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Steve Parish remembers Manchester City’s 1967-68 season

Nineteen sixty-eight was my last year at school. A-level revision had to be fitted in around the end to Manchester City’s best postwar season, when they played ten matches in six weeks. The run-in began with an am­a­z­ing night at Old Trafford when George Best scor­ed first but City cruised into top gear and beat title rivals Uni­ted 3-1. I’ve still got the little reel-to-reel tape, recorded off the radio, of a Radio 4 documentary called More Than A Game, with vox pop interviews before, during and after the match, and roars, singing and cheers throughout.

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Dear WSC
I attended the York v Colchester FA Cup second round replay. Ah, the magic of the FA Cup: went for a traditional pre-match pie and when the kiosk opened I was third in the queue. The first man ordered two meat pies. The second man ordered one meat pie. The response came back: “Sorry love, we’ve sold out.” I laugh­ed so hard I lost my place in the queue. You don’t get that kind of comedy at Old Trafford.
Alex Gage, via email

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Neil Reynolds examines Lee Hughes's relationship with his hometown club West Bromwich Albion

It’s often said that scoring a goal is better than sex. If that’s true, then losing a prolific goalscorer to another local team is like catching your wife in bed with your next door neighbour. And so it was with Lee Hughes.

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Brazil are in turmoil, Peru are in despair, and Chile are in the pool with a load of Colombian women. It's never dull in South America, as Leopoldo Iturra discovers

Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his use of magic realism, a style which deliberately exaggerates Latin American folk­lore and which allows anything to happen – from the appearance of Romanies who invent snow to immortal incestuous families.

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It may be winter, but Ian Plenderleith points out that the football can continue indoors

There are some things in football as sure to come around every year as Ian Wright’s suspension and Thomas Brolin’s attempt at career rehabilitation. In Germany and Switzerland it is the litany of the coaches moaning about the tough playing schedule when the annual fixture lists are produced, as if they thought perhaps this year they would only be playing their opponents once and that the national cup had been abolished. They carp on about too many “English weeks”, meaning that their poor oppressed players have to some-times turn out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And that the summer break is far too short.

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