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Why Danny Wilson feels Sir Alex Ferguson's pain

The Robins — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Swindon fan Nick Judd notices some startling comparisons...

What has Danny Wilson got in common with Sir Alex Ferguson? More than you might think.

If, as is currently being reported, the Swindon boss sells Simon Cox – our top goalscorer with 32 goals last season – to West Brom, he will have to fill a similar key-man void to that which Manchester United have since the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo.

And although Wilson would snap your hands off for a tenth of the £80million Ronaldo fee, he has, like Sir Alex, an unusually large amount of money to spend.

But money doesn't always buy happiness. All of United’s targets – Karim Benzema, Franck Ribery – appear to be following Ronaldo to Real Madrid. And to our detriment, a similar situation is unfolding in League One.

Huddersfield Town are building their own team of high-profile players, including Wilson’s preferred replacement for Cox, Theo Robinson. The story goes that we had agreed a deal – with both the striker and his club, Watford – before the 20-year-old went on holiday.

Robinson: "Do you think he can see me?"

But as Town fans are aware, verbal agreements can be worthless. In 2006 defender and skipper Sean O’Hanlon had given then boss Dennis Wise his word he’d stay… before joining MK Dons.

Reading between the lines on this occasion, it would appear that agents may have muddied the waters, culminating in Robinson opting for Lee Clark’s side over ours. Huddersfield had already signed Antony Kay, whom our new assistant manager Peter Shirtliff was looking to bring in from his old side Tranmere.

Rumour has it that now these West Yorkshire Galacticos are also chasing Bristol Rovers striker Rickie Lambert. Finishing level with Cox in the goalscoring charts last season, he would be a suitable replacement.

Given the relative geographical upheaval – Swindon is 40 miles from Bristol, Huddersfield 200 – presumably the Terriers are offering better wages. Good luck to them, but if it doesn’t work out, I wonder where it would leave them financially?

"Do you know the way to Yorkshire?"

To date, we’ve signed just four players. And although new skipper Gordon Greer and former Leeds goalkeeper David Lucas will be first-team regulars, the other two, Plymouth duo Dan Evans and Seb Broomfield, are rising stars.

I'm delighted that we’re building for the future and investing money in players with potential... even if it goes against our policy in all the time I’ve been a Town fan! Yet after releasing 13 full-time pros – 14 if Cox passes his medical on Monday – we need to start rebuilding the senior side, too.

It’s a funny old transfer window this year. Lower-league clubs are being forced to wait until those above them have conducted their business and, with clubs trimming their squads, there are a lot of players out of work to sift through.

The rumour mill continues to link us with a host of names. I find it all extremely exciting, but in addition to a new striker, my preferred duo would be former Leeds midfielder Jonathan Douglas and Hibernian winger Alan O’Brien.

Sky Sports and the BBC are reporting that O’Brien is in talks with the club already. The former Newcastle winger would be a strong addition, while Douglas’s box-to-box exploits are exactly what we’re after, but I suspect he may think he has bigger fish to fry (even if one blogger claims to have seen him at the County Ground today).

The same could be said for Carlisle hitman Danny Graham, who appears to have signed for Watford, although he’s still a free agent according to the PFA’s list of available players.

These are the type of additions we need to be making if, as we’re being told by the board, we’re going to mount a tangible promotion charge. Patience could be a virtue, especially in the loan market, but I trust Wilson to assemble a squad fit for a promising season.

And in the transfer window, even more than during the season, faith in the gaffer is all the fans can have – whether they support Swindon Town or Manchester United.

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Why Real Madrid haven't got Kaka’s number

Paul Simpson — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:00:00 GMT

With a feint as elegant as any he showed in the 2007 UEFA Champions League final, Kaka has given Real Madrid’s attempts to make him the new Zidane the swerve.

In an interview with Champions – out on July 8 – the Brazilian made it clear that: “I wouldn’t like to wear Zidane’s No.5. That would be a huge responsibility after all he has done for the club over the years.”

His own preference was probably No.18 – the number he wore playing for the Rest Of The World against Real Madrid on February 18 2002 in a match to celebrate the club’s centenary, and his age when he fought back from the injury that could have left him paralysed.

But 18 isn’t an especially sexy number. It doesn’t have the quirky resonance of Michael Jordan’s 23 and was only worn as 1+8 at Inter by Ivan Zamorano because Ronaldo wouldn’t relinquish his No.9.

Inter Milan vs Sesame Street

And the number has some odd associations: 18 could be a coded homage to Adolf Hitler as it uses the first (A) and eighth (H) letter of the alphabet.

Certainly this choice could have hit Madrid's merchandising machine in Belgium, where footballers have been banned from wearing 18 and 88 (usually taken to stand for HH – Heil Hitler) because of their suspected Nazi sub-texts.

This is not to suggest that Mikael Silvestre, Dirk Kuyt or Marek Jankulovski (who all wear No.18 for their clubs) have any idea of the number’s sinister undertones or are even aware of the British neo-Nazi movement Combat 18.

Madrid’s marketing men felt that, purely in the interests of shirt sales, it was the Brazilian’s duty to wear a more iconic number.

Within the club hierarchy, the idea of Kaka as Real’s No.5, as the new Zizou, seemed the perfect solution, almost as much of a no-brainer in this sequel-ridden world as Harry Potter VI and Police Academy 67.

But Kaka obviously dug in and, after some wrangling and wrestling, player and club compromised on No.8.

In football parlance, it’s not an especially legendary number, lacking the mythology that surrounds 7, 9 and 10.

"We'll start the bidding at 65 million Euros"

Hristo Stoitchkov wore 8 for Bulgaria in the 1994 World Cup, while three clubs have retired the number: Cobreola (for midfielder Fernando Cornejo), Dynamo Ceske Budejovice (Karel Poborksy) and Fredrikstad (for winger Dagfinn Enerly).

In a battle of global football icons, none of these are seriously going to challenge Kaka but maybe that is the point: this is the Brazilian’s chance to become the definitive number eight.

Eight is regarded as a lucky number by the Chinese (it sounds like the word for prosper), Buddhists (there are eight spokes in the wheel that symbolises Buddha’s teaching) and many Christians because, as Kaka would certainly know judging from his evangelical line of T-shirts, Jesus Christ dwells on eight beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount.

So Kaka is now No.8, moving incumbent Fernando Gago to No.5 – a number which, in Argentinian football is almost as resonant as 10, signifies a defensive midfielder who has the artistry to play a bit too.

Eight is a small victory for Kaka, evidence of the determination that – since his remarkable recovery as a teenager – hasn’t always been apparent beneath the beautifully spun blandness of his public persona.

And if his move to Madrid succeeds, kids across the world could be wearing 8 in his honour for years to come.

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United fans won't panic despite loss of prize pair

Andy Mitten — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:55:00 GMT

Manchester United have lost two of their best players in Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez.

But there has been no hysterical reactions from fans. More new signings like Antonio Valencia would be welcomed, but there isn’t panic on the streets of Denton, Didsbury or Moss Side.

Sir Alex Ferguson has built up such a vast bank of credit that fans would look foolish if they started questioning the playing side of the club.

Ferguson had continually proved doubters wrong and the obdurate Glaswegian would gain great satisfaction from doing it again.

United are linked with big names every day, dull agent-led talk. Papers believe it whets fans’ appetites and expectations, but such is the unreliability it merely grates.

United fans have wasted too much time in past summers fretting about whether Alan Shearer would arrive or Ronaldo would leave.

Most have learned to know better and trust the manager. He knows best and he’ll bring in who he thinks is right for the club.

He’s more likely to identify young emerging talents than go for the franchise-style players Real Madrid are distorting the market for.

Ferguson’s obsession is winning football matches, not pumping up expectations, creating illusions and grand egotistical projects.

Ronaldo wanted to leave, something his team mates and manager knew well. He was an outstanding talent in his six years at Old Trafford.

But like for most players from south of Marseille, Real Madrid and Barcelona have a far bigger pull than United or Liverpool, just as the two English giants have a bigger sway in Scandinavia.

Ronaldo’s left one club which has had the same manager since 1986 for one which has worked through eight coaches in five years.

Madrid’s new coach, Manuel Pellegrini, is top level, but he won’t have the control of Ferguson and I’m sure Ronaldo will miss the stability and discipline which Ferguson offers.

Ronaldo will also be closer to home. Manchester to Madeira takes 10 hours allowing for the two necessary connections. From Madrid it’s half that.

One significant factor about the move is that it is the first time since Mark Hughes left Old Trafford for Barcelona in 1986 that United have lost a player they wanted to keep. The first time Ferguson has lost a player he wanted to stay.

Beckham and Van Nistelrooy both left for the Bernabéu when Ferguson decided they weren’t in his plans. Ronaldo was, but what was the point of keeping a player who didn’t want to be there?

Ronaldo also had a point when he said he wanted a fresh challenge. He’s won everything there is to win at Old Trafford and can see great opportunities to make his mark in Madrid.

He’s gone and Ferguson will have access to the larger part of the £80 million fee to compensate for the rejection.

History will remember Ronaldo as a great United player. His self-confidence could be misplaced for arrogance, his posturing pretention, but if you wanted a player to score a key goal in Rome or Oporto, he was the man.

United fans have idolised Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, David Beckham and Eric Cantona, but the wider footballing community always denied these United heroes the ultimate accolade.

Ronaldo achieved that when he was voted European Player of the Year for 2008. The Madeiran thus did something that no United player has managed since George Best 40 years ago.

We’d be bitter not to wish him well, but it’s in Sir Alex Ferguson, not Cristiano Ronaldo, that United fans trust.

Jordi Cruyff always said that when he played for Manchester United he felt like he was the tail of an elephant. Whereas when he played at Alaves or Celta Vigo he felt like the head.

Carlos Tevez was not satisfied with being a leg which never stopped moving and kicking, so he’ll move to be the *rse of a big white (and laser blue) elephant.

I liked Tevez. I interviewed him in Durban last summer and he was sound. He was United’s man of the match in Moscow against Chelsea, but what matters is Ferguson’s opinion.

If he doesn’t think that he’s worth the fee, he knows the market better than any supporter.

He’s made unpopular decisions before, like selling Norman Whiteside, Paul McGrath, Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, Andrei Kanchelskis and Jaap Stam. He’s usually been vindicated.

Backed by a now finely honed scouting team, Ferguson has consistently identified the right talents and rebuilt United teams without anyone having the time to pause and talk about transition.

From emerging but established players such as Patrice Evra, Anderson and Ronaldo himself, to scores of youngsters from Paul Scholes to Federico Macheda, Ferguson gets it right.

Others will follow and there’s far more satisfaction in watching a player develop and thrive under Ferguson than seeing top name internationals like Juan Sebastian Veron or Laurent Blanc perform sporadically.

A Spanish friend spoke to Rafa Benitez several years ago. In private, Benitez had correctly identified a player who he thought would become the best centre half in Europe, but Liverpool were reluctant to sanction the funds to buy him.

He was called Nemanja Vidic.

It’s in that market, not the tabloid market, which Ferguson will be currently working hard.

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Star-studded la Liga leaves Serie A sulking

Riccardo Rossi — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:30:00 GMT

Do you ever get the feeling that the good times have gone and that they aren't coming back anytime soon?

Well, watching Ricky Kaka’s unveiling at the Santiago Bernabeu reinforced the thought that while La Liga is the new Hollywood, Italian football has become decidedly B-list.

They say that no man is bigger than a club, or a league for that matter.

But watching the Brazilian shine brightly in front of the adoring thousands in Madrid, this side of the Med the feeling is that of a spurned lover.

Amid all the hysteria in Spain – they even courted the Brazilian with Giacomo Puccini’s Nessun dorma – there seems little that can be done to incite another beauty to fancy Serie A.

Last summer, Jose Mourinho wooed everyone when he strolled into his first Inter Milan press conference and started nattering away in Italian.

While Ronaldinho drew 45,000 to the San Siro as AC Milan finally got their man – probably two or three years too late.

David Beckham injected a bit of glamour and razzmatazz to banish some of the January blues, but ended up relatively unmolested by one and all.

And now, when traditionally the transfer market should spark into life, there is little to make the heart race that bit quicker or at least persuade fans that they should be first in the queue for a season ticket.

Ronaldinho’s arrival saw Milan’s season-ticket sales leap from a relatively benign 28,000 to something in the region of 45,000.

It's doubtful that the names of Edin Dzeko, Emmanuel Adebayor or Luis Fabiano are going to create anything more than a ripple of mild interest.

Silvio Berlusconi has already revealed that, after going through the club’s budget sheet, he is not a happy man.

So there may be further bad news for the Rossoneri faithful by the end of the month when Alexandre Pato poses alongside former Milan alumnus Carlo Ancelotti at Stamford Bridge.

Champions Inter have been equally low key, concerned more about those seemingly desperate to leave rather than those knocking on the door to arrive.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has priced himself out of the market and will have to make do with achieving the respect he craves throughout Europe by turning it on for the Nerazzurri, while Maicon has been told to shut up and sign up.

Tuttosport summed up the tired feel perfectly with their half-page headline claiming Xabi Alonso was back on Juventus' radar – again too late, one feels.

AS Roma are the first club back in pre-season training, and the Romans don’t have two shiny cents to rub together to motivate even a pauper to come to the Eternal City.

Such is the uncertainly surrounding whether the Sensi family will relinquish their majority holding that talks concerning Francesco Totti’s contract extension have even been put on hold indefinitely.

And just when you thought things couldn’t get any more dire, who raises his ugly mug once again?

Yes, the Lord of Darkness himself, Luciano Moggi, is back.

Banned from the game for five years but still apparently spinning his web in the shadows, any conspiracy theorists wondering how Bologna somehow beat the drop are in for a field day.

“Old Lucky” has been chumming it up with Bologna owner Renzo Meriarini and along the way has certainly not lost any of his brashness, claiming: “I was helping him out finding new capital. It was just a bit of free consultancy work.”

That must have sent a shudder down the spines of all Bologna fans, who believe that it was Moggi and his corrupting system that helped condemn their team to relegation last time round.

In these dog days of summer, we may have lost a glittering star, and we will live with that, but the last thing Italian football needs is a bad stain reappearing.

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All quiet on the Atlético front... for now

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:00:00 GMT

La Liga Loca’s Atlético Madrid-loving acquaintances – the blog has no friends, friends make you weak – have been doing their very best to avoid the ongoing Galactico parties at the Bernabeu.

But the lack of activity at their own club has made this a tough task. Like the thousands of sleep-starved Madrileños, Rojiblanco supporters have been scowling and growling at the Florentino fiesta with pillows clamped to ears.

With the duelling duo of Enrique Cerezo and Miguel Angel Gil all with the Speedos on their holidays and unlikely to be sending each other postcards, the main news in Atleti’s wacky world has concerned a number of departures and the not-that-surprising arrival of the out-of-contract Juanito from Betis.

Midfielder Miguel de las Cuevas has moved to Sporting without anyone giving a flying fig, while goalkeepers Leo Franco and Gregory Coupet have done one on frees to Galatasaray and PSG respectively.

And with third-choice goalkeeper David De Gea wanting to bunk off to pastures new to get playing time under his gloves, the club are looking to accelerate the move for Spain’s U21 genius goalie, Sergio Asenjo, from Valladolid.

However, the Pucela side are a tad distracted and recovering from the news that former player and ex-sporting director José Luis Perez Caminero has been arrested on suspicion of money laundering.

The former Spain international is currently on bail – and holidaying at Eurodisney, apparently – but has a good fortnight to come up with an explanation to a judge as to why he was changing large amounts of lower denomination bank notes into 500 Euro notes.

A change is as good as arrest

Overall, the Vicente Calderón has been silent apart from the shuffles and scuffles from the constant crowd gathered around the tethered and barcoded figures of Diego Forlán and Kun Agüero, with one of the two set to leave this summer to help the club out of its latest financial fix.

Indeed, an ever-expanding pile of debt and the need to fund the construction of a new stadium has seen the club indulge in a bout of belt-tightening the likes of which Maniche can only dream of. And it’s for this reason that Atleti will not be indulging in its annual summer advertising campaign, which is always good for raising titters or gasps of shock.

Previous years have included the famous ‘year in hell’ campaign after Atleti’s relegation to the second division and a famous spot featuring a depressed child asking his equally sad-faced father why they support Atlético Madrid.

“It’s strange that a club that has forever been anchored to sad acts of amateurism on a sporting and institutional level, has been an example to follow in the world of sports marketing,” writes Iñaki Díaz-Guerra in AS, lamenting the absence of more advert action from the Rojiblanco club.

But with Atleti still trying to shove a stubborn Maxi Rodríquez towards Tottenham and José Antonio Reyes to literally anyone who will take the whining waste of space, the world of Atlético Madrid shouldn’t be quiet for too much longer.

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La Liga Talentspotter

Zombies, bouncers, shooters & a sea-lion

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

When last mentioning the Segunda-bound Real Betis in blog dispatches, La Liga Loca made the rather snooty suggestion that only a couple of lagered-up flamenco singers and some confused tourists would be participating in the march against club owner Darth Manuel Ruiz de Lopera.

For the kerzillionth time, the blog was shown to be quite wrong in its prediction.

An admirable 60,000 turned up in their green-and-white shirts to defy Darth’s zombie army and offer unrepeatable suggestions as to what Don Manuel could do with his club.

But since then, things seemed to have quietened a little in Seville. This is partly due to the fact that it is simply too hot to do anything down in Andalusia for the next three months, never mind go on a march.

However, many Betis fans may be thinking that there's no reason a club run by lobotomised loons can't get promoted to the Primera. After all, it happened last season for their fellow Andalusians Xerez.

Before becoming the newest champions of the second division ahead of Tenerife and Zaragoza, Xerez first announced their name to the wide world of sport when club president Joaquín Bilbao was arrested.

This being Andalusia, it was never going to be for something like tax-evasion or book-fiddling. Oh no.

Instead, Bilbao was nicked after a big night out that involved an ill-advised punch-up with a Russian bouncer and busting some caps into the door of a 'gentleman’s establishment' that had closed for the night.

"Yer name's not dahn... 'EE'S GOT A SHOOTAH!!"

Fortunately for Joaquín, his driver took the rap for the shooting business, but the global attention and a night behind bars meant that El Presidente was forced to step down from his role at the club.

Xerez then joined the ever-growing list of Spanish sides that have been unable to pay their players, but still managed somehow to finish top of the league and win promotion to the top flight for the first time in the club’s history.

Sadly it is likely to be a short stay, as Xerez have rather carelessly just lost the man who got them there.

After only being offered a one-year contract extension and a transfer kitty the size of Maniche’s brain, Esteban Vigo this week told his bosses to spin on it and moved back to the second division to manage the brilliantly-named Hercules.

Their own manager, former Real Madrid player Juan Carlos Mandía, has moved to Racing Santander.

That’s because the annoyingly long-named Juan Ramón López Muñiz has gone back to his former club, Málaga.

And that’s because their former boss Antonio Tapia has gone on to manage Betis.

While La Liga Loca was initially a little bit sad to see the back of Betis, it is now looking forward to spending the year with a club whose news-making prowess already includes brothels, drive-bys, economic meltdowns and losing managers before the season begins.

But there is one more addition to the story that could make La Liga Loca so happy it barks like a sea-lion.

Xerez are exploring the possibility of inviting one of their former coaches to take over the reins... a certain Bernado Schuster.

The blog is prepared to start a whip-round to make it happen.

*You can catch the more telegenic half of La Liga Loca on pundit duty on Real Madrid TV on Tuesday night from 19.00 UK time for their live coverage of Kaká’s presentation. Sky Digital channel 446.

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La Liga Talentspotter

New-look Napoli ready to rise again

Riccardo Rossi — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:00:00 GMT

The first day of pre-season training is always the same.

Plenty of the handshakes and introductions along with the requisite slaps on the back and hugs for the old guard.

It is a ritual that will be played out up and down the country over the next few weeks as the Serie A clubs return for a month of gruelling training.

Down in Naples it might be a good idea if everyone turns up that bit earlier as Napoli have been the busiest club in the transfer market so far.

As it stands, there are already six new faces costing something in the region of 50million Euro, but further new recruits are in the pipeline if Roberto Donadoni can persuade his hard-working sporting director Pierpaolo Marino to step up the chase for Juventus left-back Paolo De Ceglie.

Owner Aurelio De Laurentis is bank-rolling the new-look Napoli and it is certainly something that is needed if the club are going to fulfil their potential as a major player this coming season.

De Laurentis has seen how a more modestly-supported, but just as passion outfit, such as Genoa were able to make a dent in the fortress occupied by the usual big hitters – and, rightly, he believes Napoli can also be pushing for a top five finish.

Man with a plan: De Laurentis parades January capture Jesus Datolo

Donadoni arrived in March and had to make do with what was available before beginning the revamp in earnest once the campaign came to a close.

The first major coup was tempting Fabio Quagliarella back home despite Inter’s interest in the Italy international. The 18.7m paid could be the best piece of business of the close-season for an off-the-cuff striker who will revel in the atmosphere of the San Paolo.

Italy U21 midfielder Luca Cigarini will be knocking on the door of Marcello Lippi’s full squad very soon, and at 12m is an absolute snip.

However, what is equally impressive about Napoli’s dealings is the fact that they haven’t thrown their money around needlessly.

Morgan De Sanctis, for example, is third-choice Italy goalkeeper, but it only took 1.6m to prise the 32-year-old away from Galatasaray.

Juan Camilo Zuniga had an impressive first season in Italy at Siena and, at only 23, the right-back is well worth the 8.5m outlay, while at 7m the experienced Hugo Campagnaro is the no-nonsense defender sorely missing from last season’s line-up.

So far so good, and if De Ceglie - who is another Italy U21 international - arrives then the defence will have a fine mix of youth and experience to stand them in good stead for several seasons to come.

De Ceglie: The missing piece in Napoli's puzzle

On top of that, it will also have a homespun look compared to the top-heavy, temperamental South American feel last year – nine to be exact and none of them shy when coming to voicing their opinions.

When events started going south after the winter break, it was the likes of Ezequiel Lavezzi, German Denis, Mariano Bogliacino, Marcelo Zalayeta and Walter Gargano who were meant to turn things around.

Instead, they turned on coach Edy Reja and split the dressing room. That power has now been diluted, leaving Donadoni with plenty of alternatives and, on paper, Napoli certainly look like contenders.

However, most importantly of all, they look different. And after two so-so seasons now is the time for Napoli to prove they are more than just Diego Maradona’s old team.

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Betamax, Best & Buzz

Paul Simpson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

I have seen the future of football on TV and it is terrifying.

Yes, even scarier than Newcastle's new away kit inspired by Custard Creams, deckchairs and the laudable desire to ensure that Geordies don’t suffer from seasonal affective disorder.

I don’t know if your TV is ready for HD. Mine is unready, probably unwilling and almost certainly unable to offer any definition higher than slightly blurred.

Turns out I needn’t worry because HD will soon be as cutting edge as Betamax. The tellies of tomorrow will show football in 3D!

Jonathan Sim, Sky Sports’ amiable press officer mentioned this last autumn when I visited Fortress Isleworth to interview Graeme Souness.

Not wishing to show my ignorance – did he mean we’d all wear those funny paper glasses in our own homes? – I tried to grunt knowledgeably. A couple of months later, Sky tested the idea on a Liverpool vs Marseille game.

There are technical obstacles and the usual rows over standards but many sane people in sport and broadcasting seem convinced that in a few years, for the price of a plasma TV, we’ll be able to watch the action in 3D.

This isn’t quite as scary a prospect as it might have been a decade ago.

Watching the menacing amplitude of Neil Ruddock in 3D would have prompted millions to cower behind the sofa as if the Daleks were coming.

As vivid as 3D TV will make football, I have one question: what happens when players spit? Surely broadcasters aren’t prepared for the avalanche of personal injury claims from viewers who irreparably damage neck muscles jerking to avoid flying phlegm.

"LOOK OUT! It's coming right for us..."

Stripping yarns...

Not sure if the Newcastle away strip is the worst ever. See what you think.

I especially like Birmingham City’s splashed blue strip from 1992. It is tempting to see such monstrosities as evidence that the modern game has gone bonkers.

But kit designers have always shown been a bit barmy as this gallery of Victorian football strips richly demonstrates.

The agonising glory of Lubanski...

Jonathan Woodgate’s mum has, according to his tweet, been rediscovering her childhood through YouTube.

I thought I’d have a go at finding the most obscure footballers from my formative years.

Sadly, there was no Paul Cutler – Nuneaton Borough’s answer to George Best (he had the hairstyle and was the hero of our 1966/67 FA Cup run)

But I did find Wlodzimieriz Lubanski, the greatest Polish footballer who scored against England in 1973 and was then crippled – three and a half minutes into this clip – by Roy McFarland.

Despite McFarland’s attempt to use international sign language to suggest that Lubanski was just being an eastern European jesse, the wrecked cruciate ligament sidelined the star for the 1974 World Cup and he had retired when the Poles made the 1982 finals so he never became a household name like Grzegorz Lato and Kazimierz Deyna.

But about 18 years ago, when I was in New Orleans, a young black cab driver started talking to me about soccer.

Once he realised I was English, talk swiftly turned to Bobby Moore and then to Lubanski.

“Lubanski was baaaad,” he declared emphatically, the first time I, in my sheltered existence, had heard the word “bad” inverted to mean good.

I was so taken aback, I never really discovered how a young black taxi driver in New Orleans – he must have been 20 at most – had come to conceive such an intense admiration for a reasonably obscure, if brilliant, Polish footballer.

Football fame works in exceedingly mysterious ways.

Lubanski: "That goal was baaaad"

The Buzz Aldrin question...

Late last week, as the latest issue of Champions was being wrestled into submission, the question was asked: “Should we do a Buzz Aldrin feature in Champions?”

The feature would not, alas, focus on Buzz’s secret life as a long distance supporter of Bristol Rovers, but on the dilemma he faced as he hurtled back to earth in a craft that was almost, as David Bowie said, a tin can: after you’ve been to the moon, what can you possibly do next?

Footballers are luckier than astronauts. There is always another competition to win to help deflect the big question.

But sometimes, it forces itself upon a player. As Michael Parkinson noted, the night of the 1968 European Cup final was the point when, George Best felt, Bacchus replaced Busby as his mentor.

Best could remember the game but not the celebration or the meal that night with his girlfriend. He was only 22, had just won the European Cup and that campaign would win him the European footballer of the year award.

But he never won another significant trophy.

Romario’s fall, after winning USA 94, was less tragic – he just got bored with playing for Barcelona, only rekindling his fire as a club player when he had that 1000 goal target in his sights.

It’s hard to see any of the Barcelona players losing it as spectacularly, or as tragically, as Best but the Buzz Aldrin question will haunt many of them in its own way.

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Ronaldo: Rubbish and ‘a bit gay’ say Barça press

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:00:00 GMT

In the fortnight between La Liga Loca leaving Spanish shores and being dragged back kicking and screaming, millions of protesters took to the streets of Iran, Jacko popped his clogs and the campaign to oust big loser, Vicente del Bosque, began in earnest.

But absolutely nothing has changed in the news bubble of Barcelona where local rag ‘Sport’ is still banging out on about the evils of Cristiano Ronaldo a full three weeks after Madrid’s latest footballing bling-buy was announced.

Continuing the assumption that their knuckle-dragging readers are subservient half-wits without the ability to form a coherent thought of their own - probably not far from the truth - the Barcelona daily ran four editorials on Friday alone ranting that Real Madrid / Florentino Pérez / Cristiano Ronaldo are funny-looking and smell of wee.

“Why has Florentino Pérez come back?” asks Joan Vehils without bothering to give an answer to his poser.

But it’s still the signing of CR7 that still has the paper’s panties in a bunch.

However, a campaign that started out as gentle rib-tickling over Cristiano’s supposed rompathon with Paris Hilton and tendency for wearing flowers in his hair has now turned into something considerably more unpleasant.

Friday’s edition saw the downright mean Lluis Mascaró having a whopping dig at the Portuguese midfielder for “showing his pimpish prowess with his appearances in night-clubs and his brainless bimbos.”

He also notes that one of Ronaldo’s ex’s called him “a bit gay.”

"He said she said I'm a bit what?"

The not-at-all-jealous columnist ends his rant by writing proudly that “it is the antithesis of what Guardiola has in his dressing room” - a dressing-room which appears to be planning post-match bible study classes from what La Liga Loca can tell.

But if that wasn’t a big enough boot to Cristiano’s very busy balls, his colleague, Josep Maria Casanovas, lowers the tone even further by sniffing that “the Camp Nou is interested in the goals of Villa rather than the controversial charisma of Ronaldo who is on his way to becoming a metrosexual icon.”

As La Liga Loca has been a world-famous metrosexual icon for some time now, the blog would like to know what Casanovas is really trying to say here - ignoring the moronic implication that the former Manchester United man is not really known as a goalscorer.

Not enough ham in his bocadillo for you Josep Maria? Someone who wears pink shouldn’t be allowed to play in la Liga? May not be man enough for the secretary-banging, hard-drinking, Mad Men of Sport?

"I know what you're thinking... the white t-shirt was a mistake"

Still, the blog must respect Casanovas’ opinion. A gentleman has the right to stick to his guns, etc, etc. Unless that man will write whatever he is told by his Barcelona bosses of course.

Take this example from our subject’s column in April 2007 when the Catalan club were reportedly contemplating a summer swoop for the Man United man.

“Barcelona cannot let him escape. He’s got everything - class, speed, skill, a great strike and a winning mentality. As a footballer he is unique and also as a media icon. Let’s not forget that in modern football, image and marketing are also very important.”

Or perhaps a little something from July of last year when Deco and Ronaldinho were moving on and the club was looking for replacements.

“We know that Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká appear to be untouchable, but Barcelona are famous for hunting down the best players.”

So, to recap, in Sport’s world a Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Real Madrid is a pimping, preening, waste-of-space who is a bit too effeminate for their tastes.

But wearing the shirt of Barcelona the midfielder would become a dazzling footballer, a goal-machine, and an important source of marketing income.

If this is just the beginning of an almighty war of words over the season to come, La Liga Loca feels that it's good to be back after all.

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La Liga Talentspotter

The outlaw known as CR7

Paul Simpson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Lithe as a cat, a snappy dresser, a lethal marksman who rose from abject poverty to achieve fame and notoriety and be exploited by image-makers.

This could easily describe Cristiano Ronaldo but it actually refers to the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid.

Billy – or Henry McCarty to use his real name – doesn’t look much like CR7.

Truth be told, his picture on Wikipedia makes him look a bit gormless – not that I’d ever have said as much to his face or his pistol.

CR7 looks like a lot of people – Cliff Richard circa 1958 (though with more genuine menace) and Ian Beale’s gay brother-in-law (who just happens to be called Christian: coincidence? I think not) to name but two – but takes to the pitch with the cocky strut of a gunfighter confident he can out-draw any opponent.

Cliff: "£80 million? I don't stir for anything less than 100!"

Even in the misery that was his night in Rome, there was something heroic, if self-defeating, about CR7’s evident belief that he could, in the manner of John Wayne, win the thing single-handed.

Statistics were as pivotal to Billy’s fame as to Cristiano Ronaldo’s.

CR7’s 42 goals in a season will loom over him almost as much as The Kid’s inflated tally of 21 victims – one for each year of his life – doomed him to a shabby end, shot in the dark (and possibly in the back) by sheriff Pat McGarrett in 1881.

Ronaldo’s stats are genuine – evidence now suggests that the Kid may have only killed four men.

CR7 and Billy are natural soloists.

Though the Kid belonged to a gang called the Regulators, who have been posthumously hailed as revolutionaries fighting corporate conservatism in the American West, he was never a team player.

Nor, at his best, is CR7. This is often used in evidence against him but you could level the same charge at so many other geniuses from George Best to Hristo Stoitchkov.

Almost every successful striker has been a selfish genius.

And like many selfish geniuses, CR7 and Billy were obsessive self-improvers – Ronaldo’s obsessive willingness to keep practicing free-kicks is matched by Billy’s enthusiasm for practicing shooting at anything from every conceivable angle.

Just as the American West needed gunfighters like Billy to fuel its mythology, so football needs bad boy anti-heroes like Ronaldo.

We grudgingly admire his genius but love to tut our disapproval when he doesn’t pass to a well-placed teammate.

Every Ronaldo tantrum gives the grubbiest of us the cheap thrill of moral superiority, just as Billy’s misdemeanours – real or inflated – gave upstanding, law-abiding citizens an easy pride.

Ronaldo’s salary provokes a media pandemic of synthetic outrage as columnists, though eager to switch newspapers and websites for a few thousand quid, hypocritically lambast him for his greed.

And we are entertained by his bizarre costumes – it enables us to mock this working class hero (sorry folks, but that’s what CR7 is, even if, like many other working class heroes, he does stuff we don’t approve of) for his dubious taste.

Cristiano sports the cream suit & crutches look

In contrast, Lionel Messi is sold as a clean cut hero, Diego Maradona’s skills in the persona of Gary Cooper.

But if Westerns tell us anything, it’s that the distinction between hero and villain is usually not as clear-cut as it appears.

And, for good or ill, there is something intriguingly authentic about Ronaldo’s moodiness, snarls of frustration, and arrogant genius.

You almost get the sense that, like Billy, he could cut loose at any moment and decide the rules don’t apply to him.

It’s not admirable, and it doesn’t make him a great role model, but it does make him thrilling to watch.

So I, for one, will be disappointed if it all goes horribly wrong for CR7 in Madrid.

Football has enough players who are '25 going on 40'. The game, like the American West and the movie genre it inspired, needs its outlaws.

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Sporting director: An alternative way into the football world

Riccardo Rossi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

The training grounds may be quiet while the players and coaches laze on the beaches for a few more weeks at least.

However, there is one group of club employees still hard at work through the summer months: the sporting directors.

It is a role that has taken on a more wide-ranging significance in the modern Italian game, so much so that there is even a university Masters degree tailored to becoming a Directtore Sportivo.

Some of the brightest young names who would normally have moved into finance and marketing are now turning to a role that also brings with it the high-profile kudos of representing a professional football club.

"Hands up who wants to be a sporting director"

Once in position, their responsibilities range from dealing with transfers, setting budgets and ensuring that the club’s image is satisfactorily represented.

While the coach gets on with the everyday job of looking after on-field matters, the DS is the link between the playing side and the board – and can step in to settle any disputes that may arise concerning a member of the playing staff.

It is this latter point that attracts clubs to employ former professionals such as Marco Branca at Inter, who Jose Mourinho must go to cap in hand if he wants to sign a player, AC Milan’s Ariedo Braida and Igli Tare at Lazio.

Having said that, where in the past it was something of an old-boy network, any aspiring DS today must pass a 90-hour course regardless of who they are, held at the Italian Federation technical centre at Coverciano, where it costs 2,500 Euro to enrol.

Anyone holding a degree specialising in sports management has a slight advantage as they immediately receive 10 points on the overall marking score, while those with a degree in general are handed five points.

In an uniquely Italian twist, staying through to the end of secondary school ensures three points at least - so there is hope for everyone.

There are 577 DSs currently in circulation, with the latest 44 graduating in February, including Tare and former Juventus goalkeeper Michelangelo Rampulla.

Stopper turned sporting director: Michelangelo Rampulla

The high-flyers whom you see suited and booted, talking into their mobiles or deep in conversation in hotel lobbies generally have a sound business footing behind them.

However, in the modern game there is a steep learning curve as Juventus DS Alessio Secco found out early on when dealing with Claudio Ranieri.

Secco had previously been the press officer at the club, and even though he had cut his teeth under Luciano Moggi, the 38-year-old was unknown quantity within the football world.

Faced with whether to pursue signing Xabi Alonso from Liverpool who seemed ready to welcome a move to Turin, Secco demurred to the more experienced Ranieri who demanded Christian Poulsen instead.

The rest is history.

A lesson learned and while Ranieri failed to last the course, Secco remains and is growing in influence as his astute move for Diego pays strong testament to.

It is continuity that clubs are looking for – and someone who gets things done. A DS is never going to have aspirations to replace the coach but he will have influence in many areas.

That’s what Gianni Agnelli wanted when he poached the daddy of them all, Italo Allodi, Inter’s 'Mr Fix it' back in the sixties.

Allodi: He'll fix it for you, and you, and you...

“If there is a player out we want then we want him,” the lawyer was reported to have commanded Allodi, who set Lucky Moggi on his path to infamy.

With an ever-changing economic environment, that remit has changed to guarantee that things get done in more a transparent manner, with the bottom line now more and more on the balance sheet.

So, with the stars dodging the limelight for a while, it’s those in the sharp suits and mobiles glued to their ear who are taking centre stage at the moment.

Maybe future generations who love the game but have two left feet will be paying more attention to their studies as a way into the world of football.

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Bouncing Barca & the symptoms of success

Andy Mitten — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Barcelona’s a happy city.

Flags celebrating the treble hang from sunny apartment balconies and news kiosks sell special edition magazines celebrating Barca’s triumph.

A cake shop round the corner is selling treble edition cakes in Barca’s colours and a place which usually specialises in stamps is flogging little silver badges encompassing all three trophies for €25 a go.

"Wanna buy a badge?"

Barca’s five city centre merchandise stores are packed with tourists. The Catalans still look up to Manchester United as their merchandise role model, but Manchester doesn’t receive enough tourists to justify United shops in the city centre.

Real Madrid may be making the headlines with their new signings, but even if they bagged Pele, Maradona and Finch it wouldn’t wipe the smiles off Barca’s faces.

It’s their summer and they deserve it, yet given that Barca’s success came at United’s expense, I’m uneasy about it all.

It’s also unusual that it was only a year ago that most Barca fans wanted their president Joan Laporta out.

I saw two very visible demonstrations against Laporta outside the main stand last year.

As recently as October, there was huge political infighting at Barca and key resignations because of him.

And now? The former lawyer and fan activist spent yesterday high-fiving at a launch for a book about him before launching a new section in Barca’s museum dedicated to their treble.

Another person with a slender and poorly printed hagiography to his name is the brilliant Pep Guardiola.

You won’t find many people prepared to admit it now, but lots questioned the decision to install Guardiola as coach last summer. The talk before Barca’s Champions League home game against Sporting in the autumn focussed firmly on Guardiola’s precarious position.

Success has changed everything, which shows how fickle some football fans are.

Xavi spares Pep the sack in September

I’ve encountered gloating ‘Barca’ fans who wouldn’t know their way around the Camp Nou any better than a campsite at Glastonbury.

Most of my mates who support United went to Rome – ticket or not. About half of them got in to the Stadio Olimpico.

Most who support Barca didn’t travel, but they’ve got some cracking excuses why they didn’t.

I did feel for one whom I met on Sunday though. He went on a coach from Girona to Rome and took enough food for two days.

Italian police arrested him for carrying a knife used to cut Catalan sausage and he missed the match.

I can respect those Barca fans I know who actually watch their team and as a United fan I shouldn’t be surprised about the symptoms of success.

Success attracts kids (the number of Barca socios under 15 has shot up by 34 percent in the last month) and the armchair fanatic. Manchester United fans know that more than anyone.

I could always understand why United were so loathed around the country.

A Plymouth fan once told me that he’d watch Argyle home and away. He’d return to his local pub after a fruitless trip to Huddersfield or Hull, to be met by a smug tool in the latest garish replica shirt sat at the bar gloating about how “we beat Liverpool today.”

The bar-room bore had never been to Old Trafford. Wouldn’t you hate Manchester United fans if that was your only interaction with them?

When you are introduced as a United fan, conversations often follow a dreary and predictable pattern, usually starting with the fact myth that no United fans come from Manchester.

To avoid drowning in such soporific dullness, you don’t advertise which team you support when meeting people in social company.

Friends who watch United home and away wouldn’t dream of wearing the club's colours because the identity of the shirt has been stripped and because it attracts tools.

I was one of 18 United fans in Saudi Arabia last year and not one wore red.

"Sing when we're winning etc..."

And United doesn’t bring out the best in people.

I once came back from Leverkusen having seen United fail to reach the 2002 European Cup final to run into a work colleague of an ex at a party.

He was a corporate type and actually laughed at me for going “all the way to Germany to see Man U lose a football match.”

I just smiled and later saw him stood in the kitchen pouring his heart out to another dullard, wondering out loud why no girls would date him.

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Little chance of Lippi ditching class of 2006

Riccardo Rossi — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Anyone expecting Marcello Lippi to drop the old guard in the near future is in for a big disappointment.

It just isn’t the Italian way to give youth and inexperience a chance – look at the government and lack of fresh-faced politicians, the number of young entrepreneurs breaking through in the world of business and so on.

A recent poll of graduate students had over 60 percent of them claiming they would look for a future in another European country or North America rather than waste away in a society of OAPs.

And as we have witnessed, it is no different when it comes to football.

"No Andrea, you have to puff out your chest like this"

Bright young players are whisked off to the Premier League, and when they do prove themselves then no one is interested, the only positive note from South Africa, Giuseppe Rossi, being a case in point.

When you are cheering for your team to score at least one goal so they can sneak into the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup when they have been humiliated, then you know something isn’t right.

That was the case on Sunday evening as the debacle unfolded against Brazil – as pale and insipid as their shirts, the Azzurri put in such a humbling performance that you have to wonder, where do we go from here?

Lippi had no doubts where he was off to... the beach.

The coach already had his mind on a sun-lounger and a month to pick over the bones of the disaster that was the World Cup dry-run – and by the way there is still the small matter of actually qualifying for the finals to be resolved.

"I'm at the beach... I'm at the beach... I'm at the beach..."

A Serie Aaaaargh! Monday-morning straw poll had 95 percent of those questioned over their cappuccino responding with a definite “yes” to the question “should Lippi make whole-scale changes to his squad?”

The man who counts, of course, had only hours earlier reiterated his stance that you do not win major tournaments without tried and tested players.

It is the old catch-22 situation: how can the untried become polished professionals if they never get a chance to prove themselves?

Let’s remember that a decent chunk of those who lifted the World Cup in Germany were in South Africa where they: went a goal down to 10-man USA, lost to Egypt and were then played off the park by Brazil.

It certainly doesn’t inspire confidence, but at the same time the U21s are showing the sort of commitment and endeavour in Sweden that should take them through to the knock-out stages of the European Championships.

They overcame the hosts despite being reduced to 10-men thanks, once again, to the best and worst of Mario Balotelli: a stunning strike followed soon after by a stamp on an opponent and a red card.

Super Mario scores, then sees red

Unfortunately, the Inter striker falls into the same orbit as Antonio Cassano and Alessandro Del Piero: too individualistic for Lippi’s strict boot-camp mentality.

Then again, when you find yourself desperately seeking a goal to ensure you qualify for the next stage of a major finals, it is this sort of individual who can save the day with a moment of creativity.

Lippi has plenty to occupy his mind over the summer, but as he sits on the beach maybe the sounds of youngsters kicking a ball around him, pretending to be Balotelli, Rossi and Cassano, will wake the old fella up to the future.

I know, Serie Aaaaargh! doesn’t believe it either.

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Matt, Macca & Johnny Foreigner

Paul Simpson — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

His dream of playing for his hometown club in ruins, Matt Derbyshire has done a very brave thing, effectively engineering a move to Olympiakos.

Ignored in Blackburn, adored in Athens, the promising 22-year-old is setting an example many other English footballers should follow – for their own good and the good of the game.

The narrative of Britain’s football industry in the 20th century bears certain similarities to the story of British shipbuilding and steel.

Where once we led the world, exporting to all four corners of the globe, we now rely on imports.

And our frustration at this state of affairs leaves us, too often, xenophobic and insular, an attitude brilliantly caught by Simon Barnes in The Times, commenting on Big Phil’s demise:

“You may be good enough for Brazil, but if you think you’re good enough for Chelsea, you got another think coming.

"You come here with your fancy talk about winning the World Cup, but what about the Carling Cup, eh? How many times have you won that?”

Greek god: Matt Derbyshire

Buccaneers and pioneers...

It wasn’t always like this. British sailors introduced football to countries as diverse as Brazil, Iran and Spain.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, a buccaneering, hardy breed of British coaches like William Garbutt, Jimmy Hogan, Fred Pentland and James Richardson Spensley popularised British methods on the continent.

Garbutt, a right-winger for Arsenal, managed abroad (mostly in Italy) for 35 years. His Genoa players called him “Mister” and the title stuck – for Garbutt and every coach in Italy.

Rejected by the English game, Hogan collaborated with Hugo Meisl to create the glory that was Austria’s Wunderteam in the 1930s and influenced the football played by the Hungary side that beat England 6-3 and 7-1 in 1953 and 1954 respectively.

The next two generations of coaches – men like Vic Buckingham, Dave Mackay, Gordon Milne and, later, Terry Venables and Bobby Robson – were happy to make their mark abroad, winning honours in Egypt, Holland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.

Yet when Steve McClaren took on the Twente job, he was derided in the parochial British media, as if he had voluntarily gone into exile purely to escape the “wally with the brolly” jibes.

His move showed guts. Too many of McClaren’s contemporaries are content, after a setback, to scale down their ambitions to the pundit’s couch.

Hungary run riot in '53

British players have not traditionally been terrifically adventurous.

But with, according to Fabio Capello, only 35 percent of Premier League players born in England, that attitude must change.

If this percentage remains constant, there will be over 300 squad places unavailable to English players who will face a stark choice: resign themselves to the fact that the Championship is the best they can hope for or move abroad.

Model behaviour...

It’s not just about the players. Developing football nations and clubs usually adapt and adopt a strategy that has succeeded elsewhere.

Over the last 30 years, the most influential models have been:

Brazil (popular in Turkey, the Middle East, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Uzbekistan – and, briefly, Chelsea),

Germany (Greece, the Middle East, Kazakhstan and certain parts of Africa),

Holland (Austria, Barcelona, Germany, Russia, South Korea – and, briefly, Chelsea)

...and Italy (England, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland – and, now, Chelsea).

After les Bleus’ 1998 World Cup win, the French model was briefly in vogue, especially in England, but – apart from Arsene Wenger – the Gallic school remains only really influential in Africa.

Nobody follows the English model because there isn’t one anymore.

France batter the Samba Boys in '98

The rest of Europe respects the Premier League’s wealth, profile and passion – but doesn’t look to England for ideas that will shape the future of the game.

Does this matter? For British players and coaches, it certainly does because it will affect their livelihood.

Besides, the British game is not so perfect that it couldn’t be improved with a few clever ideas from abroad.

And the best English players and coaches may learn from that trade in ideas. The Premier League may even benefit because, as Florentino Perez is showing, it cannot count on wealth as its competitive edge forever.

Even if England do win the 2010 World Cup, it will, sadly, be regarded as a victory for the Italian school of football.

When Capello’s home country appoints an Englishman to coach a top-flight club, the country that invented the modern game will, once again, be able to claim that it is influential as well as rich.

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Filming with The King & drinking with The Axe

Andy Mitten — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

I flew back to Barcelona last weekend and saw lots of Tenerife fans at the airport.

They’ve had a great season in Spain’s second division and were playing their penultimate game at Catalan side Girona.

I spent time in Tenerife writing about their derby with Las Palmas two years ago so I’ve always watched out for their results.

After beating Girona to confirm promotion, those fans who didn’t make the three hour flight to Catalonia flooded onto the streets of island’s capital Santa Cruz – 200,000 of them – to celebrate.

Tenerife have a significant British ex-pat following who are delighted their team is playing Barcelona and Real Madrid next season, rather than Cordoba and Castellon.

Tenerife: Back in the big league

Tony Kempster passed away last week after a battle with cancer.

For more than a decade, Kempster ran a brilliant, predominantly non-league website, from his home in York.

If you needed to find out what the average crowds were at Old Trafford or Trafford and compare them with previous seasons, the distance between Barrow and Eastbourne or the ground grading requirements for clubs hoping to play in the Spartan South Midlands league, Kempster’s website was an anorak’s trove of results, attendances and graphs.

Kempster did the site as a labour of love in his retirement and in recent years started to receive the recognition he deserved, with the Football Supporters Federation awarding him their annual Services to Supporters award.

Rest in peace.

I’ve watched a bit of the Confederations Cup from South Africa. Standards and interest levels of the competing teams vary.

Against Egypt, Brazil’s defence look like they’d never played together before, their attack like they could damage any defence in the World Cup next season.

I was especially keen to watch South Africa for I know Aaron Mokoena, the South Africa captain, who lived in Manchester for four years until joining Portsmouth recently.

"Out of the way please David, there's a good chap"

I received a phone call from ‘The Axe’ on the day he left Blackburn recently, with an invite to go out for a beer to celebrate his transfer to the south coast.

Wolves were also interested in him. Aaron left because he wanted to play more football in what will be a very important season for him, concluding with the World Cup finals.

He’s also set up a foundation in his own name, explaining: “Ever since turning professional at the age of 17 I have dreamed that one day I will give something back to the roots that helped me develop my skills as a footballer.”

Aaron’s a good lad, and he’s confident that his country will stage a great World Cup next year.

I watched ‘Looking for Eric’ in Manchester and really enjoyed it. I’ve been a fan of Ken Loach’s work since seeing Kes.

Raining Stones is one of his best works, though the tone of the Cantona film is far lighter and it’s peppered with moments of humour.

We were asked to help find extras for the film last summer, so there’s lots of familiar faces throughout, all of whom loved the experience of filming with King Cantona.

I paid for my season ticket at Old Trafford on Sunday. I’ve held one in K Stand behind the goal since 1991, after transferring from the Stretford End.

My first one in the Stretford End cost £38 in 1987, the first adult one in K Stand £110 (£5.70 a game).

It cost £684 to renew (£36 a game) for next season.

Most cup games will be a further £36, with prices rising up to £46 a ticket should United reach the Champions League semi-final.

An equivalent season ticket at Barcelona (where I don’t pay as I work from the press box) would cost 40 percent less…

If United’s price rises continue at the same rate, I’ll be paying over £4,000 per season just to see league matches at Old Trafford in 2026.

"I wonder if the cheque has cleared yet..."

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Embarrassment vs Egypt sets up Samba Boys excitement

Riccardo Rossi — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

The telling thing to take from Italy’s defeat to Egypt is that Marcello Lippi’s current squad lack the required personality to be considered genuine candidates to retain their World Cup crown this time next summer.

After going a goal down thanks to some school-boy defending at a corner-kick – there were nine Italians in the area against four of the opposition – and no one to command the situation and ensure there was cover on the back-post.

Italy had spent the first-half more concerned with containing Egypt’s midfield than constructing anything positive themselves – and only when the situation became more desperate did they throw caution to the wind.

"Huh? Where did he spring from?"

Even then, there wasn’t a player to take the game by the scruff of the neck and turn things around - much as Roberto Baggio and Francesco Totti had done at various times in the past.

Giuseppe Rossi created the spark against the USA, but the Egyptians are a much more wily and technically proficient outfit than the Americans, and once ahead defended intelligently and in depth.

Their man-to-man marking and blanket midfield smothered the Azzurri that such was the frustration the only tactic seemed to be floating the ball towards the lofty but immobile figure of Luca Toni.

Just as worrying was the performance at the heart of the defence where the returning Fabio Cannavaro and his new club team-mate Giorgio Chiellini wilted under the slightest pressure from lone striker Zidan.

Of course, it is just the way Italy like it going into Sunday’s final group game: all to play for and nobody giving them a prayer.

If there is one country in the world that woos Italians more than their own then it's Brazil.

The laidback lifestyle, the climate, the coffee, the stunning beauties seemingly unburdened with Catholic guilt and, of course, there is the shared passion for football.

The feeling seems mutual when it comes to the beautiful game, and what truly great Brazilian has not played in Serie A in the last 20-odd years?

When Italy plays Brazil it is more than just a game, it is an event that every fan wants to be part off.

And that is why on Sunday evening, with summer finally upon us, televisions will either be blaring out of apartments, dragged into piazzas and set up on the pavements outside restaurants to take in the spectacle.

Even the droning of the vuvuzelas from the stadium will not drown out the buzz around the peninsula.

Every generation of Italian has their Brazil story – from the drubbing in 1970 to the miracle of 1982 through to the heartbreak of 1994, and no doubt they will be regaled again.

OK, seeing as you asked...

Serie Aaaaargh! was in a packed piazza in front of a giant screen when Baggio lost his Zen in Pasadena and witnessed one tifoso so overcome with grief that he took out his despair on his beautiful Vespa moped, leaving it lying broken on the cobbles as he wandered off despondently into the night.

Baggio blows it in '94

No such acts of violence against inanimate objects should occur this time around, but it is the first time the sides have met in a competitive tournament since producing a thrilling 3-3 draw in the Tournoi de France in 1997.

February’s friendly in freezing London was the wrong place at the wrong time to glean anything of significance on the state of the two teams, but Sunday’s Confederations Cup encounter is more of the real deal.

Whether Italy can find their the character to overcome the Samba Boys is another matter.

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Cornish patsies, Tinmen & c**k a boodle do

Paul Simpson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

There are eight Cornish footballers famous enough to be listed on Wikipedia.

Three of them have the word “c**k” in their surname. Make of that what you will.

(Ed - note our efficient swear filter has unfortunately edited the surnames of brothers Jack and Donald)

Scouring cyberspace last week, I came across the words “Cornish footballer” and wondered – this being the close season – if I could construct a team from the county of King Arthur, surf boards and ice cream.

So far, the answer is no.

I have Nigel Martyn in goal, another goalkeeper Dave Philp (seven games for Plymouth in 1984/85) out of position at centre-half, Matthew Etherington bombing down the wing – or not, as is his wont – and five strikers: the c**k brothers...

Jack, a gifted tenor singer who became the first Cornishman to play for England and his younger brother Donald who wasn’t as good a singer or footballer.

Mike Trebilcock (the first black player to score in an FA Cup final), Tony Kellow (fondly remembered by Exeter fans – if not by me – after scoring a hat-trick against Leicester City in the 1981 FA Cup and now campaigning to have Cornwall enter the next Commonwealth Games).

And Richie Reynolds (Pompey supporters player of the year in 1992).

Jack: England's first Cornishman

From Cornwall to Millwall...

The c*cks (another brother Herbert played a bit too) were born in Hayles, on the southwest coast of Cornwall, but were never really local heroes.

Perhaps scarred by what must have been unremitting playground taunts, they went east and made their names at Brentford.

Jack, a tall, mobile striker scored two goals in two games for England in 1919/20 and, bizarrely, was never selected again.

He really made his mark at Chelsea but did score 73 of his 234 league goals for Plymouth Argyle between 1927 and 1929.

Once again, he spurned the southwest for the southeast, joining Millwall when he was 34 and making like an unstoppable goalscoring machine.

After managing the Lions (during World War II) he ran a pub in New Cross. When he died in 1966, he was 73, some innings for a man who, in World War I, had been declared “missing in action, presumed dead” on the Western Front.

He died a few weeks before the World Cup but, mercifully for him, before The Sun reinvented the sports headline.

Otherwise his name might have inspired such screamers as “Ay up c**k!” after he single-handedly demolished Barnsley in the third round of the FA Cup; “c**k-a’Hoop!” as rumours of a summer move to QPR reached the back pages and “c**k a boodle do” after Chelsea doubled his wages.

From three c*cks to Trebilcock...

I remember Mike Trebilcock, not as a player but as a card I swapped at school and as a name that, in memory, is always spoken with that peculiar urgency and invisible exclamation mark David Coleman brought to football commentary.

The dramatic cry of “Trebilcock!” must have lodged in my memory after the 1966 FA Cup final in which he scored twice in five minutes for Everton to shatter Sheffield Wednesday.

I seldom heard the name again because, although he was only 22 then, that was as good as it got for Trebilcock.

He was soon shuffled off to Portsmouth (where he was reasonably prolific), Torquay and Weymouth before emigrating to Sydney where, at the tender age of 30, he starred upfront for the Western Suburbs.

"TREBILCOCK!"

As a boy in the fishing village of Gunnislake, Trebilcock read – and dreamt of being – Roy of the Rovers. But scouts rarely made it as far as his council estate.

It took a new neighbour – a woman who knew the Blackpool manager and offered to write a recommendation for the youngster – to persuade the boy Trebilcock his dreams might become reality.

His family couldn’t pay the fare to Blackpool but in a circuitous way, his neighbour’s enthusiasm paid off.

Ellis Stuttard, who managed Plymouth then and had a rare genius for scouting the right 14 and 15 year olds, told him: “You don’t want to go to Blackpool – come to Plymouth it’s nearer home”.

Even so, it was a while before the Trebilcock family were convinced football was a better prospect than working in the quarry.

Trebilcock’s travails may explain why, historically, Cornwall has been one of England’s least significant football counties. (Just above the now defunct Rutland.)

In the old days, scouts returned to hotbeds and feeder clubs – like Wallsend Boys Club, the source of Alan Shearer, Peter Beardsley and Michael Carrick – they knew, and Cornwall wasn’t really on the map.

Today, the trade in footballers is so global, a nearby league club is almost as likely to sign a player from Liberia as Liskeard.

Last season the Pilgrims had no Cornishmen in their first-team squad but did have a Hungarian defender, midfielders hailing from Togo and the Congo and an English-born Austrian striker called Ashley.

Cornwall’s football may prosper if troubled property magnate Kevin Heaney achieves his dream of making Truro City the first Cornish club in the Football League.

The Tinmen, winners of the 2007 FA Vase, have four rungs to climb on the non-league ladder.

As Truro has a population of 20,000 – nearly a third smaller than Accrington’s – such a goal seems on a par with Kevin Costner’s dream of building a baseball stadium on his farm.

The difference being, alas, that dreams come true more often in Hollywood movies than in football.

Truro: Making waves in non-league

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Why the national blues are black and white

Riccardo Rossi — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

The Old Lady has always stood by her man.

When the nation is in need, Juventus will answer the call.

Thirty years ago, the Azzuri was basically Juve: eight of their players started against France at Argentina 78, and the 1982 World Cup winners had six starters.

When Italy were short of a left-back in the wake of 2002 World Cup exit, Juve switched Gianluca Zambrotta from right-back to accommodate the request.

Then of course, the backbone of the 2006 world champions had black and white running through it – from Gigi Buffon, Zambrotta and Fabio Cannavaro, through Mauro Camoranesi to Alex del Piero.

"Shall we share a cab back to Turin?"

It’s no surprise that Juve will ensure that Marcello Lippi has his men for South Africa playing regularly and in the system of his choosing, marshalled by former right-hand man Ciro Ferrara.

Looking ahead to the start of next season, at least seven of those set to figure in Lippi’s squad will be lining up for the Bianconeri: Buffon, Cannavaro, Giorgio Chiellini, Nicola Legrotaglie, Camoranesi, Vincenzo Iaquinta and Amauri.

That number could easily increase to 10 or even a full team, given that Giuseppe Rossi, Gaetano D’Agostino, Andrea Dossena and Fabio Grosso are all being linked with moves to Turin.

Rossi has rightly been grabbing the headlines after his two-goal Confederations Cup blitz against the USA.

And it is certainly a heart-warming story of the son of immigrants, a Jersey boy who goes back to the old country to find fame and wealth. In a roundabout way.

Arriving at Parma in 2004 at age 13, thanks to dad contacting the club, the youngster barely had time to taste the city’s rich hams before Manchester United spirited him away – not the last time that would happen with an aspiring Italian teen.

Having failed to establish himself at Old Trafford (or on loan at Newcastle), he was loaned back to Parma in 2007 and scored nine goals in 19 – but there were no offers from Serie A’s big names.

Inter had star quality in abundance in Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Juve still had Alex del Piero calling the shots and Milan had invested in Alex Pato, another young man similar in style to Rossi.

In fact, the only side to show any interest were Fiorentina, but the Viola were unable or unwilling to meet the 11million Euro asking price. So off the little wanderer went again – and pitched up at Villarreal.

Now we’re talking something in the region of 40million Euro to bring Rossi back to Italy – and whatever Lippi’s hopes for club-country synergy, Juve aren’t going to shell out that amount.

Inter have no interest in the player, and the same goes for Milan – the Rossoneri are now more confident about keeping Pato and have set their sights on a big man up top – while even half that amount is too much for the likes of Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli.

If Juve cannot find a way to cut the transfer fee significantly – maybe by dangling David Trezeguet as a potential makeweight - then our little Yankee is going to remain in exile for some time to come.

"Light blue? Did they run out of ink?"

While we're on the subject of the national team, what about the new kit for the Confederations Cup?

A throwback to the 1930s but a little too pallid on the blue, although the shorts are all the rage this summer – well, brown linen is.

Not to worry, it should become something of a collector’s item as the traditional darker blue returns for the friendly with Switzerland in August.

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Ten great Premier League opening day moments

FourFourTwo Team — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:00:00 GMT

With the Premier League fixtures for 2009/10 announced on Wednesday morning, we look back at some of the most memorable moments from the Premier League opening days of yore...

10) Chelsea v Sunderland (August 7, 1999)
With relatively big money being spent bringing the likes of Mario Melchiot, Didier Deschamps and ...err... Chris Sutton to Stamford Bridge in the summer of ’99, there was realistic talk in the press and on the terraces that the Blues could mount a serious title charge.

They certainly started in suitable fashion, comfortably and stylishly doing away with newly-promoted Sunderland 4-0.

The pick of the goals was a real goal of the season contender from Gustavo Poyet – who strolled into the path of a delightful Gianfranco Zola chip and performed a stunning scissor-kick, smashing the ball home from just inside the Sunderland box.

Chelsea, ultimately, were forced to wait five more seasons for a Premier League title, ending the 1999/00 season in 5th place, although they did win the FA Cup, beating Aston Villa in the last final at the old Wembley.

9) Tottenham v Manchester United (August 10, 1997)
Premier League champions Manchester United made the trip to White Hart Lane for the first game of the post-Cantona era.

Fortunately they had already recruited an experienced replacement. Unfortunately for Spurs, it was their former (and future, as it turned out) hero Teddy Sheringham.

Having run the gauntlet of abuse from the White Hart Lane crowd, Teddy refused to bow to the pressure and stepped up to take a first half penalty – only to smack it against the post.

Cue scenes of unbridled joy in the stands, which would only be curtailed by United going on to win the game 2-0 anyway.

Spurs fans took some comfort from the fact their side lifted a trophy before Teddy did at United, with their 1999 League Cup final win over Leicester coming three months before Sheringham and friends famously ‘did the Treble’.

Bet he was seething about that one...

"Very good Ted, but did you win the League Cup?"

8) Arsenal v Coventry City (August 14, 1993)
Before he was entertaining legions of cabbies and white van drivers on national radio with that same anecdote about eating a pie thrown at him by an opposition fan (it gets funnier every time, really it does), Mickey Quinn was a footballer.

Somewhat of a journeyman, our Michael turned out for the likes of Wigan, Portsmouth, Newcastle and Coventry, even managing to squeeze in a stint in Greece (and, possibly, grease), scoring over 200 goals and enjoying a barrel load of ‘banter’ along the way.

Quinn’s finest hour came at Highbury in the opening day of the 1993/94 season, when he scored all three goals as Coventry romped to a shock 3-0 win at Highbury – leaving the newly-rebuilt North Bank in stunned silence.

The Independent’s Matt Tench went as far as to suggest Arsenal should sign Quinn as a foil for Ian Wright in his match report.

Sadly for Gunners fans, the club opted to forgo signing Quinn and within two years had brought Dennis Bergkamp to N5 to partner Wright. Tough break, that.

7) Reading v Middlesbrough (August 19, 2006)
Time, now, to reflect on those no longer with us. Reading and Middlesbrough played out a textbook opening day cracker in 2006, as the Royals clinched victory in their top flight bow in truly thrilling fashion.

Boro rushed into a 2-0 lead inside the first 20 minutes, as Reading looked like they may struggle with the step up to the Premier League.

However a spirited fight back ensued, with goals from Dave Kitson, Steve Sidwell and Leroy Lita giving the Royals a day to remember.

Sadly Reading’s stay in the top flight only lasted two seasons, before they returned to the Championship, where they will be joined by Boro for the coming season at least.

6) Leicester v Bolton Wanderers (August 18, 2001)
As good as Reading’s introduction to the Premier League was, it wasn’t a touch on Bolton’s comeback to the top flight in 2001.

Before the Trotters were the club every newly promoted side aspired to be, a young(er) moustachioed gent by the name of Samuel Allardyce took his Bolton side to Leicester.

At the time they were a side that regularly troubled the elite band of clubs and finished in the top half of the Premier League, with the strong-arm “up and at ‘em” approach that was to later become their trademark.

Goals from Michael Ricketts and two-apiece from Kevin Nolan and Per Frandsen sealed an emphatic and unexpected 5-0 win for the Lancashire side, which naturally put them top of the league, for a few days at least.

Bolton went on to finish the season in 16th place, while the Foxes would finish bottom of the pile.

"There is no way this can go wrong for me now - NEVER!"

5) Sheffield Wednesday v Tottenham Hotspur (August 20, 1994)
When Jermain Defoe, Pascal Chimbonda and Robbie Keane all returned to White Hart Lane to help Spurs avoid the dreaded drop, they weren’t doing anything new.

Back in December 1997, Jurgen Klinsmann returned to N17 with the club edging towards oblivion under the stewardship of Christian Gross.

Despite inspiring a generally lack-lustre Spurs side to safety that season, it’s for his first stint in North London that Klinsmann is generally better remembered on these shores.

Klinsmann teamed up with Teddy Sheringham, Darren Anderton, Nick Barmby and fellow summer recruit and World Cup 94 star Ilie Dumistrecu to form the ‘Famous Five’ – the front end of an Ossie Ardiles managed team that was more suited to attack than defend – as is the Spurs way.

Fitting, then, that Spurs should win their first match of the 94/95 season 4-3. Klinsmann scored and fronted up to the haters - who had labelled him a diver – by celebrating with an over-exuberant dive to the turf.

4) Chelsea v Manchester United (August 15, 2004)
In one of those little quirks that had us all questioning exactly how ‘random’ all this fixture scheduling lark is, Jose Mourinho was pitted against Sir Alex Ferguson in his first match as Chelsea manager, fresh from knocking Fergie out of the Champions League on the way to winning the trophy with Porto.

The press tried to ramp up the tension by claiming the two managers were at loggerheads, with Fergie supposedly irked by Mourinho’s touchline shenanigans after Porto’s late equaliser at Old Trafford knocked United out of Europe.

Instead the pair seemed to be relatively ‘tight’, both preferring to spend their time sharing a bottle of Port and winding up Arsene Wenger and Rafa Benitez, rather than each other.

Eidur Gudjohnsen’s 15th minute goal sealed the points for Chelsea, and set the tone for two years of Chelsea superiority over United, with the Blues going on to clinch back-to-back league titles in Mourinho’s first two seasons at the Bridge.

3) Middlesbrough v Liverpool (August 17, 1996)
Fabrizio Ravanelli’s move to Teeside raised more eyebrows than Rio Ferdinand’s recent choice of holiday attire.

Why would a man playing for Juventus, one of Europe’s biggest clubs, alongside the likes of Alessandro Del Piero and Didier Deschamps, want to move to Middlesbrough to play with Robbie Musto and Steve Vickers?

Whatever his reasons, Boro fans didn’t care, even less so when the ‘White Feather’ notched up a memorable debut hat-trick against Liverpool – equalising three times as the two clubs shared the points.

Ravanelli scored an amazing 33 goals in his first and only season for Boro, as the Teesiders lost two cup finals and were relegated, before promptly bidding arrivederci to the Riverside and moving to Marseille.

2) Wimbledon 0-3 Manchester United (August 17, 1996)
As rivals Liverpool were suffering at the hands of Ravanelli, Manchester United strolled to an altogether more convincing result at Selhurst Park, where they faced Wimbledon before they sold their soul to cater to the whims of the money men (Wimbledon, that is, obviously...).

With United leading 2-0 and the game entering injury time, a fresh-faced young scamp called David Beckham spotted Dons keeper Neil Sullivan off his line, and proceeded to loft the ball over the Cockney-come-Scotsman from fully 60 yards.

Sadly things didn’t work out for the Manchester United youngster, who has since moved to America’s MLS in order to find competitive action.

He must surely wonder what could have been...

1) Aston Villa v Manchester United (August 19, 1995)

Forget the kids, you'll win nothing in that ruddy awful shirt!

If Match of the Day pundits are good for anything (they aren’t, but we’re speaking hypothetically here) it’s making rash and massively exaggerated statements off the back of having seen 20 minutes of heavily edited footage of a match in order to look insightful.

Scotch killjoy Alan Hansen took this to a new level back in 1995, when he infamously declared that Manchester United couldn’t ‘win anything with kids’, after United, who had sold Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis and Mark Hughes that summer, succumbed to a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa.

We all know what happened next.

United went on to win six of the next eight Premier League titles, two FA Cups and a Champions League with a side predominantly made up of the very same ‘kids’ Hansen had belittled that faithful August night (although granted, they were aided by the likes of Eric Cantona, Peter Schmeichel, Andy Cole and Jaap Stam along the way)

Ya cannae get away with that!

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How agents will affect the Ronaldo transfer

Alex Black — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Money, money, money: must be funny in a rich man's world.

If the philosophical utterings of Sweden’s most famous four are to be believed, Cristiano Ronaldo must be laughing his blooming head off ahead of his impending megabucks move to Madrid.

The fans' general opinion is that this must be an agent’s field day... and on the whole they would be correct.

But many may not be clear on how exactly the whole situation will be handled and what exactly the role of the agent is.

On a deal of this magnitude the affair could well become very complicated and numerous third parties will probably have their say in how it all plays out.

One of the easiest to clear up should be the agent responsible for the handling of the player’s interests.

While Cristiano is enjoying his nights in Paris his agent Jorge Mendes will be ensuring that the financial package on the table from Madrid is not just enough money, but also that it is constructed in the correct fashion.

Ronaldo and Mendes will involve their own lawyers and accountants to make sure that the contract is constructed both to give the most financial security and to place him in the best tax position possible.

It will almost certainly include some arrangement regarding the player's commercial or image rights.

Ronaldo and Mendes clamber in a banger

Unless written into his contract at United, neither the player nor his agent will be entitled to any of the massive £80 million transfer fee.

Contrary to popular belief, the days of every player receiving 10 percent of his transfer fee are long gone.

Such 10 percent deals tend to only be included in the contracts of young players or those on (relatively) small wages.

It's actually more common in the lower leagues; unfortunately for the players, this is where transfer fees aren't that common anyway.

However, don’t feel too sorry for the Portuguese winker. He should still become one of the highest-paid players in the history of the game.

Meanwhile, his agent will earn approximately 5 percent of his playing contract... and here's another common misconception.

The agent's 5 percent is not usually paid up front, but in regular instalments over the duration of the deal.

This is done not only to make payments easier for the player (so he doesn't have to stump up in advance a slice of wages he's not yet received) but also for it to be in the agent's best interests for the player to stay.

"I've checked, Cris, and you owe me a fiver"

Basically, the more of the contract is fulfilled, the more the agent will earn.

Such fees will normally be paid by the club as part of the player’s contract, and he will be taxed accordingly.

Not so easy to clear up is whether or not any other agents will be involved in the deal.

It is possible that Madrid will have employed someone to act on their behalf in negotiating the transfer fee with Manchester United, and persuading the player and his agent to come over to Spain (I’m sure that would have proven very difficult).

However, it is in that agent's best interests for the transfer fee to be as low as possible: the greater the 'headline' figure, the less left in the pot for his share.

This agent’s fee would obviously be paid by the buying club, dependent upon if they are on a retainer or employed on a one-off basis.

On the other side, it is unlikely that Manchester United would have employed an agent to sell the FIFA World Player of the Year.

This is likely to have been handled internally by the chief executive, David Gill, and his team. And it's not as if Madrid's interest came out of left-field.

"So I get a finder's fee, right?"

However, on occasion clubs will employ agents to maximise the value of a player; such parties will normally receive a performance-related bonus dependent on what price they are able to achieve.

Whichever way the two clubs handle the situation, both will have employed their own teams of lawyers and accountants to make sure that the massive figures involved are all processed properly.

But back to the player's own agent.

One of the agent's most important roles in a deal such as this is to cut through the whole circus and ensure that, whatever happens, the player's best interests are always being represented.

Believe it or not, this is actually what we get paid for...

Read Alex Black's blogs here on FourFourTwo.com. Find out more about his clients at Football First Agency.

BLOG: Where Newcastle went wrong... and could go right

BLOG: Loyalty not the issue in Barry move

BLOG: Sweaty palms for the relegation contract killers

BLOG: Season's almost over, time for the hard work

BLOG: "My name's Alex, I'm an agent..."

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Cristiano, Alf & the world’s most expensive racehorse

Paul Simpson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:30:00 GMT

When Alf Common broke the world transfer record with a £1,000 move to Middlesbrough in 1905, one sportswriter snootily complained: “We are tempted to wonder whether association football players will eventually rival thoroughbred yearling racehorses in the market.”

That moment has long passed.

The world’s most expensive racehorse Green Monkey cost John Magnier, Sir Alex Ferguson’s fellow enthusiast for the sport of kings, a mere £9m in 2006.

This expensive young colt was put out to pasture last year after failing to win a single race.

"You can't win anything with green monkeys... no, seriously"

Green Monkey’s anti-climactic fate has been shared by many footballers traded like livestock for record-breaking sums.

Common, an aggressive, sturdy forward with an eye for goal and a Lord Kitchener moustache did his duty for Boro, scoring 65 goals in 178 games and keeping them in the top flight.

But the FA heartily disapproved of this lucrative transfer and he never played for England again after joining Boro. When the time came to leave Teesside, he didn’t even get his promised £250 benefit and joined Woolwich Arsenal on a free transfer.

Syd Puddefoot did well financially out of his world record move from West Ham United to… Falkirk in 1922.

He was given a £390 signing fee (not bad when a player’s average wage was £8 a week) when the Scottish club paid £5,000 for him.

But the Cockney striker only scored 45 goals for the Bairns because, he claimed, his Scottish teammates wouldn’t pass to him and joined Blackburn – for £4,000 – in 1925 having missed the Hammers’ FA Cup glory in 1923.

Fifty years later, Giuseppe Savoldi became the world’s most expensive player, joining Napoli for £1.2m.

He was 28, had been pretty prolific at Bologna (he was top scorer in Serie A in 1973/74), and scored only slightly less frequently for Napoli. But he won only three more caps while in Naples and, four years later, rejoined the Rossoblu.

He did make an indelible impression on the fans though.

By 1992, the price for the world’s most expensive footballer had risen to £13m. The Serie A star burdened with this fee was winger/left-midfielder Gianluigi Lentini.

The Vatican condemned his purchase by Milan as an “offence against the dignity of work” and religious souls may have seen evidence of divine disfavour when a car crash left him, at the age of 24, in a coma, with a fractured skull and a damaged eye socket.

He made a full recovery, his career didn’t. Only 40, he still plays for ASD Saviglianese in the Italian regional leagues. On YouTube you can get a sense of the talent, looks and style that prompted some to liken him to Maradona.

So the dismal pattern continues, with some variations.

Alan Shearer’s record-busting £15m move to Newcastle delivered lots of goals, no trophies and a crown of thorns status as the new Geordie Messiah.

Other record-breakers gone wrong include Denilson (£21.5m, paid by Real Betis, in 1998), Roberto Baggio (£8m to Juve in 1990), Ronaldo (£19.5m to Inter, 1997) and Christian Vieri (£32m to Inter, 1999).

You can count the number of record-breaking deals that definitively succeeded on the fingers of one hand: Luis Suarez to Inter (1961), Johan Cruyff to Barcelona (1973), Maradona to Napoli (1984), and Luis Figo to Real (2000).

Zidane’s £46m arrival at the Bernabeu in 2001 is a hard one to call.

He was truly inspirational, sold shedloads of merchandise but won the UEFA Champions League only once (while his less galactical predecessors conquered Europe in 1998 and 2000) and never won a major trophy with France while at Real.

You might say the transfer paid off – if only for the artistry with which he entertained the Bernabeu faithful.

But his transfer, like many others, suggests that no matter how fulsomely the world’s most expensive player is praised as they sign their lucrative new contract, in the long run these transfers often work out better for the club – and the Guinness Book of Records – than the player.

Zizou seals his one - and only - Champions League triumph

Real Madrid may pay nine times as much for CR7 as Magnier splashed out for Green Monkey but the deals do have certain similarities.

Footballer and racehorse were bought in the belief that past results guarantees future performance. And failure will not be tolerated.

CR7 will, at least, have longer to justify his cost. Green Monkey retired after failing to win three races.

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What happened when the clock struck 'Ronaldo'

Andy Mitten — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT

It happens three or four times a year.

A major story involving Manchester United which ensures that my phone rings continuously day and night. If there’s a Spanish angle then it’s even busier.

Last Thursday was one such day.

I had a demanding but manageable two days ahead, in which I’d booked to fly to Manchester to see various people. I was happy because we’d put the final United We Stand of the season to bed and the post European Cup final furore had finally died down.

Meetings ahead included one with a publisher from Rough Guides in London as I’ll edit the next edition of The Rough Guide to Cult Football. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into that in August and intend to assemble a team of quality contributors.

Anyway, I left home at 10:00, took a metro and then the airport train at 10:30.

At that precise moment, United’s website published a story that the club had accepted an offer of £80 million from Real Madrid for Cristiano Ronaldo.

Five Live called at 10:32, always right on top of the news and straight to the point. They put me live through to Nicky Campbell in the studio, which would have been fine if the train wasn’t entering a large tunnel near Camp Nou.

The reception was lost, but they called straight back and went to air.

"Hello? Andy? Can you hear me? Sh*t"

Sky called, from the UK and Sydney. I then switched off my Spanish phone as it started to buzz continuously from Spanish radio stations. There wouldn’t be enough time for all.

At check-in, surrounded by people arguing about luggage excess, the BBC World Service called. A patronising posh lady seem surprised that I wasn’t devastated.

“But you are a Man U fan?” she queried after a while. Like many media organisations, she appeared to think that all “footie” fans wore jester hats and had nothing else in their lives.

If they wanted a clown, they would have found plenty outside Old Trafford. In the space of 15 minutes there were calls from The Times, The Independent, and The National in Abu Dhabi.

I gave priority to the latter pair as I work for both frequently. One wanted a 650-word news piece and a 400-word reaction, the Indy wanted 850 words… for Sunday. Phew.

BBC News 24 were next. Could they go on air in 15? They could, but I explained that I was at an airport and that final boarding was in 25 minutes.

After three missed calls and mates texting (sample: “A cheeky bid for Torres now?” Reply: “I doubt it.”) I went through the departure gate and waited in an air bridge as the aircraft boarded.

The pilot signalled to me to get on the plane from his cockpit. I knew one of the air stewardesses and explained the situation. She told me not to worry and said she would signal me when it was time to close the doors.

"Oi... are you getting on or what?"

As I listened to News 24’s studio through my phone, they said they’d be with me in one minute. Four minutes late they were still saying “one minute.”

“I’m getting on the plane now,” I replied, “We agreed 11:02 – it’s now 11:09. I have to go. Sorry.” I was put straight through, did the interview and boarded, where I put my laptop out and wrote until we landed in Manchester.

I emailed the pieces at the other end, then switched my phone on and saw there were 17 new messages. I turned it off and went to have a brew with my mum. Priorities and that.

I’d done enough for one day, well, except for an interview with Newstalk in Dublin later that night, delivered from a Holt’s pub in Manchester, where I’d gone with a mate who’d had a similar day.

We’d both spoken to lots of match-going Mancunian United fans throughout the day, yet we ended up sat in front of a group of tools with yonner accents and garish shirts talking about Ronaldo, while proclaiming loudly that there’s no “Man U scum fans from Manchester.”

We’d both talked enough to argue back.

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Lippi set to stick with tired and tested Azzurri

Riccardo Rossi — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Italy may field up to eight players who played some part in the last encounter with USA back at World Cup 2006 when the two teams meet again in the Confederations Cup.

Several of them will be back again next summer when the real action starts in South Africa, although Marcello Lippi will be looking for progress from a number of his U21 squad currently preparing for the European Championships.

Already set to make their mark are the gifted Davide Santon and Giuseppe Rossi – American-born no less – but the latter’s inclusion does draw to a close any further discussion on whether Alex Del Piero or Antonio Cassano will return to the fold.

Rossi and Santon shine vs Northern Ireland

Lippi has two obsessions: one is remaining faithful to those who pulled off the unbelievable feat of winning the competition in Germany.

Tthe other is his correctly-held adherence to his tactically astute 4-3-3 formation.

Marcello has always matched expediency with flair as borne out by the triple attack; be it Gianluca Vialli, Fabrizio Ravanelli and Del Piero during his time in charge at Juventus or Francesco Totti, Alberto Gilardino and Luca Toni in 2006.

There may not be an embarrassment of riches going forward, but there are certainly plenty of options: the aforementioned Rossi, the rejuvenated Alberto Gilardino, the ever-reliable Vincenzo Iaquinta and Antonio Di Natale once he returns from injury.

Then there is Fabio Quagliarella and Simone Pepe who are making strong claims to be in the final party; leaving Luca Toni ostensibly the only front-man in danger of being jettisoned.

But only if Robert Acquafresca can continue his progress or if Lippi can live with the fact that Amuari has no family link with the peninsula.

The key, however, to whether the Azzurri can defend their world crown centres on the platform provided by the three players operating directly behind the front-line.

Without doubt the preferred trio would be Daniele De Rossi in the holding role flanked by Andrea Pirlo and Mauro Camoranesi.

All three played in what was probably Italy’s most expansive and thrilling performance under Lippi: a 4-1 thumping of Germany ahead of the last World Cup.

De Rossi’s subsequent flailing elbow against USA curtailed any hopes of the trio building on that performance during the tournament proper, but they are still around and in form.

They are all authoritative figures, with De Rossi still only 25 and while Camoranesi needs a season free of injury, Pirlo is ageing gracefully.

Claudio Marchisio, Daniele Dessena and Luca Cigarini could all crave out a niche for themselves as able and youthful deputies.

"Eat this"

Drawing on the traditional strengths of a solid defensive base is still an acquirement, and while Santon will provide stiff competition to Gianluca Zambrotta at right-back it is hoped that Domenico Criscito builds on his successful campaign with Genoa to provide an alternative to Fabio Grosso at left-back.

Of course, central defense is a worry, with no stand-out candidate ready to stake a claim as a successor to Fabio Cannavaro.

At least the captain has a year to cement his understanding with new Juventus team-mate Giorgio Chiellini.

Only a set-back of mammoth proportions this month will force Lippi back to the drawing board, but as it stands it will be the old guard on whose shoulders Italy's hopes of retaining the world crown rest.

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The battle for the soul of Betis begins

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Andalusia is a land where out-of-tune wailing by battered old hags is considered music, where the locals speak as if their mouths are full of chorizo and where it’s always really, really hot.

But very soon, the region down in the sticky south of Spain will be playing host to the mother of all battles, a fight to take back the light from the forces of evil, a scrap to rival any trailer for a Lord of the Rings rip-off.

To tell you the truth, it will probably end up being a couple of hundred beered-up loons wandering down the street holding a very wide banner before going to the pub after about five minutes.

"Don't worry, I've got supplies"

Nevertheless, a very excited AS have spent many days bigging up a struggle that is now taking place for the heart and soul of Betis.

Now that the sobbing from the club’s fans has died down, along with the laughter from everyone else over their ejection from top-flight football, the supporters of the Seville-based club are as frustrated as Maniche facing a childproof honey pot and looking for revenge for their relegation.

Yet another movement has been formed with the goal of removing majority-shareholder, Darth Manuel Ruiz de Lopera, from the club by forcing Betis’ godfather to agree to sell the stake he has held since 1992.

But Darth de Lopera is in no mood to move his dirt-filled coffin to pastures new.

Indeed, he plans a bigger, brighter future for the second division side with the dotty old codger promising to turn Betis into the “Real Madrid of la Segunda.”

But probably not in the ‘humiliated by anyone half-decent’ sense.

“I will take the team to the Europa League, the Champions League and once again we will go to Madrid... and that is what Manuel Ruiz de Lopera is working for,” bellowed the biggest of Beticos, slipping easily into the third-person school of insanity.

Aside from several swarms of locusts, a 200,000 strong zombie army and Hugo the Husky, De Lopera stands quite alone in his campaign to keep control of the Betis helm.

AS reports that the rebellion against Don Manuel began a long way from Spanish shores with a small group of Betis fans in Kosovo walking to a UN building to protest against his leadership. No-one is quite sure what they thought that would achieve, mind.

Not even the appointment of former Málaga man, Antonio Tapia, as the new coach could stop this juggernaut of a campaign which has taken on the slogan: “for your dignity and future, Betis.”

Next to make their vexed voices heard were Seville’s local politicians.

“Betis deserve to be relegated, they have done things so badly,” complained José Antonio Grinan, president of the parliament of Andalusia and a man who now has to sleep with the lights on. And with a battle-axe in hand.

The next stage of the campaign to oust the local Lord of the Flies is a march that is set to take place in Seville’s city centre on Monday evening.

Marca report that it will be attended by 112 fan groups, some bullfighters (of course) and former Betis waster, José Mari.

But Darth de Lopera has continued to blame everyone but himself for the team’s recent failures.

“I brought in the coach that everyone asked for and the signings they asked for, because they wanted Betis in the UEFA,” complained the Beelzebub of Betisland.

Despite all the clamour, La Liga Loca feels that De Lopera won’t be leaving the club anytime soon.

Unless, perhaps, Monday’s protesters are armed with garlic and stakes as well as banners and chants.

Lopera: "I have a cunning plan"

**********

Competition winner

A big blog pat on the back to Phil Jones for his winning entry to help Florentino Pérez name a sponsor to brand the Santiago Bernabeu and raise a bit of cash for the club.

A year-long subscription to the world’s greatest footie magazine is on the way....

The FourFourTwo judges were most tickled by the idea of the “Laxostar Santiago Bernabeu - where not just the football flows freely - also the verbal diarrhoea. And Madrid are always loose at the back.”

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La Liga Talentspotter

The transfers that rocked the world: Part V

FourFourTwo Team — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

And so we bring to a close our look back at the 25 transfers that shook the world.

Not literally, you understand; figuratively. Starting with one which changed the way transfers are conducted...

Jean-Marc Bosman, RFC Liege to Dunkirk
August 1990, Fee: ‘a Bosman’

Who could have predicted that Dunkirk’s decision to sign a journeyman Belgian striker in 1990 would change football forever and allow today’s players, some of whom weren’t born when Bosman began his career, to earn their current salaries?

Bosman had seen out his four-year contract at RFC Liege and rejected their new deal on a reduced wage. He agreed terms with Dunkirk, and signed a contract when the clubs settled on a fee.

But when Liege changed Bosman’s valuation to €400,000, over four times what he originally cost them, Dunkirk dropped out of the deal – and Bosman was left clubless.

"Pleeeeease release me, let me goooooo..."

He sued Liege and the Belgian FA, and took the case to the European Court of Justice who five years later, ruled that Liege should have allowed the transfer as he was out of contract.

By then, Bosman was playing for fourth-division club Vise, and in his first game after the ruling, he was substituted to jeers of, “Free transfer for you, Bosman!”

The ruling immediately handed players the power to run down their contracts and switch clubs with huge signing-on fees.

Wage inflation soon followed, and as the players got richer, Bosman was frustrated that his efforts were not better rewarded than the £720,000 he earned from the settlement.

“It makes me most happy when people stop me to say thank you,” he says, but his bitterness at missing the gravy train he helped build is all too apparent.

Alfredo di Stefano, Millonarios to Real Madrid
September 1953, Undisclosed

Probably the most controversial and significant transfer in football history.

Alfredo di Stefano arrived in Spain in March 1952 to play for Colombian side Millonarios in Real Madrid's 50th-anniversary tournament and immediately became the subject of the greatest tug-of-war of all time – a messy, political battle that remains extremely controversial and shrouded in mystery.

Both Barça and Madrid claimed to have signed him – Barça from Argentinian side River Plate, the club who owned him, Madrid from Millonarios, where he was playing.

Di Stefano even played three friendlies for the Catalans before General Franco’s Sports Minister, General Moscardo – who had previously banned the signing of all foreign players in Spain – imposed a share.

Each club would get the Argentinian for two years, starting with Madrid. Barça rejected the deal, so Di Stefano stayed in the capital.

"Pass the Brasso"

Still considered the greatest player of all time by many Spaniards, ‘The Blond Arrow’ won the European Footballer of the Year award twice, was top scorer in five of his first six seasons and changed history for ever.

With Di Stefano leading them, the club that had only won two league titles – 20 years earlier – gained eight more and five successive European Cups. Barcelona, meanwhile, gained an enormous chip on the shoulder.

Mo Johnston, Nantes to Rangers
July 1989, £1.1 million 

Without a doubt the most notorious transfer in Scottish football history.

When Mo Johnston, a Catholic and former Celtic star, joined Rangers, he was breaking an age-old taboo. But it was the manner of his crossing of the Old Firm divide that caused particular controversy.

During the mid-’80s ‘MoJo’ was a huge hit at Celtic, scoring 55 goals in three seasons, before moving to French club Nantes, declaring that he’d wouldn’t return to Scotland.

However, after two seasons, he had a change of heart, and announced he would be rejoining the Hoops, stating that they were “the only club I want to play for.”

However, in July 1989, in a dramatic 11th hour U-turn, he declared that he would instead be signing for Rangers.

The revelation managed to enrage supporters on both sides of the Old Firm divide.

For many Gers fans, the arrival of a former Hoops star, not to mention a ‘Celtic-minded’ one, was too much to stomach.

For Hoops fans, it was, of course, a case of pure betrayal.

"Surprise Surprise!"

From that moment, in the East End of Glasgow, he was no longer ‘MoJo’ but ‘Judas’.

Johnston went on to replicate his goalscoring feats for Rangers, scoring 46 goals in 100 games and winning two league titles before moving to Everton in 1991.

Sol Campbell, Spurs to Arsenal
July 2001, Free

Sol Campbell was not the first to make the switch across North London.

Some, such as Pat Jennings and Terry Neill, have even gone on to achieve success at both clubs, but no other player to do so has generated so much bile.

Having come up through the ranks at White Hart Lane, Campbell was not just Spurs’ captain and best player, he was a cult hero in the making. He also had ambitions that the club couldn’t match, primarily a desire for Champions League football.

More realistic Spurs supporters accepted his eventual departure as inevitable, and during protracted talks over his future in 2001, it was clear that Manchester United and several top European clubs were also interested.

He had gone on record in the Spurs magazine saying he would never sign for the Gunners. The fact that he opted to do so, and ‘on a Bosman’ so that Spurs received nothing for a player they had nurtured for a decade, simply fanned the flames.

Welcome home...

Some Spurs fans posted Campbell’s mobile phone number onto the internet, prompting Arsenal to consider hiring a bodyguard to ensure his safety.

Arsenal, with no transfer fee due to pay, allegedly broke their wage structure and pay him £100,000 a week – reinforcing Campbell’s image as a money-grabbing mercenary, forever to be known as ‘Judas’ at the Lane.

Luis Figo, Barcelona to Real Madrid
July 2000, £38 million

It nearly didn't happen.

Figo had helped Barcelona win the European Cup Winners’ Cup and two la Liga titles before Real Madrid presidential candidate Florentino Perez used the promise of signing the Portuguese winger to propel himself to power.

Madrid agreed a world-record £38m fee with Barcelona but Figo, worried that furious Barcelona fans would ruin the Japanese restaurant he had just opened, got cold feet.  

Marc Roger, one of the agents involved in the deal, wrote in his book that Paolo Futre then met his compatriot in Sardinia and talked him round.

According to Roger, he was helped when Futre allegedly took out a knife, cut a vein and stuck his blood on Figo’s face, saying, “This is Portuguese blood, but you are no longer Portuguese.”

Figo, terrified, moved to Madrid and started the ‘galactico’ era.

Barcelona fans never forgave him: a urine-filled whisky bottle and a pig’s head were among objects thrown at him on one return to the Nou Camp while four years later, during the Euro 2004 final, a Barcelona fan ran onto the pitch and threw the club’s flag in his face.

What's Catalan for 'Judas'?

Figo enjoyed success in Madrid, winning two more la Liga titles and the 2002 Champions League.

Perez continued the galactico experiment, with subsquent seasons (and presidential election campaigns) marked by the arrivals of Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and David Beckham.

But time was running out for the 'fantasy football' idea, as Perez neglected to look after dull but important players like Ivan Helguera... and Claude Makelele.

Makalele's departure was a turning point. Popular and vital but underpaid, he asked for a small rise to his decidely unGalactic salary.

Perez flatly refused, eventually shooing the Frenchman out of the club with the stinging words: "We will not miss Makélélé. His technique is average, he lacks the speed and skill to take the ball past opponents, and 90 percent of his distribution either goes backwards or sideways."

An attempt to sign Patrick Vieira foundered when Perez refused to pay decent wages for mere defensive players.

Ah, OK

While Makalele reinvigorated Chelsea, Perez ploughed on, signing the likes of Michael Owen, Robinho and Julio Baptista until the squad became increasingly imbalanced – and ineffective.

Overloaded with diffident attackers, Madrid struggled to cope with the last thing Perez could afford – a resurgent Barcelona, with Frank Rijkaard's side combining fantasista attacking with defensive diligence and teamwork.

The president resigned in February 2006, acknowledging that the club needed a new direction.

Madrid regained the league title in 2007 and retained it in 2008, but Perez was to return in summer 2009 with a open chequebook and an eye on history repeating.

The transfers that rocked the world: Part One
The transfers that rocked the world: Part Two
The transfers that rocked the world: Part Three
The transfers that rocked the world: Part Four

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The transfers that rocked the world: Part IV

FourFourTwo Team — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

As Real Madrid noisily go about assembling a fantasy football team, we look back through the FourFourTwo archives to remind ourselves that shocking transfers are nothing new. Here's some more examples.

Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, Corinthians to West Ham 
August 2006, Unknown fee

When it seems too good to be true, it often is.

Argentinian World Cup stars Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano arrived at West Ham in a blaze of publicity, 24 hours before talk of a takeover by their transfer broker, Kia Joorabchian.

Though Joorabchian never saw the deal through – West Ham were sold to Icelandic biscuit magnate Eggert Magnusson for £85 million in November – the tangled web he’d weaved plunged the Hammers’ season into pure farce.

Attempts to unravel the transfers’ legality played out across the back pages for months, with uncertainty over who actually ‘owned’ the players: Joorabchian or the Hammers.

All but unused on the pitch, Mascherano left for Liverpool in January, eventually having his registration cleared in mid-February.

"Is this real?"

Tevez, who’d disappeared off the radar altogether under Alan Pardew, then inspired West Ham to a Lazarus-style comeback under Alan Curbishley, saving them on the final day of the season with the only goal at Manchester United... whom he joined that summer.

The gnashing of teeth at Sheffield United – relegated in the Hammers’ stead, or so they believed – could be heard all the way to Premier League HQ, where an angry ‘Gang of Four’ (Sheffield United, Charlton, Fulham and Wigan) pushed for West Ham to be docked points that would have seen them demoted.

Instead, they were slapped with a world-record £5.5 million fine.

Trevor Francis, Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest
February 1979, £1 million

In February 1979, one month after West Brom boss Ron Atkinson made Middlesbrough’s David Mills British football’s first £500,000 man, he was spectacularly trumped by his Midlands rival Brian Clough.

In a typically flamboyant gesture, Clough doubled Atkinson’s record, paying Birmingham £1 million to bring striker Trevor Francis to Nottingham Forest.

It was, recalled Clough’s biographer Duncan Hamilton, “football’s equivalent of breaking the sound barrier.”

Clough: No expense spared... except on coats

Seldom has such a high-profile signing made such an impact. Less than four months after his arrival, Francis headed the winner against Malmo in the European Cup Final.

“He added a sparkle to any team that he played for,” Clough later said. “And that goal in Munich will put his name up in Forest lights forever.”

Francis joined Manchester City in 1981 and later had a long spell in Italy, before embarking on a managerial career of varying success.

He now works as a Sky Sports pundit. But even after all these years, the ‘million pound man’ tag won’t leave him.

“Even to this day, it is what I am introduced as,” he said in 2004. “Which is strange because I have been involved in the game since 1969 and played and managed some big teams, but it is always the thing that comes up.”

Allan Simonsen, Barcelona to Charlton Athletic
October 1982, £300,000 

For a brief, dream-like period in 1982-83, Charlton fans could face their Cockney counterparts heads held high – they had a former European Footballer of the Year in their ranks.

Danish midfielder Allan Simonsen had swapped the sun and sangria of Barcelona for SE7 and Second Division football. It soon became the stuff of nightmares.

New Charlton chairman Mark Hulyer, an ambitious young man keen to flex his muscles, had failed to realise he wasn’t doing business with greenhorns here: Barcelona wanted their money up-front.

The deal sprang a leak when the Spaniards demanded bank guarantees of £100,000 – delaying Simonsen’s debut by six weeks (he scored in November’s 3-2 defeat to Middlesbrough – one of nine goals in his 16-game stay).

Simonsen at The Valley: "Where the f...?"

By February, the Addicks were haemorrhaging cash and facing the drop.

Even in the Thatcherite age of Club Tropicana and boom-and-bust, paying Simonsen £82,000 a year on an average gate of 6,000 was foolhardy, to put it politely.

Simonsen left in March, and Charlton only survived relegation with a last-day win.

Hulyer had to reach an agreement with the Inland Revenue in the summer of 1983 over a £145,000 tax bill, and also faced a petition for bankruptcy from former chairman Michael Gliksten. And a winding-up order from creditors Leeds.

Happy Valley? Hardly.

Alf Common, Sunderland to Middlesbrough
February 1905, £1,000

It's not difficult to pinpoint the moment at which the transfer market lost touch with reality: it was in February 1905, when the forward Alf Common, a rapid and muscular Wearsider with a bristling moustache, became the first four-figure transfer.

Born in Millfield, he played for South Hylton and Jarrow before joining Sunderland as a 20-year-old in 1900.

He managed six goals in 18 appearances as they finished runners-up in 1901, before being sold to Sheffield United. It was a deal that seemed to suit both parties: Sunderland won the league, while Common scored in the final as the Blades won the FA Cup.

He ain't 'alf common... oh, actually, he is

He averaged a goal every three games over three seasons at Bramall Lane, but in 1904 he refused a new contract, insisting he had to return to the North East to oversee his business interests.

Sunderland obliged, signing him and United’s reserve keeper Albert Lewis for a combined fee of £520, but he had played just 20 games when Middlesbrough, desperately looking to avoid relegation, shelled out £1,000 to persuade Sunderland to let him make the 35-mile journey south.

He made his debut – as is the way of such things – away to Sheffield United, scoring the only goal from the penalty spot as Boro won their first away match in almost two years.

They subsequently avoided the drop, and Common spent five years on Teesside before moving to Woolwich Arsenal.

Diego Maradona, Barcelona to Napoli
June 1984, £6.9 million

“I truly believed Barcelona was the club for me, the best club in the world,” declared Maradona, who joined the Catalans for a world record £4.5 million fee from Argentinos Juniors in 1982.

“But I didn’t anticipate the idiosyncrasies of the Catalans. I didn’t imagine, either, that I was going to come up against an imbecile like the president, Nunez.”

Two unhappy years later and El Diego was transferred to Napoli, a club he admitted he knew nothing about.

“My time at Barcelona was ill-fated,” Maradona claimed. “Because of hepatitis, injury, the city and because I’m more… Madrid. Because of my bad relations with Nunez and because there my relationship with drugs began.”

"All my people, right here, right now..."

Maradona may have blamed everyone but himself for his Catalan ills, but he admitted that he was “down to zero, 25 and without a penny,” and needed a signing-on fee to clear debts. And that he’d continually threatened to leave.

A mediocre Barça side had tired of his spoilt antics and were happy to sell him to a team they didn’t consider rivals for £6.9m.

Napoli was a perfect fit as they indulged the diminutive Argentinian from the minute 80,000 Neapolitans saw him presented.

A revelation, he stayed for seven years and won six trophies, including their first two Scudetti.

Transfers that rocked the world: Part I
Transfers that rocked the world: Part II
Transfers that rocked the world: Part III
Transfers that rocked the world: Part V

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The transfers that rocked the world: Part III

FourFourTwo Team — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Kaka? Pah. Ronaldo? No. Continuing our look back at 25 transfers that shook football to its boots...

Steve Daley, Wolves to Manchester City
£1.4375 million,  September 1979

Before the Premier League’s standards of Ade Akinbiyi-awfulness and Bosco Balaban-badness, Steve Daley was the name used to sum up the extremes of football’s squander and waste.

In September 1979 Wolves funded Andy Gray’s £1.4375 million British record transfer by selling midfielder Daley to Manchester City for the same fee on the same day.

Twenty undistinguished months later he was sold to Seattle Sounders for barely a fifth of that fee and subsequently became a figure of ridicule.

“I think Man City were bidding against themselves,” Daley revealed in 2005, but disagreed that the burden of expectation was unfair.

“It was a lot of money to pay. I never said I was worth it, but I never said I wasn’t worth it.”

Daley (and Robbo)

Daley, who had previously been on the verge of an England call-up, found himself stuck out on the wing by City.

To compound matters, boss Malcolm Allison was dismantling an experienced City side and Daley was expected to carry the team. “It wasn’t a steady ship I joined and it proved difficult,” he admitted.

The 1981 move to America saw a revitalised Daley reborn as the ‘six million dollar man’.

“It was the right time to put a bit of distance between myself and Manchester. I thought that the Atlantic Ocean might just do it!”

Roberto Baggio, Fiorentina to Juventus
£9 million, June 1990

Fiorentina produced a sublime crop of young players in the late-’80s. Among them was Roberto Baggio, the most technically gifted player of his generation, a cool second striker capable of deft dribbles and flawless free-kicks.

With Sven-Göran Eriksson in charge they reached the 1990 UEFA Cup Final, losing to arch-rivals Juventus in two highly charged encounters.

“Baggio was the hero who filled the emptiness left by the retirement of Giancarlo Antognoni,” says fan Leonardo Troiano.

Baggio at his first love

So that summer Viola fans were stunned to hear that Baggio had been sold for a world record £9 million... to Juve.

Baggio said that he was “compelled to accept the transfer.” Fiorentina fans rioted, with more than 50 injured.

“We felt betrayed,” says Troiano. “Our directors had to be escorted everywhere and angry fans tried to break into their properties. Fans were arrested and influential leaders jailed.”

The riots forced the owning Pontello family to sell Fiorentina.

In the Fiorentina-Juve match the following spring, Baggio refused to take a penalty, which Juve missed.

He was substituted, but picked up a Fiorentina scarf, kissed it and was reduced to tears as the stadium gave him a standing ovation.

‘The Divine Ponytail’ became a terrace idol at all of his clubs – apart from Juventus.

George Eastham, Newcastle United to Arsenal
£47,500, October 1960

George Eastham, a non-playing member of England’s 1966 World Cup winning squad, was the Jean-Marc Bosman of his day.

When he tried to move from Newcastle to Arsenal in December 1959, the Magpies refused his request and simply held on to his registration.

He found himself a victim of the feudal ‘retain and transfer’ system, which effectively reduced players to serfs, dependant on the lord of the local manor.

When an appeal to the Football League management committee fell on deaf ears, Eastham was forced to stop playing.

Undeterred, and backed by the PFA, he took his the case to the High Court, claiming unfair restraint of trade. The result was a landmark victory in the fight for freedom of contract.

Eventually, Newcastle agreed a £47,500 fee with Arsenal. After a year sidelined as his future was debated by the courts, Eastham marked his Arsenal debut in December 1960 with two goals against Bolton.

He went on to captain the Gunners, before winding down his career at Stoke, and then retiring to South Africa in the late-'70s.

"Look who they replaced me with!"

“I never saw myself as a pioneer,” he says. “All I wanted was a fair deal, and to play football. It was horrible being made to feel like a criminal, and a big relief to finally get playing again.”

His achievements were belatedly recognised in 1973, when he was awarded an OBE.

Gordon McQueen, Leeds United to Manchester United
£495,000, February 1978

Reassured by Don Revie that Leeds were after Britain’s best players, Gordon McQueen signed a four-year contract in 1977.

“Leeds never kept their promise,” says McQueen. “My best friend was Joe Jordan. We joined Leeds around the same time and broke into the first team and the Scotland side. When Leeds let Joe go to Man United over £15 a week, I became disillusioned.”

A month after Jordan controversially moved in January 1978, McQueen followed and Leeds fans made their feelings clear.

“It was horrible,” McQueen recalls. “Messages like: ‘You b*st*rd, you said you’d stay’ came through the door. I gave up answering them. Everyone said I went for money. That’s absolute sh*t. Leeds would’ve paid me more.

“We lived in Leeds for six months after and couldn’t go out. I went to a midweek game at Elland Road and had to leave the ground after 20 minutes, the abuse was so bad. ‘Judas’ was painted on my garage door and the hate mail was continuous.

"I wasn’t like the modern footballer living in a private gated community; I lived in a semi-detached on Wetherby Road."

"Any chance of a hotel room?"

Of course, his wasn’t the last controversial transfer between the two clubs.

“I went to Elland Road in 2004 and saw T-shirts saying 'United Scum – Jordan, McQueen, Cantona and Ferdinand’. They had them in kids’ sizes for people not even born when I was around,” adds the Scot.

That year, Alan Smith followed the same well-worn trail across the Pennines.

Kevin Keegan, SV Hamburg to Southampton
£425,000,  February 1980

If Lawrie McMenemy had sawn Mick Channon in half for his next trick, no-one would have been any less shocked.

At a hastily convened press conference at the leafy Potters Heron hotel, the Saints boss announced the return to English football of one of its favourite sons: Kevin Keegan, twice European Footballer of the Year. Jaws dropped.

The Kevin Keegan, of Hamburg and England? Signing for little Southampton?

The £420,000 deal was a masterstroke by McMenemy.

Aware that Keegan was leaving Hamburg and could be keen on a return to England with the 1982 World Cup on the horizon – Liverpool had the first option on re-signing him – the Saints boss had buttonholed him en route from an European Championship qualifier.

There he’d given him chapter and verse on his big plans for the club.

"It's you, isn't it?"

Also in his favour was the fact that transfers between EEC countries then had a £500,000 ceiling – Southampton could afford it.

And while it lasted, it was good. The Dell was sold out, Keegan averaged over a goal every other game – 37 in 68 – before setting out on the road to becoming the Messiah of the North East with a switch to Newcastle two years later.

Transfers that rocked the world: Part I
Transfers that rocked the world: Part II
Transfers that rocked the world: Part IV
Transfers that rocked the world: Part V

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Galactic gush delivers delirium and disgust in Spain

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

“It’s insane! It’s obscene! What about the children! Frack me!”

Just four of the descriptions of La Liga Loca’s conceptualist art exhibition currently on display outside its penthouse apartment. And melting rapidly in the summer sun.

It’s also four of the descriptions plucked from Friday’s Spanish press to describe Real Madrid’s overdraft-straining, bank-busting attempts to reach the sparkling, promised land of the Champions League quarter-finals.

And maybe, just maybe, a decent Copa del Rey run too.

The double whammy of the Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo deals has split the battle-lines in the Spanish press in a fairly predictable way.

For those of a Madridista bent, the 180 million Euro spunkathon is unquestionably a Very Good Thing. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a heretic who deserves disembowelling.

For the Catalan papers, Florentino’s recent splurge is the work of Satan himself. As is the norm in this particular wacky world, there is no time or space allowed for any opinions in between.

Pérez’s back pocket-dwelling paper, Marca, blasts on Friday’s front page that Ronaldo is “the signing of the century” and gives 10 good reasons justifying Madrid’s outrageous outlay for his diving services next season.

One of them is that he is the new official hunk of the Real Madrid team. Something that Paris Hilton has also noted, according to tabloid titillation.

Roberto Gómez (whose love for Ramón Calderón has seen him severely sidelined at the paper) claims that Kaká and Ronaldo’s arrival in the Spanish capital means that “Real Madrid win, football wins, we all win!”

The paper’s editorial thumbs its nose up at those who doubt the financial sense of the double deal by arguing that it will generate more money than it costs.

Angel or demon?

The column also chooses to ignore the final years of the last Galactico age and David Beckham’s trophy-starved spell at the club by opining that “having a team with the biggest icon in world football is a guarantee of success.”

Over in AS-land, editor Alfredo Relaño writes that “in just one week, Florentino Pérez has excited Madridistas and appalled everyone else.”

Although he acknowledges the moral issues over such a big splash of cash bang in the middle of a recession and with four million unemployed in Spain, he too falls in step with the Pérez party-line.

(The paper also finds the space to print a letter from a Barcelona fan and AS reader claiming that Relaño is “the best editor of all four of the big sports papers that we have in Spain.” And the most modest, no doubt).

Inside, Emilio Pérez de Rozas writes in a tremendously sycophantic column that “Madrid owe 500m Euro and are spending 300m more. But it doesn’t matter. Pérez oozes power and credibility.”

La Liga Loca says "Get a room."

Those looking for moral outrage and more than a hint of fear need only go to the Catalan-crazy press for some self-righteously angry reaction to Ronaldo’s expected arrival in Madrid.

“It’s mad!” yells Mundo Deportivo on the reported 94m Euro transfer fee for Ronaldo.

“What message does this kind of behaviour send to the world and especially to children? What values does it promote? That everything can be bought?” rants Jaume Miserachs, getting his Puyol-patterned panties in a big old bunch.

Sport follow a similar theme, with Josep Maria Casanovas predicting the end of the world following Madrid’s latest move.

“An immoral and shameful sum... a provocation... a bad example in these times of crisis... Pérez is in love with the image that no-one can resist him and that he can do everything... the most scandalous signing in the history of football.”

As far as La Liga Loca is aware, Casanovas is already hammering away on Saturday’s editorial, entitled “WAAAAAAH!!!! IT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!!”

With David Villa’s signing due any day now, the hyperventilating hyperbole in the Spanish press has only just begun.

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La Liga Talentspotter

Galacticos, urchins and why CR7 let United down

Paul Simpson — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

It was the best of seasons, it was the worst of seasons.

Yes, 2008/09 was a season where one club could spend £136 million on two players in a week while a rival in the same league, Valencia, were so impoverished – in a Dickensian-Victorian street urchin kind of way – that they considered hiring out players to grace bar mitzvahs and weddings.

You have to admire Florentine Perez’s audacity. Since he quit Real Madrid in 2006, it has been impossible for anyone in football to use the word ‘galactico’ without smirking.

The mere mention of the g-word conjured up all the empty emperor’s-new-clothes pomp of a discredited regime.

But now back in office, Perez seems to have decided that, yes, he made mistakes – but they weren’t the blunders everyone thought he made. His true faux pas, his transfer dealings suggest, was not to think galactically enough.

It’s as if Napoleon, mulling over that tricky away fixture at Waterloo, had decided his fatal error had been not to take on the Austrian army as well as the British, the Prussians and the Dutch.

One way out of a fixture pile-up

Perez's return is swanky, expensive, headline-hogging proof that the “fan in the boardroom” syndrome is alive and well.

Not that anybody who has followed the extraordinary odyssey of Gigi Becali, the Steaua Bucharest owner, will ever have doubted that.

Becali threatened to go back to tending sheep if he didn’t win a seat in the European Parliament. Sadly for Steaua fans – but luckily for those placid, woolly creatures – Becali did get elected.

His love for a much greater European institution, the UEFA Champions League, is so fierce that he is now talking of fusing Steaua with Romania’s surprise champions Unirea Urziceni so his club can compete in the tournament next season.

While football can be too insular, it’s hard to see fusion – a concept that works well when reconciling different national cuisines – catching on.

Unirea have given Becali’s suggestion short shrift. Becali might get a slightly longer shrift from Mike Ashley, but that’s another story.

The fact that Ashley’s club, Newcastle, is apparently now worth only slightly more than Cristiano Ronaldo is an appropriately bizarre footnote to a surreal, rambunctious season of European football which has ultimately degenerated into freakonomics and deserved to have as its headline sponsor Charles Dickens, Irwin Shaw (author of Rich Man Poor Man) or Andre Breton who, as leader of the Surrealist movement, had the most difficult managerial job imaginable.

Apart, of course, from managing a squad of Dutch footballers.

Besides, the player of the season for me isn’t CR7, who, according to this Statbunker list only scored twice away from home in the Premier League (Ed: True – two within eight minutes, when United were already 3-0 up at wooden-spooners West Brom) but Milivoje Novakovic, the Cologne skipper who, despite sounding like he ought to represent Slovenia at tennis rather than football, scored 12 – out of 16 – of his Bundesliga goals away from home.

Novakovic: "In your face, pretty boy!!"

While the resurgence of the galacticos is good for a headline or thousand, the real story of 2008/09 may be the number of club chairmen and presidents across Europe who, after watching Barca triumph in Rome, are ordering their directors of football, in a manner reminiscent of the tyrant in the Sam Peckinpah Western, to “bring me the new Josep Guardiola.”

Football, like the mafia, isn’t always that imaginative. And many of Joan Laporta’s peers across Europe will be staring at their youth and reserve team coaches this summer and thinking: “Could he? Is he?”

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Bull market in Madrid gores Italian bears

Riccardo Rossi — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:30:00 GMT

Real Madrid are devouring football, claim the Italian press.

The “Real Cannibale” headlines appearing in two of the three sports dailies and quite a number of their news cousins need no translation.

Gazzetta dello Sport were also as puzzled and perplexed as everyone else: “Something doesn’t add up.”

And doing the sums it has also raised questions on whether AC Milan sold themselves short in the Ricky Kaka deal.

The answer would have to be a resounding “Yes.”

Cristiano Ronaldo heads to Madrid for something in the region of 93million Euro and Kaka pitches up for a what seems a snip at 65m. The only advantage the Portuguese has over Kaka is a three-year age gap.

Of course, papa Kaka has apparently picked up 10m Euro and the younger less-talented brother has also been reportedly thrown in there for a spare 1m and change.

It all adds up but Silvio Berlusconi and his right-hand man Adriano Galliani slipped up – and surely could have wrangled a few more million out of the deal.

Berlusconi and Galliani: "Oops"

The knock-on effect will certainly see Zlatan Ibrahimovic and his outsized ego head off to Barcelona in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses.

Zlat the Mercenary will be looking for an improvement on his paltry 12m Euro annual take-home and the general consensus this side of the Med is “Good luck and have a nice trip.”

Massimo Moratti has already marked the Swede’s card, claiming that he doesn’t really need to sell the striker but he isn't going to stand in the way of anyone who doesn’t want to play for the club.

Same goes for Maicon, who has been complaining that he has not been shown the “correct respect” – rich coming from a player who was plucked from the relative obscurity of Monaco and turned into a world-class full-back.

It now looks unlikely that Moratti is going to play ball with Samuel Eto’o, whom he believes does not merit a contract that would pay off a debt off a developing nation – something around 10m Euro over five years plus a sweetener of 15m to see him through his dotage.

If the Cameroonian finds a sugar daddy in Manchester City, Inter will then turn their time and resources to Karim Benzema.

The Lyon striker looks a better bet in the long-term: he’s only 21 and can be landed for a nice round figure of 30m, plus he’s willing to make do with 4m a year.

On the playing side, the French lad is similar to Ibra in build and style – but let’s hope he doesn’t end up being just as stroppy as the man he is replacing.

Who knows, in this crazy summer the Eto’o deal may go through as Inter look at the short-term gain of having someone in the team who has actually won a Champions League medal.

But one thing is certain: as the Spanish bull market greedily eats up Europe’s finest talent, the Italian bear equivalent can only sit and scratch itself in disbelief.

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The transfers that rocked the world: Part II

FourFourTwo Team — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

With the world record for a transfer fee set to be shattered in the next few days, Real Madrid seem to be on a personal crusade to hijack this blog.

The £56 million spent on Monday to sign Kaka will be blown out of the water by the imminent £80 million deal which should take Cristiano Ronaldo to the Bernabeu.

In today’s instalment of The Transfers That Rocked The World we look at some more moments that knocked the world for six.

And just for a change of pace, none of them involve Florentino Perez’s bottomless pit of money...

Denilson, Sao Paolo to Real Betis
£23 million, July 1998

When Denilson signed for Real Betis in 1998, new team-mate Alfonso Pérez admitted he’d never actually seen him play. “But,” he wisely declared, “for the price we’ve paid, he must be very, very good.”

According to one local politician, the price paid was ‘immoral’ – a world record £23 million from Sao Paulo – and, once they’d seen the Brazilian play, everyone else quickly agreed.

Far from very, very good, Denilson was very, very bad. The winger who once claimed to have taken the No.20 shirt because he was “twice as good as the No.10” was a disaster.

Overly individualistic, he was soon out of shape and obsessed with pointless step-overs that never took him anywhere.

Just don't do it

Within two seasons Betis were relegated, but Denilson didn’t hang around to help them win promotion back to la Liga the following year – he had promptly upped-sticks and returned to Brazil for a loan spell at Flamengo.

A couple of high-profile affairs, the comic sight of him scrambling terrified out of the window when Betis’s apoplectic president interrupted an infamous Halloween party attended by a coach load of sexy senoritas, and 13 measly goals in seven years is the sum total of Denilson’s contribution to Spain.

He eventually departed for Bordeaux on a free transfer.

Pele, ‘semi-retirement’ to New York Cosmos
Free, 1975

The original galactico coming to America.

In a country that couldn’t be even bothered to dislike “soccer,” Pele broke the mould – just as the general manager of the New York Cosmos and director of the North American Soccer League dreamed he would.

Clive Toye declared Pele “the only player who could break the crust of indifference” and set about chasing him round the globe, from Jamaica to Toronto, London to Frankfurt, Sao Paulo to Rome.

Pele resisted for four years until, now retired and faced with financial meltdown, they met again in a motel room in Brussels – a surreal meeting complete with torn trousers, a grieving chamber maid, a stream of autograph hunters hammering on the door, a $3m salary and Toye’s appeal to the Brazilian’s sense of history.

“I told him if he went to Real Madrid or Juventus all he could win was another title,” Toye recalled. “If he joined us he could win an entire country.”

For a while, Pelé did just that, despite a pitch that had to be painted green to disguise its baldness.

It was, wrote one reporter, “like watching Nureyev dance at a Times Square honky-tonk.”

At his farewell game in October 1977, 77,000 fans joined him in chanting “love, love, love,” a club with an average gate of 4,000 reached 34,000, and even Muhammad Ali admitted that Pele was “also” the greatest.

“Pele elevated soccer to heights never before attained in America,” declared president Jimmy Carter. “And only he could have accomplished such a mission.”

Pele on a parks pitch

Attilio Lombardo, Juventus to Crystal Palace
August 1997, £1.6 million

The corner of South-East London that houses Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park isn’t known globally for its sexiness. OK, so Kate Moss originates from Croydon but that’s about it.

In 1997, however, Crystal Palace and their then manager Steve Coppell branched out and brought some Italian class to SE25 with the acquisition of Italian international Attilio Lombardo.

The follically challenged right-winger (later, of course, nicknamed the ‘Bald Eagle’ by Palace fans) had won Serie A with Sampdoria and a Champions League winners medal with Juventus and arrived in London hoping to emulate his fellow countrymen Gianfranco Zola and Gianluca Vialli’s efforts in the capital.

Though he arrived on the back of a horrific run of injuries, Lombardo was immediately the star attraction at Palace, especially when he scored on his debut at Everton.

His early-season form lead Palace to 10th in the Premiership and Lombardo to an Italy recall but he was injured on international duty in November and by the time he returned, the Eagles were rooted to the bottom of the table.

After a brief spell as player-manager (with Thomas Brolin as his assistant – the mind boggles) he returned Italy with Lazio, where he won the Serie A title, leaving Palace fans to wonder: did that superstar really play for us?

Lomas and Lombardo, two of the greats

Roy Race, Melchester Rovers to Walford Rovers 
Undisclosed, April 1983  

Seismic shocks came thick and fast during the 39-year run of Roy of the Rovers.

Roy Race was shot once, kidnapped twice, lost his foot in a chopper accident, led the club on a 13-year unbeaten run and buried six of his team killed by Middle Eastern terrorists.

He also pulled off the most impressive transfer swoop in the history of football, bringing in Spandau Ballet duo Martin Kemp and Gary Norman.

But in April 1983, Race delivered the biggest surprise of all when he walked out on his beloved Melchester Rovers after 29 years man and boy.

Forced out by a board of directors meddling in his team selection, Race joined moneyed London upstarts Walford Rovers on a reported £3,000-a-week salary.

The Melchester fans felt betrayed. Thousands begged him to return, others sent hate mail. Roy’s wife Penny and three kids walked out on him.

And while he still scored goals – he was born to score goals – it never looked or felt right.

Race didn’t suit blue and he could never get Melchester off his mind. He lasted seven months, before Melchester chairman and chief villain of the piece Sam Barlow walked out, paving the way for Racey’s return.

In his first game back, a homecoming against Portdean, normal service was resumed. “The prodigal son signalled his return by displaying his priceless, match-winning gifts!”

You really could not make it up, although clearly someone had.

Paul Ince, West Ham to Manchester United
£1 million, September 1989

“The deal was close to being done. I went on holiday and my agent said it wasn’t worth me coming back to do a picture with a United shirt when the deal was completed, so I should do one before I left and it would be released when the deal was announced.”

These are Paul Ince’s words to this very magazine regarding the slip-up that to this very day has West Ham fans hissing him like a pantomime villain.

That photo was published before the deal was announced and as Ince admits: “All hell broke loose.”

Ince had broken on to the scene at West Ham in 1986 and his combative style in midfield had caught the eye of Alex Ferguson who was trying hard to re-ignite a faltering Manchester United.

West Ham had been relegated in 1989 and Ince played some games in the then Division Two but it was inevitable that a move would soon happen.

A traditional East End welcome for the Guvnor

United agreed the £1m fee and all would have been OK had that picture of Ince, United shirt upon his back, not been printed in a daily tabloid.

Instead Ince has been booed ever since at Upton Park and readily acknowledged last summer that his return to East London as manger of Blackburn would be the most testing game of his first top-flight season.

How little he knew...

Transfers that rocked the world: Part I
Transfers that rocked the world: Part II
Transfers that rocked the world: Part III
Transfers that rocked the world: Part IV
Transfers that rocked the world: Part V

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The transfers that rocked the world

FourFourTwo Team — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

So Kaka’s move to Real Madrid has sort of broken the world record for a transfer fee – if you use pounds as the measurement; thanks to decreased value of sterling to the Euro during the recent recession and subsequent money-printing.

Anyway, little Ricky’s move was reason enough, we thought, to list The 25 Transfers That Rocked The World, as originally seen in ye olde-fashioned magazine version of FourFourTwo.

Over the next five days we’ll be bringing you the 25 in five fun-sized instalments – and we’d love to hear which transfers have shocked, riled, and delighted you most over the years.

Tommy Lawton, Chelsea to Notts County
£20,000, November 1947

Imagine Wayne Rooney swapping Manchester United for Mansfield. In 1947, Tommy Lawton – the Rooney of his era – effectively did just that.

Lawton was a Chelsea and England centre-forward, a magnificent and elegant striker reputed to be even better than William ‘Dixie’ Dean.

But like so many footballers, off the pitch Lawton was afflicted by personal demons. In 1945 he left Everton, where he had been happy, to escape his troubled marriage. His wife followed him south, however, and the difficulties persisted.

Lawton: Not a badge-kisser

By autumn 1947, Lawton was looking for another fresh start and so requested a transfer. He hoped to join Arsenal, but they couldn't stump up the £20,000 fee. But Third Division Notts County could.

It was a staggering move with all sorts of wild rumours surrounding it. Lawton was said to have received a huge signing-on fee, or a lucrative ‘sham’ second job to boost his football earnings, which were limited by the wage cap.

Lawton always denied such stories, claiming to have received only the £10 signing-on fee permitted by the FA and to have chosen County because they were managed by his friend, Arthur Stollery, a former Chelsea masseur.

But he always regretted the move. “On reflection,” he said, “I should have stayed and transferred the wife.”

Clive Allen QPR to Arsenal
£1.25 million, May 1980

In February 1979, Trevor Francis became the country’s first £1 million player when he moved from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest.

If that fee, for a 25-year-old England international, caused eyebrows to rise, then they were virtually hitting the roof just over a year later.

Nineteen-year-old Clive Allen had scored 32 goals in just 49 league games for QPR when Arsenal stepped in to make him the world’s most expensive teenager in a £1.25 million transfer in June 1980.

But 63 days and three friendly appearances later, the youngster was on the move again, this time to Crystal Palace in a swap deal for defender Kenny Sansom.

"Where do you see yourself in five years' time?"

Speculation abounded, much of it centring on Palace wanting Allen’s services, but not having the cash to prise him from Loftus Road and using the highly sought-after Sansom as a bargaining chip to get the Gunners to do their bidding.

“Several different theories were put forward,” recalls Allen. “There was no foundation to any of them, but it was quite an experience to be involved in. I mean, if Arsenal wanted Kenny Sansom why didn’t they just buy him straight from Palace?”

Gianluigi Lentini, Torino to AC Milan
£13 million, July 1992

AC Milan's decision to pay a world-record £13 million for the 24-year-old was slammed by the Vatican’s daily newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, as “an offence against the dignity of work.”

In truth, the figure was inflated because Juventus had joined Milan in a bidding war for a player who had become a hero at Torino.

After his transfer went through, Torino fans showed their displeasure by storming their club’s head office.

A record-breaker (clothes model's own)

Lentini looked a decent player – if not quite value for money – as he played 30 games in his first season at Milan, and was a key figure in their Scudetto success.

But the following year he was involved in a horrific car crash which fractured his skull and put him in a coma for 24 hours.

He only played another 30 games for Milan in the next four years, and was never the same player again. Milan made a huge loss when they sold him back to Torino for £2m in 1997.

Once there, as in his first spell, he helped them win promotion to Serie A. He may not have been a hero at Milan, but for one half of Turin, his legendary status is secure.

Andy Cole, Newcastle United to Manchester United
£7 million, January 1995

You’re a Newcastle fan back in early 1995. Life is sweet. Your beloved club has equipped itself brilliantly in the Premier League and look likely to challenge for honours under Kevin Keegan, a manager working his way to Messiah status.

Then, out of nowhere, news filters through that your unstoppable centre-forward has been sold to Manchester United, the very club you were hoping to replace as the nation’s best.

Such was the shock when he sold Andy Cole (he hadn’t asked to be called Andrew back then), Keegan had to step out of his St James’ Park office and face the hordes of unhappy fans on the stadium’s steps.

"What do you mean, shocking? Oh, the jacket..."

The fee was a British record but Cole had managed 55 goals in 70 appearances for the Magpies.

Keegan pleaded with fans to trust him, went onto spend the money on Les Ferdinand and almost brought the title to the North-East the very next season.

As for Cole, his first season at United seemed to overwhelm him. As he struggled for consistency in front of goal - with Eric Cantona banned for his kung-fu moment - the title was surrendered to Blackburn.

The striker had the last laugh though, winning five Premier Leagues, two FA Cups, the League Cup and the Champions League.

Niko Kranjcar, Dinamo Zagreb to Hajduk Split
£1.2 million, January 2005

He was the golden boy of Croatian football, an elegant playmaker whose tall, slightly hunched gait was reminiscent of Zinedine Zidane.

Then, overnight, he became the target of almost universal scorn.

His father Zlatko had been a hero at Dinamo Zagreb, and Niko seemed to be going the same way as he became their youngest-ever captain and led them to the title in 2003.

But midway through the 2004/05 season, he fell out with the club’s management.

Kranjcar of Zagreb against Boa Morte of Fulham

Most observers expected his agent, Dino Pokrovac, to negotiate a deal with a foreign club, but he instead he agreed a €1.5 million deal with Dinamo’s arch-rivals, Hajduk Split.

That May, Pokrovac was shot dead in a mafia-style hit at his home in Zagreb. His killers have never been caught.

Kranjcar's form suffered, and although Hajduk lifted the title in 2005, they won only three of the 10 games in which Kranjcar played. That decline continued the following season and he was mercilessly taunted by opposing fans as Debeli – ‘Fatty’.

When Dinamo won the league the following season, a number of players were filmed celebrating in Zagreb’s main square chanting “The fatty's won f*ck all.”

A bad World Cup – when his father was national coach – followed, and it was only after his move to Portsmouth that he began to win over the Croatian public again.

A hardcore of Dinamo fans, though, will never forgive him.

Transfers that rocked the world: Part II
Transfers that rocked the world: Part III
Transfers that rocked the world: Part IV
Transfers that rocked the world: Part V

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Seedy stuff from la Liga’s lower reaches

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Now the fairly Philistine La Liga Loca is dimly aware of three great works of Spanish fiction - Marca, Don Quixote and, er, Don Quixote.

But it seems that a fourth may be added to this very short list.

And it goes under the somewhat cumbersome title of ‘The Spanish Second Division’.

Over the past few days an unruly gang of match-fixing stories have elbowed their way past the Kaká and Eto’o headlines like a granny in a supermarket queue.

Regular readers with long, long memories may remember the news from the end of 2008 of Real Sociedad president, Iñaki Badiola, producing a tape which he claimed had the then Tenerife player, Jesuli, admitting taking a 6,000 Euro bung to lose a game against Málaga at the end of the 2007/08 second division season.

BLOG: The New Perico Prince and Murky Malaga

“This is absolute nonsense,” blustered Málaga owner Lorenzo Sanz in response. “Badiola is the cancer of football.” Accusations then wormed out of the woodwork on fishy goings-on at other league games in the same season.

Unfortunately, La Liga Loca is unable to shed any light on whether any of these allegations turned out to hold water.

To date, naff-all appears to have happened in any investigations - if they ever took place, that is.

Instead everything seems to have been swept under a carpet the size of Portugal.

But the rancourous reek of rigging returned at the end of May with El Mundo publishing claims that members of Segunda A side Castellón were offered money to lose April’s league clash against promotion-chasing Real Zaragoza.

The paper reports that a player informed Castellón manager Paco Herrera about the attempt to buy his footballing favour. Herrera then told his club bosses, who passed the information onto the authorities.

El Mundo also published claims from fellow second division side Gimnastic that members of their squad had been offered fees to lose encounters - including one whopping offer of 300,000 Euro (promptly turned down).

There's yet more skulduggery afoot in the Spanish Segunda B division (a regional version of England’s Division 1) with allegations from Cadíz that offers were made to two of their footballers to help lose the play-off clash against Real Union, the side that shot to fame last season for knocking Real Madrid out of the Spanish Cup.

For the record, Cadíz prevailed in the two-legged tie and won promotion.

One of the squad members involved in the allegations, Dani Cifuentes, claims that he was offered 90,000 Euro to give away a penalty. The player says that the proposition was made through his agent (who is also, notes Marca, a Real Union shareholder).

“An unknown man called him with an offer that I told him from the beginning I would not accept,” says the right-back, who reported the incident to his club bosses.

Cadíz goalkeeper Kiko Casilla also claims to have been offered 120,000 Euro to throw the crucial promotion clash.

On Tuesday, Cadíz club president Antonio Muñoz confirmed the stories from the club camp and said that he had the name of the person trying to buy off members of his squad.

“We know who it is,” said Muñoz. "I spoke to this person and told him to his face that what he was doing was wrong. Unfortunately, I cannot say anymore. I can’t give names as I have no proof."

Stories of incentive payments are hardly new in Spanish football. But they normally concern sums of money paid to players of sides with nothing at stake to win games and are especially common during relegation battles.

Getafe president Angel Torres claimed last week that “We were the only team not to be given incentives on the last day – and we stayed up.”

Indeed, there are strong arguments at all levels in Spain that these bungs are no worse than standard win bonuses, paid for by a third party.

However, these stories of players being offered money to lose games is a different kettle of footballing fish.

While it is heartening to hear of honest footballers coming forward to report attempts to buy them off, there has to be concern over the number of players who may be less keen to turn down significant amounts of cash in encounters where there may be little else to play for.

The matter needs a thorough investigation by Spain’s footballing authorities. “Every year, you hear more and more about people buying or trying to buy matches,” complained Mario Bermejo, a player for second division promotion-chasers Xerez.

But strangely, La Liga Loca does not hold high hopes that an in-depth study into match-fixing will take place anytime soon.

After all, who knows what else it would uncover?

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Competition Time

Last chance to win a year’s subscription to FourFourTwo, remember to enter our little competition.

New Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is considering taking a sponsor’s name for the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

All you have to do is send your helpful ideas on who they should be and why to laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk by the end of Thursday June 11 - with the best suggestion winning the prize.

(Usual FFT terms and conditions apply.)

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Cruyff, Van der Sar, Cantona & Scudamore

Andy Mitten — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:30:00 GMT

I met Jordi Cruyff yesterday in Barcelona. The city is not a good place to be for a Manchester United fan and flags celebrating Barça’s treble fluttered outside the bar as we did the second part of a big interview for my next book.

Jordi has a great life story and he’s bright too, though he admits that he was frequently an “a**hole” when he warmed the bench at Manchester United.

Ryan Giggs describes Jordi as the most talented he ever saw in training, but Jordi only realised that talent after leaving United.

"Man, you're good"

Now 35, Jordi will leave for Malta on Friday, where he’s signed a contract to be player/assistant manager for Valletta.

He was telling me about his best friend Roberto Martinez, the next Wigan Athletic manager. Both are Catalan and Roberto was playing at Wigan when Jordi was at Old Trafford.

Roberto helped lift Jordi out of the fog of depression and the pair did university degrees in Manchester to kill those dull afternoons after training.

I received an email from North Carolina, from someone with a theory about Cruyff’s former Dutch team-mate Edwin van der Sar.

The person – or should that be wild conspiracy theorist? - was convinced that United’s goalkeeper had taken a bribe from the Italian mafia not to save Leo Messi’s goal in the European Cup final.

He was deadly serious and his colour-by-numbers detective work referenced the fact that Van der Sar once played for Juventus, who are from Italy - the same country as the Mafia.

He wants me to put it to Van der Sar. Not a chance.

I was incredulous, but he wasn’t alone. We had an email last month from someone who claimed to have inside information that the Premier League were shifting fixtures around to stop Manchester United from winning the title.

The man copied me in on correspondence between him and Richard Scudamore, with one email beginning ‘Dear Scudamore’.

"This correspondent is bonkers"

I’ve been writing a lot about Kaka’s move to Madrid.

Last week, the brilliant Brazilian said the following: “I’ll say it for the last time, the last time, I don’t want to leave Milan. In this period I prefer to remain silent because I don’t want to be misunderstood. To the millions of Milan supporters, I say that I have made my choice. I have said what I want to stay. Leave me in peace, please.”

This week he moved to Madrid.

We’ve also sent the final United We Stand of the season to the printers. Or we were going to, until the printers went bust. We found new printers quickly and everyone grafted to get the edition finished.

To celebrate we’re all going to see Looking For Eric when it opens this week in Manchester at the Cornerhouse, a charitable independent cinema where Cantona escaped from the media hounding him following his Selhurst Park altercation with Mathew Simmonds.

Eric would have escaped from Manchester a lot earlier if what his close mate Jordi Cruyff told me is true…

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As Kaka packs, the duckling quacks

Riccardo Rossi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Have we all missed something here? Why does Alexandre Pato want to speak to Carlo Ancelotti before he discusses his future with AC Milan?

And why is he speaking to the Chelsea coach when he is under contract at Milan – until 2012, if he cares to read the less than fine print?

NEWS: Pato plans pow-wow

Yes, once again when a player is on international duty his head is filled with all manner of voices promising riches beyond his wildest possible dreams.

"I wish I could fly..."

For Brazilians in particular, their international get-togethers are a vibrant Aladdin’s cave of untold treasures.

And having witnessed Ricky Kaka time his exit to Madrid just when he happens to be as far away from Italy as possible, the teenager and those around him are ready to board the gravy train as well.

More Kaka from FourFourTwo:
Kaka joins Madrid from Milan
Shy-boy demeanour hides ambition
Kaka leaves Milan as best friends
Kaka's exit a fresh blow for Italian football
Kaka: the factbox
BLOG: The former republic of Real Madrid
BLOG: Madrid's "new Guti" doesn't want to be there

It now remains to be seen where they will get off – and worryingly it looks ever more likely that it will be London and not a return ticket to Milan.

Pato is only 19, and speaks as if he is still in short trousers: during a press conference at the start of the week it was “Professor” Ancelotti this, “Professor” Ancelotti that every time he opened his mouth.

“Before I speak to Milan I will talk to Professor Ancelotti,” he had the temerity to reveal. “He’s an extraordinary man… yada, yada, yada… it would be an honour to play for Chelsea.”

His nickname is ‘The Duck’ and he sure knows how to quack.

"Alex! Take the A4 to Malpensa Airport and a flight to Heathrow"

He even slipped into calling Brazil coach Dunga “Professor” - demonstrating that whatever the classroom, he’s the teacher’s pet.

Where does this leave the teenager and his relationship with Milan – and in particular Leonardo, who has helped the kid overcome his almost chronic shyness and settle into the hurly-burly of life in Italy?

He obviously did too good a job, but hopefully Leo has been on the phone to his protégé to inform him that he will also be a “Professor” very soon when he gains his coaching badge come early July.

BLOG: Leo settles Pato

But it’s all very unsettling; no wonder fans are becoming disillusioned with the game when many Italians cannot afford a bucket and spade for the beach this summer.

Milan will now have to either accept another star is off or use part of the Kaka fee to hand Pato an improved contract – threatening Silvio Berlusconi’s plans for a wage-cap on all new signings.

BLOG: Berlusconi plans wage-cap

Earning less than a teenager can’t be a big draw for a potential new signing – unless it happens to be Edin Dzeko.

Post-Kaka, the Rossoneri have set their sights on the strapping Wolfsburg striker who was voted best player in the Bundesliga last season.

NEWS: Galliani admits Dzeko meeting

Hardly a household name outside Lower Saxony and certainly not worth the 30m Euro asking price – especially as he is Bosnian and would thus fill the squad’s final non-EU slot, which could be better taken up by, let’s say, the Brazilian Hernanes if Andrea Pirlo also decides his future lies on the Kings Road.

However, Dzeko only (only!) earns 600,000 Euro a year in Germany and Milan will more than triple that to offer him a five-year contract at 2m Euro per season – £33,000 per week.

"Yay! I can buy some Brasso!"

It’s all relative, of course, as a Chelsea reserve player probably brings home somewhere in the region of that amount – something that Pato and his agent, Gilmar Veloz, are no doubt well aware.

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Real Madrid finally end search for new Guti

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

With the briefest of announcements posted on their website in the wee small hours of Tuesday morning, Real Madrid had spread the word that they had doubled the number of playmakers who don’t really want to be at the club but would hang about for the cash anyway.

The arrival of Kaká on a six-year deal for a reported transfer fee of 62.7m Euro means that Madrid no longer have to rely on just the one fancy-pants footballer to pull out of nasty-looking clashes due to communions or ‘hurty’ legs - something that Guti managed brilliantly in the closing weeks of the last campaign.

"Oooh, it feels like a six-weeker"

“For a few seasons now, I know that Madrid have been looking long and hard for the new Guti,” explained the team’s Director General, Jorge Valdano, in an exclusive chat with the blog.

“With Van der Vaart we really thought we had a player on a our hands who had that same ‘show me the money’ mercenary streak of genius,” explained the former Argentine international. “But it never really worked out. Kept saying he was fit.”

But with Kaká announcing in a bustling press conference in Recife that “it wasn’t my plan to leave Milan but economic circumstances said it had to be,” pundits in the Spanish capital are certain that Madrid have finally got hold of the perfect player who can sulk through seasons long after Guti has become nothing more than a bad memory.

“The fundamental issue with Guti is that he’s a home-grown player who doesn’t want to play for the club,” explains Marca’s editorial on Tuesday.

“Every time he doesn’t fancy a game of football for one flimsy reason or another, it costs Madrid relatively little. Now, Florentino Pérez has bought a player who not only doesn’t want to be at Madrid, but is bankrupting the club due to his wages and transfer fee. That takes some skill,” praised the paper.

"Come and have a go if you think you're mardy, love"

As the clean-living Kaká was at Brazil’s training camp he was forced to deny reports that he was leaving Milan having grown tired of rejecting the constant offers from owner Silvio Berlusconi of "a fun time down at my villa" and explained that he was happy to be helping out his former club in a tough economic climate.

“A lot of companies are going through bad times and Milan is one of them,” explained Kaká on the motivations for his move to Madrid.

Real Madrid’s latest advertising hoarding is not expected to be unveiled at the Bernabeu until the end of June after duties with Brazil are completed, so it’s still not known what impact the former Balon d’Or winner will have on the squad at the capital club.

The most immediate reaction has been from Raúl, who was heard howling at the sky in the early hours of Tuesday morning after discovering that a lower tax bracket for the Brazilian superstar will make him the best-paid player on the team.

At least until Cristiano Ronaldo arrives, that is.

Skint skipper stages stadium sit-in

Sergio Ramos is said to have low expectations as to whether the born-again, evangelical, teetotal, Jesus-owned Brazilian will be up for his traditional ‘drinkie Sundays’.

However, the man that Kaká is set to replace remained defiant over his role at Real Madrid over the next few years in a short chat with La Liga Loca.

“This just means that I’m going to have to up my game,” explained an unconcerned Guti. “I like challenges. Except physical ones,” added the midfielder.

“Family events are no longer going to cut the mustard when it comes to excuses. Next season I’m looking at bunions, scurvy, Yom Kippur. Nothing will be ruled out.”

Guti ended his talk with the blog by discussing his hopes for the new campaign. “I’m determined to prove that when people think of someone who really doesn’t want to play for Real Madrid, then they think of me straight away. Not some ponce from Brazil.”

Note: None of these conversations took place. Right?

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FourFourTwo.com: More to read...
Kaka joins Madrid from Milan
Shy-boy demeanour hides ambition
Kaka leaves Milan as best friends
Kaka's exit a fresh blow for Italian football
Kaka: the factbox
Money talks and Kaka walks as Silvo suffers austerity
The former republic of Real Madrid

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Why Inter should sell Ibra – and buy Eto'o

Riccardo Rossi — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is an Inter player in as so much that up until last week he wore the club shirt and is the holder of a 12 million Euro a year contract bestowed on him by a grateful Massimo Moratti.

Apart from that, the Swede has no qualms about wearing whatever striped shirt is thrown his way – be it black and white, black and blue or red and blue.

He threatened legal action if he wasn't allowed to leave relegated Juventus, and his moody temperament and sultry demeanour will not be missed if he packs up and runs off to Barcelona.

NEWS: Ibrahimovic open to offers from Barcelona

The loss of Ricky Kaka would certainly be a major blow to Serie A’s prestige and morale, but the sulky Swede has never won over the Italian football public.

"Bye. Love you this much"

Yes, he finished top goalscorer in the league this season and at times produced some sublime moments of skill – but you would be hard-pressed to remember him producing the goods against either Juventus or Milan.

If you need inspiration in key moments then Ibra is not your man – and of course he has been missing in action when it really matters... the Champions League.

Better then for Moratti to swap one mega-contract for another and get his hands on a proven European performer in Samuel Eto’o.

The Cameroonian is only a year older than his Inter counterpart, can score as many (if not more) astounding goals, has greater pace and seems on the whole to be more of a team player.

Ibra definitely wants to leave Italy, egged on by his agent Mino Raiola who has been letting everyone know how much his client would love to play for Barça.

It seems that Eto’o is equally keen on remaining with the Catalans but a 15m Euro signing-on fee and 12m Euro salary – the same as Ibra's current wedge – should soften the blow.

You have to say that in these crazy times it would be excellent value for money.

"Hello everybody!"

The real benefit comes on the pitch, where Eto’o’s versatility would enable Jose Mourinho to employ his favoured 4-3-3 – a formation aborted early in the season when the Portuguese noted Ibra’s unwillingness to sacrifice himself more often for the greater cause.

With the more free-moving Diego Milito arriving from Genoa on the back of a 24-goal season to augment the emergent talents of Mario Balotelli, Eto’o would be the perfect spearhead to the attack.

With that trio up-front, Inter’s strikeforce would be not only the most in Italy, but also one that would be very pleasing to the eye.

Bringing Eto’o to Serie A would definitely put a smile back on the face of Italian football – while finally getting rid of one unloved long mug.

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Rebels or robots: Which would you prefer?

Paul Simpson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:30:00 GMT

On dull days like these I find myself missing the gorgeous, selfish genius of Hristo Stoitchkov.

The only Bulgarian to win the Ballon d’Or, he completed Johan Cruyff’s Dream Team.

True, he never quite clocked the fact that football was a team game but, for Cruyff, that was the point. His Barcelona needed the Bulgarian’s unpredictable, egotistical greatness to conquer Europe.

The Dream Team could pass their way to glory but if that wasn’t working, Stoitchkov could, in his heyday, be relied on to try something spectacular, outrageous and successful.

"In your face, world!"

Such genius is fragile; it doesn’t take long before the player begins to believe in their own infallibility.

But Stoitchkov gave me arguably the finest 90 minutes in my football life against Germany at USA 94. I have a tape of that game in a box in the cupboard under the stairs and still watch it twice a year.

Sadly, Stoitchkovs are rarer than they used to be.

You could even argue that as far back as the 1990s, Stoitchkov was actually a throwback. The debate over how much freedom players should have on the pitch is almost as old as football.

But as Jonathan Wilson points out in his fine book Inverting The Pyramid, it became particularly acute in the 1960s and 1970s.

The application of an English-style based on shape, pressing, a high offside trap and long-ball counter-attacks in Sweden by Bobby Houghton in the 1970s laid the foundations for Malmo’s run to the European Cup final and IFK Gothenburg’s two UEFA Cup triumphs.

But it also ran the risk, as coaching instructor Lars Arnesson complained, of “stifling initiative and turning players into robots”.

Arnesson’s fears were fulfilled just across the border by Egil Olsen’s hugely successful, but almost unwatchable, Norway.

The fact remains that we, as supporters, like to be entertained by players, and not coaches.

And although football can, in one way, be seen as a tactical evolution – the inversion of the pyramid, as Wilson puts it in the title of his book – it can also be seen as a YouTube clip of glorious moments, a history that is even more powerful because it is personal and unique.

My own clip includes Stoitchkov’s screaming free-kick against Germany, a crossbar sent a-quivering by Frank Worthington one 1970s weekday night when the Foxes beat Ipswich 5-0, and a Maradonaesque goal (the dribble, not the Hand of God) by the wonderfully named Hampton & Richmond striker Ashley Sestanovich against Aylesbury in 2005.

The day I conclude that my personal YouTube compilation is complete is the day I give up on football.

Worthington: Certainly not an automaton

In Champions earlier this season, the Brazilian great Falcao called on midfielders to show “tactical insubordination” and defy their coaches if they felt the game required them to do so.

Guus Hiddink had the courage to let Philip Cocu do just that at PSV, switching formations whenever he thought it necessary.

Wayne Rooney might have done better in Rome if he’d had more of Stoitchkov’s selfish certainty.

You couldn’t fault his loyalty, energy or diligence against Barcelona, but a player of his gifts should be encouraged to use them as he sees fit; to improvise a Plan B if Plan A is so obviously not working.

It’s odd that in a game where players are increasingly judged on the quality of their decision-making, many coaches do their best to ensure they have so few decisions to make.

A team of Stoitchkovs would be delightful and disastrous, but surely more coaches could really mean it when they tell their players to express themselves?

And more great players should rebel and have the guts to risk failure and reproach by trying to take the game’s outcome into their own hands.

If I wanted to watch football played by robots, I’d go and watch the heavy metal sport in Korea.

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Valencia - the ultimate community club

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

All over la Liga, Spain’s football clubs have been taking one for the team and helping out their most loyal supporters in these dark financial days.

Almería have announced that they will be dropping their season ticket prices by 30 percent for the new campaign. And this has nothing to do with a whopping 28 percent fall in attendances for the 2008/09 season from the previous year.

Meanwhile, Real Betis have decided to give their supporters a break from the old routine by swapping tedious trips to the Camp Nou for second division Sundays against Salamanca.

AS are reporting that construction king Florentino Pérez is contemplating the building of a Real Madrid Epcot centre - the third major infrastructure project being bandied about by a club president who appears to see cement mixers where fans see a stadium.

The paper enthuses that the family-friendly park will be stuffed with rides such as the Guti-themed ‘Spaced Mountain’ and an ‘It’s a Small World’-style boat-ride based on Real Madrid’s back four where you enjoy the sight of slow-moving figures repeating the same rib-tickling actions again and again.

Pellegrini switches to flat back three

But beating all these funtastic efforts hands down are Valencia, the club whose bold campaign allows everyone in the city a go at being president.

A busy weekend for the men from Mestalla saw the club appoint their seventh head honcho in just 15 months. In fact, a busy weekend for the men from Mestalla saw the club appoint their third head honcho in just four days.

The latest east coast eruptions began on Thursday when the then president, Vicente Soriano, was forced to step down by the club’s biggest creditors, Bancaja, for having failed to sell the old Mestalla or do anything whatsoever to improve the club’s disastrous financial position.

Psst! Wanna buy a ground?

In copying Ramón Calderón’s resignation speech, Soriano claimed he was leaving his position “with a clear conscience” but that he was also going “with a dagger in my heart because I have not been able to reorganise the club.”

(In many ways Soriano got off lightly, considering a number of his predecessors at this most viscous of clubs have left the post of president with actual daggers in their hearts).

Taking over from the second biggest majority shareholder was Javier Gómez, but he only lasted two days before Manuel Llorente moved into the hot seat.

Llorente was the club's Delegate General between 1998 and 2004 (and involved in a corruption scandal in this time, warn El País) and is the choice of Bancaja, who are the real trouser-wearers at the club these days.

“The role of president is not one that is a pleasant experience,” noted Llorente on taking up his new role.

Llorente has said that if the likes of David Villa are to be sold, then it will be for as much money as possible. But according to an article in Monday’s El País he is hardly in a position to make demands from any potential purchasers.

In a terrifying read for Valencia fans, the paper reports that the club’s debt at the end of June will stand at 547 million Euro with 70m having been lost this season alone. In the past six years the club has spent 300m Euro more than its total income from the same period.

"Come on lads, it's not that hard"

It makes one wonder why those in charge can't be thrown into the slammer on the grounds of complete idiocy. The issue with such an action is that it would set a precedent that would see a good 90 percent of those running the game in Spain doing time.

But then again, that might give a chance to those who may actually know what they are doing to have a go. A bold step forward for la Liga.

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New Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is considering taking a sponsor’s name for the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

All you have to do is send your helpful ideas on who they should be and why to laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk by the end of Thursday June 11 - extension, folks, get writing! - with the best suggestion winning the prize.

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Atlético go for Abel replacement

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

They may be completely unable to agree on the colour of ham or be in the same room together, but the terrible twins running Atlético Madrid have met in the middle over the appointment of Abel Resino as the side’s manager for next season.

Or the first few weeks of it anyway.

Club president Enrique Cerezo and the spawn of Jesus Gil, Miguel Angel, have decided to hand the former Rojiblanco goalkeeper a year’s extension to his previously very short contract for the admirable achievement of sneaking Atleti into a fourth-placed finish.

However, La Liga Loca’s Atlético man on-the-inside has nudge-nudge wink-winked that Cerezo wanted Juande Ramos as their sacking stooge for the new campaign rather than Resino.

El País joined in the conspiracy fun by reporting that Gil has been working behind his boss’ back on the Abel deal, in the same way that the Atlético Delegate General kicked Javier Aguirre out of the club without so much as an SMS to the out-of-the-loop Enrique.

And this perhaps explains Mr President’s ‘Hey, everyone, just chill’ attitude on the week’s contract speculation.

“I don’t understand why everyone’s in such a hurry,” shrugged Cerezo.

Cerezo: "What's happening?"

Incidentally, for those wondering whatever happened to Javier Aguirre, the flat-topped trainer is now managing the Mexico national side through its post-Sven season and has completely recovered from his excellent experiences down at the Vicente Calderón.

“I’ve been to a neurologist, a cardiologist, a dentist, a nutritionist, I’ve lost weight and back exercising,” beamed a fit-as-a-spaniel Aguirre after his 31 months running the Rojiblancos.

And Aguirre is now looking to bring his managerial stylings to the Premier League in the near future.

“My dream is to go to England. I’ve made some contacts there this year and I think my destiny will be to head there in 2011. I’m sure of it.”

Getafe have also made a move in the managerial market and made Michel their main man for the next two campaigns - the footballing equivalent of being stuck with Spanish gossip harpy Belén Esteban after a nuclear holocaust and realising she’ll have to make do for the survival of the human race.

(Ed: Parental guidance advised on an Esteban image search.)

Oop North, Osasuna have rewarded José Antonio Camacho for his efforts in keeping the club up with more of the same for next season.

And Villarreal have been fast-as-lightning kung-fu-fighting by appointing Ernesto Valverde – who took Athletic Bilbao and Espanyol into Europe before going to Olympiacos – as the replacement for Third-Choice Chilean Manuel Pellegrini.

Valverde to the fore as Pellegrini disappears

Just about everyone has gone to ground in Betis-land - probably for their own safety - although manager José Maria Nogúes admits that he will be stepping down after just a few short months in charge of the relegated club.

“I had the chance to show I could work in La Primera,” chirped the straw-clutching coach.

The unfortunate sap expected to bring Betis back to the big time is ex-Málaga manager Antonio Tapia, who stifled his giggles by describing the role as “an amazing job.”

The great news is that one of the managerial heavyweights of Spain may be returning to the peninsula for more action. And in a worse mood than normal.

Having been fired by Fenerbahce, Luis Aragonés was approached by an intrepid Spanish TV reporter who asked after his feelings over his dismissal.

The former Spain coach considered his options and responded: “Why don’t you f*ck off, you moron?”

And there was more bad language to be heard in what was an entertainingly awful week for Ramón Calderón.

First off, the former Real Madrid president was back in court to answer questions on his involvement (or otherwise) in the alleged vote-rigging at the 2006 presidential election.

And this is not to be confused with the court case investigating his involvement with alleged ballot-tinkering at the club’s AGM in December.

“I left [Real Madrid] so I would be left in peace,” complained Calderón. “But I’ve not managed it.”

On Thursday, Ramón got to fulfil one of his duties as the head of the Spanish FA’s centenary celebrations by opening an exhibition in a shopping centre - a speech that was drowned out by a booing and barracking 200-strong crowd.

La Liga Loca knew that megaphone would come in handy one day.

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New Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is considering taking a sponsor’s name for the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

(Usual FFT terms and conditions apply.)

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Money talks and Kaka walks as Silvio suffers austerity

Riccardo Rossi — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Money doesn’t talk in Milan. It screams and shouts and pushes its way to the front of any massed gathering.

The ultras who congregated in front of AC Milan’s plush city centre headquarters on Thursday were always going to have a hard time being heard over the honking of horns, the rattle of passing trams and the rumble of sharp-suited businessmen on their mopeds making their way home after keeping the wheels of Italian finance turning.

The fans did their best with their terrace chants, flag-waving and igniting the odd flare, but it was like shouting into a gale-force wind.

Ricky Kaka is leaving this time, and no end of protests from those who populate the infamous Curva Sud at the San Siro is going to change anything.

It was so different back in January when it was Kaka’s turn to scream and stamp his foot at the very thought of going to Manchester City.

In the end, he got his way – against the wishes of the club and his father/agent.

Then it was an imperial wave from the window of his downtown apartment, but this time he’s out of town – smiling into the camera at Brazil’s training camp halfway round the world.

Kaka gives Pato a leg-up

It is doubtful whether Kaka – who had thousands of Milan-supporting kids in tears at the start of the year at the thought of never seeing him in a red and black shirt again (goodness knows how their parents will pacify them this time) will return to the city to say farewell.

The magnitude of the situation has yet to sink in and this time Silvio Berlusconi will really have to face the music.

Being our leader, he has a small matter of voting in the European elections this weekend.

And even though he appeared on the country’s premier political television programme to drum up some last-minute support, he had to spend most of his time fielding questions about why he was selling his best player.

Of course, it’s all down to the economy, stupid – or should that be the stupid economy. Milan have a 70m euro black hole in their finances and suffered a 19 million euro loss last year – up some 8 percent from the previous season.

Real Madrid’s donation will ease the pressure on that debt and of course there will also be a massive wage bill wiped off the books.

Milan pay Kaka something in the region of 9m euro a year – net. If you want to see how his bank balance is faring by the second check out this sobering little site.

Of course, believe it or not, taxes do have to be paid in Italy and the club have to come up with the 43 percent demanded for the government coffers.

In Spain, the equivalent figure is 24 percent over five years so it’s obviously less of a burden for Real to pay the player the same amount.

Berlusconi explained all of this and more to the county’s rather large TV-watching public, and in doing so came across as one of the masses: a man with bills to pay at the end of the month, a man who wanted the best for his kids, a man who in these austere times had to make sacrifices.

A vote-winner? More than likely, and an electoral landslide would ease the pain of selling off his greatest asset and the best talent to have played in Italy for the last decade.

"Buddy, can you spare a Euro?"

Besides picking the team, Berlusconi can now impose a wage cap at the club, something he has been planning for some time, with rumours flying that it will be set at a maximum of 3.5m euro a year for new signings (Ed: that’s about £60,000 per week, or less than half of John Terry’s wage) – with the squad average a lot lower.

Then there are a range of changes to save a cent or two, like cutting back on the number of 'free' flights home for South American players, and the comparable perks received by their European team-mates – something that is certain to get the dressing room grumbling at how unfair the world is.

Will these new measures entice the big names to join the club? If they’re in it just for the filthy lucre, probably not.

But then again, it’s still Milan: seven-time European Cup winners, the home of classy football and all that.

Players come and go, but the club will always be there. But try telling that to a young Rossoneri supporter with a No.22 Kaka shirt on his back.

Just as well they aren’t of voting age.

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The perfect man to coach Chelsea

Paul Simpson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Is Carlo Ancelotti the perfect man to coach Chelsea? Obviously not.

The perfect man would need the cunning of Machiavelli, the intelligence of Socrates, the vision of Napoleon and the humility of the Dalai Lama.

Such paragons are hard to find, even in football.

But is he the best man available to do the job? Probably.

Guus Hiddink would have offered more continuity. The flaw in his CV is that he doesn’t want the job.

The Moyesiah has done a great job at Everton on reasonably limited resources – I say reasonably because he has spent £27 million on the Yak and Marouane Fellaini – but he has won no significant silverware and made little headway in Europe.

And do David Moyes’s Everton play football in the entertaining fashion of Real Madrid, a style that captivated Roman Abramovich when he saw the triumphant white angels at Old Trafford in 2003?

Even diehard Everton fans would have to admit they do not. Moyes is a very good manager but, compared to Ancelotti, his only edge is that he speaks better English.

"GetbackandefendasaunitNOW!"

The case against Ancelotti is that he is Italian, could be another Scolari and, in recent years, has presided over the decline of an ageing team in Milan.

The likes of Tony Cascarino are already predicting he won’t last the season.

Since none of us – not even Cascarino – can predict the future, let’s focus on the facts.

Under Abramovich, Chelsea has been famous for byzantine intrigues and rumours about the owner’s preference for certain players and a particular style of play.

In other words, the same situation Ancelotti who has managed at Milan since he replaced Fatih Terim in 2001 and found himself getting advice about team selection and tactics, through the media, and from Silvio Berlusconi.

No matter how baroque the boardroom politics at Chelsea are, they surely won’t surpass anything Ancelotti experienced with Juventus and Milan.

In the competition that matters most to Abramovich, Ancelotti has a better record than any coach in Europe.

In eight years, he has won the UEFA Champions League twice, lost a final on penalties and, in 2006, was deprived of a place in the final against Arsenal on the whim of a referee who disallowed a perfectly good Andriy Shevchenko goal.

"Eh?"

Milan have been a team in transition of late and Ancelotti’s exit from the San Siro marks the end of a cycle for the Rossoneri.

But the decline is not entirely of Ancelotti’s making.

As Berlusconi tightened the purse strings, the Rossoneri have simply not competed with Inter in the transfer market.

Relatively inexpensive gambles on short-term solutions like Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Beckham were not, in such circumstances, so daft.

Refreshing the team by signing younger players, as the media demanded, would have cost Berlusconi millions he didn’t want to spend.

Ancelotti has bequeathed one exciting young talent to Leonardo. If Kaka does go, Alexandre Pato could be the player to build a new Rossoneri around.

Watching Ancelotti’s Milan in the flesh – in Athens in 2007 and in that summer’s Super Cup – I realised that they were a proper football team in the old-fashioned sense.

Players knew what their jobs were, did them and played for each other with a selflessness that is rare in the modern game.

The relentless focus on teamwork started with Arrigo Sacchi but Ancelotti has gloriously maintained that tradition.

Chelsea, by contrast, have only showed that kind of spirit in the first season under Mourinho and, more recently, under Guus Hiddink.

"Press, Marco. Like this"

Ancelotti’s alleged preference for old masters has been used in evidence against him because the consensus is that he has to rebuild an ageing squad.

But there are fewer Chelsea pensioners on the books than the media would have us believe: Alex, Jose Bosingwa, Joe Cole, Michael Essien, Salomon Kalou, Michael Mancienne, John Obi Mikel and John Terry are all the right side of 30.

Besides, the brutal truth is that the Premier League is now so uncompetitive – Chelsea could have dropped another 19 points last season and still made the Champions League play-offs – that Ancelotti could, with Abramovich’s backing, afford to focus on Europe.

I’m not saying that Ancelotti will succeed. Appointing foreign coaches to run Premier League clubs is a hit (Mourinho) and miss (Josef Venglos) affair.

But Ancelotti has, unlike Scolari, vast experience coaching one of the best clubs in Europe. He understands Champions League football as well as anyone and has managed a side that, for the most part, has entertained and succeeded.

And, at 49, he’s the right age to take on the challenge.

Add all that up and you can see why, in the absence of Mr Perfect, Ancelotti seems a reasonable risk to Abramovich – if not to Tony Cascarino.

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A Big Ron, a rude Ronaldo & a gracious Stevie G

Andy Mitten — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

From Pisa to sunny Manchester and a night in the northern metropolis, before taking a train down to London for the Football Writers’ Association annual dinner.

A once horrendous train journey has become a joy thanks to the excellent Virgin trains. Travel out of hours and you get some great deals.

I was kindly invited by my next publishers, two match-going AFC Wimbledon fans who are delighted with their progress and imminent Blue Square Premier debut.

The dinner was at the Royal Lancaster and we arranged to meet in a pub nearby.

“We’re at the bar, behind Big Ron,” texted a publisher. Ron Atkinson was there, chatting with different sports journalists, his presence formidable.

The biggest shock for me at the dinner wasn’t seeing Steven Gerrard nominated, but Steve Bates (see previous blog) sat in between Gerrard and Fabio Capello.

Capello spoke warmly in English and giggled along to a comedian he clearly didn’t fully understand. He even laughed at a story about Belgium being boring.

"Haha, good one..."

United fan Bates is now the chairman of the FWA and handled events with confidence and authority, joking that he’d tried and failed to get Gerrard to join United.

He may have kissed the badge on his chest, then put in a transfer request, but my already high opinion of Gerrard didn’t change.

Last season’s winner Cristiano Ronaldo turned up two hours late and insisted that five of his mates sat at the top table with him. None of the previous greats stretching back to 1946 had made such a request.

Gerrard came across well: grounded, bright and a decent lad who gets it. He seemed genuinely humbled by the award and, after watching a montage of his great moments, requested if it could be played again, la.

Like Sir Alex Ferguson, I’d love to see Gerrard at Old Trafford, but it’ll never happen and I’m glad it won’t.

He plays for his hometown club and loathes all their rivals – you wouldn’t have it any other way. I hated seeing him kiss that camera at Old Trafford in March, but I would have loved it had Ryan Giggs done the same at Anfield.

Gerrard came over later and shook hands, as he did with others in the room. I spent a day with him Barcelona two years ago and he remembered.

I took my 14-year-old brother Sam to his first away game recently at Hull.

He absolutely loved the singing and camaraderie and told everyone that it was the best game he’d ever been too. Oh for the enthusiasm of youth. I got him out of the ground before Phil Brown emerged from his vat of Shellac and took the mike.

"Jussssssst one cornettooooooo..."

I had to persuade Sam from running on the pitch at the end:

“What are you going to do when you get on there?”

“Dunno?”

“So why go on?

Sam will hopefully get plenty of chances to go on pitches in decent stadiums. The trials at Manchester United went very well – he scored a hat-trick in one game at Carrington and received a letter saying that they wanted to see him again.

After three games, United have informed him that they’d like him for six weeks from the start of next season.

There’s a long, long way to go, but he’s enjoying his football and getting noticed. And to think that a year ago, before Stockport County noticed him, he didn’t even have a club…

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Transfers: Many have opinions, few have the fax

The Robins — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Swindon fan (and former County Ground employee) Nick Judd hops on the merry-go-round...

No sooner had Swindon’s signing of goalkeeper David Lucas been confirmed than Town forumistas were hijacking Leeds discussion boards to find out what Whites fans thought of their departing custodian.

But it’s not always the best method of researching potential new stars…

Take Ipswich fans and ‘Super’ Sam Parkin. Had they asked us what we thought of him when he signed for Town four years ago, we would have given him a ringing endorsement.

But I sat in the Ipswich end at QPR and was staggered to find the fans slaughtering the former darling of the County Ground.

It was only his second game. And he scored.

"Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!"

So Leeds fans, forgive me if I ignore such pithy comments as “He’s abysmal at best” and “He’s sh*te” and form my own opinion, thanks.

There are so many factors that determine whether or not a player succeeds at a specific club – including whether they’re happy in the area and in their home life.

Talking of Parkin, I remember his signing well, because the then Town boss Andy King would ask me and other staff members to ferry the young striker to and from his hotel room when required.

Sam didn’t live too far away and usually only stayed in a hotel when there were back-to-back training sessions.

But you can imagine a young player moving to Swindon, being put up in a hotel on his own, not knowing anyone in the area and spending his hours away from the club watching pay-per-view on his tod.

Football’s not always as glamorous as it looks.

The transfer merry-go-round was one of the most exciting times of the season when I was working at the club.

The manager was always more relaxed shopping for players than when having to contend with the rigours of the season itself, and you would be in a privileged position knowing of impending transfers, or seeing players milling around the office or training ground.

Not all of them signed, of course, but it was exciting to be one of the first to know what was happening.

The most frustrating thing was not being able to tell anyone! It would be hard trying not to spill the beans to friends on various forums.

In fact, that was one of the most frustrating parts of working for the club. While newspapers and bloggers could speculate and report on potential moves, we could only report the facts, which only came as a result of a player dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.

We’d often be the first to know, but the last to say…

"I suppose we better announce it on the website"

The best day, without doubt, was transfer deadline day.

Remarkably, all transfers were (and still are) conducted via fax, and I remember once sitting in STFC’s office waiting for one such fax to show up before the deadline – 6pm in those days – so that our player could be registered.

It did, he was, and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Would it have been dramatic if an email was required?

Perhaps not, but then that’s half the fun. Maybe the bods at the Football League do it for precisely that reason – deadline day must be a riot in their office!

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Leonardo looking to create masterpiece in Milan

Riccardo Rossi — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

By painting The Last Supper for the dining room at the city's Santa Maria delle Grazie church, Leonardo da Vinci put Milan on the map.

Now another Leonardo has been asked to make something beautiful out of the city’s other ageing artefact: AC Milan.

The modern Leonardo is very much the archetypal Renaissance man: urbane, well-read, a humanitarian and a linguist to boot. The Brazilian is also young and handsome, which fits perfectly with those whom Silvio Berlusconi likes to surround himself.

"You like Calcio?"

More importantly, not only does he understand the politics of the club inside out, he has the ear of Ricky Kaka, who he encouraged to join Milan in the first place.

This may help ensure his compatriot remains with the club rather decamp to Madrid – or to Carlo Ancelotti's Chelsea.

It’s a smart move by Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani, as Leonardo has an excellent relationship with the players and has been acting as surrogate big brother to Alexandre Pato through his tough period of adaptation to Italian football.

The much more settled teenager, who is set to marry, has recently demonstrated glimpses of that talent that brought him to the fore as a 16-year-old, and under further Brazilian nurturing will no doubt blossom into the real deal.

These are two important elements in Milan’s future success and the figures around which the club will be building the team.

With Paolo Maldini retired and Andriy Shevchenko and Clarence Seedorf set for summer exits, club leadership should now pass over to a much more relaxed Samba camp – and Kaka in particular.

It was important that Maldini was out of the way before the coup took place. The veteran knew there was revolution in the air long before he snubbed Leo during his so-so San Siro farewell a fortnight ago.

The way is now open for the new man to build the team around the dictums sent down from the benefactor: get back to the stylish, attacking football that once was associated with Milan.

"Hahaha, boobies"

Unlike in, say, England, the role of the coach in Italy is to deal exclusively with on-pitch matters – but Leo will maintain a firm link with the hierarchy and Carlo Ancelotti’s former No.2 Mauro Tassotti will play a central role marshalling day-to-day training.

Everyone else will fall into line under the new order with little disruption – and who knows, maybe even Ronaldinho will find some motivation again.

He will certainly be a lot fitter, as the resources of the MilanLab will be exploited to the full for the benefit of the club rather than farmed out to other sporting associations as it has occasionally been recently.

Two other Brazilians, Felipe Mattioni and Thiago Silva, are waiting in the wings but the Italian heart will still exist in the indomitable Rino Gattuso, Massimo Ambrosini and Alessandro Nesta.

The ingredients for success are definitely there and it seems that finally the Rossoneri have got the mix just right.

What would make it that much sweeter would be the arrival of Philippe Mexes, Emmanuel Adebayor and another Samba boy Hernanes – to take the place of Andrea Pirlo.

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Madrid go for "Third-Choice Chilean"

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Dash and darn it.

Despite La Liga Loca and millions of its readers praying long and hard to all things unholy that either Arsene Wenger or Jose Mourinho would be joining the jamboree in Castle Greyskull, Manuel Pellegrini was the chosen chump to claim that his new position as manager of Madrid was a dream come true.

Had either of the club’s first two choices come off, then the blog could have sat back with a big bag of popcorn and watched the frantic football fun unfold.

A bewildered Wenger would have been crying on the manager’s desk within minutes of his arrival at the Bernabeu, while Mourinho would have been banging Jorge Valdano’s head on it.

“I (THUMP) am (THUMP) in (THUMP) charge (THUMP) here! Are (THUMP) we (THUMP) clear! (THUMP, THUMP, THUMP)."

"Talk to the hands..."

On a side note, perhaps the best news of Valdano’s posting as ‘Director General and Assistant to the President’ is that the former Argentine international will no longer be writing his frackin’ awful columns in Saturday’s edition of Marca.

Spain is finally spared from endless pretentious prose on football being a beautiful game that must be cherished, etc.

If La Liga Loca snoozes for even a second at the Santiago Bernabeu next season, then the blog will be writing 'BORED' in big letters on a Post-It note and slapping it onto Valdano’s forehead.

But it’s Manuel Pellegrini who now holds the nominal role as coach for the next two years (or weeks) and the Chilean is just hoping that the same firing fate that has happened to his predecessors isn’t repeated.

"Remember, Manuel, we don't want to see sh*t on a stick"

Unfortunately, the Chilean coach is none too optimistic on the matter. “It would be absurd to think that it isn’t going to happen to me,” mused Manuel to Marca.

Despite today’s mischievous La Liga Loca headline, Pellegrini is a perfectly fine choice for Madrid. He has proven success at working with young talent as well as handling the more Riquelme-esque problematic players (yes, you, Señor Guti).

However, the role of Madrid manager is more about managing upwards and making sure that the buck of blame doesn’t stop with you when things go all Pete Tong. Something that Bernd Schuster failed to work out.

"We're right behind you, son"

After all, there’s a reason why the emergency signs on the walls of the Santiago Bernabeu are organisational charts rather than exit-arrows.

Real Madrid’s BAP (Blame Avoidance Plan) for this year sees Florentino Pérez as the big, fat fairy on top of the tree but with a number of easily disposable branches below him.

Such as the no.1 Vice-president, no.2 Vice-president, Secretary to the Board, Director General, Director General of the Presidency, Sporting Director and Chief Minion - a role played this time round by Zinedine Zidane.

As always, the thorny issue of who will be in charge of the hiring and firing of the footballers is still fairly fluid, with Valdano claiming that “we will only sign the players that the coach likes.”

The new sporting director, Miguel Pardeza, feels that “many of us will participate in making the decisions.”

Pellegrini himself isn't fussed either way: “Dude, I’m just in this for the payoff after six months,” he didn't say.

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Kazakhstan’s MK Dons stuck in the sidings

Mark Gilbey — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Flying can evoke painful memories.

Waking up at an ungodly hour to drive to Luton Airport for family holidays in Benidorm. Departure lounges ruled by rampant kids wielding beeping Game Boys. Disingenuously smiling stewardesses issuing plastic meals. Mobs of vacuous northern lads hoovering lager.

Good luck if you're taking the eight-hour flight for England's World Cup qualifier in Almaty – a 7,000-mile round-trip.

Being a blog of class, NMTB prefers to travel by train – which would no doubt be met with approval from Lokomotiv Astana, Kazakhstan’s answer to the MK Dons.

Not a very good answer, mind.

The Kazakh Premier League – unsurprisingly not quite as lucrative as its English counterpart – has undergone a period of austerity during the global recession. Three clubs withdrew before the new season started in March.

"Go to Moscow. Then it's just as far again"

One of them was FK Almaty, who, probably based on the flawed notion that some football is better than no football, announced in January a merger with their woefully-named local rivals Megasport Depot (whom we met the other week as one of the worst-named clubs) to form Lokomotiv.

The club are sponsored by Temir Zholy, the state-owned railway company, and as part of the deal they went 600 miles to the capital Astana looking for fame and fortune, like some Kazakh Dick Whittington.

Except Lokomotiv weren’t accompanied by a cat. (They’re not allowed on trains).

Lokomotiv are emblematic of modern-day Kazakhstan, certainly more so than that odious, mankini-clad character Borat, whose hackneyed phrases will no doubt litter the newspapers this week.

It was 12 years ago that the vaulting aspirations of the country’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, prompted him to up sticks and transport Kazakhstan’s capital from Almaty to Astana via scores of trains in a Herculean effort to create Central Asia’s pre-eminent city.

Lokomotiv are hoping their similar one-way ticket will terminate in them becoming Kazakhstan’s top football club. They want to emulate the success of Nazabayev’s creation; his (new) capital is a spectacular city.

Sadly for Lokomotiv, railway backers Temir Zholy won’t cough up the same amount as that ploughed into sprucing up Astana - reputed to be £10 billion. That'd buy a lot of players.

"...and we'll have an Argos over there"

Even to those who have watched Kazakh league football, it's an unfamiliar Premier League this year.

With one newborn team and three stiffs, 14 teams instead of the usual 16 are competing this time round.

That’s 14 teams in 14 different cities across Kazakhstan, which happens to be the world’s ninth-largest country. Hardly ideal, although it helps if your club's sponsored by the railways.

Lokomotiv's relocation means that there's no top-flight representative from Almaty. It’s the first time Kazakhstan’s largest city has been without a top-flight team since the league’s inauguration in 1992.

Just about.

Because there was a significant flaw in Lokomotiv’s Astana reinvention: they had nowhere to play.

They'd arranged to move into the new national stadium planned as the next grandiloquent monument on the city’s skyline.

But it’s still under construction, so they mooted the idea of a return to Almaty, tail between the legs, to begin the season 600 miles away.

It also means that the sprightly new capital won't play host to England, but the English FA can hardly complain about a fiasco surrounding a new national stadium.

So Wayne Rooney & Co. will face Bernt Stork’s men at Megasport Depot’s former stadium in Almaty.

Lokomotiv may not have been welcomed back in Almaty, even temporarily.

Fans of the two clubs who amalgamated to form them may well have regarded the last-resort re-relocation as a slap in the face. Nor would it have helped build a fan-base in the capital.

Instead, Lokomotiv took up temporary residence at FK Astana’s stadium.

At least they've had better luck in the transfer market. Kazakh transfer coups have been few and far between, so the signing of the former Russian internationals Andrei Tikhonov and Yegor Titov - both former Spartak Moscow captains - has generated hitherto unparalleled interest in the Premier League.

Titov: "To Astana! Er, Almaty! Wherever!"

They’ve paved the way for Lokomotiv to make an impressive start; 10 games into the season they have amassed 24 points, one behind leaders and pre-season favourites Aktobe.

You may not have heard the last of Lokomotiv. They’ll be competing in the Europa League next season, by which time their new home will be ready.

That might even tempt NMTB to visit again. And yes, it can be achieved by train.

London to Brussels, then on to Cologne; switch to the daily Moscow service followed by a Trans-Siberian adventure to Yekaterinburg, where there’s another transfer at Petropavlovsk to catch a train to Almaty.

Total time: 106 hours and 38 minutes.

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The former republic of Real Madrid

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

To avoid a repeat of the deplorably dishonest presidential elections of 2006, a poll the local Colombos are still combing through - “One more thing before you go, Mr Calderón...” - Real Madrid’s bigwigs came up with a rather nifty plan... don’t have them.

And that’s pretty much how Florentino Pérez came to strut onto the stage at Castle Greyskull on Monday afternoon to announce the return of truth and justice to the “world’s greatest sporting institution,” making it sound more like a life insurance company rather than a club where men have fun kicking a ball about.

Although there was never any doubt over the outright winner of the Real Madrid rat-race, Pérez was reclaiming his place at the Bernabeu buffet a fortnight early, seeing as he was the only one whose candidature was accepted.

The seats held their own protest

That’s not to say there weren’t any other challengers for post. There were, but all failed to meet the exacting requirements listed in Madrid’s statutes.

Namely: must have been a member for 10 years; must be Spanish; must be stinking rich; must have the initials FP.

As president of the multi-trillion dollar ACS corporation, Florentino's not short of a bob or two.

And this is why he was the only presidential pretender who could come up with 57 million euro - or 15 percent of the club’s deposit - required to enter the official race.

The original idea of the cash deposit was the heart-warming notion that anyone wanting to stand in the race would have to be so rich that stealing from the club would not be a motivating factor for taking role.

And, to be fair, this statute has prevented a couple of shady characters getting anywhere near the Bernabeu this time round.

Juan Onieva’s presidential campaign lasted just one day after his electoral video featured a six-fingered JFK and he made the claim that Barack Obama became a Real Madrid fan by seeing the team playing in black during their ninth European Cup win.

"Real Ma-WhoInTheWhatNow?"

The last candidate to pull out of the poll was Eduardo García, a peculiar 29-year-old who was backed by an organisation for the disabled (OID) that has just been fined 120,000 euro for illegal activities.

Or, so say Marca, a pro-Pérez paper with an interest in making all other competitors look less than wholesome.

However, this ruling over a multimillion-euro deposit or ‘aval’ means that anyone who is not fortunate enough to be filthy rich or have filthy rich friends cannot be president of Real Madrid.

But despite this notion that Pérez and his posse are too rich to need to stick their paws into the Real Madrid cookie jar, the new president has reportedly forced his 15 buddies on the board to sign promises not to exploit the club for their own means.

Unless it involves selling off the training ground or other pieces of real estate, that is.

In fact, it's hard to know quite why he needs 15 greying old men on the club’s payroll to help him run the team’s affairs.

“It’s as if he is going to start a special journey into space rather than run the club for four years,” notes Roberto Palomar in Marca.

RM's new website editor reports for duty

In a five-minute acceptance speech only briefly interrupted by the Real Madrid anthem blaring out over the speakers, Florentino Pérez called for “the unity of the fans.”

To tell the truth, La Liga Loca feels that this demand is a little bit rich considering that not one of the 70,000 club’s socios were able to vote either for or against their new figurehead.

After all, even Ramón Calderón got a good 10 percent of the ballot in the 2006 election – the one that was suspended after accusations of vote-tampering.

While it is true that the whole changeover process was managed in a more dignified manner than three years ago, it doesn’t alter the simple fact that Florentino Pérez’s return to the Bernabeu was a coronation, not an election.

At no point did members get the chance to challenge the wisdom of potentially increasing the club’s debt by some 200m-300m euro, should all of the current transfer rumours come true.

There was no opportunity for supporters to cast doubt on his claims of wanting to ‘Spanishize’ the squad, considering the 17 purchases of his last tenure included just one Spanish player, Sergio Ramos.

Instead, Pérez has returned to Real Madrid with a cheesy smile and flashy names - Look, Zidane! Look, Kaká! - in the hope that everyone will forget that what was supposed to be a democratic institution has turned into a monarchy.

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All you have to do is send your helpful ideas on who they should be and why to laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk by the end of Thursday June 4, with the best suggestion winning the prize of a lifetime.

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Paddy Crerand, Prince William, the hacks & the drunks

Andy Mitten — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT

The trip to Rome was great… apart from the last 80 minutes of the match.

I bumped into Paddy Crerand the night before the game by the Olimpico pitch.

I’d sent him and Noreen a postcard from Tristan Da Cunha in February, informing them that while the island only had 280 residents, 270 of them were members of a Glasgow Rangers supporters’ club.

It wasn’t true, but he was keen to find out if it was.

I was going to explain that they’d opened an orange lodge with a 10,000-seat main hall, but Paddy was already quietly seething about a perceived injustice.

Maybe because the temperature was too high, or the final was being staged in Rome rather than his back garden or the sun was setting into his brilliant blue eyes - I can’t remember which it was.

“Anyway, tell me something I don’t know,” Crerand said. “Something I can tell the smart-arses who’ve been spending days researching.”

“Pep Guardiola had a trial with Manchester City,” I replied.

“Did he?” smiled Crerand. “Did he really?” He later said it on television.

As we talked, a UEFA official told us to move. A flash of anger, such as those which frightened many opponents on the field, enveloped Crerand’s face and he challenged the official, asking him who he was.

He even questioned if he was a former leader of Italy notable for his lack of democracy. Mr UEFA backed down.

"Try it, Bremner"

Amid the hefty hacks watching training and Mihir “My sources tell me” Bose talking surreptitiously into a mobile phone, a stunning female journalist stood out like Maldini in a midden.

The Manchester United players spotted her too and Ronaldo pinged a ball in her direction.

Despite wearing Christian Louboutins and skin-tight jeans, she picked up the ball and volleyed it straight back. For Manchester United’s players, that was the best thing that happened on Olimpico’s pitch.

"Any chance of a rub-down, love?"

Any city struggles to cope with 80,000 visitors for a European Cup final. From Barcelona in 1999 through Manchester in 2003 to Rome in 2009, each airport recorded its busiest ever day.

They struggle to cope with the influx if visitors, many of whom are unfamiliar with the city and soaked in alcohol.

Delays are inevitable, but Rome did well and the weather was glorious. However, there was chaos in the accreditation centre before the match as the system went down.

The frustration and one-hour queue aroused many hacks’ hackles, with one imperious voice announcing: “I am Hugh McIlvanney of The Sunday Times.” McIlvanney got his pass.

I was sat next to the perceptive Kevin McCarra of The Guardian, who remains a very pleasant individual, despite calling United by the loathed ‘ManU’.

Steve Bates of The People collared me. More on him in the next blog. He’s a United fan from Manchester and I interviewed him for my video diary last year.

“Let’s keep tradition,” he said, hoping for a United win. It didn’t come.

Barça were brilliant and United weren’t. I was stunned at how one-sided the game was and floored by the result.

I’ve loved watching the likes of Iniesta and Xavi for years and have been lucky enough to interview them, but it was horrible watching them dominate against the team I support.

"In your face, Mitten"

I was caught up among the happy Barça fans after the game. Given that the fans had been in the sun all day, the atmosphere was laced with as much body odour as joy.

Olimpico doesn’t have a metro stop within three miles. With no transport and roads gridlocked, I walked for an hour after the final before finding a taxi. The mood was sombre at the hotel. I emailed an article at 1.30am and slept for four hours.

As I left my room, I saw a drunk sleeping on a chair by the lift. Clearly British, he’d covered his head with curtains. 12 hours later, I discovered it was my brother.

I saw familiar faces sleeping on the floor at Termini station and woke some so that they could catch the 06:30 to Florence. The train was full of shattered United fans who slept, but I had another 450 words to write.

I managed to file them from Pisa airport, where I bumped into Patrick Harverson, the former director of communications at Old Trafford who now works with William and Harry Wales.

Imagine being named after a country: Dave Italy or Brian Burkina Faso. Or is his real name William Windsor?

I don’t actually know, but being named after a town wouldn’t be too bad. Andy Andover. Margaret Margate.

"Play Michael Owen up front!" "No."

Prince William had been in Rome at the game, a late decision by the FA who felt it was right to have such a figure there with England bidding for the 2018 World Cup.

William had texted Harverson after the final to say he had been less than impressed with events on the field. Harverson should come back to Old Trafford to improve communication between fans and the club – once good, now wretched.

Anyway, I hope Harverson replied “William, it was really nothing.”

Having left it so late to attend the game, the prince must have jibbed in the ground with some of my mates. That’d explain those royal flushed cheeks.

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Where Newcastle went wrong – and could go right

Alex Black — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

When my client Alan Smith signed for Newcastle United just under two years ago, nobody mentioned relegation.

We were sold a very different dream, and very convincingly too. We'd been promised Europe and we believed it might happen.

It didn't. Two seasons later Newcastle are relegated, in a total mess, saddled with a huge wage bill and facing serious financial questions.

The fog is on the Tyne and nobody's smiling; there's not even the cheering sight of Gazza dancing about in a dodgy shellsuit.

But despite the comparisons being made to Leeds United, it might not all be bad news for the Toon Army.

"That's another fine mess I've gotten into"

Let's go back to 2007, when Newcastle were just an underperforming top-flight team that was still hoping to be everybody's second favourite club – rather than many people's favourite joke.

They had just been bought by billionaire shopkeeper Mike Ashley and in Sam Allardyce had appointed one of the most respected managers in the league.

There was going to be an overhaul of the playing staff, the coaching staff and the medical staff. Most importantly, there was going to be a totally new mentality. This all started with gusto and the changes began.

The change wasn't popular, though. Players didn't like the work and fans weren't prepared to put up with the new style of play.

The expensive new regime was not going down well. But surely everybody would realise that a total makeover couldn't happen overnight?

Apparently not. Sam was sacked and the Messiah was installed.

No, not Shearer, Keegan. Mistake No.1. Halfway through a change implementation, do not install somebody with the exact opposite approach to carry it through.

Mistake No.2 came with the appointment – over the Messiah's head – of the “London Mafia.” A team on the slide rarely benefits from the expensive purchase of players that nobody wants or has even heard of.

"Welcome to Newcastle..."

Mistake No.3 was to show even less patience, sack everybody again and appoint a new manager – who by the way hasn't managed at that level for several years and has a heart condition.

Everybody knows that the more managers you have in a season, the worse the team's results. Now, I don't mean to sound insensitive, but could there possibly have been a club more likely to have an adverse effect on Joe Kinnear's condition?

Mistake No.4 saw yet another new manager with more new ideas when there simply wasn't time to make them work. Oh, and no management experience. Result – relegation.

What does the future hold? It's well documented that they have got a huge wage bill (without reductions for relegation) and there are huge commercial ramifications too. No wonder people make comparisons with Leeds.

But I'm going to try to argue that it isn't all bad.

The difference between the Premier League TV revenue and the parachute payments they will receive is approximately £25 million, but £10 million will be instantly shaved off the wage bill by Michael Owen and Mark Viduka running out of contract.

They can save another £2 million plus if they sack Joey Barton, and a couple of sales could mean they might just be able to cope.

If Alan Shearer can manage as well as he played, they could be up at the top of the Championship and still be able to pull in the crowds.

The fans have been starved of victories for so long that they may attend even though it's the Championship.

The board had better hope so...

So it's not inconceivable that Newcastle could bounce straight back leaner, hungrier and far better equipped to do well in the Premier League than they ever could have done had they continued to cling on to survival year after year and never cleared out the closet.

Mind you, before we get too carried away, let's not forget this is Newcastle United...

Read Alex Black's blogs here on FourFourTwo.com. Find out more about his clients at Football First Agency.

BLOG: Loyalty not the issue in Barry move

BLOG: Sweaty palms for the relegation contract killers

BLOG: Season's almost over, time for the hard work

BLOG: "My name's Alex, I'm an agent..."

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La Liga’s Good Day, Bad Day - The Final Round

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:00:00 GMT

GOOD DAY

Diego Forlán

By the end of his 32-goal campaign, the Atlético forward was scoring the kind of efforts that, had you pulled them off on your PlayStation, would have made your friends beat you to death with a lamp.

Atlético Madrid

The cathedral bells were ringing in a distinctly doomy way as La Liga Loca made its way down to the Vicente Calderón on Saturday night. There were thunderclouds quite literally gathering above the stadium.

As the game against a nothing-to-play-for Almería kicked off, streaks of lightning tore through the sky and the heavens opened onto the fans below.

Unfortunately, there is no spooky or supernatural ending to this particular tale. Unless you count Atleti playing out a fairly comfortable, Champions League-qualifying, drama-free, professional win as something worthy of The X-Files.

"This could be a case for Mulder and Scully... oh no, hang on..."

Getafe

It would have been a travesty had Getafe gone down, considering the side hadn’t spent a single minute in the drop-zone. In the end, they survived by the skin of Michel’s blindingly white teeth.

The former Madrid player is set to be in charge at the Coliseum next season, with club president Angel Torres saying a deal will take “about five minutes.”

Sporting, Osasuna

Two sets of brilliant fans helped push their sides to safety in games that they both had to come from behind to win.

Joseba Llorente

With Giuseppe Rossi and Nihat having spent recent months perfecting their impersonation of strikers – as in work-dodging picket-line refuseniks – it has been Joseba Llorente who has helped drag Villarreal into the Europa League places.

The double strike against Mallorca on Saturday night was the former Valladolid man’s seventh and eighth goals in the final seven matches.

Gonzalo Higuaín

About the only Real Madrid man who actually gave a flying hoot during their pathetic five match run of defeats.

Unfortunately for the Argentine striker, his 22 league goals won’t be enough to keep him up the Bernabeu pecking order next year, with the infinitely more marketable Kaka & Co. set to take his place.

To be blunt, if Higuaín isn’t a starter, then the new regime at Real Madrid are idiots.

"Clear off, we need the space for an advert"

David Villa

His two strikes against Athletic were surely a parting gift for a club where he scored 86 league goals in just four seasons.

Espanyol

After La Liga Loca witnessed a cat eating its own vomit in the stands at the Montjuic, Paul from Barcelona took a solemn oath to watch over the blog’s feline friends.

Unfortunately for Scratchy, our intrepid correspondent has now seen his last match in what is now Espanyol’s former stadium.

“They say some teams were already thinking of their holidays. Well. Málaga were on the beach with a bucket and spade and a large 99.

"They made as much effort as I do when 'er indoors mentions washing up. Saying that, Espanyol played really well and could have won by a load more in what was a meaningless match.

"Well that's another season done and dusted and your correspondent is a happy man for the following reasons:

1) That's Montjuic finished with. Happy memories but a new stadium awaits and it's cracking.
2) Espanyol finished 10th - yes, 10th. Top half. Two months ago Espanyol were five points adrift at the bottom. What a turnaround.
3) Hopefully we can shift some deadwood in the summer - Valdo, Lacruz etc.
4) Three weeks ago I put money on Betis going down (nothing against them, just good odds).

"Stray cats: 0.

"A good summer to all and I’m off to celebrate by attacking the police and smashing shop windows. That's what real supporters do, isn't it?”

Paul, Barcelona

A last look at the juicy mountain

BAD DAY

Betis

Wow. Not even in La Liga Loca’s wildest dreams – and they're pretty odd – did the blog think that it would be Betis going down on Sunday.

A stunning achievement for the Seville-based side, and worthy of pats on the back all round.

As to be expected after such an unfortunate event, the already frustrated fans went Bético ballistic with rocks and barriers being hurled at police and attempts made to burst into the dressing room area of the club’s stadium.

The players of both sides were unable to leave the ground until an hour-and-a-half after the game when the lynch-mob had been dispersed.

AS editor Alfredo Relaño claims that this was the inevitable conclusion to the Darth de Lopera era, a rule that “had pretensions of greatness but ended in failure.”

It's a similar message in Marca’s editorial - well, the bit that doesn’t discuss the brilliance of Florentino Pérez - with the paper noting that the club was treated as a simple family business or a third-division outfit by its ‘management’.

However, both papers have chosen to pull their punches over the whispers of corruption and incompetence that have dogged the second division’s newest members and something that may have played a part in Betis’ downfall.

Guti

The part-time Real Madrid midfielder spent the week complaining that no-one ever believes him when he claims to be injured, then pulled out of the squad for Sunday’s clash with Osasuna with a hurty ankle.

And this makes one particular letter to Monday's AS all the more entertaining with one enraptured reader declaring her love for Guti, someone who “will always be one of the best in the world. I admire you as a person and as a player.”

Florentino Pérez’s first act as Real Madrid president-again should be to strap raw meat to Guti’s body and kick him into the South Pacific from a helicopter.

"Yeah but how big's your house, Stannard?"

Antonio Tapia

The sight of Málaga’s end-of-season shrug of indifference was enough to make the manager leave the club after three seasons. “I’ve finished my cycle here,” said Tapia after the 3-0 defeat to Espanyol.

**********

End of Season Business

Throughout the year, La Liga Loca has been entertaining the masses with its weekend predictions which possessed all the accuracy and comedy factor of a shot from Fernando Gago.

So, with the end of the current campaign upon us, it’s time to see how la Primera would have looked if every one of the blog’s wayward guesses had been right.

All-in-all, barring a few glaring anomalies, La Liga Loca fared fairly well by getting the top six right - not necessarily in the right order, mind - and by predicting two of the bottom three. And who could have guessed Betis?

The final Weekend Predictions league table:

1. Barcelona
2. Valencia
3. Real Madrid
4. Sevilla
5. Villarreal
6. Atlético
7. Valladolid (!!!)
8. Sporting
9. Athletic
10. Getafe
11. Espanyol
12. Betis
13. Racing
14. Mallorca
15. Deportivo (wishful thinking)
16. Osasuna
17. Málaga
18. Almería
19. Recreativo
20. Numancia

**********

Competition Time

For your chance to win a year’s subscription to the greatest magazine in the universe, remember to enter FourFourTwo’s end-of-season competition.

New Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is considering taking a sponsor’s name for the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

All you have to do is send your helpful ideas on who they should be and why to laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk by the end of Thursday June 4 (legal note: usual FFT terms and conditions apply), with the best suggestion winning the prize of a lifetime.

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Arrivederci Paolo, Carlo, Figo, Toro...

Riccardo Rossi — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:30:00 GMT

Parting can be such sweet sorrow and there are many ways to say farewell.

The full-on emotional tears and hugs. The pat on the back. The quick handshake. The wave goodbye. And the total denial that anything is out of the ordinary when you know you will never see that person again.

Carlo Ancelotti had been faking the latter for some time, but finally broke the news that he would be leaving Milan after securing third place at Fiorentina on Sunday. No surprise there, and no surprise that he will be replaced by Leonardo.

NEWS: Ancelotti leaves, Leonardo takes over

But as we bid a fond arriverderci to another campaign, it truly is the end of an era for three of the big names on the pitch.

Paolo Maldini, Pavel Nedved and Luis Figo - a trio who have shaped the European game over the last decade and a half - all hung up their boots.

"Shall we share a taxi?"

Two Golden Ball winners and another who should have won it at least once, but each one leaving a box-set of memories and a legacy of total dedication to the game that hopefully a new generation will learn from.

But hold on, dry those tears: a rumour is gathering pace that Nedved has no intention of giving up those Christmas morning runs just yet and is considering returning to Lazio, thanks in part to the promptings of his agent.

Some people don’t know when to call it a day.

However, there's certainly no way back for Maldini, who was just relieved to be in a stadium where, instead of booing him, everyone liked him – even if it happened to be in Florence.

Anyway, all three received the sort of send-off that will live long in the memory for all the right reasons.

There are those who are saying goodbye to one set of supporters but will be saying hello to a new set very soon.

And the Udinese and Genoa fans have to be congratulated as well for their rousing expression of goodwill towards Fabio Quagliarella in Fruili, and Diego Milito and Thiago Motta at the Luigi Ferraris.

Milito gets emotional

All in all, a wonderful final day with 41 goals hitting the back of the net – quite a few of them absolute crackers in what has been a season of stunning goals.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic – who ended the campaign as the league’s top goal-scorer on 25 – and Giuseppe Mascara vie for the honour of goal of the season, with two apiece.

The Catania man has to edge it with his audacious volley from the half-way line in the Sicilian derby win at Palermo and he did it again against Udinese, albeit from slightly closer range.

Zlat’s behind-the-back ninja-backheel against Bologna stands out of course, but even more tingle-down-the-back-and-shake-your-head-with-admiration was the sublime chip from the edge of the area at home to Reggina.

If this is in fact the Swede’s swansong then his final goal in Italy was something to savour: a cheeky backheel when forced to turn away from the goal inside the six-yard area against Atalanta.

"Damn you, tattoo 'artist'!"

And down in the capital, hail the last king of Rome Francesco Totti, who drew level with Juventus legend Gianpiero Boniperti in the all-time Serie A goalscoring charts when he netted number 178 from the spot against Torino.

So it’s adieu to Toro then, who join Lecce and Reggina in Serie B.

For a season most of us could not wait to usher out the door, in the end it was a perfect send-off.

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20-team league witnesses 24th sacking of season

Daniel Neilson — Sun, 31 May 2009 11:00:00 GMT

River Plate may have been getting all the attention recently for their poor plight, but even further down the table lie their arch rivals Boca Juniors.

The Argentine media, never ones to hold back an opinion, have labelled Boca’s current campaign the worst in recent history, with Argentina’s most popular team 14th having won just five games all season.

But for a Boca fan, most South American supporters in fact, the Copa Libertadores is the holy grail.

And, as the cooler weather swept in, Boca’s bid ended early at the last 16 stage, ultimately costing coach Carlos Ischia his job.

Boca bow out to unfancied Uruguayans Defensor Sporting

NEWS: Boca coach to quit at end of season
NEWS: Velez inflict more misery on Boca
NEWS: Boca eliminated from Libertadores

Ischia’s departure will delight Boca fanatic Diego Maradona, who until being appointed the national team coach embarked on a fairly abusive mission to undermine his position.

While further speculation was rife when fan-favourite Carlos Bianchi, under whom Boca won the Libertadores, returned to the ‘non-coaching’ staff.

One subject Maradona and Ischia may agree on is the stubborn character Juan Roman Riquelme.

After walking out of the national squad saying he and Maradona didn’t see eye to eye, the Boca playmaker has reportedly had problems with Ischia.

While Martin Palermo, Boca’s all-time leading goal-scorer, has also allegedly disputed many areas of Ischia’s management.

"Fine, have it your way..."

Ischia has said he will leave the club at the end of the Clausura championship which has three games left to run.

Incredibly, he is the 24th coach to be sacked in the Primera this season – a league with only 20 teams in it - with Claudio Borghi also leaving Independiente to replace Claudio Vivas at Argentinos Juniors.

And with Argentina’s ‘Big Five’ – Boca, River, San Lorenzo, Independiente and Racing – all enduring crisis upon crisis, it is again likely that the league’s smaller teams will shine at the end of the season.

Lanus lead the way ahead of Velez Sarsfield, Huracan and Colon.

Problems continue to pile up for River Plate

"You’re going home in a Buenos Aires ambulance..."

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The King, Rosbif and Cruyff

Paul Simpson — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Elvis, Great Gatsby, Mourinho’s coat. Those are, alas, my only notes from Rome.

They refer to a United fan who must have been as hot as the surface of Mercury walking around the sticky Eternal City in an Elvis jumpsuit and wig, a Barcelona supporter wearing a T-shirt with the original cover of The Great Gatsby on it and two fans at Rome airport wearing a limited edition T-shirt bearing the legend “Mourinho’s coat 2005” and a silhouette of the special one.

Can anyone tell me where I can get one of these?

I planned to take notes during the game – I even bought a compact, bijou Silvine notebook – but it was so hot in the Stadio Olimpico the ink would have melted on the page.

And the game was too absorbing, a better spectacle in the atmospheric stadium than on television where 300 million viewers across the world saw probably the most one-sided UEFA Champions League final since Porto’s efficient demolition of Monaco in 2004.

"It ain't half hot mum..."

I watched the match from nine rows behind the United bench. Just behind me was Rudi Voller and, two rows behind to my right, sat Roman Abramovich who watched the game with a diplomat’s pleasant inscrutability.

As someone who has been writing about football for 15 years, I ought to have acquired a protective layer of professional cynicism, but my heart skipped when I brushed shoulders with Johan Cruyff just before the match.

Most of the great players come to these games brimming with bonhomie. In contrast, Cruyff looked grumpy and disappeared to the remotest corner of the lounge as if in retreat from his own myth. Oddly, this only increased my respect for him.

At half-time, I was wondering what Cruyff would make of the game. Barcelona were murdering United 1-0 but was the No.14 reminded of a similar master class – given by the Dutch to West Germany in 1974 – which backfired badly?

Football writers always write with hindsight as if they had foreseen every outcome. So, as soon as the whistle blew, Barcelona’s victory was declared inevitable.

That isn’t quite how I saw it at half-time.

Like most United fans, I expected Sir Alex to say the right things and make the right changes to make the second half truly competitive. And I wondered if Pep Guardiola’s team might regret not converting their superiority into a more decisive lead.

You can’t fault Ferguson’s bravery – by the end of the game he had withdrawn almost every tackling midfielder as he chased the goal that might change the dynamic of the match – but nothing worked.

The random comments from United fans around me (“Is it me or is Anderson completely out of his depth?” and persistent growls of “Carrick!”) registered their incredulity as United failed, after the first nine minutes, to play with any great conviction, belief or accuracy.

They registered only two shots on target and, fatally, gave the ball away too often to a side that took ages to give it back.

Barcelona’s pressing in attack and midfield was superb, leaving the two opponents Guardiola genuinely feared – Cristiano Ronaldo and Rooney – increasingly isolated.

For me, the United player who impressed in the second half was Dimitar Berbatov who, as commentators like to say, “should have done better” with his header but kept the ball, played some good passes and showed, at times, why Ferguson values him.

Perhaps one of the paradoxical lessons from this strange kind of defeat is that if United are to rank alongside Real Madrid, they need more players like Berbatov, not less.

Berbatov and Rooney wonder what might have been

Rooney was, the Italian daily La Repubblica declared, “disastroso.” That was harsh. Misused might have been a better term.

Rooney has the energy and discipline to play on the flank tracking back but, against the very best sides, this does diminish his threat. If he can’t play behind a striker in a more advanced Gerrard-style role, he could be encouraged, like Messi, to cut inside when the moment was right.

On his day, Rooney can lose any defender in the world but he is much more dangerous creating that space and opportunity in front of the penalty area than on the flanks.

After the game, an alumni of French football characterised the game as a blow for the “Monsieur Rosbif” school of football.

United don’t play “Rosbif” football, but were so far below their potential in Rome that neutrals probably saw this as the traditional contest between continental finesse and British brute force. (The New York Times said as much in a headline.)

Defeat will spur Ferguson on. On the plane home, he was probably reflecting on how his team could be improved.

United won the Premier League with ease but, being an obsessive, perfectionist team builder, Ferguson will know that United have shown an odd fragility against the very best opposition.

United won the Premier League with 90 points, but only five of those were earned against Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool.

The Premier League is not, as Richard Keys and his ilk insist, the best league in Europe. It is almost as monotonously uncompetitive as the SPL.

What it does best is breed sides that can win away at Hull with metronomic regularity.

A very different kind of team, tactics and performance were required for United to complete the Italian job and, against a Barcelona team inspired by the opportunity to prove their greatness, they were found wanting.

I found the alacrity, respect and affection with which Guardiola embraced Ferguson after the game strangely moving. Or maybe it was just the heat.

"I really need to get out of this suit, don't you?"

Guardiola has been fulsome in his praise for Ferguson, extolling the Scot’s trophy-winning longevity. So, even after being congratulated by King Juan Carlos in the dressing room, Guardiola will know he is not the best coach in the world.

But he has created a great team that has entranced the game with a style that suggests the European Cup could be on the verge of a golden era.

Tactically, a senior Italian football bod suggested, Rome was no classic. But Barcelona’s style is an intriguing hybrid of two schools.

The possession, movement and versatility belonged to the Dream Team/Cruyff/Rinus Michels tradition but this was allied to the organized, pressing style first expounded by Arrigo Sacchi.

The morning after, Frank Rijkaard strode through the hotel foyer.

Guardiola’s class of 2009 is better than Rijkaard’s class of 2006, but the speed with which Rijkaard’s team fragmented is a useful reminder for Guardiola – the first non-Dutch coach to win the European Cup for Barcelona – that sometimes the truly difficult bit isn’t winning, it’s what happens next.

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The Fountain-Splashing Weekend Predictions

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Saturday

Mallorca (9th) vs Villarreal (5th)

If the rumours swirling around the Spanish press are to believed, then Villarreal coach Manuel Pellegrini will be strapping himself into the Castle Greyskull ejector seat next week before being blasted into orbit some time in November.

But the wise and wizard-like Chilean coach - who looks a little like something living on Fraggle Rock but with Jedi powers - claims to know nothing about such trivial transfer talk.

“I know nothing,” confirmed Pellegrini.

AS’ clearly insane or quite sozzled Villarreal correspondent compares the Real Madrid-centred stories to receiving a telephone call from a friend telling you that Brad Pitt is getting married.

“I would take good care of a very angry husband,” warned the very random Javier Mata to no-one in particular.

LLL Prediction - Home win

"Que?"

Deportivo (7th) vs Barcelona (1st)

El Pais reports the city-centre carnage in the Catalan capital from Wednesday night’s fiesta of tomfoolery as 199 arrests, 238 injuries and 100,000 euro in damages.

“Less than 2006,” chirped a local council official looking back to the last time Barcelona won the Champions League.

Perhaps the best part of such behaviour - all deplorable of course - is the return of the word ‘antidisturbios’ or 'riot police' to the blog.

One of those who got on the wrong side of their big sticks, write El Pais, was a 55-year-old gentleman who decided to end the evening off by lobbing metal balls at the local constabulary.

In perhaps the funniest piece of writing La Liga Loca has read all season, Marca’s editorial on Friday is hopping mad at the 300 Barcelona fans who went to Madrid’s centre of celebration, the Cibeles fountain, to lark about in the water and sing songs.

“The insults to the goddess, Guti and Real Madrid are nothing more than a lack of respect to one of the symbols of Madridismo,” fumed the po-faced paper.

“They accused me of doing what with a what?” gasped Guti, the next day.

LLL Prediction - Away win

Atlético Madrid (4th) vs Almería (10th)

Atleti only need a piddling point to secure a knockout in the Champions League qualification stages in the summer, so La Liga Loca asked its rojiblanco insider if... ahem... the club would be... ahem.... making quite sure that at least the draw would be secured.

“Not a chance,” replied the indignant insider noting that Almería coach Hugo Sánchez would quite enjoy messing up Atlético’s big night.

“I won’t be helping anyone,” hollered Hugo on the suggestion that the infamous suitcases would be arriving at his club from Villarreal’s direction, the other team in the running for a fourth-placed finish.

LLL Prediction - Home win

EasyValencia (6th) vs Athletic Bilbao (13th)

While the hard-up board of Valencia were scrabbling around the local dumpsters for their dinners, AS is reporting that a bean-counter at the club has worked out that unless the land of the old Mestalla is sold by the June 8, payments to all the institution’s creditors will be suspended and proceedings for Spain’s equivalent of administration will begin.

Meanwhile, another arm of the club has approached a gambling company and asked them to stop taking bets on where David Villa will be playing next season.

Mainly because the enterprise in question, Unibet, is one of the club’s sponsors.

LLL Prediction - Home win

"Lies, it's all lies I say..."

Sunday

Numancia (19th) vs Sevilla (3rd)

It was confirmed this week that Sevilla manager Manolo Jiménez will be spending another season on the Andalusian bench.

Another year of somewhat limp football for the fans but endless speculation on his immediate future from the likes of La Liga Loca.

“We haven’t renewed Manolo Jiménez,” announced the not-exactly-endorsing-his-coach club president José María del Nido, “but he has renewed himself.”

LLL Prediction - Away win

Espanyol (12th) vs Málaga (8th)

While Sevilla may have their managerial business sorted for the season, Málaga are still haggling over the future of their coach Antonio Tapia.

It appears that talks remain at an impasse with the boss of the Southern side fancying a spell in the Premier League, rather than a relegation scrap in Spain next season with the club having sold all its brightest stars.

Meanwhile, Espanyol fans have a transfer story to rival any 'Ribery to the Camp Nou' nonsense being drummed up down the hill, with the rumour that Norwich City superstar Mark Fotheringham will be joining Steve Finnan on the Perico sidelines next season.

Watch those season tickets fly out of the club shop over the summer!

LLL Prediction - Home win

Osasuna (18th) vs Real Madrid (2nd)

On Thursday evening, Florentino Pérez unveiled his board of directors set to take over the running of Real Madrid’s affairs next week.

And replacing 15 greying old duffers in suits are 15 brand new greying old duffers in suits.

It’s a portly posse without a single female face or anyone who appears to be under the age of 45. And it’s a group who’ve definitely had more hot dinners than you’ve had hot dinners.

In a busy day for Madrid’s new Dear Leader, Florentino popped into the office of his campaign HQ - sometimes known as Marca - where “he came, he saw and he conquered,” according to the paper.

During his visit, Pérez was probed thoroughly by Marca’s bigwigs and was asked seven questions on whether he thought his possible predecessor, Ramón Calderón, was a scoundrel or merely a cad.

One of the topics in a fairly fluffy piece that did raise the interests of La Liga Loca was the idea that the Santiago Bernabeu stadium would take on a sponsor some time soon.

“We can’t rule it out if a brand comes along that works for Real Madrid and produces income,” admitted Pérez.

And this has inspired FourFourTwo to dig deep into its pockets with a competition for you to win a year’s subscription to the magazine by suggesting the best brand possible for the club’s stadium.

“The Slumberland Santiago Bernabeu - for the quietest of nights” is just one not-that-good example.

Send your entries to laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk by the end of Thursday June 4. The most inspired entry will win a year of football fun from the greatest magazine in the world (usual FFT terms and conditions apply folks).

LLL Prediction - Home win

Over to you folks...

Racing (11th) vs Getafe (15th)

In a country where family feuds can carry over for generations, it’s no surprise that the heckles are still high from last season and a testy Copa del Rey clash between these two teams.

In a second-leg semi final affair, Getafe were accused of being big old cheats for continuing to play on - and score - after a Racing player had gone to ground.

It was a goal that saw Getafe safely through to a final where they were eventually battered by Valencia.

“It’s crazy to talk about what happened last year,” says Getafe keeper of the week Oscar Ustari.

La Liga Loca feels that this opportunity for perfect payback will be enough to bring nothing-to-play-for Racing the win over Getafe. And relegation for the Coliseum club according to the blog’s calculations! Oh no!

LLL Prediction - Home win

Sporting (17th) vs Recreativo (20th)

Recreativo club president Francisco Mendoza reacted in the traditional way to a tough time for his team by firing someone sharpish to cover his own relegated posterior.

Not wishing to sack his second manager of the season, Mendoza picked sporting director Oscar Arias as the man to carry the club’s can for a somewhat disappointing end to the season.

Taking over the still warm seat is Alfonso Serrano, who has already announced that the non-sacking of the coach was merely a postponement of the inevitable.

“It has to be someone who knows the division, this is vital,” says Serrano on his choice for new manager.

LLL Prediction - Home win

Betis (16th) vs Valladolid (14th)

And so the worst team in Spain off the pitch, faces the worst team in Spain on it.

Valladolid have only picked up three points from 30, while Betis have fans who support their players by offering up death-threats, abuse and egg-throwing.

But this won’t stop the Betis players giving everything for the cause on Sunday evening as they seek a win and survival. That’s what green-shirted striker Ricardo Oliveira said anyway before wandering off with his mobile.

“We are playing for our pride, for our lives, for our... Atlético Madrid? Forlan going? How much?.... Really?”

LLL Prediction - Home win

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Rudderless Milan face fourth-place shame

Riccardo Rossi — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:00:00 GMT

Josep Guardiola is certainly a classy fellow.

Not only does he show the world how to play football, the Barcelona coach then dedicates the Champions League victory to Paolo Maldini.

Doing things with style was once a feature of Milan, but that panache of old has been missing for some time now.

The club has refused to publicly accept the open secret that Carlo Ancelotti is off to Chelsea, and has also failed to condemn those who booed and jeered Maldini on his farewell lap of honour last Sunday.

The club used to be transparent in its dealings, proactive rather than reactive, but the mists of indecision which have descended from the hierarchy could have very serious repercussions in the long run.

Ancelotti’s revelations that he met with Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich last summer and even discussed possible signings if he were to take the job presumably not only breached his contract with Milan but sowed the seeds of the sorry state we now find the club in.

"Me and my mouth..."

Where was the commitment to the Milan cause this season, if in his mind he is already in charge of the Blues?

Admitting that he has been taking English lessons is another snub to everyone at Milanello.

Rather than maintaining a lofty silence, apart from some utterances about Ancelotti’s future being decided at the end of the season, Silvio Berlusconi and his No.2 Adriano Galliani should have allowed not-so-cuddly Carlo to get on with his lessons – by buying his plane tickets.

It worked for Juventus, whose ruthlessness in sacking Claudio Ranieri ensured they ended the season as runners-up.

Instead, with the club silent while Ancelotti tweets like a bluebird, the former certainties for second spot could finish fourth if they lose by a two-goal margin at Fiorentina on Sunday.

If Milan fail – and they have conceded five goals in the last two games - there will be further damage to the Rossoneri's reputation of getting things done rather than being passive bystanders.

Fourth place also means the preliminary round of the Champions League – and after the humiliation of a year in the UEFA Cup, that's a big risk for established stars.

Will Ricky Kaka continue to resist the sirens from Real Madrid tempting him to a new life in Spain? Will Andrea Pirlo follow Ancelotti to the Kings Road?

It's a lame state of affairs. And in times of uncertainly who better to turn to than Rino Gattuso, who is always guaranteed to make sense out of the nonsensical.

“I haven’t a clue what is going on,” claimed the combative midfielder in a newspaper interview at the start of the week. “One day I read the coach is staying, the next I read he is going - I've given up wondering what will happen.”

"What's going on, gaffer?"

No doubt Rino was speaking for all the players, which suggests Milan will travel to Florence not only clueless but rudderless.

No wonder Maldini was all smiles when he revealed he was looking ahead to having a proper summer holiday for the first time in life. His team-mates would no doubt love to have that thought in mind.

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Spain in consensus over Barça brilliance

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:30:00 GMT

There were only two people in Rome who weren't completely sucked in by the enthralling action of the 2009 Champions League final.

The first was the very desperate housewife, Eva Longoria, who was caught flicking through a magazine during the second-half with the same look of disdain and despair as Maniche faced with a Caesar salad.

The other was the lead commentator for Spanish TV channel Antena 3, who spent much of the match apologising for the pesky encounter getting in the way of their broadcasting of crap cop show Los Hombres de Paco.

Indeed, as soon as the final whistle went on what was a fairly historic night for a certain Catalan club, the channel blocked the screen with a plug for the programme and went off for advertisements for a good 45 minutes. That’s how it felt, anyway.

NEWS: Brilliant Barça crowned kings in Rome

Fortunately for Antena 3, the ending of this season’s fantastic footballing finale means that the station can return to its normal, low-budget, wobbly-set, grubby little ways.

While La Liga Loca was all with the ire after yet another testing time in front of the television, nothing - bar the Spanish government renaming Catalunya ‘Raúllandia’ - can bring the Catalan press down from their cuckoo-land cloud on Thursday morning.

“Emperors of Europe!” yells the Mundo Deportivo headline, with the paper reporting that some 100,000 celebrating supporters turned up in the city-centre before the inevitable attacks on the local plod and the 134 arrests.

"Celebrate good times, come on!"

La Liga Loca has no idea what the paper’s website says, as the sheer volume of whizzing and popping from its numerous epilepsy-inducing logos and banners caused the blog’s struggling browser to crash repeatedly.

Sport's front page says “The best in the world!” in Catalan. At least that’s what La Liga Loca thinks it says. It’s either that or “The flour of your mother!”

“Barcelona is the best team in the world and only the Champions League was missing for this fact to be beyond discussion,” writes a hyperventilating Josep Maria Casanovas in a giant-sized gushing tribute to Pep’s Dream Boys.

Over in Madrid, Marca and AS are just as full of goodwill to all Catalan men - but ruing the fact that while Barcelona were celebrating the greatest day in the club’s history, the police were camped out at Castle Greyskull investigating corruption allegations.

“Barcelona’s football had no antidote,” writes AS editor Alfredo Relaño. “The Treble, exquisite football, local players, Guardiola... perfection.”

Pep reaches for the stars

Marca’s headline declares the current Barcelona team to be “a work of art” and praises the first ever Spanish side to win the trio of titles in one season.

“There can be no doubts,” opines the paper’s editorial. “Barcelona are the best team in the world.”

Bernd Schuster had been let loose on Manchester United’s tactical deficiencies during the game, with the former Madrid manager telling Sir Alex Ferguson that “you can’t play that away against Barça, so far back, with such fear, just waiting for them to come.”

After the game, a truly stunned Pep Guardiola joked that he would be “Leaving the club straight away. I can’t do anything to top this.”

In fact, that’s not entirely true. Next year’s Champions League final is being played at the Bernabeu - a final that Barcelona already have every chance of winning.

Now that would be a sight to see.

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The world's longest journey for a league game

Mark Gilbey — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

This week NMTB is heading out east, waaaaay out east.

To the Far East, no less, to say zdravstvuyte to a team at the wrong end of the Trans-Siberian Railway on Russia’s Pacific coast.

But before it arrives in the Muravyov-Amursky peninsula to pick like some football-hungry vulture at the remains of Luch-Energiya Vladivostok’s extraordinary fixture last Friday, NMTB has a couple of stopovers on its onerous journey east at some familiar friends of the blog.

The first port of call is Ukraine, where Shakhtar Donetsk fans have been in exultant mood since the club arrived home from Istanbul with the UEFA Cup last week.

It was a well-deserved victory over Werder Bremen and Dario Srna may be flexing his trophy-lifting arm again this weekend when the Miners face Vorskla Poltava in the Kubok of Ukraine.

Srna and cup

Next it’s over the border into Moldova, where similar scenes of jubilation greeted Sheriff Tiraspol in Transdniestr upon their return from Chişinău with the Cupa Moldovei.

BLOG: A powerful Sheriff, a haircut and a drunken war

The win was about as inevitable as an Igor Smirnov victory in the schismatic state’s elections, but the president would’ve enjoyed an extra tot of Kvint before bedtime on Saturday after their victory capped an unprecedented treble for his team.

It was the third chapter in a remarkable season that has also yielded the CIS Cup and the Divizia Naţională for Leonid Kuchuk and his players.

Поздравляю. (That’s “congratulations” not a Russian insult, honest.)

But back to Vladivostok, a city whose ‘Lord of the East’ nickname doesn’t suit the hapless Luch-Energiya – hardly members of the country’s footballing aristocracy.

10 games into the new campaign, the club are back in the First Division relegation zone.

Last season was equally mediocre and Luch-Energiya exited the Premier League in reprehensible fashion after just three wins in 30 matches, two of them against fellow relegation sufferers Shinnik Yaroslavl.

It’s not all the players’ fault. They aren’t entirely exculpable, but the club have a gargantuan impediment that eggheads don’t quite know how to overcome.

Luch-Energiya are miles away – thousands of miles away – from their opponents.

Only SKA-Energiya Khabarovsk are remotely near to Vladivostok. That’ll be just the 1,000-mile round trip for the local derby this season, then.

"Bit of a trip this weekend, lads"

Football clubs in Russia are heavily concentrated in the west, yet Vladivostok isn’t much more than a goal kick away from the North Korean border. (They wouldn’t get their ball back if it went over the fence.)

So their away games habitually involve long-haul flights across the world’s largest country and several time zones.

Luch-Energiya have accrued an unremarkable 10 points so far, all of them won at their decrepit Dynamo Stadium against bleary-eyed opponents.

The only points they’ve accumulated on their travels this season have been air miles.

Their rather special guests last weekend were Baltika Kaliningrad, from the eponymous Russian exclave on the Baltic coast, some 4,575 miles away.

It was a record-breaking game, the furthest a team has ever travelled for a league match, not that Baltika were overjoyed to make such history.

There was a distinct lack of bunting out for their arrival, although Luch-Energiya were blooding yet another manager in Constantine Emelyanov, who opted for a 3-4-3 formation on his debut.

Obviously it worked. Vitali Kazantsev and Artyom Mikheyev scored the goals in a 2-0 win for Luch-Energiya that was all down to the coach’s tactical nous and motivational ability, and nothing to do with the visitors’ eye-watering trek across Russia.

Probably.

The match was last Friday (midnight for the away team, what with the time difference), which at least gave Baltika and the dyed-in-the-wool supporters who travelled to Asia the opportunity to make a weekend of it in Vladivostok.

The city’s naval base dictated that it was closed to foreigners until the collapse of the USSR and it doesn’t get many visitors today, although there is a rather pleasant beach and, naturally, a museum dedicated to local lad Yul Brynner.

Yul & co share a joke about the Muravyov-Amursky peninsula

Actually, forget a weekend - Baltika supporters might have considered making a week of it, had they not had another fixture in midweek.

Vladivostok is closer to Australia than to Kaliningrad and Luch-Energiya were once sponsored by Castlemaine.

Last season Luch-Energiya were drawn at Baltika in the fittingly-named Rambler Cup, and it was evident that then-manager Zoran Vulic didn’t give a XXXX about it.

He didn’t send any of his first team halfway across the world; in fact, Vulic didn’t even bother to make the trip himself. At least Sir Alex travelled to Hull.

The PFL attempted to solve the issue by scheduling visitors to the Far East to face Luch-Energiya and SKA-Energiya Khabarovsk on the same trip in a move that, in reality, suits no one.

The two eastern clubs are also afforded similar assistance with their fixture lists, but it doesn’t do anything for the problem of players’ jetlag.

No one wants to play two games of football in four days after a journey that would make Michael Palin recoil in horror.

Visitors to Vladivostok have employed various techniques in an attempt to find a solution, although the problem may not last much longer.

On their current form Luch-Energiya will soon be heading down to the Second Division and Russia’s regionalised leagues.

If that were to happen, not many from the far west would be crying into their vodkas.

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The dream final: God's XI vs Wimbledon

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Cynical old La Liga Loca has been around for a few centuries now in one form or another and is all too aware that ‘dream finals’ rarely turn out that way.

So knowing already that Wednesday’s affair will be to football what Guti is to commitment, the blog has taken pleasure from seeing what Photoshopped front-cover Sport would produce ahead of the critical clash, instead.

And as ever, the Barcelona-based paper did not disappoint.

The pressure was definitely on after their splendid effort from two years ago which portrayed Joan Laporta as God and Frank Rijkaard as Moses handing down the president’s Ten Commandments before the new season.

"Here, take these tablets"

But Sport delivered the goods with some gusto on Tuesday with an effort that featured the Barça players as gladiators - or rather, the heads of Barça players jammed onto the bodies of gladiators.

To be fair to the paper’s art department, Messi and Piqué looked just fine thrusting their swords in the air.

But Thierry Henry resembled a Russell Crowe body-graft that had gone very badly wrong and poor old Xavi looked like the tiny-headed man from Beetlejuice.

Wednesday’s edition trumpets the ‘super final’ between Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo - Wayne Rooney appears to be completely unheard of in Spain - with what feels like 28 pages of drivel from the keyboard of Josep María Casanovas.

Much of his thesis portrays Manchester United as the vulgar plaything of evil capitalists unlike the pure-as-a-kitten's-trump Barça who “are completely the opposite, a local entity that strives to be a multinational of passion and feeling.”

Casanovas is also under the assumption that Barcelona will be facing a late-'80s Wimbledon side by huffing that Manchester United play “typical English football: the sooner the ball is with the strikers the better,” as opposed to the culé club's “quality, spectacle and good football.”

"Italy here we come!"

Mundo Deportivo are quite beside themselves, with Joan Josep Pallàs calling the Champions League clash “the most important that Barça have played in their 109 years.”

On its website, MD is updating a minute-by-minute account of the day with the first post at 07.23 noting that a large number of fans are flying to Rome that morning.

After putting up some links to opinion polls in the paper, the YTS student in charge of the column appears to have given up the ghost on the section at 08.55... or gone for the traditional second breakfast.

AS are getting into the spirit of the occasion with editor Alfredo Relaño poking his stick into camp culé for the evening. “Despite everything, I see Barça as favourites as they play good football, extremely good football.”

Barking mad Madrid fan Tomás Roncero will not hear of such crazy talk and claims that he and “99.9 percent of Madridistas will be with Rooney and Ronaldo tonight,” while scoffing that Real won their third European Cup – something Barcelona are trying to achieve tonight – some 51 years ago.

Third time lucky in 1958

Marca attempt to get into the Champions League mood with Wednesday’s editorial lauding “the best final possible between the two best teams in the world.”

But Marca being Marca, the paper also finds time to throw some praise in Raúl’s direction by berating the 11 percent of Madrid members who want to turf the club captain out of Castle Greyskull, according to the paper’s opinion poll on the topic.

“He doesn’t deserve that,” fumes the paper. “He is the most professional, most serious and most committed player in the side.”

Raúl was also the second best player in the last round of action, according to the paper’s season-long ‘Raul-award’ vote.

But despite the Madrid captain’s fine, match-winning performance against Mallorca in the awful 3-1 defeat, he is still one place behind Leo Messi in the overall rankings - a position that the judges may well be ‘adjusting’ at the end of the season.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will be watching God's chosen ones vs Vinnie Jones's Crazy Gang.

Just don't blame La Liga Loca if the dream final's a disappointment.

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What Tony Pulis could teach Pep Guardiola...

Paul Simpson — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT

This is the time of known unknowns.

As Wednesday’s UEFA Champions League final nears, the players retreat, coaches mull their selections and the media leaves no cranny unexplored in its search for a new angle.

Many pundits have portrayed Barcelona vs Manchester United as the football equivalent of an Ali vs Frazier boxing title fight.

But Arsene Wenger, who has always had his own take on football, has a different legendary sportsman in mind as he contemplates the final. Not Ali, or Frazier, but Tony Pulis.

Let them beat Stoke
Marie Antoinette was alleged, probably wrongly, to have said of poor Frenchmen: “Let them eat cake”.

Now Wenger, England’s favourite Frenchman, has effectively said that if Barcelona are to prove their greatness, let them beat Stoke City.

Arsenal’s donnish boss laid it on the line in the Daily Mail: “I’m not convinced Barcelona would win the title if they played in the Premier League, It’s very physical and committed – and going to Stoke would be a surprise.”

Funny Wenger should mention that, because I was thinking of Stoke during the semi-final against Chelsea.

Pep Guardiola’s team have played some transcendent football, but Stoke boss Pulis could sharpen up their corners which are often woeful. Barca have taken 82 in the UEFA Champions League this season and scored from just two of them.

"Well this will probably come to nothing..."

From Pulis to Puskas and Seedorf
The hope is that players do not succumb to the pressure and hype surrounding such big games and feel, as Ferenc Puskas put it once, so physically and mentally drained they just want to win the game and be done with it, leaving us with a match as monotonous as Tony Pulis’s cap.

Clarence Seedorf, the only player to have won this competition with three clubs, gives the finalists some free advice in the latest issue of Champions: “Free your mind, and your legs and enjoy it.”

Pointless but interesting
In The Times, Bill Edgar notes that Barcelona have won two of their last eight games, while United have won seven. Not sure if it means anything but it’s interesting.

Barcelona’s average possession in Europe this season is 62 percent. Juan Castro, Marca’s chief sports writer, expects that edge to prove decisive in Rome.

Castro reckons that Barcelona only fear Rooney and Ronaldo but “it will be difficult for those United players to get the ball because Barcelona will dominate possession.”

He believes half of Spain will support the Red Devils for the final. Less flatteringly, he adds that “Liverpool and Arsenal have more followers here than Ferguson’s team.”

The Archibald precedent
Graham Hunter, who often writes for Champions, suggests that the one question every Barca fan is asking is not “How can I get a ticket?” but “Will Iniesta and Henry make it?”

The fans, Hunter suggests, feel their absence will prove too much of a blow. But both will need to prove their match readiness to Guardiola.

As Hunter points out, Guardiola watched, as a 15-year-old ball boy, when a barely fit Steve Archibald toiled as Barca lost the 1986 European Cup final on penalties to Steaua.

(By the way, The Archibald Precedent was my lame attempt to write a cross-head in the style of Robert ‘The Bourne Identity’ Ludlum).

Key to a Catalan triumph

Formation dancing
The biggest known unknown is whether the media’s predicted template for this game – Barcelona attack and United counter – actually happens.

Guardiola’s team will almost certainly play 4-3-3 while United – the journalists at this intriguing New York Times blog predict – will play one, Cristiano Ronaldo, up-front with Park and Rooney on the wing, so 4-5-1 switching to 4-3-3 in attack.

The whole debate makes for fascinating reading but these points struck me:

1. Can Barcelona break up what L’Equipe writer Erik Bielderman calls the “magic triangle” of Toure, Iniesta and Xavi in midfield without suffering the lack of fluency which so nearly saw them lose to Chelsea? Marca deputy editor Santiago Segurola is convinced they can. I’m not so sure.

2. How dangerous is it if United counter attack and let Barca press them? As Peter Berlin, sports editor of the Herald Tribune suggests, it might make more sense to attack Barca’s rejigged defence early on. Scare a back four with three regulars missing, push Barca back and you disrupt their game plan. Bielderman says the key for United is ensuring that their two lines of defence stay connected and keep Barca as far away from the penalty area as possible.

3. This is the best Barca team ever – according to Segurola. But they start the final as slight underdogs. What nobody can tell, as Berlin suggests, is how the occasion affects both teams. This Barca team may just be inspired by the sense that they are on “the verge of greatness” and by United’s decision to wear the white of their old enemy, Real Madrid. And finals, as 2005 and 2008 proved, often defy the script. They can have a mysterious, alchemic effect on teams and players – one that only becomes apparent when the match starts.

A frog’s life
United’s Korean midfielder, the artist formally known as Three Lungs, will probably become the first Asian player to start in a Champions League final – and he owes it all to dad and some frogs.

Park Senior, the New York Times notes, “took a job in a butcher’s shop to provide him with choice cuts of meat and boiled frogs into an unappetising soup, trying to coax a growth spurt.”

And finally…
Off to Rome now, having ransacked the Bionicle container in the kitchen for Euros, with the fervent hope that, as Sir Alex Ferguson put it, this game “paints the real story of football.”

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Knives out for the English angels and demons

Riccardo Rossi — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

To Italians, the fixed image of the typical English football fan is beer-swilling, shaven-headed aggression.

“Hooligan” is virtually synonymous with “Englishman” – apart from poets, 19th-century writers or David Beckham, who are “gentlemen.”

Nothing will change the stereotype unless those following English clubs to the Bel Paese turn up in straw boaters and engage in polite conversation while sipping a glass of wine.

"Fragola, signor?"

Michel Platini did little to allay local fears by raising the spectre of Heysel in a recent press conference, and even before the inevitable imposition of an alcohol ban many bars and restaurants had already informed Rome City council that they would be closing their premises on the day of the match.

NEWS: Alcohol ban in Rome

If there is any intimidation then it would seem to come from the perceived threat of the Manchester United fans, but the reality is that with AS Roma long departed from the competition, their followers will be maintaining a low profile.

The only time the knives should be out is to tuck into the fine local pizzas.

But there will be those among the local population – like the ever-growing and vocal neo-fascist community - who will be out to prove themselves, even if that means attacking some defenceless fan who has wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who needs ultras when you have skinheads?

Having said that, Rome, for all its faults, is not a particularly dangerous city when it comes to serious crimes against tourists. Muggings are a very rare occurrence.

"It's round here somewhere"

However, this is a different situation and the advice to any Manchester United fan would be to dress more conservatively, remain in the centre of the city and lay off the booze a bit.

Of course, Rome itself is pulling out all the stops to provide a showcase event – and the last thing the city fathers want are stories of stabbings and images of baton-welding police “restoring” law and order flashing around the world.

No-one wants to dissuade potential visitors among those who have seen the glories of the Eternal City in the blockbuster Angels and Demons.

We cannot expect either cherubs or devils over the next few days, but somewhere in between would do. Maybe then we can start to change Italian perceptions of those alien creatures known as il Inglese.

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The Fonz, The Flea & dating Brian Kidd's daughter

Andy Mitten — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Last week was more hectic than originally planned, but everything is going to plan.

There were calls from all kinds of media, the BBC’s Newsround to the BBC’s Radio Belfast, Faroe Islands Radio to half the stations in Spain and a piece for The Independent on Sunday to write.

Radio Belfast called while I was driving. It’s not the biggest radio station in the world, but the lad was friendly, insisted that there are a lot of United fans in Northern Ireland and I agreed to find a landline to do an interview.

They called… to stand me down, that is say that they didn’t need me. That happens perhaps twice a year – it’s part of live radio.

They asked politely if I could do the interview the following morning and I agreed. They called early and I was put on hold while Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz, was being interviewed, droning on and on in clichés.

I was kept on hold for 14 minutes, before a voice said: “We’re sorry, we’re going to have to stand you down because the Fonz is so good.”

Happy Days? Not for me and my double knock back by Radio Belfast. I’ll get over it.

Here’s the plan for this week.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I..."

Monday

Write a 450-word piece on any Barcelona news ahead of the final and a 600-word piece on Barça’s likely tactics.

Interview Brian Kidd in Manchester. He’s just finished the season helping keep Portsmouth up and will be travelling north to be back with his family. Brian’s a great man and his family are spot on.

When I was 21, I went out with his daughter. She came back to the house I rented with mates, where they had kindly put pictures of her dad on the walls. She thought I was a freak.

Tuesday

Get up at 5am and fly to Italy ahead of the Champions League final. My Dad will give me a lift to the airport as there are no trains so early. Fly.

Catch a four-hour train to Roma Termini and check into a hotel. Watch United train/do a press conference. Write.

Meet mates for a beer in Rome. I’m deliberately not travelling with them because I’ve got the workload of a political expenses secretary to get through, while they’re going on a session.

Wednesday

Write and make video diary for Channel M. Have a look around Rome.

Saviour the 2009 European Cup final. Get quotes off as many players as possible after the game, including Lionel Messi to add to his forthcoming interview in FourFourTwo.

“So, Lionel, how did it feel when John O’Shea skipped past you, then Xavi and Puyol before slamming the winner in from 30 yards?”

Give tape to an editor from Channel M so that it can be sent straight back to Manchester for editing and broadcast on Friday.

Hopefully celebrate. Go to bed very late, regardless of the result. It was 3.30am in Moscow last year as the game didn’t finish until 1am.

Thursday

Up at five. The Metro won’t have started, so take a taxi to Roma Termini for a train north to Florence.

Write for the full journey, while swilling quality Italian coffee to keep awake. Then take a connection to Pisa, file more copy at the airport there before a flight to Manchester. Write on the flight. This will be a busy day.

Watch United’s homecoming in Manchester. Possibly.

"He's wasted in defence, that O'Shea..."

Friday

Train from Manchester to London. My fiancée has never been on a train before. It’s not that she’s too posh for a rattler or anything, they just don’t have trains in Brazil.

She’ll meet family in London, I’ll meet my publishers and go to the Footballer of the Year award. I don’t go every year, but it’s alright once in a while.

Watch Steven Gerrard' presented with the award. I like Gerrard and he’s one player I’d love to see at Old Trafford, but he won’t come as he has an aversion to league titles.

Be tempted to sing Nemanja Vidic songs to him. Instead ask him why he wasn’t at the premiere of Awaydays on Thursday, when every lad in Liverpool seemed to be. As was Shaun Ryder.

Saturday

Watch all the happy Everton fans arriving at Euston for the FA Cup final before catching a train to Manchester.

Miss younger brother Sam’s final Manchester United trial at Carrington. He’ll play against United’s U15s. He received a letter this week from United confirming his success in the first two trials. It will be framed.

I would have watched Arnau Riera in the Scottish Cup final at Hampden Park if the loon hadn’t got himself booked for diving in the semi-final. He’s been Falkirk’s man of the match several times recently and is a real fan favourite.

He was last spotted dancing around the pitch at Inverness on Saturday as Falkirk moved off the bottom of the table stayed up… by beating Inverness and sending them down.

Arnau is out of contract this summer. Sunderland held that contract as they have loaned him to Falkirk. Hopefully his decent form will put him in good stead for getting a contract at Falkirk or elsewhere.

We’d have him at Manchester La Fiana, who just finished third in the Barcelona International Football league under the fine stewardship of Scotsman Stephen Love.

Jordi Cruyff played in the league this season, but we’ll let Arnau finish his proper career first.

Sunday

Fly from Manchester to Barcelona. Raise a massive red, white and black tricolour from the front of my apartment… in a massive Barca stronghold. Switch my brain off and sleep.

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Boo-boys fail to mar Maldini's San Siro swansong

Riccardo Rossi — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

It may not have been the perfect farewell to a perfect career, but the sun shone brightly and all in all a packed San Siro rose as one to bid a final home salute to the legend that is Paolo Maldini.

And despite the small section of the Curva Sud whose hearts will always belong to Franco Baresi, altogether it was a celebration of a glittering career.

NEWS: Maldini signs off at San Siro on sour note

NEWS: Totti free-kick ruins Maldini swansong

Fathers who would have been as young as their sons at their sides when Maldini made his debut were overcome with emotion, sensing that the years pass for everyone; even for someone as the seemingly ageless man they had come to praise.

"Cheers, pal..."

The Friuli stadium back in January 1985 must have had one of the biggest Milan followings in the club’s history judging by the number of 30 and 40-year-old’s who were claiming they had been present for the great man’s debut.

It was that sort of day – the club even unveiled its stylish new kit for next season and, of course, Paolo took it all in his majestic stride up until he ran into the massive banner saluting not him but Baresi alongside another with a moving tribute to a perceived lack of respect on Paolo’s part to those who “made him rich.”

The appearances, the trophies, the international caps are all well documented, and they all came from hard work and application to his profession – something the whistles and jeers can never drown out.

Browsing through Gazzetta dello Sport’s weekend magazine supplement, SportWeek provided an insight into how Maldini was moulded into the player we all know so well.

There in a black and white photo stands a young Paolo in his Milan kit alongside proud dad Cesare, who is neatly attired in suit and trench-coat, obligatory cigarette in one hand.

“Dad started to smoke when he was 15 and only gave up 12 years ago,” recalls Paolo who has never touched the wicked weed.

Paolo starts out in '85

Despite a weakness for nicotine, by all accounts Cesare was a severe enough parent who lived his life the way he played the game: in a very upright and correct manner.

There were never any favours granted to his son when it came to furthering his footballing career.

Cesare was not even aware of Paolo’s burgeoning talents, as he recalls: “I was always away playing at the weekend and it was only when some other people told me that your son is a decent player did I start to take notice.”

Paolo had only been playing in loosely organised games for the local parish team when he went for a trial at Milan aged 10, and even then Maldini Senior told those in charge not to pick his son just because of his name.

In fact, he didn’t know which position Paolo played and told the coach to decide – so the youngster ended up on the right wing.

However, as reported in the trial notes, “he has qualities that make him stand out.”

"For me? You shouldn't have..."

Another photo shows Paolo ages 14, in action for one of Milan’s youth sides – and the familiar stooped gait and turned-in right foot are already in evidence.

Reading the comments made by Paolo on these formative years, it is clear that dad’s influence was vital.

“He berated me for going out on a Tuesday or Wednesday with my friends,” recalls Paolo. “Monday is a footballer’s day off he would say, ‘so you can go out for a meal on a Sunday’.

“Dad came from an era when the teams went into a three-month training retreat, but I needed a bit more freedom than that.”

Only one other player from Paolo’s youth team – Francesco Zanoncelli – went on to have a career of sorts in Serie A, but few could have envisaged that the gangly lad would follow in his father’s footsteps and lift the Champions League trophy exactly 40 years after Cesare had done – and in England as well.

That moment, more than anything, cemented the Maldini legend and no doubt in private - as it has always been - son will thank father for turning him into the man he would become.

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La Liga’s Good Day, Bad Day - Round 37

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Good Day

Manolo Jiménez

In a truly massive win for the mediocre, Sevilla secured third spot on Saturday night after a last minute 1-0 over Deportivo.

But this achievement may not be enough to keep the side’s manager in a job mind, with Marca reporting that club president José María del Nido and his board will assess Jiménez’ future over the next few days.

The man himself fancies another season with Sevilla but will have little choice in the matter. “I’ve had other offers but my main aim is to stay here,” claimed the coach who appears to have the backing of his footballers but not of the fans.

Diego Forlán

Oh dear. The blog does sound like it has taken a big old bottle of downers today, but does the fact that the top three strikers in Spain have racked up a whopping 86 goals this season leave la Liga in the ‘Belgium’ category of divisions?

The kind of league that has coefficients to balance out its simplicity for strikers?

Diego Forlán’s hat-trick against Athletic moves the rojiblanco forward onto 31 goals, while David Villa and Mad Sammy Eto’o are on 29 and 26 respectively, suggesting that defences are fairly dire in la Primera.

To put things into a little bit of perspective, the top three goalscorers in the Premier League (Anelka, Ronaldo and Gerrard) only mustered a paltry 53 in comparison.

"Easy, easy, easy..."

Villarreal

The east-coast club has moved on from its Champions League sulk just in time with two battling wins over Real Madrid and now Valencia.

Villarreal are still two points from Atlético and may well be sending some suitcases in Almería’s direction next weekend, in the hope they can roger the rojiblancos and give Villarreal a sniff of a chance of moving into their fourth-place spot.

Ivan Alonso / Nikola Zigic

The anti-Julien Fauberts of la Liga. Two players who came in during the winter transfer window to save their respective sides as opposed to dozing and disappearing from training.

Alonso’s two goals for Espanyol against Almería saw the Pericos keep their Primera position for another year and Zigic’s solitary strike against Recreativo helped Racing recover from a worrying wobble to move into mid-table.

Sporting

Mmm. Interesting. Sporting’s survival plan appears to be panning out just as a local journo hinted it would a few weeks ago.

La Liga Loca’s spider-sense is definitely tingling. Or it could be wind from a dodgy bocadillo at the Bernabeu.

A quite ludicrous own-goal from nothing-to-play-for Málaga gave Sporting a win last weekend. And it was another victory for the Asturian side on Saturday with the same 2-1 result, but this time against Valladolid.

Mallorca

The only club to beat both Real Madrid and Barcelona this season. However, this statistic is coloured slightly by the fact that Mallorca were a little lucky to play the two sides when neither could give two honking hoots about their games.

Getafe

A 1-0 win over Numancia moves Getafe into 15th and three teams between themselves and relegation next weekend. Surely even manager Michel cannot mess this one up?

Bad Day

Marc Muniesa

“Get in!” thought La Liga Loca immediately warming to the young Barcelona defender.

The 17-year-old had come on as a second-half substitute and put in a crunching tackle on Antonio Hidalgo - the kind of meat-mangling murderholds Osasuna specialise in.

The challenge produced a red card from the referee - this being Spain and all - which was followed by what appeared to be a blub or two from Muniesa, sending the Catalan kiddie back down to the bottom rung in the blog’s estimations.

“The others told me that at least I got a standing ovation,” sobbed the tearful teenager after the game.

Guti

Dropped from Sunday’s squad for ‘technical reasons’ and for missing Saturday’s training due to attending a communion, said Juande Ramos - the same Juande Ramos who still found room for the 8 kilos overweight, bench-napping Julien Faubert.

Real Madrid

“Wenger! No... er... Mourinho!... er... Pellegrini... er Valdano... er Laudrup... er Ramos.... er...”

After Madrid’s fourth defeat in a row - and a really, really pathetic one at that against Mallorca - the list of candidates willing to take over at Castle Greyskull is a bit like Mariano Pernía - getting thinner by the day.

Osasuna

To beat Barcelona in the Camp Nou and still be in relegation trouble is very bad luck indeed.

However, the bright light on the Pamplonan horizon is the visit of, train-wreck in football form, Real Madrid to their ground next weekend in what is sure to be a bruising encounter.

Guti is already flicking through his medical encyclopaedia looking for new excuses not to play.

"I'm too sad to play..."

Betis

Things would have to go very wrong indeed for Betis to go down next weekend, but it would not be completely unthinkable.

After holding their own, as it were, against Málaga on Saturday night and being 1-0 up, the visitors were stunned when a cracking Albert Luque strike sent Betis packing with a measly point for their efforts.

Valencia

A terrible fortnight for Valencia included losing to both of their Champions League rivals and the publication of a sensational story suggesting that Silva, Mata, Albiol and Villa would be poached en masse by Florentino Pérez.

But the real blow for the very cash-strapped club is that the men from Mestalla will be left without Champions League football for a second consecutive season and the revenue it brings in.

Numancia, Recreativo

Gone, gone, gone.

TVE

A second week in succession for Spain’s state broadcaster in the Bad Day section.

Last time around the TV channel made the list due to a splendid effort in showing the Manchester United vs Arsenal title-decider some three hours late.

But that was nothing compared to Sunday’s sterling work.

With the channel flicking between the Newcastle and Hull relegation-tinged clashes, a genius decided to end the broadcasts with 10 minutes to go in both games to show handball instead.

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La Liga Talentspotter

By far the strangest team…

Paul Simpson — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:00:00 GMT

My Perfect XI, as seen on the back page of FourFourTwo (or online here), is the 21st century equivalent of the 1970s Shoot questionnaire (“Most dangerous opponent: The wife”).

Most of these XIs are compiled by old pros who namecheck old colleagues like Micky Droy alongside Pele and Maradona.

On the web, you can find debates over proper all-time XIs: is Raul better up-front than Di Stefano? Such questions promote furious, pseudo-academic debate.

"You're having a laugh ain't ya?"

In an attempt to silence my inner anorak I have chosen an utterly random European Cup XI where players are selected on such spurious criteria as: have they been seduced by a ballet dancer, insulted Scottish football or had their haircut partially in honour of Barcelona?

Feel free to make your own nominations.

1 Eddy Treijtel, seagull killer
Treijtel will never forget 1970: the Feyenoord reserve keeper shone in the European Cup semi-final, was benched by Ernst Happel for the final and killed a seagull by kicking a ball in the Rotterdam derby that November.

2 Cesare Maldini, overconfident dad
European Cup-winning defender with Milan in 1963, he was so technically accomplished that he became overconfident and made, John Foot notes in Calcio, so many hideous errors he launched a genre of blunders known as “Maldinate.”

3 Paul Breitner, Maoist millionaire maverick
A multi-millionaire Bavarian Maoist European Cup-winning full-back/midfielder with an erratic Afro, Breitner defended Berti Vogts’ reign as Scotland manager by dismissing Scottish players of that generation as “footballing dwarves.”

4 Franz Beckenbauer, legend with a private dancer
Der Kaiser was a fine skipper, imperious libero and the only skipper to lift the European Cup three times. He was also the object of an alleged seduction attempt by Rudolf Nureyev. The ballet star put his hand on Der Kaiser’s knee in a New York limo prompting the original Becks to talk about his wife and kids. Luckily, the German legend says, “Nureyev understood and we remained good friends.”

"Oi, I'm a happily married man, I'll have you know..."

5 Andreas Moller
Moller is out of position in this all-time XI but the 1997 European Cup winner deserves inclusion as the first and – to date – only German footballer to be fined and suspended for diving. He was docked 10,000 marks and banned for two games after winning a penalty in 1997 against Karlsruhe even though the defender who ‘fouled’ him was a yard away when he started to fall.

6 Emlyn Hughes, V-neck jumper pioneer
The Kop used to sing “Come on without, come on within, you’ve not seen nothing like the mighty Emlyn” in this honour of this enthusiastic, princess-cuddling, Liverpool legend who did for V-neck jumpers what Mary Quant did for the mini-skirt. His crosses were more accurate than his guesses in the picture round of A Question Of Sport. He famously identified one photo as the jockey John Reid only to discover it was Princess Anne. Still, his place in history is secure: he was the first Liverpool captain to lift the European Cup.

7 Cristiano Ronaldo, living La Vida Loca
A completist when it comes to Ricky Martin albums, United’s No.7 has a hairstyle which is partly inspired by Barcelona. As his stylist Pedro Remo told Champions: “His haircut has a British side like Coldplay but a side which is more like Barcelona, unfinished.” CR7 can play a bit too. Is liking Ricky Martin in worst taste than Basile Boli who motivated himself for European finals by listening to Bon Jovi? As Walter Cronkite used to say, “You are the jury.”

"Short back and sides with a few Catalan curls please..."

8 Alfred Pfaff, Di Stefano’s doppelganger
Legendary German playmaker, star of the Eintracht team that faced Real Madrid in 1960, Pfaff was such a leader on the pitch that he was nicknamed Don Alfredo. In his only European Cup final he came up against the original Don Alfredo, the great, grouchy Di Stefano. Sadly for Pfaff, Real’s No.9 won the battle of the Don Alfredos at Hampden. In his two most famous games, Pfaff lost 7-3 to Real in 1960 and 8-3 to Hungary in the 1954 World Cup.

9 Ferenc Puskas, international diplomat
The Galloping Major could juggle soap in the shower with his left foot. But as gifted as he was, he had to eat crow before the 1960 final. The German FA had banned clubs from playing against teams featuring Puskas because the Hungarian had claimed that West Germany only won the World Cup in 1954 because they were doped. Puskas had to send a formal letter of apology before the German FA would let Eintracht play.

10 Hristo Stoichkov, foot and mouth legend
El Pistolero, Cristo, The Dagger, Raging Bull, The Modern Left, they couldn’t coin enough nicknames to sum up the flamboyant, referee-stamping, European Golden Boot winner whose selfish genius completed Johan Cruyff’s Dream Team and prompted Maradona to salute him as a fellow “Crazy head.” Never joined the Premiership – for fear of being nicknamed Stoitchy – he is growing modest with age, telling FIFA recently: “No Bulgarian can ever match my achievements.”

11 Piet Keizer, the enigma’s enigma
Ajax left-winger who made Cruyff look uncomplicated. Keizer danced on the tables when he heard Rinus Michels was taking over at Barcelona, was voted in by the squad to replace Cruyff as Ajax skipper (prompting the furious No.14 to join Michels in Catalonia) but walked out on football in 1974 after a row over tactics. A year later, watching his son’s youth game, he famously stepped away from the ball. David Winner reckons Keizer didn’t kick a ball at all for 30 years.

Coach

Sir Matt Busby, honours kissed
Busby was the first manager to win the European Cup with an English club and the first – only? – recipient of football’s Sword Of Honour. This glittering weapon was given to him in 1964 for “distinguished service to British and international football.” The award was not named in honour of the eponymous trilogy of wartime novels by Evelyn Waugh and occupies roughly the same place in Busby’s trophy cabinet as the Greek of the Year award given to Otto Rehhagel in 2004.

"This will take pride of place in my... erm..."

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Jose Mourinho, late-night chats and Don Johnson

Riccardo Rossi — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Jose Mourinho certainly doesn’t give off the air of a man on a fleeting visit.

The latest rumours sweeping the majority of the sporting and regular dailies is that our man is off to Real Madrid and taking Zlatan Ibrahimovic with him.

It has been less than a week since Inter stuffed another title into their back pockets, and the Special One was dancing around the San Siro without a care in the world.

Apart from Ibra walking around with a long face until he was shipped off to Dubai for a bit of much-needed R&R, the atmosphere out at the Appiano Gentile training ground has been one of a job well done and now on to winning another title.

With the hard work out of the way, Jose was able to retire to the gentlemen’s club that is the Gianluca Vialli-Paolo Rossi talk-show on Sky Sports on Thursday evening.

No chance there of spotting a fresh tattoo, as sported by Marco Materazzi, who found some small patch of space on his body for another inking, or anyone strutting around in possession of a fetching multi-coloured hairdo, such as, let’s say, Mario Balotelli.

All very benign and gentle then, as the trio settled into the highchairs of a studio mocked up to look like a study of sorts – more drawing room than boot room.

"The new Real Madrid coach? Pass"

Vialli and Rossi are of course legendary figures in the Italian game and now slipping quietly into middle age while still possessing that boyish glint in their eyes. And they like nothing better than chatting about the game.

This must have come as a bit of surprise to the guest who has spent the whole year dodging verbal assaults from the fine figures of the press, but in the inner sanctum of the Sky studio - sorry authentic-looking study - Jose could finally relax and let his guard down, even pulling the sleeves of his jacket up, Miami Vice-style.

A fine raconteur he is, when not impersonating Don Johnson, and you felt he could have gone on chatting well past the allotted hour.

A gentle probing from the pair about the Real headlines brought a smile and a “Listen, guys: I am here and I expect to be at Inter next season – well, 99.9 percent certain.”

Although when questioned who he would expect to be in charge of Real he was, for once, stumped for an answer.

So no chance of the rumours abating for the time being, then.

And the Champions League winners? “Manchester United are favourites, they are bigger and physically stronger than Barcelona but have the hunger.”

This gives an indication of the direction Mourinho wants to take his Inter side – an even more robust style to lay the opposition to waste.

No wonder he is a big admirer of Nemanja Vidic – the player he picked out as United’s main man.

"Like that, lads"

It certainly seems that his sights would be set on the Serbian, but all indications are that Bruno Alves of his former club Porto will be a more realistic target.

“I need a strong central defender who can bring the ball out at his feet,” claimed Jose, overlooking his compatriot’s back-pass which gifted United their equaliser in the Champions League.

There could also be a raid back at Chelsea for two other towers of strength: Ricardo Carvalho and John Obi Mikel.

Genoa pair Diego Milito and Thiago Motta should be confirmed signings before the end of the season, who again both combine skill with a physical presence.

Although that much-awaited dossier on how Inter can launch a credible challenge in Europe while at the same time holding on to their dominance at home is still under lock and key.

An educated stab at its contents might come up with this conclusion: build it like the Premier League – bigger, stronger and faster.

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The Six-Fingered Weekend Predictions - Round 37

Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Saturday

Villarreal (6th) vs EasyValencia (5th)

And so two fine, upstanding, terrific teams must face the humiliation of a bruising barnyard scrap in their chase to overhaul... (sigh) ...Atlético Madrid in fourth place. Oh how low has la Liga sunk?

While Villarreal went about their business this week in their normal, quiet, professional, blatantly boring way, Valencia were buoyed by the visit of some fans to their training ground - supporters who came to lift the spirits of the side as they face the final two matches of the season.

Of course, what with Valencia fans being Valencia fans, this is absolute nonsense.

Instead, a potty-mouthed posse went to the club’s training camp to yell abuse at the squad and accuse them of being “a UEFA Cup team" - a wholly incorrect and unjustifiable statement. They meant “Europa League team," of course.

LLL Prediction - Home win

Barcelona (up top) vs Osasuna (18th)

La Liga Loca was planning to stay loyal to its adopted home - only by handy extradition loopholes, mind - and cheer Barcelona all the way in next week’s Champions League final.

But it simply doesn’t think it can handle the consequences of what would happen should Pep’s Dream Boys pick up the treble.

The puke-inducing Catalan press are already impossible to bear, so only Zeus himself knows what would happen should Barça win Wednesday’s Roman rumble.

“Never before has Barcelona been so respected, feared and admired,” writes Sport's Josep Maria Casanovas, a man who doesn’t seem at all concerned that he has a girl’s name.

LLL Prediction - Home win

Sevilla (3rd) vs Deportivo (7th)

Friday’s AS reports that Deportivo manager Miguel Angel Lotina has finally come to the realisation that his stable of ‘strikers’ are an absolute shower of, er, shame and is set to ditch a bunch of them over the summer.

Four of those set to be pushed out into the Bay of Biscay are Riki (26 apps, 6 goals), Mista (13 apps, 1 goal), Omar Bravo (9 apps, 1 goal, returned to Mexico) and Bodipo (19 apps, 4 goals).

What Deportivo need now is the phone number of a club willing to buy their hopeless, misfiring, waste of space cast-offs.

Quite possibly a phone number with a Newcastle prefix.

LLL Prediction - Home win

Getafe (16th) vs Numancia (19th)

Normally, when Vicente del Bosque talks one should listen. Except this week when he appears to have supped several bowls of silly soup.

When asked to comment on the latest names being thrown into the hat of those looking to be fired five months into a contract with Real Madrid - a hat that now includes Laurent Blanc, Michael Laudrup and Brian Molko from Placebo - the Spain manager suggested temporary Getafe coach Michel.

Molko: "We'll play four-four-two in four-four time"

“He’s the Guardiola of Madrid,” opined the man who was not sexy enough for Florentino Pérez some six years ago.

And it’s a fine theory apart from the small fact that Guardiola brought promotion to Barça’s B team after just one season in charge and is on the brink of winning the treble with the big boys.

Michel, on the other hand, managed to relegated Real Madrid’s second side and failed to promote Rayo Vallecano during his spell at the club.

Just like Guardiola, then.

LLL Prediction - Home win

Recreativo (20th) vs Racing (12th)

A Friday wouldn’t be a Friday without La Liga Loca’s hopeless prediction on the weekend’s dog of a game that turns out to be a brilliant blinder.

LLL Prediction - Draw (and a goalless one at that)

Valladolid (13th) vs Sporting (17th)

Goodness grief, this match has caused all manner of trouble and strife this week.

It all began when Valladolid sent just 1,859 tickets to the institutions at Sporting, costing a rather steep 75 euro each.

“Gits!” was the reply from the club that generally takes the entire population of the town to every away game.

“We want the Zorilla to be full of Valladolid supporters and not Sporting fans,” explained the quite cool Pucela president, Carlos Suarez.

Sporting’s response was to threaten to send 4,000 to the match, with a good 1,500 of those without tickets.

“Fine!” said Valladolid’s city authorities.

“We’ll just stop you getting anywhere near the town,” was the stern message but “without overlooking the rights of the citizen,” explained local suit Cecilio Vadillo on Valladolid’s plan, which completely overlooks the rights of the citizen.

LLL Prediction - Away win

Málaga (8th) vs Betis (15th)

Betis - the Venus fly trap of la Liga - looks a tempting treat to those footballers that don’t know better.

But they soon discover that death or the loss of limbs is the only way to escape.

It appears that there could be quite a few departures from the club this summer, with Capi, Emana and Odonkor just three players who have all expressed their desire to get out of Dodge and the clutches of De Lopera.

Clambering over their bodies in the stickiest of scrambles will be Arzu, who’s had eggs thrown at his car and was booed for his goal celebration against Almería last weekend.

“It was dedicated to my grandfather and daughter,” explained the very unhappy bunny. “The situation here is insupportable. All the normal people have gone.”

LLL Prediction - Draw

Athletic (11th) vs Atlético (4th)

Having had three days off during the week, you’d have good reason to assume that the nothing-to-play-for Basque club will simply roll over and allow their tummies to be tickled by their visitors on Saturday night.

But shame on you for doing so, because Athletic have a very good reason to try their damnedest against Atlético Madrid - cold hard cash.

The end of the season in Spain has brought about the inevitable rumours of win bonuses being paid by teams C with an interest in the result of a match between A and B.

Suitcases: often stuffed full of Euro

In this case, it’s both Villarreal and Valencia looking for Athletic to do their Champions League chase a favour by stopping the current rojiblanco surge.

“It can’t be proved, but it’s no secret that Athletic will be on bonuses for this game,” nudge-nudged Jesús Hernandez in Friday’s Mundo Deportivo.

LLL Prediction - Home win

Almería (10th) vs Espanyol (14th)

Espanyol are the winners of this week’s Grumpy Sourpuss Taking Themselves Far Too Seriously award.

Noemi Rubio is a young lady who plays for the club’s women’s team alongside Luis García. But she is also... gasp... a Barcelona fan.

Poor Noemi was outed on Facebook when photographed wearing the club’s colours and attending the Copa de Rey final.

When the images came to light, the female footballer was immediately suspended and it has been announced that her contract will not be renewed in June.

“She is conscious that she has damaged the feelings of members and fans of Espanyol,” wrote some idiot from Espanyol in a statement oblivious to the notion of freedom of expression.

LLL Prediction - Home win (and a heavy one too as blog punishment for petulance)

Real Madrid (2nd) vs Mallorca (9th)

The La Liga Loca curse continued this week with the withdrawal from the Real Madrid presidency race of Eugenio Martínez Bravo.

The blog had managed to have a chat with the candidate just a few days before and thought he would be a fine choice as the next Bernabeu bigwig on the grounds that he wasn’t a megalomaniac who wanted to stick a roof on the club’s stadium.

Unfortunately he’s not a billionaire either, which means he's unable to raise the 57 million Euro required to stand in the race.

But that left room for another candidate to announce his plans for the club should he win June’s presidential poll.

Juan Onieva was a VP under Lorenzo Sanz and fancies another crack at the club’s expense account.

In an entertaining presentation, Onieva revealed his plans to make Hugo Sánchez his manager, hand over 3 percent of Madrid’s budget to unemployed members who are struggling to pay their mortgages and make Barack Obama an honorary member of the club.

But most entertainingly of all, his slideshow featured a photograph of a cheery, waving JFK - with six fingers.

LLL Prediction - Home win

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