| Product: |
World Soccer |
| Date: |
16/08/06 (184 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Wonderful analysis and insight and pleasing to read and very detailed
Disadvantages: Monthly publication makes it seem out of context at times.
World Soccer Magazine (WSM) is a long running (perhaps longest) international football magazine. The title reflects pretty much its aim except that they annoyingly use the word 'Soccer' instead of football despite the publication being British and having little to do with the U.S . Oh well, it's a corporate world we live in I suppose we just have to accept that fact.
I began buying this magazine around the turn of the millenium when avid football fans may realise, that Italian league football (Serie A) was taken off our screens. Being in the pre-sky digital era I was forced to keep up to date on the latest happenings by course of this excellent monthly publication.
The magazine always profiled a singular player at the front. This would usually be the player who was the most famed or publisiced player at the time of printing. Hence going down the years almost every great player of any era had appeared on the front World Soccer Magazine. The first page as I remember it always contained a small introduction by the Editor (esteemed writer Gavin Hamilton) outlining the focus of the current edition of the magazine.
The great thing about this magazine is that it has every inch of the globe covered. If there is a meaning football match played anywhere at any time you will find it somewhere in the WSM. Of course the magazine gives greater emphasis on the more established leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany etc..). The whole purpose of the magazine is to go look at football with a more strategic and anylitical look. We get many interviews from major footballing stars who are always quizzed on more serious issues of the game (and not on stuff like hairstyles and cars).
One of the main features was team of the month, when the magazine's experts would get together and judge the best 11 players from all of the leagues (across Europe). Why is this a good feature? Well ask any football fan and they will tell you they know better than any manager about team selection. However we often think we know more than we actually do, so this feature has a lot of us eating humble pie.
The quality of journalism is really high and there are few colomns that you read that have you thinking 'what is he on about?'. The magazine has a feature profiling young footballing prospects.I can remember many of todays top players (Ronaldinho, Messi etc..) appearing in this section before I had ever heard about them.
There are a few critcisms that can be made of WSM, however many of the drawbacks of the magzine do not lie within their control. As with nearly all series publications the internet has made magazine such as this lose much of its appeal. Why wait for a month when you can get instant information from around the globe and for free all on the net. The content can seem a bit outdated in particular the reviews of particular tournaments. Which often appeared a month after they had been completed and usually were long forgotton (Like World Cup 2006, anyone still remember that? Oh yeah England lost!).
The magazine has increased in size of the years and unsuprisingly in cost aswell. Some may see the magazine as quite small given its cost (around 3 pound a copy) but it only concentrates on high quality articles and features so this is not suprising.
Regardless of the impact of the internet, this magazine has stood the test of time and has still managed to stay popular. It has high quality features every month and keeps you up to date with the latest happenings in world football.
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Magazine Statistics
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Readers: Male 90%, Female 10%
Average Age: 30
Circulation: 45, 497
Readership: 372,000
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Summary: Still a great magazine for avid football fans
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