Seven seasons with seven different champions has made for an exciting domestic scene but European impotence, reports Marcus Christenson
Djurgaarden fans could be forgiven for celebrating as if there were no tomorrow after their team won their first league title in 36 years, before beating Stockholm rivals AIK with an extra-time winner in the cup final to complete the double.
Roger Titford takes the pulse of our readers again and finds they have cut down on football slightly, but are unhappy at their increasingly sedentary lifestyle
In WSC 187 we asked for readers’ responses to a questionnaire we had first used way back in 1991, before the start of the Premier League and the all-seater era. How much had changed? Eighteen per cent of our respondents actually recall answering that questionnaire and another 37 per cent thought they might have done. So, although the two surveys were 11 years apart, we’re looking at a lot of the same people’s views on the same issues. Not that surprisingly, a lot of the answers were the same too.
He might have been the answer to one of Liverpool's perennial problems, but the call never came. Ben Lyttleton goes in search of Anfield's wasted winger
The reception area at Nîmes stadium was heaving before France’s 1998 World Cup winners took on Marseille in a charity match in aid of flood victims in early November. The France coach Aimé Jacquet was getting stressed out at the late arrival of Christophe Dugarry, muttering: “It’s worse than at the World Cup, because with Stéphane [Guivarc’h] injured, we haven’t even got one forward.” Didier Deschamps was trying to get Marcel Desailly to speed through the traffic by promising the game would earn him a senior cap, while Frank Leboeuf was causing hilarity with his Scottish hunting get-up. And then the Liverpool winger Bernard Diomède walked in. He went to register his arrival with the receptionist, who was heard saying: “You’re a player? And where do you say you play? At Liver-what?”
Day 19 of the WSC advent calendar and we’re concentrating on the true meaning of Christmas: turkey. In issue 191, from January 2003, Barney Ronay reported on football’s role as an arena for politics in Turkey, and how it could change after the election of a new nationalist and Islamic-leaning government.
In 1985 England beat Turkey 5-0 at Wembley in a World Cup qualifier. Two years later, an opportunity for revenge presented itself when the teams met again. This time the score was 8-0. Yet when Sven-Goran Eriksson’s men travel to Istanbul next October for their final Euro 2004 qualifier, they will face the team that finished third at this summer’s World Cup. Turkish football has transformed itself over the past ten years. And now Turkey looks set to follow suit.
When Hungary visited in 1981, England hadn't got to the World Cup finals for 11 years. Cris Freddi went with his heart in his mouth, which improved his singing
Call this our culmination. England’s last qualifying match. We’d been to all the others at home and reckoned we’d suffered enough. They hadn’t been convincing in any of the others, even the 4-0 opener against Norway. It took them most of the first half to score, the third goal was a penalty, and the fourth was three minutes from time. I’d missed that one, Mariner’s only good goal for England, because I was swapping nips of rum with two Norwegian fans. There was also the most beautiful woman ever seen at Wembley, a classic white-haired ice goddess. Drifting involuntarily towards her in the coach park, I found myself shaking hands with her equally stunning boyfriend, straight out of the Thor comics. Oh well, who needs the perfect woman when you’ve got two World Cup points?