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TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine1986

TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine

2011

Inside Dilemmaforteenstars

SwindonTown’sworstseason

SwindonTown’sworstseason

CarltonCole’sTwittertrouble

CarltonCole’sTwittertrouble

Crawley-unpopularchampions

Crawley-unpopularchampions

RelegationbattleinBirmingham

RelegationbattleinBirmingham

BARCELONA: BEST IN THE WORLD? IN THE WORLD? IN THE WORLD?

£2.95 June2011 Issue292

Noonecan matchusfor passing...

hype...

andfalling over

AroundtheworldRacisminBrazilBosniabannedbyFIFA

AroundtheworldRacisminBrazilBosniabannedbyFIFA

Germandemocracyunderthreat

Germandemocracyunderthreat

ForeignownersforSpanishclubs

ForeignownersforSpanishclubs

China’sfootballboom

China’sfootballboom

1986

2011

25thAnniversarySpecial

Fromfanstocustomers–the changingmatchdayexperience

11/05/2011 18:25

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TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine1986

2011

Inside FootballLeaguereview

FootballLeaguereview

Swanseabackatthetop

Swanseabackatthetop

WholikestheEuropaLeague?

WholikestheEuropaLeague?

TheFAatwarwithFIFA

TheFAatwarwithFIFA

AnIrishmaninLibya

AnIrishmaninLibya

HAS BLATTER

HAS BLATTER RUINED FOOTBALL?

RUINED FOOTBALL?

No,itwill takeatleastanothertakeatleastanother

No,itwill takeatleastanother fouryears fouryears

AroundtheworldGoodtimesforPorto

Italian fancampaign SeasonrestartsinJapan

Serbia:Arkan’sclubindecline

Latvianfootballonthebrink

Argentinarefereeingcontroversy wsc293_cover.indd 1

£2.95 July2011 Issue293

£2.95 July2011July2011July Issue293

1986

2011

25thAnniversarySpecial

Thechangingfaceofclubownership fromIpswichbrewerstoRussianoligarchs

08/06/2011 18:21

TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine1986

1

2011

Inside Over-pricedEnglishtalent

Players’ superinjunctions

HowforeigntourshavechangedHowforeigntourshavechanged

Howforeigntourshavechanged

Whathappenedtoawayends?

Football’s onlineabusers

THE NEW MOURINHO?

Failtowinthe ChampionsLeague,fall outwithAbramovich,

takeabigpay-off

AroundtheworldMexicowintheGoldCup again

Palestine takeonAfghanistan

NewhopeforIndianfootball?

GranadaontheriseinSpain

CorruptioninSouthKorea

AderbydayinRio wsc294_cover.indd 1

£2.95 August2011 Issue294

1986

2011

25thAnniversarySpecial

Howthegamehaschanged,from

Howthegamehaschanged,from parkfootballtothetacticalrevolution parkfootballtothetacticalrevolution

06/07/2011 18:30

TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine

TRANSFER MADNESS!TRARANMADNDNDNDNESS!S!MADNDN

1986

2011

TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine

TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine

INSIDE Football and the riots

Joey Barton’s long goodbye

Life in League One for

Sheffield Wed and Notts County

Sheffield Wed and Notts County

Footballers’ Desert Island Discs

Footballers’ Desert Island Discs

Media-savvy managers

1986

2011

Let’sall moveto Manchester

TheHalfDecentFootballMagazine

INSIDE Stars from the lower divisions

Stars from the lower divisions

Should clubs compensate fans?

Should clubs compensate fans?

Footballers love computer games

Footballers love computer games

Gateshead aiming for the League

Gateshead aiming for the League

When crowd abuse goes too far When crowd abuse goes too far

When crowd abuse goes too far

Hartlepool’s lost rivals

TEVEZ CONTROVERSY

Iwon’tplaywith peoplewhoareonly hereforthemoney

£16million forPhilJones?

£20million forJordan Henderson?

£20million forStewart Downing? £20million£20million forStewartforStewart Downing?

wsc295_cover2.indd 1

£3.50 September 2011 Issue295

INSIDE The Carlos Tevez saga

Women’s World Cup

Wimbledon are back

Uruguay win Copa

Bundesliga scandal

Champions League in decline?

Fulham return to Europe

Pat Rice’s glasses

1986

2011

25th Anniversary Special

Football writing: broadsheets,

tabloids and player biographies tabloids and player biographies

27/07/2011 19:14

ARSENAL’S NEW DIRECTION

AROUND THE WORLD

South Africa’s World Cup hangover

South Africa’s World Cup hangover

Shamrock Rovers in Europe

What next for Asian football?

Mundialito: the tournament

England turned down

Slavia Prague in crisis

£2.95 October 2011 Issue296

31/08/2011 18:27

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AROUND THE WORLD

Joe Cole is a hit in France

Spanish players’ strike action

Premier League still big in Japan

Footballers and booze in Brazil

Lebanon’s World Cup target wsc297_cover.indd 1

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Order online wsc.co.uk Editorial common ground As fans of Manchester United and Liverpool traded insults the clubs looked more similar than ever

Alex Ferguson, in contrast, stayed above the fray until his goading declaration that Suárez should never play for Liverpool again after the failed handshake.

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 f lare-ups at an FA Cup tie and the reverse league f ixture. 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 f ilm footage of the Kennedy assassination.

When FSG f inally stepped in to tell Suárez to accept blame for the non-handshake and ask Dalglish to apologise for his stroppy posturing, it was a result of pressure from business partners. The club’s shirt sponsors Standard Chartered publicly criticised Suárez, while an editorial in the New York Times, in which FSG own a seven per cent stake, suggested that Liverpool

“needs to repair its global image fast”.

That the saga made news around the world shows how, for all the mutual distrust, the two clubs are bound together. United and Liverpool will always be on the same side, for example, in any future discussion about Premier League clubs gaining control of their own overseas broadcasting rights.

That the Suárez saga made news around the world shows how, for all the mutual distrust, the two clubs are bound

Pertinent points were raised here and there but the cumulative ef fect was utterly depressing. The central issue of how best to confront racism in football was largely swept aside in favour of dismal one-upmanship, with some of those involved clearly enjoying the opportunity to f ling mud. That Evra should be barracked on his return to Anf ield, where he was treated as the perpetrator rather than the vict im, was greeted by some Manchester United fans as proof of the racist nature of their rivals. But then a section of the United support also sing a blatantly racist song about Park Ji-Sung, scorer of the winning goal in the return league match, which also includes the lines “you could be Scouse, eating rats in a council house”.

together

Last October Liverpool’s managing director Ian Ayre suggested that English clubs should be free to negotiate their own deals as Real Madrid and Barcelona do in Spain. Ayre received no backing, although it was reported that this was more due to bad timing than oppo

Some Liverpool fans, meanwhile, took the FA’s decision that Suárez was the guilty party as evidence their club is uniquely discriminated against by the football establishment. The fact that Kenny Dalglish was judged by most neutrals to have made a fool of himself for stonily denying that Suárez was in any way culpable seems only to have strengthened this sense of paranoia.

sition to what he was saying among the major clubs. In 2003, United’s chief executive at the time, Peter Kenyon, f loated the same idea. As the clubs try to increase their global support, the nature of their rivalry will be an essential marketing tool. When Liverpool made their apologies Ferguson accepted them with a frank admission: “One thing you cannot take away is that both of us need each other.”

Read Editorials from the WSC archive wsc.co.uk/editorials

A lot of fans on both sides will have been dismayed, if not entirely surprised, at the general descent into abuse and bluster, but extreme voices will always shout the loudest. Just as they do in each f ixture between the clubs where the regular swapping of chants about Hillsborough and Munich conf irms the extremists’ view of one another. That such outpourings of bile can be routinely defended as “banter” is incredible.

To outside observers, the two clubs can seem strikingly similar. Both have built huge worldwide fanbases that are of enormous commercial value and have led to their being acquired by speculators with a background in US sports. At United, the Glazers remain unpopular with the fans for having put the club into debt to fund their takeover. Liverpool’s f irst American owners were despised for the same reason.

Their successors Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are not likely to be the subject of protest marches while they continue to fund Dalglish’s rather haphazard reshaping of the squad. But they seem to have realised, belatedly, that it was a mistake to have allowed him to lead the club’s response to the Suárez-Evra conf lict, where partisanship emphatically trumped common sense.

The old familiar enemies watch over their teams

5