pay their laundry bills, and Deportivo La Coruña and Celta Vigo, who were trading blows at the top of La Liga not so long ago, are beset by deep-rooted financial problems.