Professor Champions League

Fascinating final clash of styles which echoes down the ages

2012-05-19T07:27:00Z

Paul Simpson, editor of FourFourTwo's UEFA-flavoured sister magazine Champions, on the Allianz Arena clash

The 2012 UEFA Champions League final isn’t just a contest for the greatest prize in club football; it is the latest instalment in a never-ending tactical argument.

Jupp Heynckes’ Bayern belong to the grand tradition of Bill Nicholson, Jock Stein, Rinus Michels, Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola in which teams dominate possession, take the initiative and feel obliged to win in style, as Danny Blanchflower once put it.

Roberto di Matteo’s Chelsea stand for a different, no less valid, tradition in which teams seek to draw the opposition out and punish them on the counter.

Catenaccio was pioneered by the great Swiss coach Karl Rappan in the 1930s, developed in Italy in the 1950s by Milan coaches Gipo Viani and Nereo Rocco and perfected in the 1960s by Helenio Herrera’s Inter.

The counterattacking style of Rocco and Herrera dominated European football in the 1960s. Milan’s triumph over Benfica in the 1963 European Cup final signalled a shift to a new age of austerity on the pitch. Herrera’s Inter emphasised the point by defeating Real Madrid and Benfica to win back-to-back European Cups in 1964 and 1965.

With the goalscoring genius of Giacinto Facchetti at left-back, the panache of Sandro Mazzola up front and the genius of playmaker Luis Suarez in midfield, Inter were a sophisticated, tactically shrewd, technically gifted team but their reputation has been undermined by the legions of moronic imitators who turned catenaccio into a blueprint for boredom.

As UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh likes to point out, there are many ways to win a football match. The Herrera way came unstuck against Celtic in 1967. Stein admired Herrera and had studied the Argentinian’s methods, once telling his left-back Tommy Gemmell: “Your job is to play like Facchetti”.

In the heat of Lisbon, the immovable object of Inter’s defence crumbled under the irresistible force of Celtic’s attacking verve. The Lisbon Lions played, as Gemmell put it, “pure attacking football”. The left-back did his bit, scoring the equaliser that shattered Inter’s resistance.

1967: Celtic's brio breaks Inter's resolve

European football expected Rocco’s Rossoneri to restate the case for the counterattacking game in the 1969 final against Michels’ Ajax. But Milan attacked from the off. In the 67th minute, when Angelo Sormani made it 3-1 to the Italians, the outcome was settled.

Organised by Michels and inspired by Cruyff, Ajax exacted total revenge in 1972 and 1973, beating Inter 2-0 and Juventus 1-0 in two of the most one-sided finals in the competition’s history. The manner of these defeats was so comprehensive that even Italian football, which had championed catenaccio as “the right of the weak” in the famous words of Gianni Brera, realised a rethink was required.

At this point, the tactical war seemed over. In a sense, it was. As a philosophy of football, counterattacking had had its day. But coaches kept using the tactic when the occasion – or the opposition – demanded.

The most successful exhibition of counterattacking football in a European Cup final since the 1960s was probably Nottingham Forest’s 1-0 win over Hamburg in 1980. For whatever reason – possibly because it encouraged other coaches to underestimate him – Brian Clough perpetuated the myth that he knew nothing about tactics.

As Jonathan Wilson has proved in Nobody Ever Says Thank You, his compelling biography of Old Big Ead, this is errant nonsense. In 1980, with striker Trevor Francis injured, Clough told Gary Mills to move into midfield in a 4-5-1 that utterly stifled the German champions.

After the final (which Forest won 1-0 thanks to John Robertson’s goal), Hamburg coach Brnko Zebec sounded like a man who had just been mugged: “Hamburg carried the whole weight of that game. Nottingham only defended. I say this not as a criticism but as a statement of fact.” Enzo Bearzot, who would win the World Cup two years later with an enterprising Azzurri side, even accused Clough of reinventing catenaccio.

1980: 'Robbo eats Hamburgers' as Forest outwit the Germans

Although Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan proved that Italian teams – especially when illuminated by Dutch genius – could attack and entertain, winning the European Cup in 1989 and 1990, old prejudices lingered.

When Cruyff moved from the pitch to the dugout, he maintained his suspicion of the Italian style. “The Italians,” he famously said, “can’t beat you, but you can lose to them.” (To which Carlo Ancelotti replied: “If Cruyff wants entertainment, he should go to the cinema.”)

The Dutch icon cast the 1994 UEFA Champions League final, in which his Barcelona side faced Fabio Capello’s Milan, as a contest for the soul of football. But with Alessandro Costacurta and Franco Baresi suspended, Don Fabio decided, like Rocco in 1969, that attack was the best form of defence. Milan won 4-0.

1994: Fabio four, Johan nil

Pep Guardiola was one of the Barcelona players shaken by that defeat and, though he still reveres Cruyff as a mentor, he saw at first hand how dangerous over-confidence could be. In his short but spectacularly successful coaching career, Guardiola – along with Jose Mourinho – has raised the bar with the sheer meticulousness of his pre-match preparation.

Mourinho has replaced calcio as the principal public object of Cruyff’s ire, partly because of the Portuguese maverick’s abrasive brand of mind games but also because of the ruthless – and often effective – way he has organised his Chelsea and Inter teams to frustrate Barcelona.

The 2010 UEFA Champions League semi-final was Mourinho’s greatest riposte to Cruyff. As Sandro Mazzola points out in the latest issue of Champions magazine: “With typical Mourinho canniness, Inter didn’t confront Messi – they simply cut off his supply lines, employing a four-man cage tactic”. This was a huge gamble – Messi’s team-mates could exploit the space vacated elsewhere – but it worked. Inter had won and, whatever purists might say about their style of play, the tie was hardly devoid of entertainment.

2010: Inter put Messi in the cage

Two years later, Mourinho’s former club have reached their second UEFA Champions League final after similar heroics at Camp Nou as Roberto di Matteo, replacing Andre Villas-Boas, prioritised results over style.

One reason the debate between purists and pragmatists will never end is that the distinction between the two is not as clear-cut as many purists would suggest. Possession football isn’t always thrilling – the most enthralling match in Spain’s successful 2010 World Cup campaign was probably their 1-0 defeat to Switzerland – and teams that counter aren’t always dull: Chelsea’s 4-1 victory over Napoli in the round of 16 was as compelling as their disposal of Benfica in the last eight was efficient.

Nobody knows how Chelsea will play in Munich. Facing the same kind of defensive reshuffle as Capello in 1994, will Di Matteo decide attack is the best form of defence? Or will he choose containment? The rope-a-dope Muhammad Ali style tactics worked for 10-man Chelsea in Barcelona, but only with Messi missing a penalty.

With away goals irrelevant in Munich, Di Matteo will need Chelsea to compete in midfield, be resolute and disciplined on the flanks and, when the spaces open up behind Bayern’s wide players, make the most of them.

Heynckes faces his own tough choices. In 2010, Bayern were not simply undone by the absence of Franck Ribery. They were confounded by an Inter team so confident in its organisational nous they were happy to give the ball away. Louis van Gaal’s Bayern were too methodical, too slow and took so many touches – often five or six before finding a team-mate – that the Nerazzurri defenders had time to ensure they were perfectly in position.

2012: Which way will the coaches go?

With Ribery and Arjen Robben in the starting line-up, and Toni Kroos floating free in midfield, Bayern should be more fluent going forward than in Madrid. Mind you, just as Di Matteo is unlikely to emulate the old-school catenaccio of Herrera’s Inter, Heynckes’ Bayern won’t employ the gung-ho attacking football that worked so memorably for the Lisbon Lions in 1967.

Whoever triumphs in Munich, neither side will land a knockout blow in the eternal contest between the ghosts of Herrera and Michels.

The boy who never learned to bend it like Rivelino

2012-01-18T11:15:00Z

Baseball, the American novelist Michael Chabon once declared, is the gift fathers give their sons. In Britain, that gift is usually football.

My dad died a year ago. One of the smaller consequences of his death was that it ended an intermittent dialogue between us about football that had lasted most of my life.

Our conversation started in the 1960s. Dad fervently admired Don Revie’s mighty Leeds United and, even though as an eight-year-old I had to admit they could knock the ball around a bit, I couldn’t bring myself to like them.

I never quite understood why. Sheer pig-headedness? Pre-adolescent rebellion? Perhaps.

Decades later, when I was watching Seinfeld, I found another likely explanation. When a friend of Jerry’s told him he would like a potential acquaintance, he replied: “Why would I like them? I don’t like anybody.”

Like Seinfeld – and like most journalists I know – I couldn’t stand someone else telling me something was good.

So whenever Leeds blew it – against Chelsea in the 1970 FA Cup final, Wolves to lose the league title in 1972 and Sunderland in the 1973 FA Cup final – I cheered, a gleefully gratuitous reaction which dad took in good part.

Chopper, Ossie and friends put a smile on the face of a young Paul Simpson

As I couldn’t support Leeds, I turned to Jimmy Bloomfield’s stylish Leicester City side, 16 miles from home in Nuneaton. A cousin and uncle were regulars at Filbert Street and within weeks my throat was raw as I joined in the Len Glover roar – a foot-stamping, ear-splitting, larynx-bursting noise that greeted the sight of Glover, on the wing. with the ball at his feet.

Coventry City were nearer but there were no family ties and, under Noel Cantwell’s management, they were one of the most sterile football teams in Europe. Dad often quoted Michael Parkinson’s appalled descriptions of the Sky Blues in which machine-gun-like Ernie Machin was forever mowing down anything that moved.

But Brazil, not Leeds, provoked the family’s first real football-related clash of generations. Although we are officially obliged to pretend, looking back, that we all supported that beautiful Brazil team in 1970, I didn’t. I supported England, wept after the tragedy of Leon and cheered on the Italians in the final because they had beaten the team who had beaten us and done so in a match so enthralling I can still recall particular scenes – Beckenbauer patrolling midfield with his arm in a sling, Riva stabbing home Italy’s third – as vividly as if I was watching it live today.

Luckily, dad was a shrewder judge and, after the final, decided it was time I, being nearly nine, learned to bend it like Rivelino.

Until then, my football practice in the back garden had been a kick and rush affair – five touches for me, playing as Team A, to get from one end of the lawn to the other and then I, as Team B, had five touches to get back to where I started.

This wasn’t, dad rightly concluded, the best way to train a footballer who aspired to play in the school team (ambitions that began and ended with one inconclusive substitute appearance, out of position, at left-back) and so, for much of that summer, he put the ball on a particular spot on the lawn and invited me to try and curl the ball over an imaginary wall.

I tried to curl it with every part of both feet – the outside, the inside, and the instep – and striking every area of the ball. But after four weeks, I began to lose heart. If the ball was curving, I couldn’t see it. So one night – after ten free-kicks went either infuriatingly straight or veered into the rhubarb – I rebelled, saying I wanted to revert to my old five-touch game.

Rivelino's set-pieces would hardly ever disturb rhubarb...

It was, in all fairness, a poor reward for his weeks of patient counsel. Looking at me with horror, dad complained: “You’re just like all the other Europeans, you just want to play kick and rush.”

Chastened, yet relieved, I ran down the other end of the lawn with the ball. I felt more at ease pretending to be Riva than Rivelino and dreamed of having a shot so powerful I could break a spectator’s arm, just like Riva, as my International Football Book Of The Year No13 informed me.

Yet for months, when dad wasn’t looking, I’d sneakily put the ball on that same spot, try a different method of kicking it and study the ball’s trajectory intensely, determined to calculate whether I had managed to make the ball deviate slightly from its normal path. I was never convinced.

When Revie left Leeds, I realised that dad belonged to that much-derided breed whose passion for the game was defined not by a particular club but by a commitment to, as he put it, “teams who play good football”. West Ham were always in favour – later I discovered his affection might owe something to family history: his dad, my grandfather, had enjoyed living in the East End in the 1920s when the Hammers had been in their pomp.

Apart from Revie’s Leeds and the Hammers, he admired Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. If their game wasn’t exactly Brazilian in its adventurousness, Forest did recognise that football is best played on the ground. And Clough, in the Midlands in the 1970s, was a plain-talking, maverick deity.

After I left home, our talks about football were more intermittent, often consisting largely of a prolonged post-mortem on England’s latest failure during – or on the brink of – a major tournament. (I had learned the lessons of Leon in 1970 well and never wept again: West Germany 1972, Poland 1973, Argentina 1986, Netherlands 1993, Brazil 2002 and Germany 2010 were greeted stoically with resigned despair). He mercifully missed the debacle in Bloemfontein – he was in Cyprus at the time – but rang next day to ask: “How bad were they?”

Dad was ahead of his time in the sense that he never seemed to expect too much from – or even particularly enjoy – watching England. He was much more ecstatic when Denmark beat Germany at Euro 1992 than I ever saw him after an England game.

Denmark celebrate Euro 92 glory (Simpson Sr. not pictured)

Whenever I was back in Nuneaton for the weekend, we would watch Match Of The Day. Dad’s mode of viewing was to pour himself a large glass of red wine, settle in his favourite armchair, shake his head occasionally and tut a lot. The only Premier League side he could bear to watch, he once announced, was Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal.

When I asked once why he didn’t watch much football, he said: “I can’t stand all the mistakes”. At the time, I took this for the curmudgeonliness of age but, a year later, accidentally catching a dire bottom of the table clash one not-so-Super Sunday, I started counting the errors. After nine consecutive changes of possession, I had to stop because continuing to watch this serial ineptitude had begun to seem like an act of idiocy.

In the 1960s, dad had entranced me with heroic tales of the Nuneaton Borough v Bedworth United derbies of his youth. In his enthusiastic telling, these legendary games were spectacular, gladiatorial contests played out before an enraptured throng.

In the derbies I’d seen, this great local rivalry manifested itself in some shamefully crude tackles and a 90-minute debate over which set of supporters were less likely to have a job. The highlight of ‘my’ derbies was a half-time pitch invasion I staged with a mate in a valiant, albeit hopelessly misguided, attempt to fill up our autograph books.

Nearly 50 years after those indifferent derbies, three generations of the family – my dad, brother-in-law, son and nephew – miraculously went to watch Boro. Not a derby, but Boro were still at home. It was the first time we had all been to watch the Boro – or Town as they had been renamed as punishment for some mysterious financial irregularities – and the match became even more of a family do when attacking full-back Eddie Nisevic, a cousin’s son, came on in the second half as Boro chased the game.

Like those coaches who watch from the stands, Dad had by then retired to the back row where he delighted in pointing out, with all the authority of a retired midfield general, which unit of the team wasn’t moving forward or back in unison and supporting the play as they were supposed to.

That was the last game we watched together but this week, in dad’s memory, I will venture into the back garden, put our deflated UEFA Champions League matchball in the middle of the lawn, and try, with little hope and even less expectation, to bend it like Rivelino.

Germania: Is fussball coming home?

2011-11-25T14:59:00Z

There were tears in the Basle dressing room when the players heard that coach Thorsten Fink was leaving.

Everybody knew that Hamburg would approach Fink but Swiss football assumed that, with Basle doing the business in the UEFA Champions League, their promising young coach would stay. But Fink couldn't resist this opportunity and, given the variables and vagaries that afflict the coaching profession, it’s hard to blame him.

If the 44-year-old coach had any doubt what his mission at Hamburg was, he only had to look at the clock in the corner of the club’s new stadium, which proudly counts down the months, days, minutes and seconds that the Red Shorts have been in the Bundesliga.

Before the Hoffenheim game kicked off, the clock stood at 48 years, 88 days, 33 minutes and 32 seconds, celebrating the fact that Hamburg are the only club to have played every season in the Bundesliga since it was formed in 1963. That is not a record the club plans to lose without a fight.

No pressure, then…

But has Fink instilled that urgency into his new players? Playing 3-4-3, they beat Hoffenheim 2-0 to earn three points that lifted them out of the relegation zone. But in the first 10 minutes, the Hamburg man who showed the most composure on the ball was probably Fink himself, trapping a ball on his chest on the touchline and calmly volleying it back onto the pitch. Some coaches would have turned this act into a piece of comedy, or self-congratulation, but Fink did it simply with minimal fuss and immediately focused on the game.

Peruvian striker Paolo Guerrero and German midfielder Marcell Jansen got Hamburg’s goals – Jansen made the second with a slalom through the Hoffenheim defence and scored with a calm finish – but the most assured players in red shorts were probably German international Dennis Aogo and Jeffrey Bruma. Given the challenges Chelsea face in central defence, the loan of Bruma – once hailed as the new John Terry (when JT was in his prime) – to Hamburg seems an odd oversight.

Fink (centre) with Arnesen and Bruma

The matchday programme’s cover star was Gokhan Tore, Hamburg’s tricksy, muscular Turkish wide player who – at the age of 19 – already looks as accomplished as Hoffenheim’s Ryan Babel. The 24-year-old Dutch winger, once tipped alongside Lionel Messi to be one of the stars of the 2006 World Cup, raised hopes with his mazy runs but, as he did so often at Anfield, cruelly extinguished them with a lack of end product.

Still, it doesn’t pay to be too dogmatic about such matters. To the layman’s eyes, the best that could be said of Hamburg striker Marcus Berg’s performance was that he was constantly on the verge of being effectual. After the game, the first question put to Fink was about Berg. The coach replied that the stats showed that Berg had set up more shots – five – than anyone else on the pitch so he was happy with his No.16’s performance.

Three points, after too many draws, was a step in the right direction for Fink. But we may have to wait until next season to see if one of Germany’s most promising coaches can really bring back the glory days to Hamburg. As I write this, it is 10,411 days since the great Ernst Happel’s Red Shorts won the European Cup.

Happel, the missing link
Orthodoxy has it that Victor Maslov invented pressing in the 1960s. The tactic was then used, in differing degrees, by Rinus Michels and Valeriy Lobanovskiy before Arrigo Sacchi triumphantly deployed it with Milan in the late 1980s. But when I discussed Happel with Uli Hesse, author of the seminal German football history Tor!, he reminded me that the Austrian had used this very tactic as Hamburg coach in the 1980s.

Happel in his Hamburg pomp

Happel was an eccentric, inspirational coach who won the European Cup with Feyenoord in 1970 before steering Hamburg to an unlikely victory over Juventus in 1983. His players were never quite sure what he was going to say to them before a match. Sometimes, he would barely talk at all – but the Hamburg players do remember that often, just as they were about to run out into the stadium, his closing words would be: “And don’t forget the pressing.”

The trouble with genius
Pressing isn’t one of the qualities you associate with Arjen Robben. The Dutch master of the wing is arguably the greatest conundrum facing Jupp Heynckes as he tries to win the Bundesliga and ensure Bayern take part in the UEFA Champions League final on their own turf next May.

Robben has the pace, trickery and technique to turn any match against any calibre of opposition, as he showed with that wondrous volley against Manchester United in April 2010. And yet his brand of greatness is, let’s be honest, more predictable than that of Franck Ribery (who, gratuitous plug, is the cover star of the latest Champions).

When Robben gets the ball, you know he isn’t going to run to the by-line to whip in a cross. It’s also not especially likely that he will pass. Robben is invariably looking to create the opportunity for him to score. And this single-mindedness presents the opposing defender with fewer uncertainties than Ribery or Thomas Muller, who has looked remarkably good on the right for Bayern this season. And to accommodate Robben, Heynckes has to play Muller infield, which means that Toni Kroos, who had a foot in both Bayern goals against Villarreal, has to change his game too.

Germany’s Dutch lesson
“English football,” the Austrian journalist Willy Meisl (brother of the great coach Hugo) liked to say, “has forgotten much and learned nothing”. The same cannot be said of the German national team. When they beat Netherlands 3-0 in their recent friendly, there was only one team playing in the style the Dutch have made famous – and it wasn’t the team in orange. You should never build too much on one result but that performance – and the national side’s record in qualifying (Played 10, W10, D0, L0, F34, A7) – suggests this could be the best German side since the one that won Euro 1972.

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“A goal isn’t the most important thing, it’s everything”

2011-11-17T12:12:00Z

Azzurri’s greatest goalscorer opens up to discuss a striker’s psychology, physical power and the perfect modern striker

Outside Italy, Luigi Riva is now almost unknown, but in his late 1960s heyday he was such a compelling, legendary figure that two Sardinian bandits once came out of hiding to watch him lead Cagliari’s attack – and were promptly arrested.

Was Riva really that good? He probably had the hardest shot in football history – around 124mph if you take into account the way the ball has changed – and once famously generated enough power with his left-foot to break a spectator’s arm with the ball.

Thunderous acclaim

Between 1967 and 1970, Riva powered Italy to victory in the European Championships and the World Cup final in Mexico, won the scudetto with Cagliari and was top scorer in Serie A in 1967, 1969 and 1970. He is still the Azzurri’s record goalscorer (35 in just 42 matches) and would have won the Ballon d’Or in 1969 if Gianni Rivera hadn’t inspired Milan to victory in the European Cup final.

In this brief, but golden period, Riva was the most fascinating footballer on the planet. He was Cagliari – even more than Maradona was Napoli in the late 1980s: in his seminal book Calcio, John Foot recalls how one supporter watched a roadside game in Sardinia “where all 22 players wore Riva’s number eleven shirt”. His most famous goal, against West Germany in 1970, graced the greatest semi-final – and the greatest period of extra-time – the tournament has ever seen.

The great Italian football writer Gianni Brera once gave Riva the unprecedented rating of “9+” in a match report defending himself against charges of undue generosity by declaring: “I baptise him rombo di tuono (thunder-clap)… he is one of the most extraordinary athletes ever produced by Italian football.”

There is nothing Riva doesn’t know about scoring goals. He scored with diving headers, long-range shots, and overhead kicks. And what’s why I was so delighted he agreed to share his thoughts on the goalscorer’s art in our dossier on strikers in the 50th issue (count ‘em!) of Champions.

The power of Messi

Riva’s opinions are as bold as his play. In the interview he explains to Sergio Di Cesare why he often looked angry when he scored: “A goal isn’t the most important thing, it’s everything. When a forward doesn’t score, his character changes, he becomes sad, argumentative, insecure, stubborn, selfish and short-tempered in every aspect of his life.”

Unlike many greats of his era, he doesn’t denigrate today’s game; he celebrates it – while pointing out that some of what we think of as modern was invented in the 1970s. “Today an attacker must be a complete player,” he says. To be specific, they need to create space with their movement, flourish with their back to goal, make the most of tight spaces, contribute to the team’s collective play and have the guts to take the risks that may create a goal. “I’ve met peerless penalty takers who never missed but refused to take on in the dying minutes of a big match<’ he confides.

Technically and physically audacious, Riva had his leg broken twice and suffered countless other injuries. But he insists that today, more than ever, raw physical power is crucial: “Even Messi has it – and intelligence, speed and technique.”

The contemporary strikers he rates most highly are Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. But asked to identify the definitive modern striker, Riva selects Johan Cruyff.

“Despite his slim physique, Cruyff was fast, tough and nasty when necessary. He was intelligent enough to know where the ball was going before the others, how to control it and never lose it. He directed the play,” says the artist formerly known as Rombo di tuono. “All that was 40 years ago. Cruyff played like the best attackers of today.”

The iconoclastic Italian movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini once said of Riva: “He plays poetic football. He is a realistic poet.” Icons like Riva and Cruyff may have hung up their boots years ago but their poetic realism lives on in the likes of Rooney, Messi and Ibra.

Champions is now available electronically. Aside from Riva’s thoughts on strikers, the 50th issue of the magazine reviews the 20 greatest moments in UEFA Champions League history, explores how Mats Hummels uses body language to fire up his team and reveals why Czech midfield legend Pavel Horvath is happy to have the physique of an ice hockey player.

Platini plays down talk of a crisis as calcio left hoping for Barca collapse

2011-09-13T10:56:00Z

As another European football season kicks off, Italian football faces what F. Scott Fitzgerald once described as the ultimate test of human intelligence: knowing that things are hopeless but acting as if they aren’t.

At UEFA’s season kick-off in Monaco last month, calcio’s best and brightest were privately admitting that they could face an annus horribilis. Over a cup of café fredo in the Meridien Beach Plaza, one lamented: "Italian football is in its worst shape since the 1970s when we didn’t win the European Cup between 1969 and 1985. The difference is that at least then teams were investing in youth. Some do today, but too many are content to recruit all their players in the transfer market."

Eto’o’s departure or a lucrative exile in Dagestan, the lack of what marketers like to call a 'marquee signing' by the Milan giants, and the growing uncertainty over the Italian economy, have all contributed to the general depression.

Calcio’s greats have traditionally subscribed to the theory that football in general – and great teams in particular – works in cycles. If calcio was a superhero franchise it would seem to be currently stuck at the Batman And Robin stage. Sheer tact and the laws of libel prevent me, alas, from speculating as to who is the Chris O’Donnell of Italian football. The good news, of course, is that a Christopher Nolan-style rebirth lies ahead. But it took eight years from George Clooney’s bemused caped crusader to Christian Bale’s dark knight struck artistic and commercial gold. Will calcio have to wait that long?

Possibly not. In their desperate hours, Italians have looked to Michel Platini, the UEFA president, who, shortly before teeing off at a charity golf tournament in Turin, assured the media: "Is Italian football going through a crisis? In my four years in office, I have handed the Champions League trophy to two Italian teams – so I can’t see a crisis. I’m sure Italian teams will soon return to the top."

Michel's not wrong - AC Milan and Inter celebrate in 2007 and 2010

The bianconeri legend was especially optimistic about his old club: "Juve will rule again. It’s a great thing to have your own stadium: big clubs need that." It’s possible that the example of ‘NewVentus’ – and its £90m investment in its very own stadium – may be the catalyst that persuades other clubs to invest in the facilities today that will generate millions in revenue tomorrow. But so far there’s no great evidence of that. And even if there was, it would take a while to revolutionise calcio’s performance on and off the pitch.

So Italians have partly consoled themselves by constructing scenarios in which Barcelona’s domination of the European game collapses. Some put their faith in calcio’s prince-in-exile, Jose Mourinho who has made an already strong Real Madrid squad even more impressive over the summer and has what writer Phil Ball might call the 'morbo' to disturb Barcelona in the knockout stages.

Others cite the wise words of Sir Matt Busby and highlight what they claim is a change in Barcelona’s strategy. The first Scot to win the European Club with an English club famously remarked that: "Any team is apt to be over the top within five years of reaching it". Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona are in their third year – surely, some pundits suggest, they must start to exhibit some frailties soon?

Barcelona’s activity in the transfer market suggests, some cynics claim, that the coaches have evaluated La Masia’s next generation and found them wanting. This would not be entirely surprising: how do you ensure that your youth stars are as good as Xavi, Iniesta and Messi?

The deals which have seen Bojan Krkic, Jeffren and Orio Romero leave Camp Nou – for good or for an indefinite period – do suggest the difficulty many young players face breaking through.

Bojan was forced to leave Camp Nou for Serie A this summer

"Barcelona have a golden generation that has not just played together but trained together for years," said my Italian companion as he sipped his fredo. "How easy will it be to replace that? Especially if they have to buy in players who haven’t been trained in the La Masia way."

You might think that that sound you can hear in the distance is that of a once great football nation collectively reaching for the nearest straw as it tries to avoid drowning in a sea of troubles but the question is not entirely stupid.

The patterns Barcelona weave on the pitch are so mesmerizingly effective because they have become almost instinctive, so instinctive that even world class players like Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Vila have not always been in tune with their teammates. And over the next few years, Barcelona will have to replace the likes of Puyol (34), Alves (28), Abidal (32), Keita (31), Villa (29) and Xavi (31) while Mascherano and Iniesta are both 27. How effectively they are replaced will determine how long this glorious cycle lasts.

The mere fact that such scenarios are being spun reveals calcio’s colossal lack of self-confidence. But it also reflects the fact that many Italians believe their chances of staving off another 15-year wait for the European Cup would be much improved if the greatest team since Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan showed signs of wear and tear.

The truth is that many others across Europe will spin such scenarios about the European champions. This isn’t Barcelona’s fault – it is just that in an age where football has become ubiquitous such greatness can, all too quickly, become oppressive. Especially if you’re trying to win the trophy they seem set to monopolise.

Still on the subject of Barcelona, the new issue of Champions includes a conversation with Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s erudite technical director, about the secret of Barcelona’s possession play. (A clue: it’s not all about passing.) And we have an interview with Sergio Aguero, whose greatness has already begun to oppress defenders in the Premier League.

Kuper, Messi, Pele, pressing, Barcelona and historical revisionism

2011-07-22T11:00:00Z

Champions editor Paul Simpson might be on a well-deserved summer holiday but you can't keep a good writer down...

On the plane to Verona, I took Simon Kuper’s The Football Men, a work of dogmatic genius. Kuper is such a gifted writer he almost creates his own football universe. In Kuperland, the Dutch are always right – even when they’re not. So, mysteriously, are Olympique Lyonnais.

The virtues of the French club’s approach to transfers was praised to the skies in Why England Lose, Kuper’s last book – which was published, with brilliant irony, at the very point Lyon’s approach to transfers jumped the shark.

In this new collection, Lyon’s fitness coach Robert Duverne is “brilliant” while director of football Bernard Lacombe is the “owner of one of the best pairs of eyes in the game”. With the club oozing genius from every department, Lyon’s failure to win Ligue 1 since 2008 is utterly baffling.

Kuper reveres most Dutch footballers but usually views English footballers with patronising contempt. His anatomy of the five stages of an English international’s career is telling, revelatory and funny – I hadn’t realised that Ashley Cole reprints his wedding speech in his autobiography – and he predictably blames the players not Fabio Capello for the debacle in South Africa.

The England players should take their share of the blame but Kuper’s verdict ignores Carlo Ancelotti’s revelation, in his entertaining memoirs, that even footballers as technically astute as the Milan squad of 1993/94 sometimes found it hard to understand Capello when he discussed tactics.

"Just smile and nod, George, smile and nod"

Sometimes, Kuper’s certainty leads him astray. In a fascinating profile of Franck Ribery (which reveals that he once picked up a 100kg club doctor and put him in the wash basket), he says: “There are two types of attacking players. The one type – the passer, Zidane – wants the ball to his feet so he can pass it. The other – the runner, Henry – runs deep so the passer can give it to him in space. Ribery, uniquely, is both types in one.”

Hang on, doesn’t a certain Barcelona No.10 do that as well?

And then there’s the profile of Florent Malouda which includes the startling sentence: “Malouda has no weaknesses”. As any Chelsea fan can tell you, Malouda can drift so completely out of a game that his very existence becomes the subject of abstruse philosophical debate.

All of which may sound like I hated the book. But I loved it. Kuper’s collection is so opinionated, interesting and challenging it will have you arguing with yourself. It has taught me more about football – and what I think about football – than any book I have read in the last five years

Total Barça!
When I’m on holiday, I conduct an informal census of football shirts as a crude popularity index. This July, on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy, I spotted seven Barcelona shirts (five of which bore Messi’s name) and two Argentina shirts (both with Messi on the back).

Only Inter – we were staying in Salo, only 65 miles from Milan – came close to Barca’s dominance with four shirts. After that came Bayern (three), Milan (two) and Spain (two), while Ajax, Brazil, Juventus, Manchester United and Mozambique had a shirt each. The other players to be honoured were Arjen Robben and Pato (both twice), Alessandro del Piero, Nigel de Jong, Fernando Torres and David Villa.

On a ferry, I was astonished by one Dutch family’s allegiance to all things Nike. Dad wore a Nike T90 shirt, the eldest son had an insipid pale blue Nike KNVB shirt, while his little brother wore a Barcelona shirt and a Manchester United cap. The bad news for Florentino Perez is that I didn’t spot a single Real Madrid shirt in 10 days in Italy.

Does this mean anything? Yes and no. Barcelona are now as ubiquitous and as inescapable as Elvis in the 1950s or the Beatles in the 1960s. I’d be prepared to bet that if you walked down the main street in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, you would probably find a boy running around in a Barcelona shirt with Messi’s name on the back.

Mini-Messis in Palestine

You can’t blame Pep or Messi, but Barcelona’s supremacy is so marked it has almost become oppressive. In the latest Champions, the likes of Gabriele Marcotti, Ian Hawkey, Uli Hesse and Phil Ball debate whether the current Barcelona team are the best in the history of the European Cup. They certainly look like the team most likely to retain the trophy since Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan in 1990.

Pele, Brazil 1970 and the joys of historical revisionism
On ESPN the other night I stumbled on a rerun of Brazil 1 England 0 at the 1970 World Cup. I hadn’t seen the match in years and was impressed anew by the intelligence of Bobby Moore and his ease on the ball as he drove England forward in search of the equaliser.

What I hadn’t noticed first time around was that the Brazil side, as beautifully as the played, were not averse to the darker arts. Pele was so sublime it was a shock to see him tumbling theatrically in the penalty area, just as I was stunned by how often some of his team-mates – including the gorgeously talented Jairzinho – left their foot in longer than was necessary.

Jeff Astle’s miss still astounds. It’s tempting to wonder what would have happened if Sir Alf Ramsey had stuck to his original plan and used Peter Osgood, the one England player who, in training, seemed to thrive in the heat, rather than wilt in it.

I was struck too by Martin Peters' selflessness as he diligently pressed Brazil on the edge of their area. England’s pressing wasn’t as concerted as Milan’s under Sacchi – Peters did most of the harrying in what was presumably a deliberate ploy by Ramsey to restrain Carlos Alberto – but the sight did raise the question: who invented the pressing game?

"Come on Peters, get after 'em"

Sacchi perfected it but admits he was inspired by Rinus Michel’s Ajax in the 1970s. The Dutch school certainly lies behind Barcelona’s pressing, but as Jonathan Wilson has pointed out the great Ukrainian coach Valeriy Lobanovskyi wrote an authoritative tome on pressing, The Methodological Basis Of The Development Of Training Models.

Steven Johnson’s brilliant new book Where Good Ideas Come From suggests that many discoveries are made simultaneously – the classic case being sunspots, found by scientists in four different countries in 1611 – and this may be true of pressing.

By hounding Brazil in their half, Peters was pressing in a way of which Lobanovskyi would approve. It wasn’t a tactic England deployed as a team – it might have been impossible in the heat of Guadalajara, even though the game was often played at walking pace – but the match left me wondering whether the evolution of pressing might be more complex and interesting than the orthodox history which draws a straight line from Michels to Sacchi and then on, via Cruyff, to Guardiola.

Marquee Messi, Wembley woes for Presidents & 1978's best manager

2011-05-27T12:40:00Z

Champions editor Paul Simpson unleashes some random thoughts ahead of the Wembley final

A century before certain notable events happened in England, 1866 was a great year for Argentinian football: Angelo Messi was born. Seventeen years on, Lionel Messi’s great-great-great-grandfather set sail from Italy to Rosario, a journey that transformed football more than a century later. The glorious talent that so conspicuously lights up Argentina could have inspired the Azzurri.

Indeed, Barcelona’s essential No.10 could have starred for Inter, Juventus or Milan. Enrico Preziosi, who now owns Genoa, revealed a while back that little Leo could have joined Calcio Como: “He came to us for a trial. He was 15 and we rejected him. He cost $50,000. Every now and then one makes a mistake. Certainly when you see him now you can say we could have balanced the accounts for 30 years…

"We had someone following him, we spoke with his family, he was very keen to come to Italy, but nothing happened. We decided not to take him on also because of the approach we have [in Italy], the lack of interest in following young players. Almost no one takes on young players like that, with the idea of going through the whole process of turning them into an important player and then giving them a professional contract.”

Little Leo, 8: That's never in the quadrant, ref

Two years ago, Erik Bielderman, the great French football journalist, analysed Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and his thoughts are worth quoting at length: “Ronaldo, you love him or you hate him. Messi you can only love. Ronaldo’s talent is condensed and overshadowed by his behaviour, which puts him in the same category as Maradona: absolute talents who cheat and whom we find bad-mannered, but who have this indispensible dimension of being at the top of the bill.

"Messi doesn’t have this dimension. He’s the young, middle class man who succeeds with discretion. Only his game is fantastic… I love Messi, but Ronaldo excites me. Messi has such a low centre of gravity he can pull off moves that are not possible for 99% of people. He surfs on a physiological quasi-handicap. Ronaldo, physically, has nothing to make him a player of genius. What he’s accomplished in being a great is for me more complicated than what Messi does.”

***

Whoever wins at Wembley, Messi’s eminence could change the balance of power in world football. Argentina just seem to be producing more “marquee names”, to use an odious marketing term, than Brazil right now. With a proper manager, they could even win the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The Selecao desperately need to unearth a new Pele, Ronaldo or Romario.

***

While much of mainland Europe will cheer on Barcelona, many Italians have adopted Manchester United. In part, this is sheer resentment at the supremacy of such a heavily eulogised Mediterranean rival but it also reflects calcio’s deep, enduring concern for the art of defence. By becoming the first team not to concede away from home in an entire UEFA Champions League campaign, United have done something that resonates in Italy, with Gazzetta Dello Sport praising their “ironclad defence”.

"Italy loves us! Yay!"

***

Barack Obama has enough to worry about but I’m going to add to his stress anyway. As a keen student of American history (and apparent fan of football), he may be intrigued to know that no US President in office at the time of a Wembley European Cup final has left the White House of his own volition.

JFK, in power when Milan beat Benfica 2-1 in 1963, was shot six months later. By the time Manchester United beat Benfica in 1968, JFK’s successor LBJ had already announced he would not seek re-election on the very reasonable grounds that nobody wanted to re-elect him. Richard Nixon was in the Oval Office in 1971, when Ajax beat Panathinaikos, but he quit in 1974 to spare himself the indignity of impeachment.

Jimmy Carter (in office when Liverpool beat Bruges in 1978) and George Bush Snr (riding high when Barcelona beat Sampdoria in 1992) both lost their subsequent bids for re-election. Can Obama beat the Wembley European Cup final curse?

***

Until we started researching previous Wembley European Cup finals for the new issue of Champions (out now folks, with rare insight into The Flea by Graham Hunter, a fantastic look at Nereo Rocco and an intriguing analysis of the forgotten men of Total Football), I hadn’t realised how remarkable 1978 was for the great Austrian coach Ernst Happel.

On 10 May, he led Bruges out at Wembley in the European Cup final against Liverpool, having disposed of Juventus in the semi-final. Deprived of influential centre-forward Raoul Lambert and midfielder Paul Courant, Happel told Bruges to keep it cagey and lost 1-0 due to the combined genius of Graeme Souness and Kenny Dalglish.

Happel in the '70s: He's earned that drink

Six weeks later, he reached the World Cup final as coach of the Netherlands, and again found himself facing the host country. Preparing to face Argentina in the manic surroundings of the Estadio Monumental, Happel gave one of the most memorably succinct pre-match team talks – “Gentlemen, two points” – but the Dutch lost 3-1. Once again, absentees hurt Happel – Johan Cruyff didn’t travel to Argentina because he was still unnerved by a kidnap attempt in 1977 – yet he almost managed to achieve the highly improbable.

Happel is a vastly underrated coach. He was the first manager to win the European Cup with two clubs, Feyenoord and Hamburg, and in both finals he overcame the favourites (Celtic in 1970 and Juventus in 1983). As a free-scoring defender (he once smashed a hat-trick against Real Madrid in the European Cup), he had the sheer audacity to trap the ball with his backside in the quarter-final of the 1954 World Cup, when Austria beat Switzerland 7-5. They don’t make 'em like him anymore.

Champions, the official magazine of the UEFA Champions League, is out now. Buy it here

Why Sparta are better than Barça

2011-03-04T14:00:00Z

Sometimes the best questions have no definitive answers.

We all relish the thrill of office one-upmanship when we know the answer to a seriously trivial football question. For example, on Champions this week, we were intrigued by a uefa.com story pointing out that the three Italian teams in the last 16 must overturn a first-leg deficit away from home, something only one team has done before in the UEFA Champions League’s knockout stages.

That team was Ajax in the 1995/96 semi-final, who lost 1-0 in Amsterdam to Panathinaikos and beat the Greek champions 3-0 in Athens. Perhaps the effort wore Louis van Gaal’s side out because they weren’t at their best in the final, losing a shootout to Juventus. With historical precedent so firmly against calcio, no wonder Gazzetta dello Sport has already written off the hopes of Inter, Milan and Roma, declaring “Goodbye Europe”.

Is the sun setting on Italian Euro-hopes?

Lies, damned lies and record books
Only a few weeks ago, Barcelona’s record-breaking la Liga run of 16 wins in a row prompted uefa.com to study the history books and declare that Benfica, who racked up 29 successive victories between 1971 and 1973, had the longest winning run in Europe. In England, the longest winning streak is 14, a record shared by Arsenal (2002-3 in Premier League), Bristol City (Second Division 1905-06), Manchester United (Second Division, 1904-05), and Preston North End (Second Division 1950-51).

Benfica’s tally isn’t a world record. As Uli Hesse (author of the lovely Tor!) pointed out in an email, rsssf.com – a sumptuous online archive where geeks like myself like to while away the hours – suggests that Jordan’s Al-Faysali racked up 32 wins in a row between August 2001 and March 2003.

The trail doesn’t end there. The same site’s celebration of unbeaten runs notes that Sparta Prague embarked on a run of 51 straight victories between 1920 and 1923. Digging deeper, Uli found more detail which suggested that Sparta also won all three games in an end of season mini-tournament in 1919, so the invincible Reds probably won a minimum of 54 matches in succession.

I say minimum because we don’t know yet know at which point in 1919 Sparta failed to win a match nor in what particular round of the 1924 season their victorious sequence came to an abrupt end.

Comedians and café owners
No wonder supporters call the team of this era “Iron Sparta”. Among the Sparta stars of the 1920s and 1930s, two stand out for contrasting reasons: goalkeeper Vlasta Burian later became the king of Czech comedy, while inside-forward Oldrich Nejedly scored 161 goals in 187 games in eight years with Sparta and was top scorer in the 1934 World Cup with five goals. He would have scored even more but broke his leg in 1938 when he was 29, retiring a year later.

Nejedly shared his goalscoring burden at Sparta with Raymond Braine, a Belgian café owner and striker who – with football in Belgium still an amateur affair – felt compelled to play abroad. Failing to obtain a work permit for Clapton Orient, Braine joined Sparta but couldn’t have been entirely mercenary because he turned down a lucrative offer to change his nationality to lead Czechoslovakia’s attack in the 1934 World Cup.

The Sparta sides of the 1920s and 1930s were great. And their record of at least 54 wins in a row makes Barcelona’s recent 16 on the trot look a bit puny. But can we conclusively say they have won more games in a row than any other team in the history of football?

Afraid not. Exhaustive research hasn’t found a team with a longer winning run than Sparta. But feel free to tell me otherwise.

Tall Poppies & Chris Waddle: The necessary ordeal of Thomas Muller

2011-03-01T10:30:00Z

The Twitterati have spoken. Thomas Muller, the 21-year-old wunderkind who won the Golden Boot at last year’s mediocre World Cup, is officially a disappointment.

Against Inter, the great white hope of German football did a lot of running but – contrary to what those xenophobic dullards who continually slate Dimitar Berbatov for ‘laziness’ might have you believe – running is not in itself a guarantee of a player’s quality. And one header that missed the target seemed to crystallise the commentariat’s view that the possessor of the second most famous surname in Bayern’s history has gone off the boil.

In one way, this verdict has absolutely nothing to do with Muller’s actual form. It is partly inspired by the changing nature of football commentary. Gone are the days when the likes of Barry Davies or Huw Johns would polish their literary allusions or bon mots (one of John’s finest, politically incorrect, remarks was “He owns a flower shop this feller but he’s no daisy”).

Today many commentators have adopted the tone of a disappointed headmaster. This scolding tone has reached a monotonous, joyless crescendo with Chris Waddle’s analysis on ESPN.

Waddle (right) blathering on about 'pelanties' for ESPN...

The Waddler, as his pal Gazza used to call him, has become a professional scourge, taking every opportunity to grumble that such-and-such a striker really should have ‘made the goalkeeper work‘, bemoan the abysmal quality of any ball into the box, and rebuke a defender when a pass goes astray.

We don’t want commentators or pundits to be cheerleaders but Waddle picks fault so often and with such enthusiasm you would think he’d never tried something that didn’t come off, dropped a clanger or blasted a penalty over the bar in a World Cup semi-final.

That’s a cheap shot, I know, but Waddle’s bluster is irritating and paradoxical: in his diatribe about Theo Walcott’s deficiencies he sounded remarkably like the kind of blinkered coaches who forced him to play abroad in his heyday.

There’s only one Oleg Salenko!

Waddle is a particularly telling example of a joyless tendency Australians call Tall Poppy Syndrome. And right now Muller has become, for many, the tall poppy that needs cutting down.

The good news for the Bayern forward is that this is an ordeal every good player must endure. Despite thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, we like to pretend that people’s lives follow a simple arc.

If they start good, they ought to become great before, inevitably, spinning into decline. If they fail to conform to this pattern – and most footballers do, their progress is a stop-start, two steps forward, one back, kind of process – the idea soon spreads that they are overrated. This gap between how we believe players ought to develop – and how they really grow – is behind what many pundits call “second season syndrome”.

Thomas Muller: Tall poppy or previously overrated?

So now eight months after he was officially one of the most promising young footballers in the world, it is Muller’s turn. The worst-case scenario for the Bayern star is he becomes the new Oleg Salenko, the joint Golden Boot winner at USA 94, whose career petered out at Rangers where he showed more commitment in flare gun fights with Gazza than he ever did on the pitch.

Things haven’t sunk that far yet. Indeed, the stats suggest they haven’t sunk very far at all. In 38 games for club and country in 2010/11, Muller has scored 18 goals and created 15. In 46 games in 2009/10, he scored 19 and was credited with ten assists – the kind of crisis in form many Chelsea players would love to be suffering right now.

So why has the commentariat rushed to condemn him? Muller is not a perfect footballer – he can drift out of games, could be more ruthless in front of goal and might fare better if he was physically more robust. But he has more technique than most English players, doesn’t lose his cool, can play in a variety of positions and shows glimpses of impressive vision. Not bad for a forward who only made his debut for Bayern in August 2008 and is still younger than Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.

An encouraging strangulation

I wonder if the real challenge Muller faces at Bayern isn’t about focus or quality but about imposing himself. That is why I find it deeply encouraging that Arjen Robben recently tried to strangle him for showing disrespect. Holding your own in an attack alongside such gifted egocentrics as Franck Ribery and Robben, especially with Mario Gomez emerging as first choice fox in the box, cannot be easy.

And Muller comes across as a pretty straightforward, level-headed young man who doesn’t indulge in the same power games as many of his peers. He has been tipped as a likely new Ronaldo. That might sound fanciful to those who saw him against Inter, but he has already amassed a third of the Brazilian striker’s record-breaking tally in World Cup finals.

If there’s one thing Muller could learn from the original Ronaldo, it is probably that great players achieve greatness by being selfish when necessary. If Muller is to silence the doubters, he needs to discover his inner devil.

Dyspeptic Pep, Arshavin's missing gloves & toys without batteries

2011-02-18T13:12:00Z

Has anyone seen Arshavin’s gloves?

What I want to know is what did Andrei Arshavin do with his gloves? Arsenal’s diminutive No.23 hails from St Petersburg, where winter temperatures of –20ºC are not uncommon, but on a moderately chilly February night in north London he ran onto the pitch sporting dainty black gloves.

Fifteen minutes later, when his superb finish completed a remarkable counterattack and an even more remarkable resurrection, he was mysteriously barehanded. As I left the East Stand, an Arsenal supporter vehemently declared: “I knew Arshavin would come good in the end.”

If that particular Gooner appeared on Mastermind, his specialist subject would be being wise after the event.

Psychic Philippe

The euphoria was understandable: nobody expected this. Actually, that’s not quite true. Philippe Auclair, who covers English clubs for L’Equipe, had a tenner on Arsenal to win 2-1 at odds of 14/1. At half-time, the odds on a 2-1 home win had soared to 125/1 but his faith was vindicated. Psychic Philippe’s one regret? Not putting a fiver on Robin van Persie to score Arsenal’s first goal.

Van Persie’s strike is a perfect illustration that in football – as William Goldman once said of Hollywood – “Nobody knows anything”.

As Nicklas Bendtner came on for Theo Walcott, I lamented the fact that Arsene Wenger hadn’t brought van Persie off. Sixty seconds later, the yellow-booted genius had found the net with a superb strike that bisected the wide open space Victor Valdes had helpfully left between himself and the near post.

I felt partially vindicated by Valdes’s error. His kicking had been so erratic since the first minute I assumed that, if he was as out of sorts as his distribution suggested, it was only a matter of time before he dropped a clanger.

Yet when David Villa gave Barcelona what hack match reporters call a “richly deserved lead”, Valdes’s form seemed irrelevant. Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona spent most of the first half torturing Arsenal with possession.

In Row 28, the effect of all these pretty little triangles was almost hypnotic, trance inducing. Only one man in the stadium didn’t seem mesmerised with delight: Pep Guardiola.

Dyspeptic Pep

He cut an increasingly grumpy figure on the touchline, possibly because he could see that, while Barcelona ran through their training ground routines, they often had two on one and a prairie’s worth of space on the other flank.

Some coaches tell their team to break games into ten-minute blocks. The ebb and flow of any match is such that even Barcelona will, at times, allow opponents into the game. And Guardiola looked fretful as his side failed to capitalise on their utter dominance.

They created chances and were unlucky with some decisions, but they only managed five attempts on target (compared to Arsenal’s seven), a poor return for 61% of possession and 629 passes.

Perhaps there are some realities in football that even a team as immense as Barcelona cannot ignore. For the last few seasons, Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s technical director, has emphasised the importance of counter-attacking in the UEFA Champions League. And the key characteristic of any counter — the former Scotland manager insists — is speed.

Many of Barcelona’s counters were so slow and methodical that even a relatively static Arsenal had thoroughly regrouped. For a while at the start of the second half, Barcelona did switch the play with a few crossfield balls – maybe Guardiola had had a word. But the principle that the last thing you learn is the first thing you forget kicked in and they reverted to more intricate play. As the Spanish daily El Pais put it, Barcelona became “more administrative and less ambitious”.

Arsenal’s second goal vindicated Roxburgh: a first time side-foot pass from the ever impressive Jack Wilshere, a touch and a beautifully weighted pass by Cesc Fabregas to Samir Nasri, a cut inside and a lovely rolled pass across the area and Arshavin made a tricky chance look like a tap-in.

The Spanish press felt the substitutions turned the match. Wenger gambled and was rewarded. Guardiola tried to hold on to what he had and lost it. Actually, Arshavin for Alexandre Song wasn’t a massive gamble. Song had committed six fouls, had been booked and was drifting into some very odd positions in his quest to change the game.

Arsenal looked more settled with Arshavin out wide and Wilshere and Fabregas organising midfield. Seydou Keita is hardly your clichéd holding midfielder but his arrival – in place of Villa – took much of the sting out of Barcelona’s attack. Bojan for Villa might have worked better.

Even so, Barca almost snatched a late equaliser as Arsenal’s defence nearly imploded. When the final whistle blew, the Gooners rose in triumph but you could hear the relief in their joy.

The only disappointment in this enthralling match was seeing Sergio Busquets, fairly early on, urging the referee to show Song a second yellow card. Still, I was impressed by Guardiola’s dignified response to the result: “It’s a pity we lost but these things happen in football.”

Away daze

Guardiola also alluded to an issue that must trouble him. If Barcelona are the best team in the world, they should convince on the road. Since 2009/10, their record away from home in the Champions League stands at Played 10, Won 2, Drawn 6, Lost 2.

Although the British press focused on Messi’s failure to score in his seventh game with Barca on English soil, the fault is not his alone. Since 2009/10, Barca have averaged 1.2 goals a game away from home in this competition – and 2.55 goals a game at Camp Nou.

Wenger can take heart from this game. Arsenal’s resilient spirit, Nasri’s return (he looked off the pace initially but grew to influence the match), Laurent Koscielny (who would earn even more plaudits if he’d learned the first rule of televised football: never look gormless when you’ve made a mistake – if in doubt, point), Wilshire’s eerie maturity and Arshavin’s renaissance are all positives.

Guardiola may console himself with the thought that his side were below par but, if they’d had a penalty and not had a goal wrongly disallowed, would probably have won.

Guardiola’s luck didn’t placate the Spanish media. In El Mundo, Julian Ruiz said Messi had “lost the thread of his dynamite”, accused Andres Iniesta of “sleep-walking” and labelled Barcelona a “club in crisis”. This seems outlandish but Ruiz’s remark that Barca played like a “toy without batteries” is not entirely absurd.

Without Carles Puyol, they seemed to lack a leader on the pitch. Maybe that’s another reality even Barcelona can’t ignore: great teams need the spirit to match their technique.

So what’s next? One thing is all but certain: Barcelona will score in the Camp Nou. They have now done so in their last 11 knockout matches in this competition. The more intriguing question is: will Arsenal score too? They will now believe they can.

The odds still favour Barcelona but Guardiola may yet rue losing a game his side could, at one stage, have won 3-0.

Zombies, rattlesnakes & ducklings - The Champions League is back

2011-02-15T12:15:00Z

This blog is a literary experiment. Before you hit the back button, I'll explain. There is a silvery black hole on my laptop keyboard where the letter 'j' should be. I must therefore contemplate the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League without calling on the tenth letter of the alphabet. This does mean the usual lengthy, occasionally turgid analysis will be replaced with a few half-formed, probably derivative thoughts.

Chelsea's destiny may be decided on the flanks

Playing three at the back against Chelsea was a shrewd ploy by Kenny Dalglish, but it was no Einsteinian masterstroke. Even when they don't play the diamond, Chelsea's attack has often been far too narrow this season.

Instead of getting behind defences near the by-line, Chelsea have usually played it through the middle and, with so many of their talismanic players in inconsistent form, many promising attacks have petered out in front of the opposing penalty area.

Is Fernando Torres the answer? That depends on the question. One Chelsea season ticket holder gave Nando's arrival a muted welcome. "What I'd really like," he grumbled, "is someone who can pass the ball to him."

When Chelsea chase the game, as they did against Liverpool, they too often resort to hitting crosses from distance which drop near the edge of the area in the (usually vain) hope that a knockdown will create something out of not very much. These aren't crosses of Beckham quality, but a confession of desperation.

I couldn't help but contrast the Blues' unimaginative forward play – not simply against Liverpool but in many games this season – with the inventiveness shown by Inter and Roma in their 5-3 thriller. True, both defences were tarnished by gaping holes the size of Piers Morgan's ego, but their passing, movement and running was simply in a different class.

"Houses in London cost how much?!?"

Against a beautifully drilled Copenhagen defence, the Blues must exploit the full width of the pitch and free space for Ashley Cole, in particular, to unnerve the Lions' back four with his pace. On the other flank, expect Blues old boy Jesper Gronkjaer (hey, the character actually worked) to try and run rings around Branislav Ivanovic.

If they don't bring a lead back from Denmark, they will face an excruciating test of nerves at Stamford Bridge.

The second most miserable man in England after the transfer window shut (assuming Charlie Adams is the most gutted) is the head of Chelsea's academy. A laudable attempt to build a team of Chelsea's own – a successor to the Busby Babes, Drake's Ducklings and Fergie's Fledglings – has been shelved for reasons of expediency.

The pendulum has swung back in favour of big-name signings. Let's hope, as Gabriele Marcotti suggested, that this is merely Chelsea's attempt to spend big before UEFA's rules on financial fair play kick in.

Zombies and Hollywood: the final rematch

Since the draw, the odds in Bayern v Inter have shifted slightly in favour of the Italian champions.

Bayern's 3-2 loss to Cologne was the first time they had thrown away a 2-0 lead in 13 years. Mark van Bommel's switch to Milan looks oddly timed. Uli Hoeness, who – even more than Beckenbauer – is virtually the living incarnation of Bayern, has complained that Louis van Gaal is hard to work with. Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

And yet this is run-of-the-mill stuff for FC Hollywood. Van Gaal eats this kind of crisis for breakfast. Robben and Ribery have hardly played together this season and are returning to fitness. They were, let's not forget, in a far worse state in the group stages in 2009/10 and made the final.

"Crisis? Pah! Bring me a spoon and some milk...."

Inter's revived hopes have more to do with their new spirit under Leonardo. Pundits who specialise in tactical insight will bombard you with subtle explanations for this transformation, but to my untrained eye the explanation for Inter's revival is simple: they have stopped playing like zombies.

Every coach is a perfectionist but there might be something in Rafa Benitez's brand of perfectionism that reduces players to a trancelike state of anxiety. The Special One makes his perfectionism seem invigorating, fun. Benitez's seems, to the outsider, rather dour. And his last two teams – Liverpool 2009/10 and Inter 2010/11 – have both at times played in a semi-vegetative state that's even more bizarre when you compare it to the glory of Rafa's Valencia.

Rattlesnakes, constrictors and Barcelona

Arsene Wenger has a stark choice against Barcelona: stick or twist? Actually, as anyone who saw the Gunners blow a 4-0 lead against Newcastle, he doesn't have a choice. He cannot hope to close the opposition down and hold onto the nil he has at kick-off against an attack that has scored 2.94 goals per game in all competitions this season.

If Wenger was tempted to stick, Barca's 3-0 demolition of Atletico Madrid 10 days ago proved that a defensive strategy would be about as wise as asking what women know about the offside law.

Atleti coach Quique Sanchez Flores set his side up with one up front. Even though the 'one' was the sublime Sergio Aguero, the game was over as a contest after 28 minutes. Flores brought Forlan on at half-time and the mattress makers did disturb Barça's back four – even suggesting they might find a way back for a few moments – before Messi completed his hat-trick in the 79th minute.

Sadly for Barça, there's no Mikael Silvestre this year...

The best Brazilian teams pass back and forth until they have lulled the opposition into a false sense of security. Then, when a useful space opens up, they go in for the kill. UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh calls this approach the "rattlesnake".

As for Barcelona, well, to quote the bloke in the Mitchell and Webb sketches, they play like that but not like that. They keep the ball but their possession is more purposeful, constricting the space their opponents can defend in. Their success is often reductively ascribed to Messi or to their sheer wealth of intelligent, attacking talent. That all matters, but what takes them to the very highest level is the breadth and depth of their bombardment.

Against Atletico, Messi scored his first goals in the 17th and 28th minute. But from the 15th to the 30th minute, Barcelona could – and probably should – have scored from five or six other attacks. Atleti never cleared their lines long enough for their defenders to regroup. Ultimately, it came down to mental stamina. Atleti's defenders began to acquire the desperate, haunted look of wanted men on the run.

If Barcelona have a weakness, it is their defence. And if Wenger is to succeed against the kinds of odds Phil Collins used to croon about, he must place the Blaugranas' back four at the heart of the battle.

Having only used the letter 'j' thrice in 1100 or so words (and two of those were to spell a footballer's name), I now completely understand why the tenth letter of the alphabet is worth eight points in Scrabble.

Roberto Baggio is still on the case

2011-02-02T14:31:00Z

The hair, once jet black like a movie star’s, is silvery grey now. The famous ponytail is long gone - cut off in 1997. The most telling legacy of Roberto Baggio’s illustrious playing career is the pain in his knees. He likes to run to keep fit but “only in straight lines, every change of direction is a minor trauma.”

Italy’s freescoring fantasista, one of the few modern footballers to achieve mythic status before he hung up his boots, has a new job now. After a clean, prolonged break from the game, Baggio is back as president of the Italian FA’s technical sector. And as he makes clear in an exclusive interview in the current issue of Champions, he returns with an agenda – one that may ruffle the egos of the 35,000 coaches in calcio he will oversee his new role.

Revenge of the narcissists

As a boy, Baggio was inspired by players and their creativity. “Zico was my model as a child,” he told Sergio di Cesare, the respected Italian football writer who interviewed him for Champions. “In my time, I particularly liked Diego Maradona and Marco van Basten for their intelligent game and Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini for their personality and leadership.”

The modern player he adores, predictably enough, is Lionel Messi. “He plays like a child in a playground, unaffected by tactics, teammates or opponents.” But Messi would not, he believes, be as great as he is if it weren’t for Pep Guardiola “who does not try to confine his talent but gives Messi all the space he can express it.”

And that, in a nutshell, is what Baggio would like more coaches to do: “One should never denigrate talent, as happens far too often at grassroots, when young players are told off for trying a backheel or some clever dribbling.

“For me, football has always been about trying something difficult, truly inventive or an action that will be truly remembered. I’ve never really been satisfied by the easily scored goal.”

That vision of football, he feels, has been undermined because “modern football is increasingly dominated by the coaches, their narcissism, their tendency to put themselves above the team and their players.”

Baggio is interviewed in the latest edition of Champions - out now

For Baggio, the tactical negativity that has begun to imprison players is an abominable mutation of the beautiful game. “Players are the true protagonists,” he insists. He has a point. I can’t remember anyone ever telling me they were going to a match to watch a coach.

The 2010 World Cup, surely the most sterile in living memory, produced few memorable moments of true invention – unless you count Luis Suarez’s handball or Nigel de Jong’s kung fu in the final – and was so short of magic that even as you read this Sepp Blatter and his blazered army of apparatchiks are devising cunning schemes to give the next mundial a serious makeover. When I say “cunning” I do, of course, use the word quite wrongly.

But their frenetic head-scratching reveals that even Fifa has recognised that even an event as iconic and resonant as the World Cup cannot afford too many tournaments as mediocre as last summer’s.

Baggio’s rebalancing act

Will Baggio succeed in rebalancing calcio, encouraging coaches to put players at the heart of their approach and ensure that the beautiful game shows us a bit more beauty?

His own career suggests the odds are stacked against him. A footballing deity to fans, he was often distrusted by coaches like Marcello Lippi, Fabio Capello and Carlo Ancelotti.

For a player with one and a half legs, as he likes to joke, he won many honours – but never the World Cup or the European Cup. As a player, he was probably most at ease at Fiorentina and Brescia rather than at Inter, Juventus or Milan.

Some men, as Bobby Kennedy used to say when quoting George Bernard Shaw, see things as they are and ask: why? Others dream of things that never were and ask: why not? Baggio dreams of “a kind of football where players are back at the heart of the game, ditching rigid, collective boring collective strategies” and asks: why can’t we have that back?

To many, his views will sound nostalgic, even reactionary. Unlike Gatsby, Baggio isn’t trying to repeat the past. He’s merely striving to rectify a flaw which he believes could endanger the game’s future. In his nightmares, he sees his creative heirs, marginalised and frustrated, unable to invent the kind of moments that live in our memory and football degenerating into an inferior variant of chess, with 22 pawns, a ball and a grandmaster in the dugout.

If you want to read the full interview with Roberto Baggio, in which he relives some of the most excruciating moments of his life – the stitches, that penalty at USA 94 – and reflects on Buddhism, Hemingway and Ayrton Senna, buy the current issue of Champions, available at all good newsagents and a few frankly mediocre ones.

Sturm und drang: A rough guide to coaching etiquette

2011-01-13T16:21:00Z

When I first saw Steve Kean patrolling the touchline as Blackburn Rovers manager, I feared for him.

New managers, especially those filling a void as large as that created by the legend of Big Sam, must exude competence. And Kean didn’t. Truth be told, he had the slightly bewildered, moderately resentful air of a man who had arrived, slightly later than he’d hoped, at the bus stop, suspected his bus had already departed but was too embarrassed to ask anyone if that was the case.

Luckily for Kean, he has since acquired or discovered an inner calm. But his initial confusion set me thinking – increasingly rare these days – that one of the crucial choices facing any coach today is the persona they adopt on the touchline.

Jig, fists and rejigs

In the old days, when very few cameras covered matches, we barely noticed managers during a game. They might do an occasional jig (like David Pleat), or punch a fan (Brian Clough) but most of the time they were content to sit on the bench and make coded gestures to their players suggesting they were playing too far up or down the pitch (a technique perfected by the great Bob Paisley). Even a coach as demonstrative as Cloughie was usually happy just to shout a bit.

At some point this changed. Helpfully I have no idea when. Maybe when FIFA introduced the technical area in 1993. But while watching Aston Villa on TV a few years ago, with the camera constantly panning towards Martin O’Neill’s sturm und drang on the touchline, I realised how melodramatic coaches’ behaviour had become.

"No, I said hoof long balls to Heskey for 90 minutes, dammit!"

O’Neill ran through more emotions during a routine 1-1 draw against a middle of the road team such as Middlesbrough than Richard Burton displayed in a virile, passionate and sardonic take on Hamlet which enthralled Broadway in 1964.

I wasn’t sure what subliminal message O’Neill hoped to convey. Was he trying to prove he cared as deeply as the supporters? Was he conscious of the need to provide the kind of entertainment his team might not have been delivering? Did he think his antics would unsettle the other manager or influence the officials? Or was that just Martin being his loveable, passionate self?

To get ahead, get a coat

As a touchline performance artist, O’Neill has been surpassed by Jose Mourinho, who is just as emotional, but much better tailored. I mention tailoring because I am increasingly convinced that clothes maketh the manager. On a very basic level, the stylishness of a coach’s schmutter may do more to impress his players than the quality of his tactical insight.

Serie A coaches have long understood that one of the prerequisites for success is having a really nice coat. The best have aspired to the unflappably mysterious existentialist aura exuded by goalkeeper and raincoat connoisseur Albert Camus.

Like Camus’s idol Bogart, this type of coach rarely moves a facial muscle unnecessarily. (Carlo Ancelotti, the most minimalist Method actor on the touchline, signifies his moods largely through the manipulation of his left eyebrow – Roger Moore must be so proud.) The subtle implication is that these managers do not see the game as we do but are wrestling with some higher level of wisdom which will manifest itself in their next substitution.

Whether he's won the league or lost at Wolves, Carlo is understated

The trouble with this style is that existential mystery can easily be mistaken for hapless ineffectuality. Towards the end of Sven’s England reign, the calm that had once seemed such a reassuring contrast to Graham Taylor’s gibbering seemed, instead, to suggest that, like us, the Swede was an impotent bystander, with no more influence over the game’s outcome than the self-appointed tactical genius three rows behind you.

Something similar has happened to Capello. The passionate sergeant major shtick was initially more impressive than Steve McClaren’s wally with the brolly but when things fell apart in South Africa – and the centre of England’s defence couldn’t hold – the camera panned to reveal Don Fabio staring at his players with the same kind of enraged, stupefied disbelief as millions of fans at home.

Did we not loathe that?

There is no right or wrong way for a coach to behave in the dugout.

Actually, there is a wrong way – just watch the Channel 4 documentary Do I Not Like That. Lawrie McMenemy’s pained reaction to Taylor’s behaviour is almost as hilarious as the antics themselves.

Or, more recently, think of Cluj coach Soren Cartu kicking the glass out of the dugout in disgust after his side lost to Basel. (Cartu’s loss of the plot was swiftly followed by the loss of his job.)

Each coach must choose their own style but they must be convincing – otherwise it’s a bit like watching Jude Law playing Alfie instead of Michael Caine. And no manager’s style – even Mourinho's – will suit all seasons.

The statesmanlike gravitas Roy Hodgson exuded at Fulham seemed, in the cauldron of Anfield, more like anachronistic irrelevance. Under extreme duress, Hodgson indulged in manic face rubbing or reverted to a kind of bemused, fatalistic “Oh dearie dearie" reminiscent of Taylor’s immortal cry as England boss: “What sort of thing is happening here?”

Roy can be thankful he didn't get the root vegetable treatment...

Roberto Baggio, who gives a remarkably candid interview in the next issue of Champions, would probably suggest that “narcissistic coaches” indulge in all this sturm und drang because they can’t bear the spotlight to be on players.

We don’t need coaches to act as an emotional mirror to reflect what is happening on the pitch – we know how we feel when we’re losing – and we would, all things being equal, like managers to get on with the job they are paid to do and coach.

But if coaches feel obliged to perform, they could take their cue from Cloughie, whose occasional theatrics were often leavened with humour.

Once when Arsenal faced Nottingham Forest at Highbury, the linesman warned Cloughie to be quiet. Clough pointed at Terry Neill and Don Howe on the Arsenal bench and said: “They’re making just as much noise at me why aren’t you telling them to shut up?”

The linesman didn’t reply so Clough added: “Perhaps I should go over there and sit with them.”

“Come over and sit on my knee,” Neill chipped in.

Cloughie proceeded to do just that, nestling on Neill’s knee and asking the linesman: “Am I all right now?”

The linesman just flashed Cloughie a bewildered smile and ran off up touchline.

Chicken farmers, an octopus and the rise of the Belgians: 2010 remembered

2010-12-30T20:30:00Z

If Sid Lowe can do it, why can’t I? The esteemed interpreter of Spanish football gives out the Sids at the end of every season, so I’m going to dish out the Simmos as I review a year in which football spectacularly lost the plot.

Some of the decision making – and I don’t just mean by referees – displayed a kind of crazed incompetence seldom seen since Caligula promoted his favourite horse Incitatus to the Roman senate. It was a year in which England contrived to lose two World Cups, Rafa Benitez lost two jobs and a Spanish newspaper declared that the sermon on the mount was “in fact a prophecy of Leo Messi”.

The mismatch of the year
No not Zilina v Marseille, or even Rooney v Ferguson, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad v Paul the Octopus. The Iranian president accused the now late, lamented psychic octopus who correctly called the outcome of eight World Cup matches, of spreading “Western propaganda and superstition”.

The funniest example of English football’s insular closed shop mentality
All and sundry – from Sir Alex Ferguson to Lou Macari and Mark Lawrenson – have lined up to condemn the Indian chicken farmers who own Blackburn and had the unmitigated gall to sack ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce. Graham Taylor has even threatened to boycott turkey and chicken in protest.

The sub-text here is what makes a couple of “Indian chicken farmers” – and you have to say those three words with just the right amount of indignant disgust in your voice – think they know more about football than Sam, Sir Alex or Graham?

I’m not sure if the objection is to the fact that they’re Indian (surely not) or chicken farmers or whether the fact that they are Indian and chicken farmers somehow compounds the insult to Allardyce, Blackburn Rovers and English football.

But Allardyce’s departure doesn’t seem that odd or appalling to me. Playing Big Sam’s way, Blackburn were never going to be more than a middle of the road Premier League team. Every so often they would flirt with relegation while, with a bit of luck, they might qualify for the UEFA Europa League (where, with their style of football, they would win few converts and probably not progress very far). That’s not the kind of business plan which would persuade anyone to part with £23million of their hard earned cash is it?

The timing may have been stupid but I’m not sure the decision was.

The most compelling parallel between the works of Michelangelo and the career of Frank Lampard
In Alan Bennett’s diary in the London Review Of Books, his entry for 7 April 2010 reads: “The open mouth of Chelsea’s Frank Lampard, having scored a goal, is also the howl of the face of the damned man in Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement.” If you don’t believe him, see for yourself.

The most underrated trend
Belgian defenders. Vincent Kompany is now finally proving his quality at Manchester City (where his compatriot Dedryck Boyata is showing much promise). Marouane Fellaini has become a hero at Everton. Thomas Vermaelen settled brilliantly at Arsenal. Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen are first choice at the heart of Ajax’s back four. Nicolas Lombaerts has won the Russian title with Zenit St Petersburg. For a country that languishes at 57 in the Fifa rankings and has a population of just 10.4m that is some conveyor belt.

The most crushing disappointment
The World Cup bidding process. Transparent, understandable and free from any hint of corruption – the battle to host 2018 and 2022 should have been all of these and wasn’t. In public, Sepp Blatter may pillory the English as bad losers – even though the US, Australia, Spain and Portugal were just as disgruntled – but you would hope that privately, with such stalwarts as Franz Beckenbauer expressing doubts about the process, even he can see the need for change. Only one winner emerged from this flawed process: the construction industry which stands to gain £41bn in revenue from these two tournaments.

The most inspirational moment
Eran Zahavi’s bicycle kick for Hapoel Tel Aviv against Lyon. A breathtaking piece of swivelling, improvised, genius. The 23-year-old attacking midfielder has improved over the last five years with Hapoel and is enjoying the most prolific season of his career. Zahavi has already been linked with clubs in Belgium and may move on for a decent fee this summer.

The most transformational coach
Not the Special One. Not even Joachim Low who coached the most entertaining team in South Africa and reinvented, through brilliant improvisation, the two man screen in midfield. For me, the man who over-achieved most spectacularly in the dugout was Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa, who helped Chile qualify for their first World Cup (they were hosts in 1962), beat Argentina for the first time ever in a competitive match and changed the national team’s culture, encouraging his young, gifted side to be more attacking away from home. It seems sadly typical that Bielsa quit in November because he felt he couldn’t work with the new president of the Chilean FA.

The most intriguing remark about the state of football
It’s hard to beat Blatter’s observation that “Football has become a monster, but a positive monster.” The longer you think about the remark the more baffling it becomes. “Monster!” was, of course, the catchphrase of uber agent Eric Hall who is now, so his Wikipedia page says, hosting a golden oldies Sunday afternoon show on BBC Radio Essex.

The least memorable pundit
Has to be Alan Shearer. I cannot remember a single observation he made in 2010. Actually that’s a lie: my respect for him soared when the shambles of England v Germany in Bloemfontein moved him to angry eloquence. Sadly, he doesn’t get that angry very often.

The most annoying cliché
That Dimitar Berbatov doesn’t run enough. The Bulgarian’s real flaw is that he doesn’t impose his very obvious genius on games often enough. Despite what many people in English football seem to think, running is not an end in itself.

The player of the year
Antonio Cassano, the maverick genius of calcio who has just strolled into the last chance saloon at Milan. The player who confided in his memoirs that at best he’d given not 110%, or even 100% but around 50% on the pitch has impressed and appalled in almost equal measure. But in an age where many football teams feature the bland leading the bland, Cassano is never dull. It would be great if Milan could find a way to make constructive use of a player who once ran away from Fabio Capello on the training ground prompting the coach to shout: “Don’t run, only cowards run”.

The team of the year
Mourinho’s Inter. They didn’t play attractive, expansive football but they knew precisely what they were doing, performed heroically at Camp Nou and clinically at Stamford Bridge and the Bernabeu. They were a proper team and the intelligence with which they played was fascinating to watch.

The Incitatus award for someone promoted above his or her level of competence
There are so many contenders but the clear winner must be Gigi Becali, the Romanian MEP who owns Steaua Bucharest, has a painting based on da Vinci’s Last Supper with himself as Jesus (and the players and coaches depicted as his disciples) upon his wall and sacks coaches faster than you can say ‘Indian chicken farmers’. In 2010, the Romanian giants have been managed by Ille Dumitrescu, Marius Lacatus, Victor Piturca and Mihai Stoichita. Piturca has had five spells as coach while Lacatus is now in his third stint in the hottest seat in European football. Becali is, as Tommy Docherty used to say, “a legend in his own mind”.

Lenny Kravitz, suicide & Wenger: The Champions League draw analysed

2010-12-20T11:39:00Z

They think it’s all over in Nigeria. One Nigerian Gooner – named only as michotech49 – posted on uefa.com: “Arsenal we win am very sure by the grace of God”.

Arsene Wenger was a little more circumspect about facing Barcelona, the runaway favourites to win the 2010/11 UEFA Champions League, again, saying: “We want to knock them out. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it possible? Yes.” The coach was more sanguine than most fans whose reaction is probably best summed up by the headline on The Gooner which read simply: “The Barcelona suicide”.

In trying to Google The Gooner, I actually typed ‘The Gonner’ which could be an omen or what the great Sigmund would call a Freudian slip. Anyway, moving swiftly on, discontent among online Gooners has reached such a pitch that one supporter dared ask: “Oh, by the way, what does Pat Rice do?” Come on, Arsenal fans, this is hardly the time to be turning on your own legends. The general mood might be summed up by Brad who posted: “O cruel footballing gods why hast thou forsaken Arsenal?”

If Arsenal are to win, they might require divine intervention. Wenger’s Plan A is to take on Barcelona at their own game – assuming his players can get the ball off them. Plan B is – well there is no Plan B really. Unless Arsenal’s defence becomes significantly more rock-like between now and February, he can’t play the kind of spoiling game with which Jose Mourinho’s Inter beat Barcelona last season. He doesn’t even have the defensive steel in midfield to play the 4-5-1 that steered Arsenal to the final in 2006. This is especially ironic because one tactical innovation with which Wenger won a lot of silverware early on at Arsenal was the use of defensive screening midfielders like Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit.

No tie is over before it has started – though even Lenny Kravitz might feel his most famous song doesn’t apply in this instance. But Wenger’s predicament underlines the competitive ruthlessness of this tournament. A poor 45 minutes against Shakhtar and an off-night in Braga have made Arsenal’s journey to Wembley significantly more arduous than it needed to be.

The other ci risiamo ties – that’s Italian for ‘here we go again’ by the way – are Lyon v Real Madrid and Inter v Bayern. Neither quite match Alien vs Predator in the 'clash of the titans' stakes, but both have intriguing sub-plots. The ties encouraged so many players, clubs and owners to join in remembrance of things past it might have been sponsored by the estate of Marcel Proust.

Will Lyon’s remarkable run of success – in three ties against los Blancos they have won at home and drawn in Madrid to progress – be ended by old boy Karim Benzema? Lyon keeper Remy Vercoutre didn’t sound that confident when he noted: “Last year they were complacent. They still haven’t got over it. We know we’re not favourites.” He has a point. On balance, with Mourinho in the dugout, Real don’t seem destined for a seventh successive exit in the last 16.

Bayern v Inter is the draw’s greatest gift to European football. Louis van Gaal’s Bayern are slight favourites but the big question hanging over the tie is whether Rafa Benitez will be coaching the Nerazzurri in February (at the time of this blog being published, we are awaiting confirmation of reports the Spaniard has left the club - ed).

The World Club Cup win (below) has done him some good but the mood in Italy was captured by the Gazzetta dello Sport headline: “Inter rules the world, so what next?” Benitez’s broadside about lack of trust and broken promises on new players won him some support from fans – one poll found most wanted the coach to stay – but owner Massimo Moratti deflected the speculation saying: “For the moment I don’t want to talk about Benitez.” The coach’s outburst recalls his famously indignant observation over new signings at Valencia: “I asked for a sofa and they bought me a standard lamp.”

Tottenham’s return to San Siro to take on the other half of Milan prompted Rossoneri coach Massimiliano Allegri to remark: “All the teams who have made it this far are good but it could have been far worse. Tottenham score freely and have quality up front, but they always give something away at the back.” Still, Allegri – and his defenders – may already be having nightmares in which they are carved apart by the lanky, jinking, blurred form of Gareth ‘Incredibale’.

Chelsea and Manchester United may feel reasonably satisfied with their draws, but Carlo Ancelotti and Sir Alex Ferguson know their ties are far from done are dusted. Copenhagen are efficient, especially at home, and are almost the polar opposite of Spurs. What they lack upfront they make up for at the back, conceding just five in Group D, not bad for a team that played Barca twice. And Chelsea will need their first choice central defenders back to face Senegalese bombshell Damien N’Doye, who looks like a young Didier Drogba.

They think it’s all over in Schalke too. On Bundesliga Talk, a writer with the poetic name of Dylan Thomas suggested: “Schalke couldn’t have had an easier opponent”. The key, Thomas correctly suggested, was whether Schalke could dominate midfield. Although the hype will focus on Raul’s return to Spain, the more intriguing clash is between two famously workaholic coaches. Felix Magath’s reputation – exemplified by his nicknames ‘Saddam’ and ‘Qualix’ (The Torturer) – is well known but have no doubt Valencia’s Unai Emery has already spent hours dissecting Schalke’s group games in forensic detail.

Claudio Ranieri doesn’t think it’s all over. Mindful that Shakhtar won the last ever UEFA Cup and very nearly did the double over Barcelona in this competition in 2008/09, he was at pains to point the stylish football the Ukrainian champions play.

Roma have become the kind of team that can lose or beat anyone depending on their mood and that may be Ranieri’s biggest concern. Shakhtar’s wily coach Mircea Lucescu will be scheming for an away goal at the Stadio Olimpico. The return in Donetsk may just help Lucescu steer Shakhtar into the last eight for the first time. Shakhar’s Romanian full-back Razvan Rat (spare us the ‘any relation of Roland” gags please) was certainly bullish: “I want to quote a famous chess player to say that to become stronger one must play against the strongest”.

It seems appropriate, then, to round off with a Mourinho-esque observation from another famous chess player, Bobby Fischer: “Genius. It’s a word. What does it really mean? If I win I’m a genius. If I don’t, I’m not.”

What is the purpose of Chelsea Football Club?

2010-12-16T11:48:00Z

Or, to put it another way, what can Roman Abramovich learn from the children’s author and one-time striker Aivar Pohlak who runs Estonian champions Flora Tallinn and the Estonian FA?

Pohlak doesn’t look like a football club president, he talks more like a rock musician or a poet. But, perhaps because he and his colleagues had to create a club from nothing as Estonia became independent in 1991-92, he has thought long and hard about what purpose clubs serve.

Flashy underachievement, love and a Roman goddess

His view is simple: “Football is about love. You can’t force love, and you can’t buy it, you have to show people you’re worth loving.” To do that, he argues, a club must stand for something. An Estonian patriot, who watched his country’s love for the game almost wither away in the old Soviet Union, Pohlak believed Flora Tallinn should stand for the renewal of Estonia’s football. That’s why the new club’s name honours the Roman goddess of spring.

It takes a certain presumption to propose that your club should define a country’s football culture, but Flora has a mission that goes beyond accumulating trophies – although Pohlak admits it helps to win stuff as well.

Contrast that with Chelsea. What do the Blues stand for? Before Roman Abramovich, Bagehot, the Economist’s political editor confided: “I loved the club because of its reputation for flashy underachievement. For Chelsea, the pleasure was all about knowing that we could beat anyone on our day and lose to anyone on our off-day”.

The old Chelsea were maverick, stylish and puffed up with an inflated sense of their own importance. But they were seldom dull. You could say the same about the first manager Abramovich hired, Jose Mourinho. But Jose’s mysterious exit changed matters.

A Chelsea season ticket holder on the tube to the Zilina game a few weeks ago told a fellow supporter: “I was gutted when he left. I’m still gutted.” Mourinho is seldom far from a Chelsea fan’s thoughts but his memory had been rekindled by another mysterious departure – that of Ray Wilkins – which had rankled. “Proper Chelsea he was,” the supporter said indignantly.

By dispensing with Wilkins’ services, it was as if Chelsea had declared war on its own past, a civil war in which there could be only losers. (One immediate loss: the British media’s mysterious, but burgeoning goodwill for the club evaporated faster than you could say ‘sideways pass’.) Although Peter Osgood is an object of iconic worship at Stamford Bridge his maverick genius seems to have little authentic connection with today’s Chelsea. The club is now often seen as standing for one thing: winning – albeit with a nod to the obligation to be vaguely stylish implied by the example of Osgood, Zola and Hudson.

From Moscow to Barcelona (via Nuneaton)

The idea that football clubs ought to stand for something might strike you as pretentious balderdash. But most clubs do – even if that ‘something’ is as nebulous as their function in their local community.

Clubs often become a focus for particular social, religious, or political causes. In the Soviet Union, support for Spartak Moscow, which had few powerful sponsors in the Communist regime, became a quiet act of political protest. Other clubs come to embody a certain approach to the game. In any division in any league in any country there is always one club that insists it plays football as it should be played. (In England alone, I have heard such a view expressed at Arsenal, Charlton, Leicester City and Nuneaton Town.)

Even before Barcelona became synonymous with beautiful football, they were a potent symbol of Catalonia’s political aspirations. Real Madrid, once the idealised representation of Franco’s Spain, are famed for their enduring commitment to the glory game and great players. Manchester United’s image is still defined by romance, glamour and tragedy. The Busby Babes may have perished more than 50 years ago but that style of football is still embedded in United’s DNA. It would take a decade of 1-0 wins ‘boring boring Arsenal’ style to seriously erode that.

Consultancy Sport + Markt say Chelsea, with 21.4m fans, are the fourth most popular club in Europe. But the Blues still have ten million fewer supporters than Manchester United and Real Madrid. Barcelona aren’t even within touching distance: Sport +Markt puts the club’s European fanbase at 57.8 million.

The Blues cannot swiftly close that gap without a dramatic, transformative event – ergo all the speculation surrounding Pep Guardiola. Abramovich probably believes the best way for Chelsea to make the requisite great leap forward is develop a great team that lives in the memory like Ajax in the 1970s or Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan in the 1990s. Sacchi famously told Marco van Basten that the ultimate victory was to win so well nobody could ever forget you. Even under Ancelotti, one of Sacchi’s protégés and a double winner in his first season at the Bridge, Chelsea have not achieved that.

But even Pep might not be the answer: Barcelona’s gifted young coach is standing on the shoulders of such giants as Rinus Michels, Johan Cruyff, and Louis Van Gaal. The Barcelona way predated Guardiola and will endure after him. It is unclear how swiftly or successfully that model could supersede – or be grafted onto – Chelsea’s existing modus operandi.

Perceptions, perches and strategies

Under Mourinho, the Blues could have achieved a different kind of immortality, as a record-breaking club that dominated the world’s most popular national league and, given time, won the UEFA Champions League. But that is no longer an option.

Also off the agenda is the original goal of building the kind of ‘team of all the talents’ that made Sunderland famous in the 1890s. Yet if Abramovich was to spend big to make millions more people across the globe love Chelsea, a player might be more useful than a coach. It could be worth £80 million to find a footballer who, through sheer genius or iconic significance, becomes as globally synonymous with Chelsea as Lionel Messi is with Barcelona. But such a move seems unlikely.

So the strategy seems essentially to hope that Carlo Ancelotti can make the most of a squad that looks a bit short on depth, win the Champions League and, as the club’s promising youngsters are blooded, build on that momentum.

That might sound a long shot but there’s a lot of football to be played between now and May. And Wilkins even suggested on Sky Sports that Chelsea are the only team that could beat Barcelona in the Champions League this season. Asked how they could do that, Wilkins replied, with deadpan wit: “With great difficulty”.

Proving Chelsea are worth loving to a sceptical global audience won’t be easy either. Flora Tallinn’s example suggests that Chelsea won’t get the love they need to see them through their desire to knock Barcelona or Real Madrid off their perches if they are perceived as primarily standing for ruthless ambition. In an increasingly globalised football industry, even Millwall have realised that “No one likes us, we don’t care” doesn’t quite cut it any longer.

Say goodbye to a record-breaking midfielder, chimney sweep and genius

2010-12-01T14:36:00Z

And now the end is near. I refer not to England’s flickering hopes of hosting the 2018 World Cup, or Frank Arnesen’s predicted departure from Chelsea, but to the retirement of former chimney sweep Roar Strand, the Sir Cliff Richard of Norwegian football, who has finally retired at the ripe old age of 40 and a bit, after winning his 16th Norwegian league title.

For those of you who would rather study an Ikea catalogue than read another blog about Scandinavian football, I apologise. I struggle to explain why I’ve come over so Scandinavian all of a sudden.

There may be four reasons. First, it’s that time of year when seasons end and titles are decided across the region. Second, I find it bizarrely pleasing to write about footballers with letters in their names that resemble the chemical symbol for boron (even if, under FourFourTwo’s no foreign accents policy, I don’t have to faithfully reproduce them). Third, I’ve been watching too much Wallander. (The Swedish version is so beautifully miserablist I have to play a few Leonard Cohen songs afterwards to cheer myself up.) Fourth, it’s probably because football in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden seems to belong to a more innocent, hype-free era than in England, Italy and Spain.

Mind you, this is changing. They don’t make ‘em like Roar Strand anymore – not even in Trondheim where, 21 years and a few months ago, as an impressionable 19-year-old, he made his debut for Rosenborg. A one-club man (apart from 22 games on loan to Molde), Strand became a legend in midfield and on the wing at the Lerkendal, playing 125 games in UEFA club competition, more than Beckham or Zidane.

Strand in action against Scotland during the 1998 World Cup

Like Ryan Giggs, Strand is adored even by fans who detest his club. The manner of his 40th birthday celebrations probably explains why. On February 2, the squad were training in Marbella. Strand woke his roommate Steffen Iversen up – getting a quick ‘Happy birthday’ in return – and was first out onto the training pitch insisting that he had to work harder compete with the younger players. His teammates encouraged him to relax with a cake and by buying him his first ever session at a spa centre.

Outside Norway, Strand is best known for the frequency with which he pops up in trivia questions. The hardy midfielder’s stint as a chimney sweep was on orders from coach Nils Arne Eggen who wanted all Rosenborg players to have a second job to keep them grounded.

Despite playing in the centre, on the wing and as a wing-back, Strand has scored in 21 consecutive top flight seasons, a record matched by Giggs and Pele and only exceeded by Romario. With 16 Norwegian titles, five Norwegian Cups, a Norwegian midfielder of the year award and a gold watch from the Norwegian FA, Strand may have won more domestic honours than any player in European football today.

Strand looks a tad geriatric in the photo on his English Wikipedia page, as if the mere act of running has made his back ache, but – possibly because of the stamina acquired as a chimney sweep – he remained remarkably free of injury for club and country. (He also won 42 caps for Norway, it would have been more but he quit in 2003 and refused all offers to reconsider.)

With defender Erik Hoftun, Strand was at the heart of the remarkable Rosenborg side that won 13 titles in a row between 1992 and 2004 and, in Europe, defeated the likes of Borussia Dortmund and Milan.

It’s worth reiterating that Eggen’s Rosenborg, the definitive version, played quick passing football in a 4-3-3, not the sterile long ball game deployed by the national side in the 1990s. A world class box-to-box midfielder, Strand could teach many more famous footballers a lot about the art of running off the ball.

In Europe, he found the net against such no-marks as Arsenal, Porto, Real Madrid and Sampdoria. Even Gooners were impressed by the power and precision with which, in September 2004, he side footed the ball into the roof of the net against them to score what many supporters of the Troll Kids insist was his best ever goal.

On top of the chimney sweeping, the loyalty, the records, the technical brilliance, there is the utterly marvellous fact that his first name is Roar. Okay, it’s the Norwegian form of ‘Roger’ but it still seems a perfect moniker for a footballer. To me, it brings back memories of a Sunday morning schlep to the newsagents to snap up a short-lived comic called Score And Roar.

One of his teammates joked about erecting a statue of Roar Strand outside the Lerkendal stadium. Rosenborg’s greatest No6 deserves no less.

Danish football's Lazarus man standing on the edge of greatness

2010-11-23T11:20:00Z

When you’ve literally come back from the dead, it puts football in perspective. So FC Copenhagen coach Stale Solbakken will not have been unduly perturbed by the jostling with Pep Guardiola after the Danish and Spanish champions drew 1-1 in Copenhagen.

Guardiola was angry with Solbakken for saying that Barcelona keeper Jorge Manuel Pinto (who imitated the referee’s whistle in the first leg) ought to have been banned for five games, not two. Guardiola accused his rival of manipulating the media. Solbakken replied: “It was just a Norwegian making a terrible joke.”

Having interviewed Solbakken last time his side were in the UEFA Champions League – they came third in Group F in 2006/07 – I can understand Guardiola’s confusion. Even when discussing his own ‘resurrection’ – he had a heart attack during training on 13 March 2001 and was pronounced clinically dead before his heart started beating again in the ambulance twelve minutes later – he was hard to read, so matter of fact he could have been analysing a minor tactical innovation.

Solbakken: Not afraid of Kazan, Barca or death...

Detachment, it was clear, did not signify lack of determination. Still only 42, Solbakken has now won the Danish title twice as a player and four times as a coach. A fifth title – with the Lions 16 points clear halfway through the season – seems a formality.

In 2006/07, he steered Copenhagen to their first ever Champions League group stage. The Lions roared at home – taking seven points out of nine – but lost every away game. This time, they need a point in Rubin Kazan this week or, failing that, an eminently achievable home win against Panathinaikos to secure their first ever place in the last 16. That would be the best run by a Danish side in this competition since Brondby made the last eight in 1986/87.

Denmark’s dynamite shortage

This is all the more remarkable because as Marcellus, a sentinel in Hamlet, very nearly said, something is rotten in the state of Danish football.

Dennis Rommedahl, the consistently inconsistent winger who is now at Olympiacos, has just been voted Danish footballer of the year. Super League attendances – probably partly because of the Lions’ dominance and the national side’s travails – are down 24% this season. After a dire, dull, dour World Cup, the Danes may miss out on Euro 2012 (they face Portugal and Norway in Group H) at which point national coach Morten Olsen, linchpin of the legendary Danish Dynamite side, will retire.

Though no emerging Danish players have the explosive talent of the Laudrups, much hope – and hype – has focused on the slender frame of Christian Eriksen, the Ajax midfielder who became the youngest player ever to feature in a World Cup finals this summer. It’s worth noting that only five of the 13 players Solbakken fielded against Barcelona on matchday four were Danish.

Whatever happens, national service beckons for the Copenhagen coach. If the Norwegians don’t make it to Poland and the Ukraine, he will replace Egil Olsen as Norway coach in January 2012. If Norway do qualify, Solbakken will take over from Olsen after the Euro 2012 finals.

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen

He will be missed at FC Copenhagen. Under Solbakken, the Lions have become the strongest Scandinavian side in European competition. No supporter will ever forget their 1-0 win over Manchester United, 3-1 rout of Celtic or that feisty draw against Barcelona in which Victor Valdes, at fault for the equaliser, did his Toni Schumacher impersonation.

Solbakken’s strategy of pressing Barcelona out of their stride – the footballing equivalent of Corporal Jones’s “They don’t like it up ‘em” in Dads Army – just about worked. His players were stubborn, resilient and intelligent. Though Barcelona dominated possession as usual, both sides could easily have scored the winner. One Barca supporter was impressed enough to suggest that if the Lions were in la Liga they would “finish in the top half for sure”.

Twenty five scouts from foreign clubs swelled the crowd at the atmospheric, compact Parken stadium. Defenders Oscar Wendt and Mathias ‘Zanka’ Jorgensen, midfielders Martin Vingaard and William Kvist and striker Damien N’Doye are the most prized players. Yet the renaissance of 33-year-old Jesper Gronkjaer, long regarded as the very definition of the stereotypically tricky but erratic midfielder, may be Solbakken’s biggest achievement.

Copenhagen has been chiefly famous for exorbitant bar prices, fairytales and Danny Kaye, as Hans Christian Andersen, singing “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen”. Solbakken’s Lions have made Copenhagen one of the capitals of European football. The team’s results may earn the Danish champions an automatic place in the Champions League group stage in 2011/2012. If they do make this season's knockout round, they will be the underdog everyone wants to avoid.

This could be the greatest ever season for club and coach. Football is certainly not a matter of life and death for Solbakken. He just reckons his near death experience has made him more focused. And his focus right now is on winning.

Andy Carroll, Watergate and England’s national emergency

2010-11-11T12:22:00Z

What has the Watergate scandal got to do with Andy Carroll’s suitability to lead England’s attack?

At the meeting that authorised the burglary of the Watergate hotel – and fatally undermined Nixon’s presidency – one manager reluctantly backed the scheme thinking: “It’s only a third-rate burglary. What could possibly go wrong?”

The Watergate scandal is the classic manifestation of a psychological phenomenon which Irving Janis dubbed “groupthink”. In essence, the term describes the mechanism by which members of a tightly knit group are so keen to reach a consensus that they don’t critically test, analyse or evaluate an idea, no matter how barmy it is.

Janis died in 1990 but if he were alive today – and read the football media – he would realise groupthink is flourishing. Especially, as we’ll discuss later, where Newcastle’s No.9 is concerned.

U-turns and turnips

This year we have seen classic examples of groupthink in the British football press. The most spectacular – both because of the scale and the speed in the change of attitude – was the way that, within days, a press that had condemned Fabio Capello as a turnip (or, as they say in Italy, Luca Toni) after the fiasco in South Africa did a collective U-turn and – with the exception of a few distinguished dissenters like Patrick Barclay – concluded the Italian was still the right man for the England job.

Once that collective decision had been made, nothing could challenge this view – not even the revelation that the vastly experienced Italian had been outthought by a bunch of German Ph.D students.

Capello would presumably struggle on University Challenge

In case you’d forgotten, the students’ masterplan to undo England wasn’t especially complicated or cunning. It boiled down to four points:

1. If you clog midfield, you stop most England attacks.
2. England’s defence doesn’t like it up ‘em so hit long balls.
3. Lure John Terry out of position.
4. Give the ball to Matthew Upson – he rarely passes it to a teammate.

Loving and loathing the Blues

A few weeks ago there was a minor outbreak of groupthink when the question: “Is it time to love Chelsea?” popped up in various parts of the media and was answered in the affirmative by such usually reliable stalwarts as Kevin McCarra.

The grounds for loving Chelsea were basically as follows:

1. Chelsea aren’t spending anywhere near as much as Manchester City.
2. Their coach is a very nice bloke, a proper football man.
3. Er, that’s it.

It’s a bizarre question anyway. If you’re a supporter of Arsenal, Fulham, Spurs or West Ham, there is never a time to love Chelsea. The Blues have been despised for decades, witness the rant by Terry (James Bolam) in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? back in the 1970s that “Chelsea represent everything I detest about football”.

Even if Roman Abramovich brought peace to the Middle East, discovered a cure for cancer and made world poverty a distant memory, large swathes of the populace would still find it hard to warm to the Blues.

How handy is Andy?

The latest, astonishing case of groupthink is the clamour for Andy Carroll to be included in the England squad. His strengths are obvious – aerial prowess, never say die spirit, a useful left foot – but so are the deficiencies.

If even 1% of what the tabloids say about him is true, the kindest you could say is that Carroll hardly has the kind of lifestyle that suggests he is a dedicated, focused, professional athlete.

Carroll has most pundits singing off the same hymn sheet

As I write this, he has scored seven goals in the top flight. Yet such sages as Jamie Redknapp confidently predict he could lead the England attack for the next decade. This is a terrifying prospect in so many ways.

First, the mere prediction suggests that Redknapp has learned nothing from the World Cup, a tournament ultimately suffocated by hype. When George W. Bush said “You can fool some of the people all the time and those are the ones you should concentrate on”, he was joking. Redknapp and other pundits have taken Dubya literally.

You expect this kind of knee jerk from Alan Shearer, the self-appointed patron saint of the Geordie nation, but the last time we had this kind of clamour, the striker who was good enough to lead England’s attack for the next decade was Andy Johnson, now rebuilding his career at Fulham.

If seven goals in the top flight is enough for a striker to be considered worthy of the Three Lions, how much lower can the bar go?

Doesn’t this represent some kind of national disaster? A crisis so deep that the sports minister should declare a state of emergency, assume extraordinary powers and order Stuart Pearce to spend very waking hour searching Genes Reunited until he’s found half a dozen decent young foreign strikers with an English grandparent?

The idea that Carroll is the new Shearer, Supermac or Milburn is appealing, especially to Toon sentimentalists. But as an England star, it’s almost as likely that Carroll could be the new Francis Jeffers, David Nugent or Chris Armstrong who amassed just two England goals between them.

I don’t have a convincing alternative to Carroll. I just believe we’re far better off not falling for all the hype. Carroll may be a useful makeshift, a striker of last resort, or he may rise to the challenge. But his top-flight goals have come against Arsenal, Aston Villa (in disarray after O’Neill’s exit), Blackburn, West Ham and Wolves. Hardly proof he’s a world-class striker.

And only a media desperate to convince us that a) England have a real chance in 2012 and b) the Premier League is not the new Championship (which is what it increasingly feels like to me) would say otherwise.

Ultimately this kind of groupthink metamorphoses into a much more devastating phenomenon. The phenomenon I’m thinking of starts with ‘mind’ and ends with four letters that rhyme with ‘luck’.

Inter's semi-crisis continues as Rafa fields a team of two halves

2010-11-08T13:23:00Z

The Italian media usually answer such questions with scientific precision. In Gazzetta Dello Sport, Valerio Clari was clear: the Nerazzurri’s point at Brescia had “prevented the half-crisis from becoming a huge crisis”.

There were only two things wrong with Inter against Brescia. Their defence and their midfield. Brescia’s goal was almost comically simple: a long ball to Andrea Caracciolo who outfoxed three Inter defenders and the keeper with mysterious ease.

Watching the replay – and marvelling at the way one long lofted pass undid Inter – it was hard not to recall Rafael van der Vaart’s rumoured taunting tweet to Wesley Sneijder: “I met your defence in Milan. It didn’t look good, it was like cheese with holes in.”

Redesigning a football team is never easy. And the way Inter played in their treble-winning season gave the team its identity. Rafa Benitez is now trying to change that, as he urges Inter to play more attractive football, but his players could be forgiven if they started losing faith. Against Spurs, Lucio and Maicon looked especially disenchanted.

The major beneficiary of Benitez’s approach is Samuel Eto’o, who has already scored more goals this season than in the whole of 2009/10. But that gain is offset by the damage done to Inter’s rearguard.

They conceded six goals in two games against Spurs, five were created on the flanks. As long ago as the Super Cup, the chasms of space left out wide by Inter’s more attacking formation were as obvious as, well, a priest on a mountain of sugar.

Maicon should, as Benitez said, take his share of the blame but so should a coach who has proved himself one of the best tacticians in the UEFA Champions League and ought, after the first leg, have devised a cunning plan to deal with the force of nature known to the Italian press as “Incredi-Bale”.

Benitez probably felt he had to abandon the disciplined 4-2-3-1 with which Inter won everything. The margins of victory – against Barcelona in the semi-final – were too slender for comfort and rivals have had the summer to plot how to undo that system. But he has yet to find a formation that suits his players better. Sneijder says Inter need to rediscover their winning mentality. He’s half-right. What they also need to discover is a new way to win.

Against Brescia, Benitez plumped for a 4-4-2 which failed, as Gazzetta noted, “because the midfield line was formed by a former full-back like Zanetti, Sneijder, who hadn’t played in that position for a long time and two lads who are forwards, not outer midfielders”.

This wasn’t a game of two halves; it was a team of two halves. Five at the front and five further back and, after Maicon’s injury, only Christian Chivu striving to ensure the twain should meet.

For Moratti, Brescia probably wasn’t as wearying as the debacle at White Hart Lane. Yet the Inter owner has been reasonably restrained, saying: “It’s not that you have to react violently every time something like this happens but we have to appreciate that this is not the way to reach our goals”.

In his defence, Benitez points out that his side are only a few points shy of the summit of Serie A and just a win away from a place in the last 16 in the UEFA Champions League. He has been spectacularly unlucky with injuries, especially in the middle of the park with Esteban Cambiasso, Dejan Stankovic, Thiago Motta and McDonald Mariga sidelined. That misfortune, especially Cambiasso’s absence, did contribute to Inter’s discomfort against Spurs and probably explains the rumours of Rafa’s interest in Lucas.

This is still a half-crisis. Moratti is a seasoned owner who is not easy to panic. Benitez’s evolution of Inter may become clearer and more successful when half the squad returns from the treatment table. Till then, the coach must do his best to limit the damage. But the Milan derby, the fixture that defines the Interisti’s mood for much of the season, is only a week away.

When Europe’s national team coaches met in Madrid in September, there was much discussion about how reactive a coach should be and the importance of a team retaining its identity as it tries to outfox the opposition. One coach admitted that in the World Cup: “During the first half, I looked at my team and I thought ‘this is not us’. At half-time my priority was to persuade the team to be themselves.”

The question that hasn’t yet been answered, in Benitez’s reign at Inter, is: “What is ’us’?” At the moment, the Nerazzurri don’t play like Jose Mourinho’s Inter. But nor do they play like a team designed by Rafa Benitez.

Buffalo to Bristol Rovers: The story of Big Mal, the Great Gatsby & Supermou

2010-11-03T11:00:00Z

Malcolm Allison’s death moved people in many ways, but it made me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, and Jose Mourinho’s future.

Fitzgerald probably didn’t even know soccer existed. But in the final three paragraphs of his magnificent, flawed novel Tender Is The Night, he perfectly envisages the tragic fate that befalls most managers.

His hero, the psychoanalyst Dick Diver, is initially as commanding a presence on Fitzgerald’s French Riviera as Mourinho is at the Bernabeu. But in those final paragraphs he has become a nomadic exile, cycling between a series of smaller towns and smaller practices in New York State.

Fitzgerald even loses track of his erstwhile hero concluding: “In any case, he is almost certainly in that section of the country, in one town or another.”

From Buffalo to Bristol Rovers

Fitzgerald famously said: “Show me a hero and I will write you tragedy”. And Allison’s heroic tragedy could have easily have been written, suitably mythologised, by Fitzgerald.

The Guardian’s Michael Henderson saw Allison as a footballing Jay Gatsby who epitomised Fitzgerald’s description of his most famous hero: “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.”

Yet Mourinho seems more of a Gatsby, a self-created hero, than Allison. The coach’s personal bible of notes even recalls the young Gatsby’s schedule of self-improvement which includes the Mourinhoesque note: “No wasting time”. And that dismal schedule of Diver’s small towns – Buffalo, Batavia, Lockport, Geneva and Hornell – recalls the nomadic decline of Allison’s last years as a coach shuttling from Yeovil to Sporting, Middlesbrough, Willington, Kuwait, Vitoria de Setubal, SC Farensie and Bristol Rovers.

In his heyday, Fitzgerald declared that life was something you dominated if you were any good. Yet his fiction traced the many tragic ways life overwhelms even the very best. Personality – no matter how long your unbroken series of successful gestures lasted for – was ultimately not enough for Gatsby or Diver.

Tolstoy made the same point, tediously, in War And Peace, suggesting that the outcome of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia could not be wholly explained by the character, genius or behaviour of Napoleon, Tsar Alexander or their generals.

But the media ignores Tolstoy’s reproof and Fitzgerald’s tragic wisdom, preferring to interpret European football largely as a clash of personalities. These heroes and villains are eulogised and criticised like contemporary Napoleons.

This approach is not entirely wrong – it would be churlish and stupid not to recognise Mourinho’s part in ending Inter’s 45-year wait for the European Cup – but it is far from the whole story, as Liverpool’s travails have shockingly revealed.

Daisy, Judy and Jose

Whether Mourinho loathes Benitez or vice versa is an entertaining Punch and Judy show, but is it anything more than that?

If you look beyond the cult of personalities, what is most striking about European football is not how radically geniuses like Mourinho have changed matters but how much remains the same.

At the top of the game, though competition has varied in intensity since the late 1960s, the profound resilience of Ajax, Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus, Inter, Liverpool, Manchester United, Marseille, Milan has been impressive. They have all had their struggles but the sheer longevity and overall consistency of their success would be deemed phenomenal in any other industry.

To give you a point of reference, between 1970 and 1983 a third of the 500 largest global companies ceased to exist. The difficulty of merging and acquiring clubs skews the comparison a bit – mind you, clubs face far fiercer competition than the giant multinationals.

In this context, Mourinho’s rise looks slightly different. The Special One got his big break at one of Portugal’s big three, cemented his reputation at a rich, long-established English club (albeit one with a gift for flashy underachievement), reconquered Europe with one of Italy’s most successful, well-off clubs and now reigns as football’s greatest living superhero at the wealthiest club in the world which has won the European Cup nine times.

Once you set aside the matter of Mourinho’s genius, the other common factors in his remarkable story are pedigree (which implies a position of power, an expectation of success and, in many cases, a certain quality of infrastructure) and wealth.

One of Mourinho’s lesser spotted gifts as a coach is his instinct for selecting clubs with the financial resources to give him a temporary, but hefty, competitive advantage. There’s an echo of Gatsby here too. Fitzgerald’s doomed hero says of his beloved Daisy “Her voice is full of money”. Since he’s been able to pick and choose, Mourinho invariably joins clubs that are “full of money”.

So, for me, even if Mourinho rewrites history and becomes the first coach to win the European Cup with three clubs or the first to win it twice in a row with different clubs, his greatest feat will be winning the UEFA Champions League with comparative underdogs, Porto.

The haunter becomes the haunted

Mourinho’s alliance with the media has created a myth – let’s call it Supermou – that is so powerful it has diminished Phil Scolari – a coach who had merely won the World Cup – and haunted the likes of Avram Grant, Jesualdo Ferreira and Benitez.

But ultimately, as Allison discovered, such myths haunt the very person they celebrate. One of the recurring trials in superhero fiction is the moment the baying, betrayed mob turns on a superhero deemed to have lost his superheroic gifts.

Brian Clough avoided such nastiness by achieving a kind of success so unprecedented and spectacular that most Nottingham Forest fans never blamed him when the club fell to earth. The fans, owners and presidents of the clubs that hire Mourinho are less forgiving.

Mourinho does not talk like a student of football history. But as he basks in the deserved adulation in Madrid he might want to reflect on one line in Brian Glanville’s obituary of Allison: “The worst thing that happened to him was what, at the time, appeared the best: when, in 1971, he was made manager of Manchester City.”

Mourinho is more disciplined than Allison but Tolstoy, Fitzgerald and Glanville would probably suggest he ought to think ahead if he seeks to avoid the worst.

If he could avoid the Diver/Allison syndrome by bowing out at the top (as a World Cup winner with Portugal?), the legend of Supermou would remain untarnished. And that might just be the most special thing The Special One ever does.

Milk, Spurs and a prospect named Messi

2010-10-22T12:28:00Z

There was a time – and I don’t think I’m indulging in false, misty-eyed nostalgia here – when football used to happen on the pitch. And we all talked about goals, saves and mazy runs with the ball not contracts, agents and injunctions in the famous jurisdiction of Dallas.

This week the UEFA Champions League did the immense public service of reminding us that football can still be about stuff that happens on the pitch even if, mysteriously, discussion of that stuff leads us to Rafa Benitez’s milkman who told us that, in Liverpool, the coach the Italian media have snidely dubbed Big Ben was a three semi-skimmed pints a day man. Given that Rafa once went to war with Valencia players because he ordered them to use skimmed milk in their ice cream, that seems a lot to me.

But at the San Siro it was Spurs, not Inter, Rafa or John the milkman, who showed a lot of bottle. True, the expanses of unmarked space on Inter’s flanks in the second half were so vast you could have driven a milk float down them, but you can only play whoever you’re up against. And Gareth Bale took superb advantage of the kind of slack defending seldom seen since England’s World Cup exit.

Clearly Inter’s internal debate over who should track back on each flank remains unresolved. Such indecision may prove fatal in the knockout rounds.

Dwight Yorke sticks his neck out

Still, those stern judges in the famous jurisdiction of the Italian football press didn’t mind. Gazzetta dello Sport hailed the “fantastic, unstoppable Eto’o” and celebrated the performance of Philippe Coutinho, the Brazilian attacking midfielder who looks almost as prodigiously gifted as Jack Wilshere. They barely acknowledged that skipper Javier Zanetti’s goal made him, at 37, the oldest player to score in the history of the Champions League.

But this was a tough week for opinion formers. Perched uneasily on a high chair in the Sky Sports studio, Dwight Yorke, perhaps unnerved by the unaccustomed proximity of his old sparring partner Graeme Souness, bizarrely described Lionel Messi as “one for the future” when debating whether Barca’s No10 was as good as, or better than, Maradona.

As much as Souness drooled over Messi he was even more amazed by the act of footballing alchemy that Harry Redknapp had wrought at Spurs. Souness made one substitute appearance in the UEFA Cup for the Cockney Tap Dancers between 1968 and 1972 and was simply astounded by the sight of a Spurs team fighting back. This wasn’t, he implied, the Spurs he knew and sneered at, the old Spurs that loved to be the best team on the pitch and still lose.

The stereotype of Spurs as congenital flatterers to deceive was set in stone in September 2001 when they managed to lose 5-3 to Manchester United after being 3-0 up at half-time. Sir Alex Ferguson’s team talk at the interval didn’t involve any crockery flinging. He calmly told his players: “Obviously, you know this is Spurs we’re playing. In their minds, they’ve already won. Get one back and they’ll panic. That’s the thing about Spurs. They’ve always played that way and they always will.” United proved him right then but nine years later Redknapp is finally proving him wrong.

Inter’s defending wasn’t the only echo of the World Cup to resonate this week. In South Africa, many pundits used the term “broken team” to describe national sides that didn’t really have a tactical plan but relied on the individual brilliance of their stars. On matchday three, Massimiliano Allegri’s Milan played like a “broken team”. It is probably too early for the rather lopsided array of talents Allegri has at his disposal to grow organically into a unit but against Real Madrid, they looked like the most un-Sacchi-like team the Rossoneri have fielded since the former shoe salesman left the dugout in 1991.

But back to Camp Nou. For me, the revelation of the night wasn’t Messi but Copenhagen’s Senegalese striker Damien N’Doye who twisted past a panting Carles Puyol to rattle the woodwork with a fierce half-volley in the second half. The Danish champions have scored three goals so far and N’Doye has grabbed two of them. No wonder Sampdoria have been linked with him.

Walternaccio and Rooneygate

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the week wasn’t Bale’s valiant hat-trick but the inventive football with which Rangers really should have beaten Valencia. True, los Che started out below strength but Walter Smith’s men created enough good chances to make the old gags about ‘Walternaccio’ as stale as the unsold bread in Covent Garden on this week’s edition of The Apprentice.

If Rangers can maintain this vein of form, Smith may yet fulfil his lifelong wish to (as he reveals in the next issue of that really surprisingly good magazine known as Champions) lead his men out at the Bernabeu.

This is already the most surreal football season since 1994/95, made so mirablis by Cantona’s kung fu kick. And for this I blame the media. (Not just the media, I think Rafa Benitez’s milkman, a gullible Texan judge and whoever asked Colin Murray to host MOTD2 should take their share of responsibility. I don’t know what the qualifications for hosting MOTD2 are, or indeed if there are any at all, but Murray’s competence is so immense he reminds me of LBJ’s famous remark about a rival who was so useless he “couldn’t pour water out of a wellington boot if the instructions were printed on the sole”.)

But to return to the point – I do have one honest – why was one tabloid billing Wayne Rooney’s desire to leave Manchester United as “Rooneygate”?

I haven’t read every column inch devoted to this controversy – who has the time or, indeed, the willpower? – but surely no one has credibly accused Wayne of secretly trying to subvert the democratic process by employing a team of disaffected Cuban exiles who were probably once in the employ of the CIA to break into a hotel room to find secret documents that were probably never there in the first place? Thought not.

The Rooney saga has many facets (most of them, I suspect, invisible to the supporters and the media) but none scandalous enough to warrant the use of the ‘gate’ suffix.

Stupefied to a mutter by Sven

2010-10-18T09:27:00Z

After more than four decades watching football, it’s delightful, if professionally inconvenient, to know that the game can still stupefy me.

How do you feel about having Sven as manager? It’s a question I get asked everyday. And I always mutter something non-committal under my breath because the truth is I don’t know.

This is in itself an alarming state of affairs for someone who has been writing about football for 16 years. As a football journalist, you’re paid to have opinions, even – or should that be especially? – when you don’t have one.

Milan Mandaric, Eriksson and Aiyawatt Raksriaksorn

But how I do feel about Sven? On hearing the news, I was flummoxed by the surrealism of it all. It is easily the strangest thing to happen to my beloved Foxes since Leicester Fosse – as they were then known – notoriously lost a penalty shoot-out to an elephant. In the 1890s, four players took on a jumbo-sized goalkeeper from Sangers Circus with an oversized ball: only one, William Keach, managed to score.

Part of me smelled a hoax. Leicester had inadvertently been embroiled in football farce before. In Joe McGinniss’s sublime The Miracle Of Castel di Sangro, the village team that has somehow reached the dizzying heights of Serie B signs a promising African striker who is said to have played for Leicester City but astounds McGinniss by vowing, at his first press conference, to sleep with all the players' wives. The ‘Leicester striker’ turns out to be an uninspired publicity stunt by the club’s demented owner.

Even when I realised Sven was no hoax, I couldn't shake the feeling that City had been press-ganged into playing a largely unrewarding cameo role in someone else’s sitcom. This worry was partly inspired by the fact that I – along with, I suspect, many other Britons – could no longer distinguish between the man himself and Alastair MacGowan’s doleful, hen-pecked, ineffectual Sven.

So the mere mention of Sven as City boss prompted visions of McGowan in the dug-out and Ronnie Ancona’s Nancy in the director’s box, secretly texting her roving other half a series of increasingly furious reprimands about his latest peccadillo.

The confusion sounds absurd and yet at the same time it has the ring of symbolic truth. The Sven who won Serie A with Lazio, became the first coach to win the league and cup double in three countries (Sweden, Portugal and Italy) and did a half-decent job at Manchester City seems to bear no relation to the Sven who turned up in the east Midlands as the figurehead of the tinpot regime that briefly gave Notts County fans ideas above their station.

So which Sven had Leicester City hired? And was his appointment – and the investment by Thai duty-free retailer King Power – merely just the cruellest of false dawns?

After the 1-1 draw against Hull (managed by Nigel Pearson, who left City in the summer – possibly in a row over transfer funds, in a move which will surely stymie his prospects of a minor Premier League job in the next year or two), neither of these questions has been answered.

If I couldn’t decide how I felt about Sven I should, at least, be able to construct the kind of pithy riposte with which such enquiries are usually greeted in the workplace. But even that seemed beyond me.

My next thought was that I’d rather have Jimmy Bloomfield but he is sadly unavailable on account of having died of cancer in 1983 at the shockingly young age of 48. In the early 1970s, Bloomfield’s City – studded with such geniuses as Frank Worthington, Keith Weller, Alan Birchenall, Peter Shilton, David Nish, Jon Sammels and Len Glover – made me gasp as well as cheer.

In Julian Barnes’s seminal novel A History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters, the narrator ascends to heaven where his beloved Leicester City win the FA Cup every year. (Note that even in a fantasy of paradise, Leicester only win the FA Cup – not the Premier League, let alone the European Cup. It’s as if the most inventive British novelist of his generation had decided that, even in a fictional utopia, to suggest that City would win the European Cup was just too outlandish.)

When I reread the book – something I do every other year – the City side I envisage monopolising the FA Cup is the one I first saw with uncle Ron and cousin Mick in the early 1970s in which the magnificent seven – Shilton, Nish, Weller, Sammels, Worthington, Birchenall and Glover – were ably supported by the likes of Dennis Rofe, Steve Whitworth, Graham Cross and Rodney Fern, who revealed in his Shoot! questionnaire that the person he’d most like to meet was Lester Piggott.

As I write this, I’m becoming accustomed to the idea of Sven. The real Sven. That’s partly because even the briefest scrutiny of the list of Leicester City managers confirms just how dire Paulo Sousa’s replacement could have been. Mark McGhee? Craig Levein, latterly famed as the pioneer of the new, shortlived 4-2-4-0 formation? The second coming of Gary ‘Suitcase’ Megson?

So my stupefaction is over. Sven will do. He’s a darn sight more encouraging than the return of Megson and not quite as bizarre as a penalty shoot-out with an elephant. (Mind you, if City’s new Thai backers are as hungry for publicity as some suggest, why not restage this classic conflict between player and pachyderm?)

But if you pinched me tomorrow and told me that Sven of the Foxes had been a dream, a hoax or a new Radio 4 satire like Lenin of the Rovers, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Scrabble, Princess Diana and Armenia

2010-10-13T15:36:00Z

For Europe’s football giants, qualifying for the finals of Euro 2012 is almost a formality. For many smaller countries, such as Armenia, ambitions are more modest. Earning more points than last time, doing well enough to move up to the next pot in the seedings.

These are not the kind of aims to inspire a nation, so if they are accompanied by the occasional night of unexpected glory – like Armenia’s 3-1 win over Slovakia last Friday – so much the better.

Armenia is a far away country of which most football fans know nothing. Till now, the Armenians have had only one thing in common: a sense of indignant grief over the murder of at least a million of their compatriots by Turkey during World War One. Armenians aren’t even united by geography: only three million of them live in the republic, another 11 million are scattered across the globe.

Afflicted by history and geography, this fragile young nation has long looked to individual celebrities such as chess master Gary Kasparov (a keen football fan) to embody the nation they dream of becoming. (This quest even led some eager patriots to calculate that Princess Diana was 1/64th Armenian.) Since their victory over Slovakia – and their 4-0 tonking of Andorra – the national football team has become such a symbol.

The 3-1 win was a shock but hardly undeserved. Armenia’s fast, short passing game outfoxed the Slovaks (who played like big-time Charlies convinced that victory was just a matter of turning up) and the new 3M forward line – Edgar Manucharyan, Henrik Mkhityaryan and Yura Movsisyan – gives the team something it has conspicuously lacked in recent years: a cutting edge in front of goal.

National coach Vardan Minasyan, who won 11 caps in midfield for Armenia and was caretaker manager when the national team beat Belgium 2-1 in 2009, has transformed the team. After losing 1-0 to Ireland, they came within a late handball of beating Macedonia away before settling for a 2-2 draw.

The victory over World Cup finalists Slovakia is arguably their most spectacular result in 18 years of international football. And the rather more expected win against Andorra means Armenia are on an unprecedented three-game unbeaten run.

How the 1998 World Cup was won… with Armenian help
Before the Slovakia game, the edited highlights of Armenia’s football history amounted to Ararat Yerevan’s Soviet league title in 1973, their subsequent run to the European Cup quarter-finals and that triumph over Belgium. The best Armenian footballer of all-time is, by common consent, midfielder Khoren Oganesian who won 34 caps for the USSR and scored the winner, coincidentally against Belgium in the 1982 World Cup.

On top of that, two members of France’s 1998 World Cup winning squad – Alain Boghossian and Youri Djorkaeff – are of Armenian descent. Djorkaeff has even speculated in public about coaching the Armenian national team.

The good news for Armenian players is that, since Scrabble changed the rules to allow proper names, a thorough knowledge of their monikers could help Scrabblers conquer all. Mkhityaryan is worth 26 points in the English version.

Armenia are still unlikely qualifiers for Euro 2012 finals: Minasyan doesn’t really have the strength in depth. Mkhitaryan, arguably their best player against Slovakia, is the only player in the squad with UEFA Champions League experience (with Shakhtar Donetsk) while the other most famous player, Manucharyan, has returned to Armenia’s perennial champions Pyunik after five wasted, injury-prone years at Ajax.

Movsisyan, whose family fled to the US for asylum eight years ago, looks a good prospect. The 23-year-old terrorised Martin Skrtel and scored the goals that kept Randers in the Danish top flight last season.

Pride, money and hope
Minasyan’s triumphs couldn’t come at a better time for Armenian football. Pyunik have won the last nine titles but are being pushed all the way this season by Yerevan rivals Banants. But Armenian football needs investment to bring more young players through: the best academies are run by Pyunik and Ararat FC. Meanwhile Hratch Kaprelian, who owns most of Ararat FC, is now investing in a French third division club.

If Minasyan’s team can become a serious focal point for Armenia’s national pride, the economic benefits could trickle down to clubs and the grassroots. If that happens, either fewer investors may follow Kaprelian’s example or, better still, the richer members of Armenia’s enormous global diaspora might be inspired to invest in Armenian clubs.

This might sound like a lot of hope to build on seven points from four games. But sometimes, goals, games and qualifying campaigns can change history.

Are tactics ruining Rooney's dreams?

2010-10-08T12:18:00Z

The last thing Wayne Rooney needs right now is more advice. But as his 25th birthday nears, he must sense that, as a man and a footballer, his life is approaching a tipping point. One serious misstep and the genius once billed as the white Pele could become another English footballer who promised greatness but never quite achieved it.

Watching his games at Euro 2004 – and that hat-trick on his debut for Manchester United against Fenerbahce just over six years ago – I was reminded of Franz Beckenbauer’s famous analysis of Gazza at Italia 90: “A true footballer from the streets, defiant, crafty and intrepid like the leader of a boy’s gang. Behind his angular forehead, he would cook up ideas you just didn’t expect.”

And this summer, even when the Kaiser was at his most contemptuous of England’s kick and rush football, the Manchester United and England striker was exempt from Beckenbauer’s general scorn. The World Cup winner as player and coach noted: “If Rooney can catch a little on fire, England will be a threat to anyone.”

But the World Cup didn’t spark Rooney in the slightest. And in the months since, the star has dominated the tabloid front pages in a manner unseen since the absurdity of Gazzamania, prompting a thousand columnists to ask: what is wrong with Wayne Rooney?

Celebrity, peace and joy

Celebrity is, John Updike once suggested, the mask that eats away at the face underneath. Both George Best and Gazza discovered, at immense personal cost, the truth of Updike’s observation. Now Rooney is discovering it too. It didn’t take many years of tabloid scrutiny before Gazza confessed that the only place he felt at peace was on a football pitch.

You wonder if Rooney has already begun to feel the same. Except that, these days, his body language does not often suggest joy. Which does beg the question: has Rooney fallen out of love with football?

It happens. And given the colossal failure of England’s World Cup campaign, it would not be that surprising. Officially, professional footballers are supposed to put such disappointments behind them or use the rage to fuel their quest for self-improvement. But the reality is that failures, especially of such magnitude, are much harder to manage than such mantras might suggest.

Why, after all, did Rooney become a footballer in the first place? Because he was very good at it– and because he dreamed of emulating such geniuses as his boyhood idol, Maradona.

As daft as some of Rooney’s off the pitch activities might seem, nobody has ever suggested he is unintelligent about football. And the contrast between Maradona in 1986 and Rooney in 2010 will have hurt him. He now knows he has at best two more opportunities to live up to his idol in a World Cup. Even at 25, the opportunities for Rooney to prove his greatness are diminishing.

In Rome in May 2009, Rooney sat in the Manchester United dressing room, processing the unexpectedly comprehensive manner of his side’s defeat, and concluded: “We lost to the best team in the world.” Winning the UEFA Champions League was the best moment of his career. But in the two years since Moscow, United’s progress to the business end of this competition no longer seems assured.

The dreams that inspire players like Rooney are not necessarily the same as those that inspire their coaches. Arsene Wenger once said a coach’s duty is to encourage creativity, not destroy it. In that respect, Rooney has been lucky with the licence granted him by Sir Alex Ferguson – if not by successive England managers. He has the technique and the vision to do the unexpected but he has not inspired as many YouTube moments as Messi or Maradona.

In many ways Rooney’s all-round game has improved significantly, but it has also become less spectacular: for example, he has not scored from outside the area in 65 games for Manchester United.

He must watch Barcelona’s No10 with awe and envy. And he may wonder if it is his peculiar misfortune to have grown up in the wrong football culture. Because Beckenbauer had a point. The prevailing mentality in English club football is still kick and rush.

There’s only one Brian Talbot! 

Rooney, who has the best technique of any English footballer of his generation, is often celebrated not for what sets him apart from other footballers but for the very trait he shares with such mediocre midfield workhorses as Brian Talbot: he runs a lot.

We grant Rooney the freedom to use his legs when what he really needs to grow as a footballer is the freedom to use his brain. (To be fair, he might be given his head if he played in either Serie A or La Liga.) In many respects, Rooney’s predicament is symptomatic of the game, which is now dominated by discussion of formations, tactics and shapes. The triumph of the coach is symbolised by the fact that Real Madrid signed only one galactico this summer: Jose Mourinho. Great news for coaches and columnists with chalkboards, but is it really good for the game?

The implausible dreams that inspired Rooney to become a footballer are the fantasies that underpin football. If we can’t be the next Maradona, the next best thing is to watch the making of one. And if Rooney can’t fulfil his dreams, I fear for football.

When we look up this era on whatever YouTube is called a decade or two from now, what clips of action will we be watching: Rafa Benitez sitting in the dugout writing notes?

Megson, Blanchflower and Presley

2010-09-17T10:33:00Z

The eight-point guide to this week's UEFA Champions League action...

1 Take it away Lionel!
The goal of the week has to be Lionel Messi’s second against Panathinaikos. In any other week, Thomas Muller’s curving volley with the outside of his foot would have stood out. But Messi’s dribble and shot was so good you still couldn’t quite see how he’d done it on the replay.

Messi is the supreme exponent of an endangered art: dribbling. We’ve all grown up with wizards of the wing who fall under their own spell and flatter to deceive. But Messi darts towards the goal, knowing that even if he doesn’t score, he will probably wreak enough havoc to set up a teammate. With the ball at his feet and running at defences Messi is as good as Maradona and Best.

Watching Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona is, let’s face it, so much more fun than watching Vicente del Bosque’s Spain. I agree with Mike Ticher who said in When Saturday Comes: “I watched Spain’s World Cup with a mixture of admiration and frustration. Yes, it was tactically and technically brilliant and sometimes ‘beautiful’. But was it gripping? Were those four 1-0 wins in a row the best football can be? To me, there was something repressed and clinical about Spain that sucked the drama from the matches.”

For me, the difference between watching Barcelona and Spain is like the difference between hearing Elvis sing Suspicious Minds and Proud Mary. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, it is sufficient, it does the job, but it doesn’t have the same charismatic, joyous urgency as El crooning: “Honey, you know I’d never lie to you...”

2 The night of the living dead
Transylvania’s finest pulled off the result of the week. With coach Andrea Mandorlini sacked 48 hours before kick-off, Cluj could have played like zombies against Basel. But they snuck a 2-1 victory thanks to ruthless finishing, the left foot of Juan Culio (who made both goals) and honest toil.

New coach Sorin Cartu, a stern disciplinarian, has had a chequered career. He was just 35 when he won the double as manager of Universtatea Craiova in 1990/91, but he has drifted around the league since like a Romanian Gary Megson.

Cartu should know that September is the cruellest month for Cluj managers. In September 2008, Ioan Andone was squeezed out despite having just won the first double in the club’s history.

Mandorlini paid the price for an indifferent start to the season and his startling decision to omit promising striker Cristian Bud, centre-back Nuno Diogo and experienced Argentine midfielder Sixto Peralta from the Champions League squad.

Cartu is Cluj’s eighth manager in five years, which suggests that owner Arpad Paszkany and chairman Luliu Muresan are taking the ‘Chelsea of Romania’ tag a bit too literally.

3 The perils of punditry
The “you never win anything with kids” award for heroically misguided punditry goes to, er, myself for bigging up Braga.

Professor Champions League, Tue 14 Sep: "Braga pose more of an attacking threat than Sporting Lisbon"

While marvelling at Arsenal’s quality, Michel Salgado wondered about their ability to read the ebbs and flows that are an intrinsic part of every match. If Arsenal were as good at making decisions as at passing the ball, he suggested, they might win the ultimate prize.

There’s something about Wenger’s Arsenal that makes seasoned pros like Salgado uncomfortable. It’s almost as if they are too pure, lacking the necessary understanding of realpolitik which most successful teams call on in times of need.

But their football can be magical, like Barcelona’s in 2009, Ajax’s in the early 1970s and Brazil in 1970. The cheap jibes about Arsenal’s recent dearth of silverware under Wenger slightly miss the point. Football isn’t just about trophies; it is, as Danny Blanchflower famously said, about glory and doing things with style. As Arsenal are doing.

4 Too many tweets...
Maketh a tw*t, as David Cameron memorably observed. The prime minister’s wisdom is obviously lost on Russian president Dmitri Medvedev who sarcastically congratulated Marseille defender Cesar Azpiliceuta for scoring the own goal that gave Spartak Moscow three points.

“Spartak beat Marseille, Azpiliceuta played brilliantly” tweeted the exultant pres. He might have done better just to congratulate Spartak keeper Andrei Dykan who fully deserved his “11 out of ten” rating from coach Valeriy Karpin (who by the way is interviewed in the latest issue of Champions).

5 Anoraks corner
Chelsea’s romp over Zilina was remarkable for stattos, anoraks and all-round saddoes like me. When 17-year-old Josh McEachran made his debut against the Slovakian champions, he became the first player born after the Champions League started to grace the competition. Chelsea’s promising young midfielder was born on 1 March 1993.

6 The bad news for Spurs
Losing their coach and some key players over the summer, Twente were cast as cannon fodder in Group A. But against Inter, the Eredivisie champions moved the ball around well, kept their shape for much of the time and exploited the spaces left by a Nerazzurri side that still seems caught betwixt and between.

Rafa Benitez’s attempt to make Inter play more expansively is leaving more space on the flanks for opponents to attack and, against Twente, led McDonald Mariga to stray too far forward leaving Lucio and Walter Samuel isolated.
Although Theo Janssen’s stunning free kick stole the show, forwards Bryan Ruiz and Luuk De Jong were exceptional. Michel ***’homme’s team could trouble Werder Bremen and Spurs in the race for the last 16.

7 Milacticos 2 Auxerre 0
Two moments of genius from Ibra – and Ronaldinho – were the difference between Milan and Auxerre. Jean Fernandez’s side were unlucky not to grab a point. Leonardo suggested his old club’s progress in this competition would depend not on the ‘Milacticos’ but on the fitness of central defensive intelligence Alessandro Nesta who will need to be at his most commanding if the Rossoneri’s lack of bite in midfield is not to cost them.

Kevin-Prince Boateng’s flick on for Ibra’s first goal is the latest memorable episode in a career worthy of a soap opera. Still only 23, Boateng has played for six clubs and two countries, missed a penalty in an FA Cup final, and registered an assist on his Champions League debut. As if that wasn’t enough, he has publicly admitted that, when depressed, he had a serious shopping addiction. He has looked good in midfield for Milan and could yet prove one of the bargains of the summer.

8 The wrong curse
Wayne Rooney’s troubles have been attributed to the curse of Nike. But the real curse may be much closer to home.

Since Bobby Charlton scored 49 goals for England, various misfortunes have befallen players who looked like smashing his record. Gary Lineker, who seemed destined to supersede Charlton, struck one of the oddest penalties of his career (against Brazil) when in sight of that record and hobbled into retirement with a dodgy toe, a goal short of Charlton’s total. Michael Owen racked up 40 goals at a fair rate but hasn’t played for the Three Lions in two and a half years.

Now 24, Rooney has scored 26 goals for England – Charlton had scored 23 by the time he celebrated his 24th birthday – and looks the best bet to break that record since Lineker. But will he?

More from Professor Champions League

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Jugglers, copycats and Sepp's dodgy knee

2010-09-14T10:35:00Z

The editor of Champions Magazine shares some random observations on the week ahead in European football...

Can anything stop Chelsea?

“The only thing that can stop Chelsea [in the UEFA Champions League] is their appalling bad luck in this competition”. I read that on the internet so it must be true.

True the Blues have had their hopes cruelly dashed by a ghost goal, indifferent refereeing, a missed penalty and a late equaliser, but that isn’t what’s troubling Chelsea fans. They fret about central defence. Without the sly, strategic wit of Ricardo Carvalho, the Blues must rely on John Terry, Alex, Jeffrey Bruma and Branislav Ivanovic.

Away this week to MSK Zilina, it will be intriguing to see what kind of test 21-year-old Gambian striker Momodou Ceesay (who scored three goals in qualifying) gives Terry. Ceesay spent two years in Chelsea’s youth academy so won’t lack motivation.

Send in the juggler

Ajax’s return to the Bernabeu for the first time in 15 years is sufficient reason for a gratuitous revel in the audacious genius of Gerrie Muhren. On 25 April 1973, the Golden Ajax beat Real Madrid 1-0 at the Bernabeu. The result was almost incidental because during the game Muhren started nonchalantly juggling the ball just inside the Real half. Around 110,000 Madrilenos had the grace to wave their white handkerchiefs in appreciation.

Muhren scored the only goal as Ajax progressed to their third successive European Cup final (in which they beat Juventus 1-0 in Belgrade.) Later as the midfielder walked back to the hotel, he was surrounded by Real fans who mistook him for a Dutch supporter and wanted to know all about Ajax’s demon juggler.

Muhren loves to ruminate about that moment’s symbolic significance and declared: “Before then it was always big Real Madrid and little Ajax. When they saw me doing that, the balance changed.”

The balance has shifted again since. A 1-0 win by Ajax in Group G would be the shock of matchday one. Not least because Jose Mourinho has now gone 137 home games without defeat as manager.

There’s only Arsenal. Err, wait a minute…

Braga used to wear green and white, like Sporting Lisbon who they were kind of named after. But their Hungarian coach Jozef Szabo was so impressed by Arsenal on a trip to Highbury in the 1920s he remodelled the club on his return to Portugal.

Braga adopted Arsenal’s red and white kit, named their youth team the Arsenal of Braga and unsurprisingly became known as the Arsenalistas.

Szabo isn’t the only football aficionado to be inspired by Arsenal. In a province of Buenos Aires in 1957, brothers Hector and Julio Grondona launched a club called Arsenal de Sarandi. And let’s not forget Arsenal Maseru (who, coincidentally won the Lesotho title in 1989 and 1991, the same years George Graham’s Gunners won the league), Arsenal Kharkiv and Arsenal Kyiv (in the Ukraine), Arsenal (Honduras), amateur club Arsenal-Tula (Russia), Berekum Arsenal (Ghana), Arsenal Wanderers (Mauritius), FK Arsenal (Montenegro) and Arsenal Kragujevac (Serbia).

Not sure why Arsenal inspire so many clones. Many clubs have one doppelganger – Everton in Chile, Manchester United in Gibraltar, even Liverpool in Montevideo – Arsenal have lots of them. It may be as simple as the fact that Arsenal have always felt like part of the football establishment and, even as far back as the 1920s, people from within the game who visited them came away with feeling that that was a proper football club ought to be like.

This week two Arsenals clash in Group H. Although Arsene Wenger’s team should top the group, Braga’s demolition of Sevilla away from home in the play-off round was far more emphatic than the 4-3 scoreline might suggest.

If Wenger is right – and his team are now equipped to win this tournament – they will want all three points. But Braga pose more of an attacking threat than Sporting Lisbon who have perennially flattered to deceive in the group stages.

Brazilian striker Lima’s hat-trick defeated Sevilla, but his countryman Matheus is as much of a threat. Fast, mobile, with a knack for scoring crucial goals, the 27-year-old will be encouraged by the DVD of Arsenal’s defensive lapses against Bolton.

Who’s going to take off?

When he was manager, leader and the walking symbol of Auxerre, Guy Roux would use a particular gambit with players who wanted to move on. In his blunt, avuncular way he would compare them to a plane. If you want to leave, he’d say, that’s fine. But if you leave, do you have what it takes to really take off?

The speech served Roux’s interests. Often he would convince a player to stay on for a year or two. And for players moving clubs today, his question remains as relevant as ever. Too many move too early, are grounded at their new club and have to move on to soar again. (You’ll be delighted to hear that I have now exhausted my entire stock of aviation metaphors.)

So with Roux’s question in mind, the player I’ll be watching most this week is Yoann Gourcuff. His move to Milan epitomised Roux’s Law. Though he wasn’t particularly to blame, Gourcuff endured a turbulent, traumatic World Cup. But he has the chance to be the creative fulcrum of Lyon, the French club most likely to emulate Marseille and win this competition.

He has the talent and the vision, as he showed in this competition last season with Bordeaux. Does he have the character?

The strange case of Sepp Blatter’s knee

Famous leaders often become indelibly associated with a particular physical movement. Churchill had his V for victory, JFK was a great pointer and as for Sepp Blatter... the FIFA president has become legendary for his jerking knee.

His latest spasm is the proposal to abolish extra time at World Cups to encourage attacking play by going straight to penalties. His argument is curiously contradictory. If, as Blatter suggests, the thought that the penalty lottery is only 30 minutes away inspires teams to defend in depth, surely his proposal would reduce the amount of constructive play to 60 minutes?

Obviously, you try not to expect too much from the footballocracy but has Blatter forgotten such great, and utterly undefensive, extra times as England v West Germany in 1966, Italy v West Germany in 1970, West Germany v France in 1982, Soviet Union v Belgium in 1986, Germany v England in 1990 (no goals, but no shortage of excitement) and Italy v Germany in 2006?

Maybe Blatter’s other knee will come up with a better idea.

Houllier’s false memory syndrome

Gerard Houllier has celebrated his return to club management by declaring that: “My players won the Champions League for Liverpool”. His curious boast begs the obvious question: if really they were your players, Gerard, why couldn’t you get as much out of them as Rafa Benitez?

Expect more historical revisionism in this vein with such headlines as: “My players won the World Cup for France”.

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My Perfect 10: Vladimir Petrovic

2010-08-30T07:00:00Z

The new issue of FourFourTwo is a 'Playmakers Special'. This week on FFT.com our writers will be celebrating their favourite fantasistas – and Professor Champions League starts us off with the discarded genius who played Wengerball before the term even existed...

Vladimir Petrovic could, as Arsenal historian Ivan Ponting noted, "drift through games with the detached air of a man out for a quiet afternoon’s plane-spotting" but that didn’t stop me loving him. The mercurial Serbian playmaker was, his Gunners team-mate Brian McDermott said, "like a messenger from the future, letting us know that one day English football would be ruled by players like him."

There is some justice in Brian Glanville’s pithy verdict: "Gifted but sporadic". But when you watched a side as fractured, aimless and infuriating as Terry Neill’s Arsenal in 1982/83, Petrovic’s visionary, inconsistent genius was easier to stomach than Brian Talbot’s running, the industrial pointlessness of which symbolised an era when British football confused activity with ability.

In 1982, eastern European football as almost as remote as the dark side of the moon so when a frail blond playmaker nicknamed Pigeon arrived at Highbury that winter, nobody knew quite what to make of him. Unfortunately one of the people who didn’t know what to make of him was his new manager who often used Petrovic, a playmaker revered for his talent by Red Star Belgrade fans, as a winger.

Luckily, the players recognised his ability. Tony Woodcock and Alan Sunderland would soon learn to cry "Vladi! Vladi!" and stretch their arms out appealing for the perfect through-ball.

The official stats – 22 appearances (three as a sub) and three goals – would seem to confirm the dismissive view of Ponting and Glanville. But he joined a team in transition, in the sense that Arsenal were going from bad to worse: a team that seemed mesmerised by its own decline. They didn’t play anything as pretty as Wengerball. Nor were they as soporifically efficient as George Graham’s Gooners.

Heady days: Vladimir Petrovic and Ashley Grimes

Though they had some talent – the North Bank could still sing "We all agree, Rixy is better than Hoddle" and almost believe it – few playmakers have been asked to make the play for such a dysfunctional outfit. Tenth in the old First Division in 1982/83 flattered that Arsenal team.

Watching from the North Bank, trying to blend in by perfecting the requisite amused fatalism, I was intrigued by Petrovic. If he did, as Stewart Robson told Jon Spurling in his book Highbury, "have a tendency to drift out of games completely", it was hard to blame him as Kenny Sansom thundered down the left (a tactic which was by 1982/83 merely underlining the law of diminishing returns), scrambled defensive clearances went astray and his through-balls found spaces his team-mates weren’t aware of.

A free-kick first alerted me to Petrovic’s spellbinding genius. Memory tells me that it was against Stoke City in January 1983. Arsenal had won a free-kick 35 yards from Stoke’s goal at the Clock End. The North Bank groaned, awaiting the usual dance of indecision that preceded every promising set-piece that season. But Petrovic strolled up to the ball, curled it around the wall and into the net.

Nobody cheered for a second or two. We weren’t used to free-kicks being taken that quickly and emphatically and, as the goal was at the other end of the pitch, many on the North Bank must have wondered if it was all a mirage. But as the Arsenal players drifted back towards the centre-circle, the North Bank realised it hadn’t been seeing things and let out a mighty roar.

Though the crowd began to chant "Vladi", his teammates quickly realised he wasn’t destined to stay. The Serb had only made his debut in December but by March Neill had decided he was surplus to requirements. (I asked Neill about this many years later and he said he’d desperately wanted to keep Petrovic but had been foiled by the ever-changing financial demands from his agent and Red Star.) The next game, an FA Cup quarter-final against Aston Villa, Petrovic was superb, turning two opponents inside out before scoring a blinder.

He never did anything that match-changing again. Yet those Arsenal fans still pining for the assured artistry of dear departed Liam Brady adored him. And on the last home game, against Sunderland, he ran rings around everyone. He was so brilliant it was like watching one of those impossibly perfect performances I’d only read about in comics like Score, Roar and Roy of the Rovers.

That was his last-ditch attempt to persuade Neill and Arsenal to keep him. Even with most of the stadium chanting "Are you watching Terry Neill?" it didn’t work. Petrovic was off that summer – to Paris and then to Antwerp. Neill would be gone a few months later, booted out in December 1983 with the Gunners just five points clear of relegation.

When Petrovic left, he told Spurling, he received a letter from one Arsenal fan saying: "Maybe one day Arsenal fans will enjoy watching a skilful team rather than a bunch of kickers and runners." As the Serb joked: "I wonder if Arsene Wenger wrote the letter?"

My Perfect 10: Riccardo Rossi on Roberto Baggio
My Perfect 10: Steve Morgan on Robert Prosinecki
My Perfect 10: Andy Mitten on Eric Cantona
My Perfect 10: Michael Cox on Rui Costa
My Perfect 10: Hugh Sleight on Zico
My Perfect 10: James Horncastle on Francesco Totti
My Perfect 10: David Hall on Zinedine Zidane
My Perfect 10: Sefa Atay on Gheorghe Hagi
My Perfect 10: Jamie Bowman on Michael Laudrup
My Perfect 10: Joel Richards on Juan Roman Riquelme

Videos: Football's finest playmakers in full flow

The 'Playmakers Special' issue of FourFourTwo is in stories throughout September 2010.

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Death, glory and Rocky Balboa

2010-08-27T09:09:00Z

After Michel Platini slumped over a restaurant table in South Africa, I was curious to see how he was on his annual ‘meet the press’ session in Monaco.

His scare seemed to have reinvigorated him, not chastened him. Much as it may disappoint those in Britain who regard the UEFA president as a bureaucrat who insists on interfering with English football purely because he is French, he was in fine fettle and seems almost certain to be unopposed when he stands for re-election next year.

In a wide ranging Q&A, Platini stated that using two extra assistant referees meant there would be “zero tolerance” for bad referees. And the man enforcing that zero tolerance policy is none other than Pierluigi Collina.

In a more relaxed bull session with a few football writers on the terrace at Monaco’s Le Meridien Beach Plaza hotel he revealed, among other things, an amused and critical admiration for the Rocky movies, his memories of being humiliated by Bobby Robson’s Ipswich Town when he was at St Etienne and his unswerving belief that technology – even in the innocuous guise of a TV set watched by a fourth official who could radio the referee to tell him if he’d blundered horrendously – was the last possible resort in the game’s continued efforts to improve the standard of refereeing and the quality of refereeing decisions.

Michel and Gary discuss the finer points of Rocky IV

At one point, he stood up to physically demonstrate the black art of committing fouls on attackers in the box that are invisible to the referee.

It was a bravura performance which had the English press eating out of his hand. As he finished, I thought how odd it was that so little of the goodwill and sheer delight in his company showed by the assembled journalistic throng is reflected in the British media’s coverage of him.

Asked about the quality of the last World Cup, he shook his head in comedic exaggeration to show how woozy he was in hospital when the final was played. But he did suggest that if this tournament was anything to go by, “football is becoming too standardised, there used to be different flavours of football – a South American way or an African way, as well as the European way. Now the African teams are coached by Europeans and the best South Americans play in Europe so everything has become much more homogenous.”

Did you know this season ends in a 1?

And so to the draw. Monaco seemed to be crawling with Spurs fans, drunk on success. If I’d have had a pound for every time someone sang “Spurs are on their way to Wembley” or mentioned that this season ended in a 1, I’d have been able to buy trebles all round at Le Meridien’s bar. (And, given that a pint of cooking lager costs £11 at this upscale establishment, that is some statement.)

After the draw for what the sublime Melanie Vinegar kept referring to as the “Wafer Champions League”, the Spurs fans I met all wore virtually identical expressions of quiet satisfaction. Group A looked like a mission possible for Spurs and the tussles with Werder Bremen, a team with a flair for melodrama that the great Cecil B. De Mille would have envied, could be spectacular.

Wes looks thrilled to be travelling to White Hart Lane...

The Group of Death – Group G – is also the Group of Glory. Real, Milan and Ajax have won this competition 20 times between them.

The revolutionary Ajax of the 1970s were inspired by Alfredo di Stefano, Gento and Ferenc Puskas.

Milan and Ajax have met in two finals, winning one each – the Rossoneri triumphed in 1969, the Amsterdammers in 1995 – but the Italian press had no doubt about the real significance of this draw – as Gazzetta dello Sport’s headline put it: “Milan contro Mou”.

The Italian sports dailies, having already fallen into that pining, puppy dog state of longing for the Special One which has also afflicted Richard Keys on Sky Sports, gleefully seized on the excuse to plaster Jose over their front pages.

Without Mourinho, Inter are hard to read.

They have pretty much the same squad. The art for Rafa Benitez, one Nerazzurri fan in the European footballocracy told me, will be to change just enough to keep them successful.

Teams that stand still, even great ones, don’t often succeed. Benitez’s team talk, this Interisti suggested, should be: “If you don’t succeed, everyone will say it was all down to Mourinho. This is your chance to prove that it was you, the players, who won it.”

Meanwhile in Brazil, Alan Brazil…

If Group G is the Group of Death (or glory), Group H is the Group Of Logistical Awkwardness, with Arsenal having to travel to the opposite ends of Europe if they are to progress at the expense of Braga, Partizan Belgrade and Shakhtar Donetsk.

The draw was kind to Inter, Lyon, Manchester United (hailed by Gazzetta as the “loose cannon everyone wants to avoid”), Barcelona, Bayern and especially Chelsea. And Rubin Kazan, the surprise package of 2009/10, have a decent shout at the last 16, if they can find their scoring boots at home. They didn’t lose in Kazan in 2009/10, but they didn’t win either.

Spurs’ qualification makes London the first city to have three clubs in this competition in the same season since Athens in 2003. And William Gallas, if he features in the competition this year, will become the first man to play in this tournament for Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs.

So could London break its duck at Wembley next May? Platini declined to speculate when asked over buffet on the terrace and then denied that Spurs were his favourite English team. Ipswich, he suggested, now there was a team: “Wark, Mariner, Brazil, Butcher...”

Am off now to fur up the arteries with a continental variation on the great British breakfast.

One final thought which occurred to me in the lobby as football’s great and good greeted and avoided each other: David Dein really does look like David “cheep as chips” Dickinson, albeit with the day-glo orange tan turned slightly down.

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Who’s brainwashing who?

2010-08-11T14:23:00Z

Is Sir Alex Ferguson a master of mind games? Most of us would agree he is although, as David Runciman has pointed out in the London Review Of Books, the primary evidence for that belief is his much-mythologized contretemps with Kevin Keegan as the 1995/96 title race reached its pulsating conclusion.

Keegan had been incensed by Sir Alex Ferguson’s mischievous suggestion that other teams wouldn’t try as hard as against Newcastle as against Manchester United. This provoked the most famous outburst in English football history; a furious fusillade which is still mesmerising today.

The popular conclusion is that the Newcastle players, watching their boss gesticulating and shouting, “I would love it” live on TV, decided Keegan had lost the plot and, losing faith in their leader, surrendered the title.

Watching it again now, Keegan isn’t as out of control as my memory, shaped by the media’s interpretation of the event, had suggested. Indeed, when Keegan says of Ferguson “He went down in my estimation when he said that”, his honest eloquence strikes a chord.

As Keegan’s fury mounts, his gestures become more frantic and by the time he reaches the “I would love it” passage that has haunted him ever since, he looks undone by anger. True, he can barely get the words out, but he doesn’t, to me, look like the gibbering wreck of popular legend. The only point at which he sounds completely daft is when he warns United that they have to get a result at Middlesbrough. The words “straws” and “clutching” instantly spring to mind.

That speech was delivered on 27 April 1996. That was 24 days after the meltdown many think really cost Newcastle the title: the 4-3 defeat at Liverpool. One of the most enthralling Premier League games ever (I can still play certain sequences from that game like a video in my head), this loss was the fatal blow for Newcastle’s challenge and the turning point in Keegan’s reign. David Ginola has since said: “If we had kept the score at 3-2, we would have won the league – definitely.”

It’s always tempting to look for a single explanation for any mysterious event, but sometimes the truth is more complex than that. Freakish early season form had given Newcastle a 12-point lead at the top of the table in January. But on 23 March, they lost 2-0 to Arsenal. That was followed by that glorious defeat at Anfield, a 2-1 win over QPR and a 2-1 defeat at Blackburn on 8 April. After taking just three points from 12, Newcastle were six points behind their rivals (albeit with a game in hand) and the title was Manchester United’s to lose.

All of this happened long before Ferguson decided to underline his mastery of mind games. So what Newcastle players thought about their boss’s outburst is almost irrelevant: they had already all but lost the title by then.

Yet the media, inspired by its own misinterpretation of this denouement, has consistently insisted that Ferguson is some kind of Einsteinian genius when it comes to mind games, without really offering any other indisputable proof of his Machiavellian brilliance.

Jonathan Norcroft did suggest in the Sunday Times that, in the psychological wars between Wenger and Ferguson, “Ferguson was getting under Wenger’s skin more than Wenger was getting under his” but again offered no supporting evidence.

There is no telling anecdote to convince us that the Scottish master had the sensitive Frenchman fighting back the tears as United and Arsenal duelled for honours. Indeed, in the most memorable joust, Wenger seemed to win on points with his suggestion that every man believes he has the prettiest wife at home.

But heck, why let the facts wreck a good story? It was Josef Goebbels who observed if you tell people a lie often enough they believe it. And as it has been officially decided, on the basis of evidence so partial and flimsy it wouldn’t convince the most gullible jury, that Ferguson is a master of mind games no football writer worth their salt is going to waste their time suggesting otherwise.

So in January 2009, when Rafa Benitez took on Ferguson at a press conference, the media reaction was utterly predictable and as one-sided as Pravda in Stalin’s heyday. Norcroft characterised Benitez’s remarks as a “white-lipped saucer-eyed rant” and, presumably appealing to the nation’s collective memory of the Manuel, the inept waiter from Barcelona in Fawlty Towers, lampooned the Liverpool manager’s pronunciation of “Meester Fer-goo-son”.

Yet as Musa Okwonga notes in his impressive new book Will You Manage? Gabriel Marcotti saw Benitez’s speech not as proof the Spaniard had lost his cool, rather as oratory designed to make the media and officials think about how referees were treating Manchester United.

The fact the gambit didn’t work had little to do with the merit of his case, it was just that the press, brainwashed by its own deluded nonsense about Ferguson’s Zen-mastery of mind games, decided the real story was that the Liverpool manager had gone crazy.

And when Liverpool failed to win their first title since 1990, the media decided Ferguson had done it again – even if it wasn’t clear what exactly “it” was. Although Liverpool did the double over Manchester United, if you compared the depth and quality of the two squads, United looked the most likely champions, something the media conveniently forgot.

The argument that a) Ferguson is the Muhammad Ali of mind games and that b) such mind games decide trophies is a convenient fiction which flatters certain managers, denigrates others, and gives journalists a narrative they can use to make sense of the season and fill a few column inches.

But the delusion may be self-perpetuating: any manager thinking of taking aim at Ferguson should know that the outcome of such a contest is (at least as far as the media is concerned) already decided.

By the way, I should add that I believe Ferguson is a master of mind games – with his own players.

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Why (some) Americans loathe soccer

2010-07-21T09:02:00Z

Who invented football? Though China has a respectable claim, England usually gets the credit. But G. Gordon Liddy, one of the Watergate conspirators who has inevitably become a talk show host in America, sees it differently.

“Soccer comes from Latin America," he opines. "The game, I think, originated with the south Americans and instead of a ball they used to use the head – the decapitated head – of an enemy warrior”. Course they did, Gordon. (The "G." stands for George, by the way - not, as you might expect from the quality of his sporting insight, Gormless.)

Why am I quoting this nonsense from a man most famous for a dinner-party trick in which he held his hand above a lighted candle until his flesh started to singe? Because it goes to the heart of why the self-proclaimed land of the free has never fully embraced the sport of the free-kick.

Many American right-wingers believe a theory encapsulated by Mark Thiessen, a former speechwriter for baseball aficionado George W Bush: “Many years ago my former White House colleague Bill McGurn pointed out to me the real reason why soccer hasn’t caught on in the good old USA. It’s simple really. Soccer is a socialist sport.” (McGurn, by the way, was Bush’s chief speechwriter.)

So that’s cleared that up. Because ‘soccer’ wasn’t invented on their side of the pond, many American patriots can’t contemplate the sport without “beginning to smell a big fat Commie rat”, as George C Scott’s twitching reactionary General Buck Turgidson put it in the chilling satire Dr Strangelove.

Jack Kemp, a former Republican presidential wannabe, once took to the Congressional floor to oppose America hosting the 1994 World Cup, on the grounds that gridiron was “democratic capitalism” while soccer was “European socialism”. Kemp was joking. Liddy, Thiessen and many others aren’t.

The fact that Barack Obama, a West Ham United fan, likes soccer seems sinister proof to America’s far right that the game is just a Communist plot to subvert the good old US of A.

And things can only get worse. Soccer’s image in America will surely sink lower than a lizard’s armpit after an anthropologist called Scott Atran told the Senate that a Muslim’s enthusiasm for the beautiful game is a “reliable indicator of whether or not someone joins the jihad” and that most of the people behind the bombings in Madrid 2003 played soccer together.

Atran’s scaremongering tosh – sorry, that should read "authoritative insight into the ever-ongoing War On Terror" – has even inspired stories in Newsweek. One, under the not-at-all-inflammatory headline "The link between football and jihad", swiftly followed another (by the same author) which Newsweek.com can't decide whether to call "Why Islamists Love the World Cup" or the more straightforwardly confrontational "Why Jihadists Love the World Cup".

(Editor's note: FFT.com cannot be held responsible for the content of other websites. Don't blame us if it's a turgid, fatuous, ill-conceived waste of ones and zeros.)

It can’t be long before Osama Bin Laden’s apocryphal status as an Arsenal season ticket holder is used in evidence against ‘soccer’. And sure enough, it crops up in both of David A Graham's pieces for Newsweek, which has halved its subscriber base in the last two years and can barely expect to pick up new readers from the footballing fraternity.

The round-ball game has been used as a – oh go on then – political football for almost as long as it has been a sport. But so far, to the chagrin of many dictators, columnists and rabble-rousers, attempts to link the game with a particular political philosophy, government or terrorist organisation have all come to naught.

Football is too unpredictable, amorphous and organic to be easily tailored to a cause. If Atran had been alive when actor John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, would he have urged the government to arrest every thespian as a Confederate insurrectionist?

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The brutal beauty behind Mourinho’s coronation

2010-05-26T10:40:00Z

“Open, flowing finals? Only for teams who don’t know what they’re doing.” That was Gazzetta dello Sport’s verdict on Inter’s efficient despatch of Bayern Munich in the Santiago Bernabeu on Saturday.

Jose Mourinho’s Inter knew just what they were doing in a game that was more coronation than contest. Mourinho’s tactics – concede possession until they enter your half, regain possession and counter quickly – weren’t pretty but they were pretty effective.

In some ways, his approach is a strange twist on Arrigo Sacchi’s pressing game. Inter don’t press upfield, like Sacchi’s legendary Rossoneri, but they do compress the play, forcing opponents to attack in a confined space, and when they don’t have the ball, show a compactness – especially if you look at the distance between the front and the back lines – that Sacchi would approve of.

Arjen Robben was marginalised, showed wide by Cristian Chivu with Esteban Cambiasso designated to cover inside and outside if the Dutchman got through. Chivu never looked comfortable but it didn’t really matter.

Philip Lahm, presumably under instruction and knowing that tracking back isn’t Robben’s strong suit, rarely made the kind of runs expected of an overlapping full-back. Indeed, in the first 25 minutes he barely hit a forward pass.

Who’s that nutter in the UEFA seats? Oh it’s me

Even though Mourinho’s tactics were brutally pragmatic – striker Samuel Eto’o, once deemed an egotistical iconoclast, often became an extra full-back when Inter lost the ball – some of their play, especially their passing out of defence, was a joy.

Diego Milito’s movement – using the full width of the pitch and playing in front of and behind Eto’o at times – was simply wondrous. When the Argentine feinted past Daniel van Buyten to score Inter’s second, the goal was so technically perfect I jumped out of my seat and shouted “Yes!”, as if I was a demented, diehard Nerazzurri, to the mild consternation of the UEFA officials sitting around me. (I’m not a diehard Nerazzurri by the way – though I may be demented – I was just enthralled by Milito’s brilliance.)

The first goal was technically brilliant – and Route One. Presumably on Mourinho’s orders, keeper Julio Cesar spent much of the first half hoofing long balls up the pitch. Just as I was starting to find this tactic a) irritating, b) repetitive and c) counter-productive (Bayern mostly regained possession) Milito rose to head the ball to Wesley Sneijder who passed with accuracy and speed for the Inter No22 to float the ball into the net to make it 1-0. (Milito deserved his man of the match award although, for awesome efficiency and quiet brilliance, Cambiasso could easily have won that prize.)

Mourinho said defending deep was the best way to mask his team’s lack of pace. But it was Bayern’s lack of pace in attack that made this final so uncompetitive. On Sky Germany, Matthias Sammer and Stefan Effenberg felt Bayern’s lack of confidence was crucial.

Ulrich Hesse, Champions’ contributing editor noted on an email: “The interesting thing was that you just knew from looking at them at half-time that they both felt it was already over. They didn’t say the game was lost, you could just tell from their expressions.”

Sloth, omschakeling and serious downshifts

The only way to beat Inter was to attack them at speed – by that I don’t just mean physical pace but the speed with which the ball travels – and Bayern’s players sometimes took seven touches before passing.

The possession stats tell the story: Bayern had 66% of the ball but only six shots on target, one less than counter-attacking Inter. Apart from one cracking save just after the break from Thomas Muller, Cesar didn’t have much to do. Bayern’s sloth in attack was startling given that Louis Van Gaal has focused them on the importance of exploiting the omschakeling, the moment when a team regains possession and has the chance to strike before the opposition reorganises.

Would Franck Ribery have made a difference? The Wall Street Journal felt, in their best American sports jock prose, that his absence would “seriously downshift Bayern’s attacks”. And Franz Beckenbauer suggested the Frenchman’s fearlessness might have inspired Bayern. But on current form it’s hard to see Ribery changing the result.

It seems presumptuous to query Van Gaal’s tactics but, after Dejan Stankovic came on for Chivu, I was surprised he didn’t bring Muller into central midfield and switch Bastian Schweinsteiger to his old role on the flank to test the sluggish Serbian with his pace.

This might have prevented Inter deploying Cambiasso, Lucio and Walter Samuel to neutralise Robben. Schweinsteiger might also have beaten the defence to the by-line and produced the kind of crosses Miroslav Klose and Mario Gomez could have made something of.

In truth, it’s hard to blame the coach. Inter – especially their defence, Javier Zanetti (in his 700th game for the club), Eto’o, Sneijder, Cambiasso, Milito and Goran Pandev – rose to the occasion.

Too many Bayern players seemed overawed by it. They squandered corners and, as their desperation deepened, began pumping long balls into the box in the vain hope of finding Klose or Gomez.

Even though The Guardian picked Robben as Bayern’s best player (giving him a generous eight out of ten), the Dutch wizard was attracting some serious flak from the heavyweight coaches behind me who felt his failure to track back was stifling Bayern, making their attacks tediously predictable.

But between the 61st and the 68th minute, Bayern looked like they might break through. The Inter fans felt the shift in momentum too, expressing their anxiety and frustration in loud whistles. But Milito’s second goal made this the most one-sided UEFA Champions League final since 2004 when Mourinho won this competition for the first time.

The battle of the soulmates is over

As The Guardian’s Scott Murray noted, Mourinho went through “micro-cycles of emotion” at the end, “smiling, laughing and hugging, crying uncontrollably, then smiling, laughing and hugging again”. He shook Van Gaal’s hand.

The Bayern coach had confessed, in UEFA’s official matchday programme, that he and his opponent were “soulmates who texted each other often”. And they were reasonably generous in their post-match remarks.

The Dutchman had one dig: “People remember my teams”. Great teams, he insisted, live in the memory. They don’t just accumulate trophies. But after a 45-year wait for the European Cup, will any Inter fan ever forget this team?

It is tempting to draw lessons from such a result. It does, incidentally, mean that the city of Milan has now won more European Cups – ten – than Madrid (nine) and Italy, with 12 triumphs, has surpassed England (11). But the game provoked more questions than answers for me.

How myopic – or plain broke – must Premier League clubs be to spurn Milito last summer? Will Mourinho become the first man to win the trophy with three different clubs? He’s already only the second man to win it with clubs in different countries. (Ernst Happel, with Feyenoord and Hamburg, was the first.) Who will Van Gaal buy to bolster his attack and central defence? And does Inter’s victory mean that counter-attacking will become as fashionable as Barcelona’s reinvention of Total Football? (Probably not. The margin of error is so thin, most coaches and teams will struggle to emulate Inter’s feat. It’s still easier to win the game if you control the ball.)

The victory is great news for Massimo Moratti who has born the slings and arrows of Inter’s outrageous misfortune (and, on occasion, outrageous misuse of the family fortune on some naff players) with dignity. And good news for Mario Rosenstock, the Irish humorist whose impressions of The Special One are so convincing the man himself invited him to do them for the Chelsea players. Rosenstock will bring his cult football puppet show Special1TV to BBC3 this summer just in time for the World Cup.

The cult of the Special One triumphed at the Bernabeu in club football’s showpiece fixture. That cult will now face its most merciless scrutiny at the same stadium next season.

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Madrid relieved to be hosting meeting of the ones that got away

2010-05-21T07:30:00Z

The coaches are sparring, Bayern’s Croatian striker, Ivica Olic stands accused of being a fancy dan Steve Claridge – a pub footballer who has miraculously scored seven goals in Europe this season – both finalists are on the brink of a historic treble and although Real Madrid don’t feature in the final, they are trying to steal the limelight with some trademark wheeling and dealing. Yup, it can only be the UEFA Champions League final.

Chastened, terrified and ecstatic

The Champions League final will be a chastening experience for Real Madrid executives especially if, as is widely expected, the outcome is decided by Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder, both former Los Blancos.

There could be five ex-Real stars on the pitch on Saturday night – Inter’s Samuel Eto’o, Walter Samuel and Esteban Cambiasso have all also been discarded by Real – but, as the legendary Alfredo di Stefano is honest enough to admit in the official matchday programme, the worst case scenario for “all of those of Madridismo” has been averted.

After Real were knocked out by Lyon, Di Stefano was terrified by the thought that Barcelona would become the first team to retain the Champions League in Real’s own stadium. As the delightful Sid Lowe has noted, Di Stefano’s relief was shared – and in some cases surpassed – by Madrid fans, one of whom said Barcelona’s exit was “the happiest day of my life, well, after the birth of my kids”.

The Madrilenos will be even more ecstatic, for a while, if they can entrap the genius who masterminded this beautiful defeat.

Di Stefano certainly didn't revel in Barca's defeat to Inter...

Mourinho, Napoleon and supernovas

In 2004, Jose Mourinho won the Champions League with Porto in his last game as coach. He may well, if Gazzetta dello Sport is any guide, pull the same stunt this weekend, winning the tournament with Inter and heading to Real Madrid to occupy the hottest hot seat in football, a veritable supernova of dugouts.

Much as I admire the chosen one (as Mourinho was known in Portugal before, with a flourish reminiscent of Napoleon – who took the emperor’s crown and stuck it on his own head – he rebranded himself “the Special One”), I wonder if all this speculation hasn’t subtly tilted the odds in Bayern’s favour.

True, the Porto players probably knew Mourinho was leaving in 2004 but after Ludovic Giuly limped off, that final was more coronation than contest. He also faced a vastly less experienced coach, Didier Deschamps.

Even for a squad as gifted as Inter’s, Bayern – and Louis Van Gaal – are a stiffer sterner test, offering much less margin for error. Sneijder (who has described Mourinho as almost like a father) and Eto’o, who owe their comebacks to the coach’s guidance, wouldn’t be human if they weren’t distracted by unsettling thoughts of their futures without their mentor.

And for the team, there is a world of difference between approaching the final as if, like Ajax in 1971, you expect this to be the first act of a golden age and fearing that, shorn of your inspirational leader, this might be your only hope of winning this coveted prize.

In the latest Champions – available at all good newsagents and a few dodgy ones – Mourinho reveals some of the methods he has used to lead Inter to this final. One of his greatest gifts is to communicate his certainty and confidence to players. They don’t – unlike Don Revie’s England stars in the 1970s – drown in dossiers because he also gives them clear, succinct messages. Against Chelsea, Mourinho told his squad: if we don’t concede a goal from set-pieces, we’ll win. Inter didn’t and he was proved right.

Who's that on the cover...?

It’s possible that ‘Mou’ – as he’s known in the text world – can, through force of personality, keep his squad focused on the trophy Inter have waited 45 years to win. But any sports psychologist would insist that a team would prefer to prepare for such a career-defining fixture without wondering about the coach’s future.

Lions, ash and false teeth

Volcanic ash permitting, I will soon be in Madrid to watch the most eagerly anticipated Champions League final since… last year’s. In truth, 2009 was never that competitive after Eto’o put Barcelona ahead.

The team who scores first has won 12 out of 17 Champions League finals. (To be fair, two of those winners – Juventus in 1996 and Manchester United in 2008 – prevailed in the shootout.) Manchester United (in 1999), Bayern (2001), Liverpool (2005) and Barcelona (2006) are the only sides to come from behind and lift the trophy in the Champions League era. Twelve Champions League finals have been won by a single goal or in a shoot-out.

So the outcome may be tight, but whoever wins, they are unlikely to react quite as Ronnie Simpson and Bobby Lennox did in 1967. These two Lisbon Lions, heroes of Celtic’s unexpected victory over Inter, had but one thought when the final whistle blew: sprint to the goal and retrieve their false teeth before their jubilant fans claimed them as souvenirs.

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Lahm’s rabbits, Schweinsteiger’s coffee and Bayern's lucky square posts

2010-05-18T13:49:00Z

Whatever happens in Madrid, one thing’s for sure: after the game, Philipp Lahm will ring home to enquire about the health of his pet rabbits Milky Way and Brownie.

Lahm isn’t the only Bayern player with intriguing hobbies. On the club website Bastian Schweinsteiger lists his hobbies as “Music, meeting friends, travel, new experiences, Starbucks”.

Bayern coach Louis Van Gaal’s hopes of defeating his protégé Jose Mourinho at the Santiago Bernabeu may come down to a phenomenon German fans refer to as ‘Bayern dusel’ – that special kind of luck with which the Bavarian giants have, so often through the years, snatched a trophy or seven.

A good example of ‘Bayern dusel’ would be the square posts at Hampden Park in 1976 which repelled Jacques Santini’s header and Dominique Bathenay’s shot as the Germans beat St Etienne 1-0 to win their third European Cup in a row.

That run had started with a big dollop of ‘Bayern dusel’ in May 1974 when, with 119 minutes on the clock and Bayern trailing 1-0 to Atletico Madrid, George Schwarzenbeck stupefied his teammates by choosing not to pass to predator extraordinaire Gerd Muller but to shoot from 35 yards.

Luckily for Schwarzenbeck the shot flew past Miguel Reina, Pepe’s dad, to earn a replay that Bayern won 4-0. And coming bang up to date, Miroslav Klose’s header against Fiorentina, arguably the most offside goal of the year, helped Bayern defeat the Viola in the last 16 this season.

But ‘Bayern dusel’ can be a fickle mistress, conspicuous by her absence in the 1987 and 1999 finals when Bayern blew two 1-0 leads in astonishing fashion.

The first upset – against Porto – now feels like instant karma. The club’s then president Frits Scherer was so confident he drafted his victory speech the night before the match. But in 1999, after the late, late horror show at Camp Nou, even Germans who didn’t support Bayern felt (briefly) sorry for the club.

In 2001, Bayern won the shootout and the UEFA Champions League, a triumph that owed more to Oliver Kahn’s genius than luck though there was something miraculous about Kahn’s save from Amedeo Carboni.

So with a big hunk of ‘Bayern dusel’ Van Gaal’s team may yet defy the odds – as they did, after all, against Manchester United. If they are at their best – and Inter aren’t – that part of Germany that is forever Bayern could be celebrating on Saturday night.

I was tempted to rehash the old Jimmy Tarbuck gag – Inter look the better team on paper but the final isn’t played on paper, it’s played on grass – but I won’t.

It will be fascinating to see how Van Gaal sets up Bayern. His favourite ploy is to have Mark van Bommel and Schweinsteiger in front of the back four with one player – often Mario Gomez or Miroslav Klose – upfront.

Then as Ulrich Hesse, author of the great Tor! put it on an email: “That leaves three players whose positions are not so easily definable. Arjen Robben, Thomas Muller and Ivica Olic are neither midfielders, nor strikers, they are something in between”.

These in-betweenies are incredibly flexible. Against Fiorentina, Ribery and Robben were the wide men with Muller behind Gomez, not as a playmaker but as a striker with a bit more room.

The imaginative, industrious Olic can play behind the striker, as the striker (in one Bundesliga match Klose played behind the Croatian) and on the wing.

Muller has also starred on the wing instead of Ribery and, in a German Cup game against Schalke, behind Olic, Robben and Klose in the hole and in front of the holding midfielders.

However Van Gaal sets Bayern up, he will remind his players of the importance of possession. Keeping the ball will be essential if his team are to protect their weakest link – a defence which has shipped 13 goals on the way to the final.

That record must influence his game plan. Bayern’s best hope, as Barney Ronay has suggested in The Guardian, is probably to swashbuckle their way to victory, trusting in the cavalier genius of Arjen Robben whose volleys, free-kicks and feints could carry the day.

If Robben doesn’t deliver the crucial magic, Van Gaal will hope that Gomez, Klose or Muller are efficient with the few chances that may fall their way.

Swashbuckling is something of a departure for Van Gaal, a famously methodical coach who, at Barcelona in the late 1990s, dared to improve on Cruyff’s 3-4-3 to make it structurally sounder.

But his Bayern share one trait with their boss: pure, bloody-minded resilience. Schweinsteiger’s personal motto “Never lose belief” could be the team’s rallying cry. And that quality could make this final more competitive than many pundits would have you believe.

The key word there, of course, is could.

FEATURE: Nausea, genius and how to stop Robben rocking

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Nausea, genius and how to stop Robben rocking

2010-05-11T14:37:00Z

On 24 May 1967, the night before the European Cup final, Inter defender Tarcisio Burgnich was woken by the sound of his teammates retching their guts up in fear.

At that point, the pugnacious stalwart of Helenio Herrera’s La Grande Inter must have known he would not be completing his hat-trick of winners’ medals the next day.

An iconoclastic dictatorial coach, Herrera decided he wanted his team to focus ahead of the final, confining them in an extreme, claustrophobic ritiro.

Already depleted by injuries to Luis Suare and Jair, and with nothing to focus on but the game, Inter bottled the final against Jock Stein’s Lisbon Lions. The point at which La Grande Inter’s aura of invincibility shattered irretrievably probably came when sweeper Armando Picchi advised keeper Giuliano Sarti to let Celtic score because they were going to win anyway.

Inter have never come as close to European Cup glory again. Indeed, in the 43 years since the effective end of the Herrera era, the club has become notorious for, as John Foot nicely puts it in Calcio, “turning collapse into an art form”.

Inter’s rivals have found this tendency so amusing that in 2003 a board game was launched called Perdentopoli, literally Loseopoly, to celebrate the fact that the Nerazzurri had crumbled their way out of another Scudetto.

The best way to cure the club’s long-standing inferiority complex, owner Massimo Moratti decided a couple of seasons ago, was to hire the coach with the most successful superiority complex in European football: Jose Mourinho. And the gamble has paid off.

Exactly how Mourinho works his miracles is still a mystery. He may be a master of Powerpoint presentations (and, via his backroom staff, games like Championship Manager), dossiers and mind games but he is no root and branch reformer like Arsene Wenger.

As meticulous as Mourinho’s preparation is, I can’t imagine him spending much time – as Wenger is reputed to have done – fretting about the training ground’s feng shui.

Whether the water is running the right way is not, I suspect, a question that has ever vexed the brilliant pragmatist who has guided Inter to their first European Cup final for 38 years.

What Mourinho has done, spectacularly, is to communicate his certainty, knowledge and conviction to his players.

In the new issue of Champions magazine, his new midfield genius Wesley Sneijder sums up the difference the Portuguese coach makes to his players by saying: “Mourinho knows”.

He sends his players into battle believing they know every ploy their opponents might try, how to react to most conceivable match situations, which of the other team’s weaknesses they can most profitably exploit – and what threats they need to contain.

Dusan Uhrin, the Czech coach at Euro 96, found the semi-final second leg against Barcelona enthralling because he was fascinated by how brilliantly and thoroughly every detail of Inter’s defensive play had been thought through: to let your opponent complete 555 passes and restrict them to four shots on goal was a magnificent feat.

With the wrong players, Mourinho could end up with a team that is much better informed but none the wiser. But, after reflecting on the lessons of defeat to Manchester United in the last 16 in 2009, he has made sure he no longer has the wrong players.

Mourinho has stopped Inter crumbling in Europe by finally assembling the squad he wanted. Ironically, the purchase of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the move Pep Guardiola hoped would clinch Barcelona’s second consecutive European crown, actually paved the way for Mourinho to bring in the players to complete Inter.

Combative midfielders and defenders like Thiago Motta and Lucio, striker Samuel Eto’o who could play as a target man or lead a counterattack and Wesley Sneijder who brought a creativity, technique, intelligence and range of passing to midfield which has made Inter much harder to predict or nullify.

Inter are now almost universally expected to win, which brings its own dangers. Mourinho needs his players to stick to the game plan. Against a team coached by his old, uber-methodical boss Louis Van Gaal, any hint of complacency, or lack of concentration, could prove fatal.

Mourinho will be aware of that risk. And he will be keen to ensure that the weight of history and expectation does not become a burden as it proved to be, ultimately, even for a team as seasoned as Herrera’s Grande Inter.

He will dissect Bayern for them, identifying their vulnerabilities – man-for-man the Germans probably have a weaker squad – and warning about their strengths.

One intriguing question will be what kind of pattern of play he will try to dictate. Inter have made it to the final by controlling games but not the ball – they have had 45% of possession compared to Bayern’s 58% – but that approach may not be as productive in a final.

The advice on containing Arjen Robben may simply be show him wide. The Bayern No 10’s goals have been unbelievable but he is yet to register a single assist in the competition this season. The Dutchman’s crosses are far less dangerous than his volleys.

Most of all, Mourinho will tell his defenders, try to replicate your success against Barcelona by ensuring that you don’t concede free-kicks in front of – or near – the area.

In closing. the Inter coach will remind his players that they should have no fear because they can beat anyone. After the manner of their victories over Barcelona and Chelsea, his players will believe him.

Will it be enough? Nobody knows. But one thing’s for sure: on 22 May either he or Van Gaal will become the third coach – after Ernst Happel and Ottmar Hitzfeld – to win this competition with two different clubs.

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History not on Barca's side as they seek second leg fightback

2010-04-23T07:30:00Z

In the entire history of the European Cup, I can find only four teams who have done what Barcelona must do next week: overturn a two-goal deficit from the first leg of a semi-final.

The first club to do so, bizarrely, was Inter, who lost 3-1 at Anfield in 1965 to Bill Shankly’s Liverpool and won 3-0 at the San Siro, reaching the final – as any Red will tell you – partly because Inter had a little help from the referee.

The last team to stage this kind of comeback, spookier still, were Barcelona who, in 1986, got stuffed 3-0 by IFK Gothenburg in Sweden, won the second leg by the same score at the Camp Nou and prevailed in the penalty shootout.

After donning a metaphorical anorak and trawling through the archives, my research suggests that 22 clubs have tried to do what Barcelona need to do at this stage in the competition.

Eighteen failed – few more agonisingly than PSV who, in 2005, were within minutes of knocking out Milan before Massimo Ambrosini’s late away goal.

Heurelho Gomes and Alex were among the beaten PSV players in 2005

Guus Hiddink, with the self-confidence that only comes from being worshipped as a virtual deity in such disparate parts of the world as Korea, Eindhoven and Stamford Bridge, still insists that his side would have beaten Liverpool in Istanbul.

The other two teams to successfully come back from the brink are Hamburg (who lost 2-0 to Real Madrid in the Bernabeu in 1980 but thrashed Los Blancos 5-1 in the return) and Roma, who broke Dundee United’s hearts in 1984.

Inter, as you may have noticed, are the only team to stage such a comeback and then win the final.

What does all this mean? Not much except, perhaps, that Jose Mourinho has reached the tipping point in his career at Inter.

Calcio may all bow down to the tactical genius of ‘Mou’ this week but come next Thursday, if Barca run amok on their own turf as Hamburg did in 1980, he could be dodging tomatoes.

Inter have done half the job but should heed the wise words of the great Mario Kempes: “Two-nil is the most dangerous score in football."

(In the same interview, for Champions, he also said: “Never rub the head of a bald Indonesian” but that’s for another blog).

Lyon’s mission is more straightforward. Claude Puel won’t let them play that poorly again. Their 534-mile coach trip to Munich didn’t help.

Hugo Lloris looks back in anger as Bayern take a first leg lead

I know, I know, old timers will insist that in their day footballers could run that distance to that game and still score a hat-trick before quaffing 15 pints after the game but times, if not attitudes, have changed.

The differences between winners and losers are now so small that such travails – apart from anything the sheer boredom must be enervating – can decide a tie.

In Munich, Les Gones played as if they were suffering from a kind of footballing altitude sickness, as if awed by the realisation that they had come this far for the first time.

In front of their own fans, knowing precisely what they have to do, they should be much more focused.

If they can put serious pressure on Bayern’s young defenders Diego Contento (who is 19) and Holger Badstuber (21) and make the most of Philip Lahm’s slight dip in form, they could yet reach their first UEFA Champions League final.

Bayern have shown great resilience since they overwhelmed Juventus in Turin. They are now the only team to win four Champions League knockout ties and they have the look of a team with luck on their side.

But their margins of victory have been thinner than a size zero model. They have lost their last two away games in the competition but still progressed.

"Who you calling flat-faced?"

It’s nice to see Louis van Gaal back at the top. As Simon Kuper has noted, he is ungainly, pot-bellied and flat-faced but has “one saving grace, he is brilliant.”

Kuper’s suggestion that Van Gaal is “that rare manager who constantly improves his teams’ performances” may surprise fans of Barcelona and Holland who failed to reach the 2002 World Cup finals under his tutelage.

He left the national side insisting: “Some of the players refused to accept my methods. I am who I am. I’m not going to change that and I have no desire to.”

But his enraged schoolmaster shtick has worked brilliantly at Ajax (where he won the UEFA Cup, a trophy that saved his job, as well as the Champions League), AZ and now Bayern.

Hard to believe that before Christmas the manager with a Michael Portillo quiff was only six games from the sack.

The worry for Bayern must be that as long ago as 2000 Van Gaal talked of himself as a potential successor to Sir Alex Ferguson.

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Capello’s migraine, Barcelona at Nuneaton & the Bulgarian Maradona

2010-04-14T09:30:00Z

I can’t remember how I came to be on Marcello Lippi’s yacht which was, presumably, moored off the coast near his hometown Viareggio. Nor can I say precisely when Fabio Capello came storming on deck complaining vehemently about his migraine.

But I can still vividly recall Don Fabio spurning suggestions that he seek medical advice insisting that the best way to cure his migraine was to shout at it.

As football dreams go, that was one of my more extravagant ones, matched recently only by snatches of a dream in which, on some familiar but different version of Channel 4’s ubiquitous Come Dine With Me, the Minogue sisters dropped into UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh’s terraced house, cooked him a slap-up meal and insisted on cleaning the windows afterwards.

No wonder I won’t hear a word said against Kylie and Danni.

"Hold on ladies, let me just get the Windex..."

I dream about football much more than I used to. Don’t know why. These dreams have evolved from standard stuff – yours truly has chance to score on England debut but mysteriously comes over all leggy and fails to reach the ball with the goal at his mercy – into far richer, stranger visions.

Last month I dreamed that England lost on penalties to France in the last 16 in South Africa after a 1-1 draw. I was moderately depressed when I woke, cheered slightly when I checked that we couldn’t meet les Bleus in the first knockout round and then felt irrationally troubled when I realised we could meet them in the last eight.

If this prediction comes true, remember you read it here first. If it doesn’t, file and forget.

If you have ever had any football dreams as daft as mine do share them. Don’t be shy - you have nothing to lose but your self-respect, the esteem of your peers, and your standing in society.

Typical Ferguson.

Enough already with the "typical" stuff. Various writers have already ensured that Sir Alex Ferguson’s “typical Germans” remark has been spun, toyed with and over-used more often than his eloquent verdict on the 1999 UEFA Champions League final: “Football, bloody hell”.

We’ve already had typical Germans (ad nauseam), typical Ferguson, typical Argentinians, typical podsters and indeed typical Mexican.

Up the Boro part 72

Nuneaton Town (nee Borough) v Farnborough Town at the weekend saw three generations of the Simpsons and assorted in-laws at Nuneaton’s Liberty Way on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon to watch an odd game that ended fairly all square at 1-1.

My son looked on with commendable restraint, restricting himself to one can of Coke for the duration.

My father, with an authority I had not seen since I met the great Rinus Michels at a conference, dissected the inadequacies in Nuneaton’s play. “He,” he said pointing at a Town/Boro midfielder with the conviction of someone who had been a midfield general in the school playground in the 1940s, “should be up here”, indicating a spot ten yards in front.

Michels: Sure he was great, but could he have cut it at Nuneaton?

He had a point. The Boro (as they were called till the FA made them change their name to Town as a punishment for the usual financial irregularities) were not moving up as a unit and the left and right halves of the team were unbalanced so they rarely attacked, as it were, in stereo and too often lost possession.

Farnborough are leaders of the league which changes its name and sponsor every season but is just one rung below the Conference North and South. They won the tactical battle, forcing Nuneaton to switch from a lacklustre 3-5-2 to 4-4-2 and shrewdly deciding that if they packed the middle, their opponents wouldn’t trouble them on the flanks.

They were also, it must be said, masters of the concealed elbow, the persistent push and, when required, a spot of Graeco-Roman wrestling. But they are efficient, have two nifty forwards – Bradley Bubb who scored the goal was especially impressive – and cause havoc with long balls on the counterattack.

Apart from dad’s tactical laments, the highlight for me was the assistant referee who flagged a player offside after he ran onto his own pass.

In the second half, standing behind a Boro fan in a Barcelona shirt, I wondered idly if there is any football ground in the world that has not been, to use a word much used by commentators addicted to martial and sexual metaphor, ‘penetrated’ by a Barcelona shirt. I fear not.

Maradonas, fat ladies and Guardiola effects

The new Maradona isn’t Messi but Iliyan Micanski. The 24-year-old Bulgarian striker has scored seven goals in seven games for Zaglebie Lubin in Poland.

The most spectacular – a 65-yard dash and finish against KSP Polonia Warszawa on 20 March – earned him the tag “the Maradona of Lubin”.

As Lubin only has 77,000 inhabitants, this isn’t as good as being the “Maradona of the Carpathians”, like Gheorghe Hagi, but it’s better than nothing. The goal is on YouTube but all the clips froze my shoddy computer (sadly, below is the best we could find - ed).

In Luxembourg, meanwhile, a Turkish-Belgian playmaker called Yasin Karaca has thrown open the title race since signing for F91 Dudelange and proved that some football clichés really are universal, telling uefa.com: “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings”.

The fat lady has sung in Greece where Panathinaikos have done rather better out of the ‘Guardiola effect’ than Juventus or, so far, Milan.

When Pana fell to second in November, coach Henk Ten Cate was replaced by Nikos Noplias, a club legend whose managerial experience began and ended with Greece’s Under-19s and Under-21s.

Noplias is now the second man – after Juan Ramon Rocha – to win the Greek championship as player and coach with Panathinaikos. Maybe Greek football is finally discovering that it doesn’t have to import coaches to win stuff.

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Why Maradona is Elvis to Messi’s Beatles and United’s defeat is Peter Drury’s fault

2010-04-08T08:30:00Z

There are three obvious conclusions to be drawn from the remarkable denouement to the UEFA Champions League quarter finals.

1. Lionel Messi is now as great as Maradona.
2. The thrilling, globally renowned, debt-ridden, Premier League has passed its sell by date.
3. Manchester United’s ageing side needs completely rebuilding.

These are the obvious conclusions. But they are all, to varying degrees, wrong.

Lionel Messi is not as great as Diego because he has not yet won the World Cup almost single-handed, although he has an opportunity to make up for that this summer.

Nor has he powered a side as mediocre as Napoli in the 1980s to the league title.

You can argue about whether Messi has Maradona’s talent or not but their track records, so far, suggest Diego is the greater player. His feats should be a challenge and an inspiration to Messi, much as Elvis’s were for the Beatles.

The Beatles, Elvis and Shane MacGowan pose for a nice snap together

The Premier League is not spent as a European force. If Arsene Wenger, instead of his old disciple Claude Puel, had been drawn against Bordeaux, the Gunners may well have reached the semi-final.

Chelsea had the misfortune to be eaten up by Jose Mourinho’s charisma machine but would probably have beaten CSKA. And United, down to ten men and with their greatest player marginalised, came within 16 minutes of the last four.

There are a lot of ifs, buts and probablys in that last paragraph, but that is the nature of football – especially in the UEFA Champions League. The margin between victory and defeat – unless you’re playing Barcelona – are thinner than a slice of Ryvita.

And it’s quite conceivable that one, two or three Premiership teams might reach the last four in 2010/11. This season should be regarded as a useful corrective, a salutary lesson, rather than, as FIFA president Sepp Blatter might like to think, a crucial tipping point in the evolution of football.

And so to United. They did field an ageing team against Chelsea but as Mark Ogden concedes in the Daily Telegraph, Ferguson has successors to Neville, Giggs and Scholes in place.

As a thoughtful constructor of teams, Sir Alex Ferguson started taking bets on young players years ago. Some – Nani, Darren Gibson, Rafael (despite his dismissal), Antonio Valencia and Park Ji-Sung – look like paying off. Others – Anderson – look more dubious.

Valencia, Rooney and Nani - the next holy trinity?

Ferguson obviously found defeat an embittering experience judging from his post-match remarks about “typical Germans” but the morning after the game he was probably at Carrington training ground before the first sparrows had passed wind plotting his next moves.

If he compares his side to Pep Guardiola’s, he may feel that he is short of another assured passer in midfield to vary the attack (reducing the reliance on the flanks), a top class holding midfielder (in the prolonged absence of Owen Hargreaves) and an Ibrahimovic-type striker to partner Rooney.

Dimitar Berbatov has the talent to be the latter, but his rapport with Rooney seems poor and he doesn’t, as Alan Hansen pointed out on Match of the Day after the Chelsea game, always make the runs you would expect from a player with his innate gifts.

Yet it is hard now to flourish at the very top if you rely so heavily on one genius. Even if that genius is as gifted, committed and competitive as Rooney.

It’s easy to blame Berbatov, Rooney’s ankle, or Rafael’s youthful rashness for United’s exit. But anyone who watched the game live in England will know that Peter Drury is the real culprit.

The clue - if you’re reading this Peter – is in the name of your job. You are a commentator, not forecaster, or Biblical prophet. So declaring that United are through to the semi-finals, as you did in the first half, was sheer folly, inviting the curse of the commentator to fall.

"I've said I'm sorry, please stop ringing me, Sir Alex..."

As indeed it did. Courtesy of Arjen Robben. The Dutchman had been as menacing as a tea cosy for 74 minutes until that sublime strike.

One final question Peter, did you really, as my scrawled notes indicate, introduce the game saying, “sepia-tinged, history’s bunk, Rooney plays”? If so, does this indicate that the Joycean stream of consciousness has replaced ersatz Churchill as your literary style?

Probably not as later, after Bayern scored, you remarked that “a new sense of unease has enveloped the expectation” at Old Trafford which is just bad press release prose.

Robben’s goal was wondrous and cruel because United’s ten men had created more clear-cut chances than Bayern’s eleven. And the Germans spent a lot of the second half passing in front of United, passes that spoke not of thoughtful probing but of quiet desperation.

Louis van Gaal’s triumph means that three of the four coaches in the semi-finals have honed their craft at Barcelona.

Van Gaal was hurried out of Camp Nou to the usual salute of white handkerchiefs, Mourinho was Bobby Robson’s interpreter at Barca and Pep Guardiola is the living embodiment of the club’s footballing creed.

We wonder if Sir Bob get Jose confused with Carl Cort

That creed was, of course, forged in Amsterdam at the Ajax of Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff. Their arrival at Camp Nou in the 1970s transformed Barcelona and the club bears their imprint still.

The semi-final line-up, as Simon Kuper will surely point out if he hasn’t already, is a quiet vindication of the Ajax school of football.

Guardiola’s Barcelona owe a philosophical debt to Ajax, an influence symbolically represented on the pitch by Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Ibra’s old club Inter have been transformed since Mourinho signed up another Ajax graduate Wesley Sneijder. And Bayern coach Van Gaal won this competition with Ajax in 1995.

Mind you, if you’re Italian, none of this matters. In Italy, history isn’t, as Drury suggests, bunk, it’s argued over, scrutinised and constantly invoked as journalists, politicians, footballers and club presidents look for encouraging omens.

In an odd piece, Gazzetta Dello Sport has noted that Inter have now won five Champions League games in a row which they have only done twice before: under Roberto Mancini in 2007/08 (when they lost to Liverpool in the last 16) and Helenio Herrera in 1963/64.

Guess which season Gazzetta is invoking as an omen for the semi-finals?

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Quarter-final frolics: Ducks, ankles and egos

2010-04-01T14:00:00Z

Until Tuesday night, I’d been thoroughly fed up with Marouane Chamakh.

In part, this was the irrational resentment many journalists feel for a celebrity whose name doesn’t seem to spell naturally. In part, this feeling was inspired by the furore of his on-off move from Bordeaux to somewhere else, which created an online caricature of the Moroccan striker as a sulky egotist.

One of the perils of the internet age is that, on the basis of an Wikipedia page and some quotes, we feel justified in judging people we have never met and, when it comes down to it, know very little about.

My initial impression when Chamakh took to the field in Stade Gerland was that my prejudices were right. He is one of those unfortunate souls whose natural expression suggests he is perpetually on the verge of tears. But, as the great Andy Gray might say with a note of gravelly wonder in his voice, what a player!

Although his team lost 3-1 – and Lisandro scored twice for Lyon – Chamakh was the most intriguing player on the pitch.

His runs were intelligent, his skills silky and his instincts around the penalty area normally spot on. What impressed me more than his headed goal was the snatch shot he struck on the edge of the area, an opportunity taken so quickly he seemed, momentarily, to be moving at a different speed to anyone else on the pitch.

Speed – or rather tempo – was crucial in the Stade Gerland.

Often, football games are decided by one simple fact: what speed the match was played at. In the first half, Lyon forced Bordeaux to play at their pace, Lisandro and Michel Bastos created havoc in the Girondin defence and the home side led 2-1 at the interval.

In the second half, Bordeaux slowed the game to their favoured tempo, were the better team for most of the half – Chamakh forced one of the saves of the season from Hugo Lloris – but still conceded another goal after a dubious penalty award.

For technique, drama, controversy and free-flowing football, Lyon v Bordeaux was my match of the week, indeed one of the best I’ve seen all season. Certainly more intriguing than watching Manchester United’s familiar frailty – a mysterious inability to keep the ball – undo them against Bayern.

Even though Inter took an hour to find any rhythm, their 1-0 over CSKA was far more comprehensive than the scoreline suggests. Igor Akinfeev was in such mesmerising form his asking price will surely have soared by a few million euros.

Arsenal v Barcelona had everything: sentimental sub-plots, crucial cards, farce (how did Arsenal scrape a draw when they should have been 7-0 down after 18 minutes?) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic breaking his duck against English teams in the competition.

This will have given the great Zlatan particular satisfaction because, as he told Champions earlier this season, he’s thoroughly aware that the English, as a footballing entity, don’t rate him.

Still, unimpressed Monsieur Rosbifs might note gleefully that uefa.com’s player rater has Messi, not Zlatan, as man of the match.

Can’t see it myself though Messi may have won it on the U2 effect. In their heyday, U2 were so massive that the mere fact they turned up in a studio was enough to earn their album three stars in Q magazine.

As for Manuel Almunia, in that kind of form he could have protected the pass at Thermopylae single-handed (although the movie might not have worked as well: 300 just sounds better than 1).

With Akinfeev, Lloris, Van de Sar and Almunia all making superlative saves, this was a good week for keepers. And a bad one for ankles: Wayne Rooney’s and Wesley Sneijder’s are both causing consternation ahead of the second leg.

After the first round of ties, nothing is decided. But it was a great week of football, a week which will surely go down in the annals of this competition as the week when Barcelona completely and utterly battered Arsenal 2-2.

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Moronic Inferno engulfs English managers

2010-03-25T12:15:00Z

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Though ostensibly concerned with Ireland’s struggle for independence, W.B. Yeats’ most famous poem The Second Coming also prophesies the degeneration of the football media and the passionate intensity of Chris Kamara, Alan Green and the callers on a zillion radio phone-ins.

To crowbar in another literary reference, Britain’s football media could be summed up by the title of Martin Ami’s most entertaining essay collection The Moronic Inferno.

In age where clichés are passed off as gospel truths, one of the many dubious truisms is that smaller Premier League clubs cannot afford to play attractive, enterprising football if they want to survive.

Alan Green: Passion, intensity, a face for radio...

There is only one flaw with this theory. It is utter, absolute b*ll*cks.

Any enterprising manager might want to consider the influential, if chequered career of Zdenek Zeman, Serie A’s great, iconoclastic coach.

True, the Czech maverick has never won the Scudetto, but he has shown a remarkable gift for squaring the circle that destroys many English coaches: creating successful entertaining teams without spending a fortune.

His sides have come second, third and fourth in Serie A and won three promotions.

The next issue of Champions carries a revealing interview with Zeman by Gabriele Marcotti in which, among other things, he declares: “I don’t think you need great players to play great football. What you do need is guys who are passionate, work hard and know how to execute.”

From Palermo’s youth teams to Roma, Zeman’s sides have played a brand of football defined by “movement, speed and execution”, a 4-3-3 formation and attack: “It’s not rocket science, it’s simple math: the more guys you have trying to score, the more you will score.”

Zeman loved it when a plan came together (yeah, we know it's not a cigar...)

So why, if he’s that good, isn’t Zeman in management today? The answer in part is that his ideas are too radical even for calcio, arguably the major league that is most receptive to new tactics.

His style demands a lot physically from players during a match and in training. And players, especially those arrogant enough to think they’ve already made it, aren’t always prepared to make that commitment. (Although they might think it worth the effort in the long run because, the Czech coach insists, they will get injured less.)

Zeman can’t understand why footballers are stressed by training. Indeed, his analysis of the physical demands on players raises one of Marcotti’s favourite themes: how good would footballers be if they trained as hard as other sportsmen? That question might be another aspect of Zdenek’s enigmatic legacy.

Yet as Marcotti points out, the results can be spectacular. Zeman took Foggia up two divisions as coach. In 1991/92, Foggia played some truly scintillating football as they finished ninth in Serie A in 1991/92.

That summer, Zeman did something that seemed like an act of professional suicide: he let most of his stars go and hired a bunch of players from the third division. His reward? Foggia finished a respectable 11th.

Zeman’s transformational genius as coach has unearthed or polished such gems as Alessandro Nesta, Dan Petrescu, Salvatore Schillaci, Giuseppe Signori and Francesco Totti.

"Oh sh*t, I forgot to sign substitutes!"

Could someone do a Zeman in England? It would be nice to think so. But new training methods can prove a tad controversial in the Premier League.

There are too many “one-dimensional footballers” (as Zeman calls them, referring to players who focus only on their strengths and ignore their weaknesses) in England for his football of movement, speed and execution to succeed easily.

Yet, for a chairman with courage, patience and vision – if indeed such paragons are to be found in the modern game – his brand of football could be worth the risk.

Unlike the best in Yeats’ classic poem, Zeman does not lack conviction. He is convinced his ideas are simply ahead of his time.

Now 63, he is living, if unemployed, proof that managing an unfashionable team successfully doesn’t have to be a matter of just keeping it tight at the back, getting stuck in and taking your chances.

That mantra may play well in the more conservative sectors of English football but the lingering popularity of the Monsieur Rosbif school probably explains why none of the 32 teams in this season’s UEFA Champions League had an English coach and why the only English manager to impress in Europe this season – Roy Hodgson – had to go abroad to make his name.

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Why Chelsea win wouldn't be best result for English clubs

2010-03-16T12:00:00Z

Can anyone slay Barcelona?

The best result for English clubs in the UEFA Champions League this week wouldn’t be a 2-0 win for Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, it would be a miraculous victory for Stuttgart in Camp Nou.

Barcelona are the only non-English team left in the competition with the class, form and quality to intimidate a Premier League club.

If you are a Stuttgart fan you might want, as they say on BBC News on Saturday night, to look away now. Barcelona have drawn the first leg away from home in 21 European ties – and won 15 of them.

The last Bundesliga side to win at Camp Nou were Bayern in November 1998 when, oddly enough, Louis van Gaal coached the Catalans.

Stuttgart have never made it past the last 16 in this competition and… oh you get the picture. This could be the most one-sided fixture since Richard Dunn was daft enough to get into a ring with Muhammad Ali or an unknown non-league side called Hereford took on the mighty Newcastle in the FA Cup.

Carlo and calcio at the crossroads

The Chelsea fan who lives around the corner is worried. Has been for months. If you offered him Guus Hiddink as coach now, his gratitude would be almost pitiful.

A lifelong season ticket holder, he believes Chelsea aren’t playing like champions – of England or Europe. And, despite the flattering 4-1 over West Ham, he has a point.

They lack the aura of invincibility Mourinho wrapped them in and have not always shown the gung ho spirit that roused fans under Hiddink. With the Premier League no longer in the bag, this is a difficult time for Carlo Ancelotti who will need all his sangfroid – that’s French for stiff upper lip – as the season progresses.

Chelsea have reached the semi-finals in five out of their last six campaigns. Their only failure – in 2005/06 – was, ironically enough, on Jose Mourinho’s watch.

That most Italian of scorelines (1-0) will suffice for the Blues but with Petr Cech injured, the odds tilt slightly in Inter’s favour.

Yet Inter, like Real, have been serially slayed at this stage in the tournament, going out in the last 16 three times in a row.

The stats may encourage the visitors. Inter have won 37 out of 41 ties where they led after the first leg. But the Nerazzurri faithful know that the last time they won a Champions League home leg 2-1 – in the 2005/06 quarter-finals – they were beaten 1-0 by Villarreal in Spain.

The coach’s press conferences yielded one entertaining snippet. Mourinho, attempting to suggest that a lot of water had flown under Stamford Bridge since his departure, said: “They moved on, I have moved on. I keep winning important things. They keep winning something. They won an FA Cup.” Touché.

If Chelsea do the business, Serie A would miss out on the last eight for the second year running. Cue much wailing, lamentation, gnashing of teeth and, quite possibly, the loss of a Champions League spot to Germany.

Bring on the dark horses 

Whether Laurent Blanc leads the French champions to victory or defeat against Olympiakos, there is one certainty: headline writers will deliver a vintage crop of wine-related puns.

You can probably make up your own already. Call it serendipity or synchronicity, but a wine connoisseur – oh alright then the bloke at Oddbins – tells me the 2009 Bordeaux was the best in ages. Just like the team then.

If Barcelona are the goliaths no one wants to draw in the last eight, Bordeaux are the troublesome Davids. Like Blanc in his prime as a defender, they are quietly stylish, economical, easy to underestimate and tough to beat.

Sevilla vs CSKA Moscow is the tie where anything can happen.

CSKA boss Leonid Slutsky is talking about playing both his creative playmakers – Alan Dzagoev and Keisuke Honda – on the grounds that “we’re going out to try and play attacking football as a goalless draw is of no use to us.”

The game will showcase two stars looking to move on in the summer. Luis Fabiano has revealed he has already very nearly come to England twice – with Chelsea under Scolari and Manchester City when they bought Robinho – and will be keen, at 29, to impress.

Time’s winged chariot doesn’t scurry quite as fast for 25-year-old CSKA midfield star Milan Krasic, but the Serbian footballer of the year could cap an outstanding season with a summer move West.

Because CSKA need to score – and Sevilla, despite the excellence of Andres Palop in goal, don’t have the strength in depth to sit back and defend – I am half-convinced this could be one of those truly mad games, like Monaco 8 Deportivo 3. With my current strike rate, that’s probably guaranteed a 0-0 bore draw.

Haven’t done the chanceometer in a while, but if anybody’s interested in this predictive method (used by one London gambler to make himself very rich), it suggests that Barcelona (137 chances) will prevail over Stuttgart (131), Chelsea (130) will beat Inter (94), Bordeaux (124) will knock out Olympiakos (111) and CSKA (105) will lose to Sevilla (112).

In the wrong hands – i.e. mine – such stats can be dangerous.

But I did wonder why a student of the game like Mourinho hasn’t clocked the fact that one reason for Inter’s struggles in Europe is that they don’t earn enough corners: just 3.14 per game in this tournament this season compared to 7.5 for Bayern and 5.12 for Bordeaux.

I don’t want to encourage any Rory Delap-style playing for set-pieces but with 20-25% of goals coming from dead ball situations, this could be a handicap.

Mind you, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona were woeful at corners last season and look what happened to them.

Big Sam, Rafa and St George

At the National Sports Book Awards last week, I was astonished to hear sportswriters rallying around ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce in his latest fusillade against Rafa Benitez.

At last, or so the consensus around the bar after too many Asahi beers had it, this valiant, stalwart Englishman was giving it to that Johnny Foreigner come lately! Allardyce couldn’t have generated more patriotic fervour if he’d dressed as St George and slayed the dragon.

In these exchanges – to call them mind games inaccurately implies some thought is involved – the charges often say as much about the accuser as the accused.

Here we have Benitez sarcastically likening Blackburn’s style to Barcelona in a season when his team have played some stupefying football. Meanwhile, Allardyce accuses the Liverpool boss of using the row as a “cover up” to mask “how bad his side were.”

Am I being unduly cynical but could Sam be using the row to generate enough good PR to obscure the fact that Blackburn are a bit rubbish?

You would expect a club with Rovers in their name to win more than one game away from home in an entire season.

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Ronaldinho, Kaka and Arshavin set to go on trial

2010-03-09T13:00:00Z

“There are players who’ve made their whole career on one match. There are players who do everything to make a splash on television and then it’s over. Afterwards they play but they live on their attainment.”

Michel Platini’s frank remark, made in an interview with the French novelist Marguerite Duras in 1987, is a reminder of how things have changed for footballers.

And one of the catalysts for that change has been the tournament that Platini indirectly presides over, the UEFA Champions League.

We can all think of players who have made their career on one match, or only look the part when the TV cameras are on them.

But the Champions League, by ruthlessly pitting the best against the best season after season, has made it harder for the chancers, the flatterers-to-deceivers, the lazy, and the merely inconsistent to prosper at the very top.

Razzle dazzle ‘em

Every Champions League game is a courtroom in which a player is judged – though at least they’re being scrutinised for what they do on the pitch.

Sometimes, especially when the media clamber onto a bandwagon, the process of judgement can be horrendously skewed. Last week’s teenage sensation is this week’s overrated flash in the pan.

The process of building them up to knock ‘em down is almost as pitiless in football as in the music industry. And it can be just as distracting and destructive.

Luckily, the most influential judges are the coaches who are professionally obliged not to get carried away and know that one game, one bit of that old razzle dazzle on television, does not define a player’s quality.

Michel loves to kick back and chill out with some Enya

Their judgements may be more measured but they can be just as unforgiving in the long run. And the tournament many regard as the ultimate test of a player is the Champions League.

Arsene Wenger says that one of the first questions he asks when appraising a prospect is: “How will he perform in the Champions League?”

Statistical breakdowns

So into this courtroom this week step the players of Arsenal, Bayern, Fiorentina, Lyon, Milan, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Porto.

Each tie is accompanied by statistics which can inspire optimism or despair (eg Porto have won their last 24 two-legged ties in UEFA competitions when defending an advantage away from home yet the Portuguese champions have lost on their last six visits to London).

But the best players won’t worry about the stats. They will be imagining, sometimes in lavish detail, scenarios where their team wins.

None of these ties are over. Milan’s mission hovers between impossible and implausible.

Only one side has lost at home in the first leg of a Champions League knock-out round and gone on to win the tie: Ajax against Panathinaikos in the 1995/96 semi-final. And United have never lost by two clear goals at Old Trafford in the history of this competition.

But in a buoyant interview, Ronaldinho insists “nothing is impossible.” When he talks about his renewed form (“To tell you the truth I’ve been planning to have a year like this”) you can almost hear him grinning.

The Brazilian predicts a beautiful game at Old Trafford. And it may be one in which the script is written not by coaches but by a player. That must be the worry for United fans.

On current form, they have one game-changing genius, Wayne Rooney, whereas Milan probably have two and a half (Ronnie, Andrea Pirlo and – the half – Marco Barriello).

Real’s Pjanic button

Real v Lyon is as finely poised. Again, fans can find comfort in conflicting statistics.

Lyon have not conceded in 620 minutes, while Real have only failed to score at home in this competition in three of their last 20 games (though worryingly for the Madrilenos two of those scoreless games were in the first knockout round).

Lyon’s best hope, apart from a clean sheet, must be Lisandro Lopez, whose impressive strike rate – 14 in 30 games in this competition – looks a tad less daunting when you realise he has only scored once in the competition this season.

But he – and playmaker Miralem Pjanic – are the potential game changers. Against them, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Gonzalo Higuain could all prove decisive.

Kaka is regaining form but is still in danger, to hark back to Platini’s analysis, of being typecast as a player who lived off one golden season (2006/07).

Kaka - a one season wonder...?

The second leg could prove coach Manuel Pellegrini’s point: that Real, in recent seasons, have degenerated into a gifted counter-attacking side who can’t keep possession long enough to dominate the opposition.

He has tried to change that – to no avail in the first leg. But the Real players’ post-match in-flight inquest on the way home from Stade Gerland proves they know what is at stake.

On paper, Bayern have more players who can make a difference than Fiorentina. It is hard to know how fired up/distracted the Viola will be after their bad luck in the first leg.

Mind you, as Jeffery Marcus points out in the New York Times, it is hard to know which Fiorentina will turn up anyway.

The likelihood is, as Bayern coach Louis van Gaal says, that the Bavarians will score, so it will take some performance from Cesare Prandelli’s team to make the last eight.

For all that, the mood in Italy seems to be one of defiant optimism.

1-0 to the Arsenal

Cesc Fabregas’s hamstring blows the Arsenal v Porto tie wide open.

The Gunners have a surprisingly dismal record of overturning first leg leads in UEFA competitions – they have done so once in their last nine attempts – but could go through with that most George Grahamish of scorelines, 1-0.

In Cesc’s absence, their talismanic genius is Andrei Arshavin, a sublime player who still hasn’t quite silenced the kind of concerns that Platini raised in that interview.

The Russian maestro has scored 10 goals this season for club and country but only one in the Champions League (against Olympiacos) and only two against top class Premier League opposition (Liverpool and Manchester United).

This would be a good week for Arshavin to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Euro 2008 was not some glorious departure from the norm. A player with his natural gifts should be a serious contender for the Ballon d’Or by now.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Andrei? Arsenal fans certainly hope so.

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Vilification of 'rat' king Cole has gone too far

2010-03-05T15:30:00Z

You’d think we’d be sated by all the revelations about Ashley Cole by now, but I still have one unanswered question: at what point in this whole affair did the Chelsea and England defender change his name by deed poll to Rat Cole?

Everytime I picked up a tabloid last week ‘Rat’ Cole was committing another grievous offence against his soon to be ex-wife Cheryl, the most iconic female martyr Britain has produced since Princess Diana went all panda-eyed on Panorama.

One tabloid front page – apologies for not remembering which but after a while they all become one blur of bold typography, exclamation marks and words like sink, revenge, low or suffer – screamed: “Rat Cole sinks to new low!” This certainly grabbed my attention.

What depths of depravity had the greatest left-back in the game today sunk to now? Had he seduced the Pope? Destroyed a small Spanish holiday resort on a drunken rampage? Or, worst of all, signed up for the new series of Celebrity Love Island?

Ashley consoles himself with a trip to market...

In case you didn’t see the story, I won’t keep you in expense. The lowdown dirty ‘Rat’ Cole had had the unmitigated gall to say that the marriage began to go wrong when his mother-in-law moved in.

I felt a bit cheated at this point. If you’ve had as many extra-marital affairs as ‘Rat’ Cole allegedly has, to truly sink to a historic new low requires more effort than merely complaining about his mother-in-law in a manner that Les Dawson, were he alive today, would thoroughly approve of.

With each revelation, each additional layer of lurid detail, each ‘friend’ interpreting the participants’ true emotions – the real, complex story of a famous marriage gone horribly wrong is reduced to an entertaining, long-running yet utterly predictable cartoon in which the leading characters are a saint and a rat.

Watching this cartoon, the great British public – many of whom struggle to understand the complexities of their own marriages – have passed swift, satisfying and, in many cases, hypocritical judgement.

The public vilification of ‘Rat’ Cole has become so extreme that even his complaint about his mother-in-law’s presence in Hurtmore House, the aptly named Surrey mansion where the Coles lived, merely succeeded in giving mothers-in-law, one of the great pantomime villains of British society, a good name.

Although his lament did seem a tad ingenuous as she only moved in after allegations of the Rat’s first extra-marital affair.

Dawson - not a fan of mother in laws

Stupid, serially unfaithful, selfish, pathetic and deceitful; the Chelsea and England left-back has been all of these. His famous remark that he swerved off the road in anger after ‘only’ being offered £55,000 a week by Arsenal had stereotyped him as an ungrateful mercenary even before he betrayed the most popular woman in Britain.

That business of getting a Chelsea official to cover for him was shabby too although, as Tony Cascarino pointed out, similar shenanigans have been going on in football since time immemorial – especially on pre-season tours where even clean cut, happily married footballers have often behaved as if the old TV industry acronym OLDC (On Location Doesn’t Count) applied to them.

And yet, if we’re honest, who among us thinks that having a live-in mother-in-law is a recipe for a happy marriage? And did the most powerful man in Britain today – Simon Cowell of course, not Gordon Brown – really have to be consulted before the split was announced?

This kind of public scandal is like nuclear war, there are no winners, just survivors.

Right now, Rat Cole’s stock is so low he’d lose a by-election if he was running against a civilian kidnapping Somali pirate, while Cheryl is flying off to America to build a new career (It’s a measure of Britain’s colonial arrogance, or tabloid stupidity, that we assume that all she has to do to ‘conquer’ America is land at JFK airport).

"I promise I'll never leave your side, darling..."

The scandal may have given Cheryl the intriguing aura of a troubled, martyred icon but she’d probably still rather have her marriage.

If this has been the worst week in the Coles’ lives, it’s hardly been a vintage one for Fabio Capello. The England manager must be appallingly impressed by English football’s ability to self-destruct.

His first choice left-back, who should be focusing on recovering for the World Cup, has been condemned in absentia by the British media. His first choice centre-backs, Rio Ferdinand and John Terry, struggle with fitness and form, and if Rio’s back doesn’t recover, Capello may have to appoint a third captain in less than five months.

His first choice right-back Glen Johnson is still out with a knee injury. It looks increasingly unlikely that Owen Hargreaves will anchor England’s midfield in South Africa.

Just when Capello thought things couldn’t get any worse, Gordon Brown has likened his predicament to the England manager’s.

Does that mean England have about as much chance of winning the World Cup as Labour has of winning the next election?

More analysis from Professor Champions League

---------------------------------------------
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The least predictable game... and Inter-Chelsea

2010-02-24T12:00:00Z

In case you hadn’t noticed, Chelsea meet an old friend tonight. England’s football media is so delighted to have an excuse to glory in Jose Mourinho that even the normally acerbic Martin Samuel has felt obliged to remind his readers why the Portuguese coach is the special one.

The subtext to the fawning is that the media desperately wants Mourinho back. That's why the British press, with the obsessive insistence of a spurned lover refusing to recognise that it’s over, maintains that Jose is really missing the Premiership which is, as everyone knows, the best league in the world.

True, it’s not the best supported (that’s the Bundesliga). It’s not the best for goals per game either (the Bundesliga does better on that measure too). Nor, despite the zillions that pour in through TV and sponsorship, is it the most financially secure.

But the Premier League is, in some way that is never quite specified, the best. Ergo Mourinho must miss it, even though he was rhapsodising the other week about the intriguing tactical challenges Serie A poses for a coach.

Operation Fightback

Inter vs Chelsea

As hyped as a Hollywood blockbuster or Gordon Brown’s Operation Fightback, this clash is almost a Mourinho derby in which the team he built takes on the team he’s still building. And, wallflower that he is, Jose has lost no time pointing this out.

Still, Petr Cech insists that his old boss’s mind games won’t faze the Chelsea players – although, judging from the performance against Wolves, confusing the Blues at the moment might not seem that difficult.

The Italian press, egged on by Gazzetta dello Sport, have been beating the drum for Mourinho’s new Inter. Here, they proudly declaim, begins calcio’s very own Operation Fightback. Revenge for United 7-1 Roma, Arsenal 5-1 Inter, Liverpool 2-0 Inter and United 2-0 Inter is imminent.

The appropriate response to such hype is to smile, nod and quote Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop: “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. The Nerazzurri are much more fluent than last season, when their tactics, for all of Mourinho’s experiments, often boiled down to Give It To Ibra.

The goalscoring of Diego Milito and Samuel Eto’o is now backed up in midfield by the guile and vision of Wesley Sneijder, a rejuvenated Dutch master and recent escapee from the Bernabeu. Without the Dutchman, Inter have looked more vulnerable and Chelsea’s first priority, surely, will be to deny him time and space.

The margin between the teams seems thin and Mourinho was already hinting yesterday that this tie may go into extra time.

Chelsea’s recent record in the knockout stages has been impressive, unlike Inter’s. But this tie finds the club in a bit of a pickle. The Blues’ form on the road has been unimpressive. John Terry has been making uncharacteristic errors, presumably distracted by his marital woes.

Ashley Cole’s shenanigans have prompted a lecture to the squad while Cole himself, a footballer who has always had his own unique take on reality, is said to feel he’s being victimised.

With all this going on, Carlo Ancelotti would probably take a draw and an away goal at San Siro. And the man to get that away goal is probably Didier Drogba, who has now scored 31 goals in 60 games in this competition.

The Ivorian striker’s theatrical tendencies have slightly obscured the fact that he is a truly great player. Simon Barnes at The Times once said that good players make goals, great players make a team. By that standard, Drogba is a great player.

So ultimately, this tie may come down to two men in a fantastic vein of form: Didier Drogba and Jose Mourinho.

The unpredictables

CSKA Moscow vs Sevilla

Political writer David Runciman once suggested that only 5% of the action in any game was “exclusively subject to the differential skills and the tactics of the team, the rest being shaped by chance or inconsequential factors”. He would probably enjoy the uncertainties that surround this clash.

For starters, which Sevilla will turn up – the sparkling talented outfit that has humiliated Real Madrid and Barcelona, or the hapless oafs who lost at home to Racing Santander? And how rusty will CSKA Moscow, who haven’t played a competitive game since December, be when they kick off?

How will the Luzhniki’s artificial playing surface suit Sevilla? And how many pairs of gloves will the la Liga side’s Brazilian stars want to wear given that the forecast temperature in Moscow tonight is -5˚C?

Even the chanceometer, the principle that the side that creates the most opportunities normally merges triumphant, is too close to be of much use: Sevilla created 88 chances in their group, CSKA 82.

Both sides can rely on superb goalkeepers. Andres Palop would be almost as well known as Igor Akinfeev if he didn’t have the misfortune to be competing with Iker Casillas and Pepe Reina for the Spanish goalkeeper’s jersey. But neither Sevilla nor CSKA have that consistent quality in every part of the pitch.

Guillem Balague and Graham Hunter persuasively argued on Revista de la Liga that Sevilla’s inconsistency is partly down to a lack of leadership on the pitch. A few characters stand out – Palop, Jesus Navas and Luis Fabiano, desperate to mark his last season at the Ramon Sanchez with a trophy.

But they lack leaders in central defence and midfield. By la Liga’s standards, the midfield lacks flair – and this has forced coach Manolo Jimenez, under fire from fans for his conservatism, to play a faster-paced, direct, English style of football.

Sevilla will want to open up the tie to exploit CSKA’s greatest weakness: defensive midfield. Although Fabiano misses the first leg, Sevilla can call on Frederic Kanoute, Navas and new boy Alvarado Negredo for goals.

Fabiano’s track record in this tournament is impressive – nine goals in 12 games – and if he isn’t scoring, he’s creating (four assists in Group G). His movement in the penalty area is exceptional, he has a remarkable instinct for goal and the technique to punish defenders. His one flaw? Probably that he can struggle to stay focused for 90 minutes.

But Jimenez’s team are sometimes so keen on attack they leave space for opponents to counter into. And CSKA scored 10 in their group, only one fewer than Sevilla.

Even without Vagner Love, Leonid Slutsky’s team have found goals relatively easy to come by. Eight of their 10 goals came from midfield (Milos Krasic has four, Alan Dzagoev three) while Czech striker Tomas Necid – the lone striker in CSKA’s 4-2-3-1– has created four and scored one.

Necid was especially influential in the 3-3 draw against United. Though CSKA were gutted not to have held on for the win, that fine display of Russian resolution was the springboard for the club to reach the last 16 for the first time.

CSKA fans of a certain age will vividly recall their first trip to Spain in this competition. In 1992/93, they dethroned reigning European champions Barcelona, coming down from 2-0 down in Camp Nou to win 3-2 and clinch the second round tie 4-3 on aggregate.

It would be nowhere near as great a shock if CSKA knocked out Sevilla. (Los Rojiblancos did, after all, lose on penalties to Fenerbahce at this stage in 2007/08.) This is one tie where anything could happen. Except two 0-0 draws.

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It's a knockout Pt.3: Unleash the underdogs

2010-02-23T11:30:00Z

The UEFA Champions League returned in style last week with some cracking goals, another swirl of controversy surrounding bald Scandinavian referees and a performance by Wayne Rooney that suggested he’s determined to nick the Ballon d’Or off Lionel Messi.

If Handel hadn’t got there first with Zadok The Priest, Phil Collins could have supplied the epic theme for the first two ties this week as Stuttgart and Olympiacos struggle against all odds. So, as the soft rock classic almost says, let’s take a look at them now...

When attack is the worst form of defence

Stuttgart vs Barcelona

Stuttgart got the draw nobody wanted. The club’s Swiss coach Christian Gross knows his "mission impossible" starts with one simple task: getting the ball. Barcelona averaged 68% possession in their group stages. In their last match, at Dynamo Kyiv, they had the ball 77% of the time.

The stats make dismal reading for Stuttgart. The Germans have won just once in 11 meetings with Spanish sides, a terrible consistency they share with Gross whose record as manager against la Liga teams is played eight, won one, drawn two, lost five.

In contrast, Barcelona are unbeaten in nine on their travels in this (their last away defeat was at Old Trafford in the 2008/09 semi-final), have won four and drawn two on their last six trips to Germany and did the double over Stuttgart – 2-0 and 3-1 – in their only previous encounter in the 2007/08 group stage.

"OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod"

And the "chanceometer" – the idea that the team that creates the most chances more often than not wins the game – shades it for Barca, though not by much, as they created 119 goalscoring opportunities in their group to Stuttgart’s 110.

PROFESSOR CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: How one professional gambler makes money by taking his chances

But Barcelona are stoppable, as Atletico Madrid proved, and will miss Dani Alves, Eric Abidal, Yaya Toure, Seydou Keita and Xavi. That kind of injury crisis would cripple most clubs but Pep Guardiola can still call on such journeymen as Messi, Henry, Ibra, Iniesta, Puyol, Pique, Pedro and Marquez.

The great Zlatan – who ended his goal drought in that defeat by Atletico – must surely see this as a great chance to break his duck and score his first goal in the knockout stages of this competition.

So what is Gross to do? The romantic option – especially after Saturday’s 5-1 demolition of Cologne, and with Barça’s defence ravaged by injuries – would be to attack Barcelona and hope that Cacau, who scored four in Cologne, is brilliant and ruthless.

But most European coaches say Barcelona are at their most dangerous when you attack them. The reward for such audacity might be the kind of heavy, stinging defeat that seriously undermines morale and inspires punning headlines of the Gross Misconduct or Christian Thrown To The Lions variety.

The safer option would be for Gross to rerun the Super Cup and watch how Mircea Lucescu’s superbly drilled Shakhtar Donetsk frustrated Barcelona.

"I didn't see that coming, did you?"

At their best, Barcelona are European football’s scintillators in chief. But when the tempo slows and space is scarce, they can get stuck in a passing rut, hit too many passes, too slowly and get a tad bogged down. With Barça becalmed and frustrated, Cacau and Pavel Pogrebnyak could even nick a goal.

The wisdom of Socratis

Olympiacos vs Bordeaux

Atletico Madrid’s notorious chairman Jesus Gil once said that firing a coach felt as natural to him as drinking beer. Olympiacos chairman Socratis Kokkalis hasn’t been that trigger-happy but just over halfway through the season, Bozidar Bandovic is now in his second spell as caretaker manager after the oustings of Temuri Ketsbaia and Zico.

This is the third time Olympiacos have reached the knockout stages of the Champions League. On both previous occasions, the coach was on his way within 10 months.

Like his many predecessors, Bandovic, who made his name as a defender with Red Star Belgrade in the early 1990s, has two simple tasks: over-perform in the Champions League and win the Greek title (as they have in nine out of the last 10 seasons).

The biggest obstacle to Olympiacos over-performing against Bordeaux is goals. The lack of. Their top scorers in Group H – Brazilian defender Leonardo, defender-or-midfielder Vassilis Torosidis, midfielder Ieroklis Stoltidis and striker Kostas Mitroglou – all grabbed a goal apiece.

Mitroglou’s strike rate, if that’s not too generous, was a goal every 387 minutes in Group H. (Though the 21-year-old did, to be fair, shoot down Sheriff, the Moldovan champs, with two goals in the play-off round.)

When you’ve been firing blanks, the last thing you need is to face a defence coached by World Cup winning centre-back Laurent Blanc. Bordeaux have the competition’s meanest defence, conceding just two goals as they surprised Juventus and Bayern to emerge as the alpha males in Group A.

"...and this is how you tackle..."

Bordeaux reached the European Cup semi-final in 1984/85 and are fancied by many to do at least as well this season – superb news for headline writers who haven’t quite exhausted their list of wine-related puns.

Euro for Euro, Blanc must be one of the most effective coaches in Europe today. As Gabriele Marcotti has noted, his efficient back four cost just £3.8m. As a coach, he has a particular gift for rehab, rebuilding the confidence of Bordeaux’s best player Yoan Gourcuff and Michael Ciani, the central defender who scored two tasty headers in Group A.

Bordeaux’s recent wobble – they have won just two out of five Ligue 1 games since Christmas – may give Olympiacos hope. But the Greeks will have to work hard to deny Gourcuff, Marouane Chamakh, Wendel and Yoan Gouffran – and to stop the French side scoring from set-pieces.

Bordeaux will want to stifle Torosidis. Now 24, the Greek international, who started as a full-back, has played as a winger and now often features in central midfield. Combative, strong, tall and technically accomplished, Torosidis just needs to score a few more goals to become the complete player.

His long-expected move to a bigger league – he has, inevitably, been linked with Manchester City – might be influenced by his form for Greece in South Africa this summer.

It took Olympiacos 32 games to record their first away win in this tournament and their defence has been porous on their travels, shipping 2.12 goals a game. So if Olympiacos are to avoid a Greek tragedy, they need a clear margin of victory and a clean sheet in Piraeus.

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It’s a knockout Pt. 2: Arsenal, Porto, Fiorentina & Bayern

2010-02-17T12:00:00Z

The longer I study mathematics, number crunching, statistics and their application to the game of football, the more deeply convinced I become that their use simply introduces a higher level of nonsense into punditry.

Yesterday, applying the formula developed by one rich gambler – the team that creates the most chances usually wins – I suggested Manchester United and Real Madrid would conquer all.

At first glance, I was half right.

The Professor on It's a knockout Pt.1: Milan, Man U, Real & Lyon

United, with a much greater track record at creating goalscoring opportunities in this tournament, just edged it – even though, on the night, they created one fewer chance than Milan!

Real lost 1-0 to Lyon. Los blancos have, game-by-game, created significantly more chances than Claude Puel’s team.

But on the night, in one of the best 1-0s of the season, Lyon created 18 chances, twice as many as Real.

If we evaluate tonight’s games purely in terms of goalscoring opportunities, what do we conclude?

Bayern vs Fiorentina is too close to call: the Germans made 86 opportunities in their group games, compared to 91 for Fiorentina, while Porto (who created 124 chances) might surprise Arsenal (101).

Zealotry and pragmatism

Porto vs Arsenal

When Arsene Wenger called this tie “difficult, but feasible”, the British press assumed he was playing mind games.

After all, United and Chelsea have beaten the Dragons on their own turf in the last year.

Yet William Hill agrees with Wenger rating a Porto victory this week as slightly more likely (7/5) than a win for Arsenal (8/5).

The absence of Andrei Arshavin and Eduardo, with Robin van Persie sidelined, is significant.

But 11 Gunners have already scored in the UEFA Champions League this season and Cesc Fabregas, their top scorer in this competition (and this season as a whole) will play.

The bigger concern may be the absence of Alexandre Song. Many Arsenal fans rave about him, as does David Walsh in The Sunday Times.

I haven’t seen him enough in person this season to make any sweeping judgement.

But from what I’ve seen on TV, I wonder whether people are seeing Song as he is today or projecting an idealised version of the player he might become in a few years.

Certainly a minority of Gooners post such furious questions on message boards as: “Why in God’s name is Song never in front of the centre-backs when he is supposed to be?”

"So you're not coming to Portugal? Oh, bum."

Porto are not, as Gabriel Marcotti notes, the side that pushed United so hard in the quarter-finals last season.

Their annual summer sale has begun finally to take its toll and, despite some good recent form, they are nine points behind Benfica in Portugal.

It hasn’t helped, as The Sunday Times’ Ian Hawkey notes, that “The Incredible Hulk has become the Ineligible Hulk” after a fracas in the tunnel against Benfica just before Christmas.

Though his ban does not apply to UEFA competitions, Porto’s marauding Brazilian genius will lack match fitness.

Hawkey and Marcotti identify the major threat to Arsenal as Radamel ‘Falcao’ Garcia, a 24-year-old Colombian who has quickly filled Lisandro’s goalscoring boots.

He can finish with both feet, has a devastating change of pace, is pretty nifty in the air for a player who isn’t quite 5ft 10in, and he has scored seven in his last 10 games.

Porto paid £4.8 million for him and could double that if they sold him this summer.

Remember the name: Superbock!

Porto are adept on the counter and Arsenal have become exceptionally adept at conceding on the counter so it will be intriguing to see if Wenger has his team playing a little deeper in Portugal, reducing the space for Porto to attack into.

Above all, this fixture offers a fascinating contrast in managerial styles.

Porto are schooled by Jesualdo Ferreira, a wily pragmatist who may never match the glory that was Jose Mourinho but won’t rock the boat either.

Ferreira’s perpetual challenge is to build a team flexible and resilient enough to lose star players upfront, in central defence and midfield and still compete in the Champions League.

And Ferreira knows that, no many how of his stars are sold, he will pay if the Dragons don’t deliver.

Facing Ferreira is Wenger, a coach with the conviction, zeal and mystic aura of a biblical prophet who, for all his cosmopolitan, analytical intelligence, really does seem to believe that his way of playing football is morally superior.

Wenger may be dismayed, if not surprised, to hear that Ferreira says his main goal tonight is “shutting out” Arsenal – although the Porto coach could be playing mind games too.

With Arsenal’s injury problems, he might wonder if a more aggressive approach could clinch the tie in the first leg.

Violins and washing machines

Bayern vs Fiorentina

If football matches were decided purely by which teams had the most stars, Bayern would be a shoo-in for the last eight.

They can call on the slippery Arjen Robben, the superb Ivica Olic, the reliable Miroslav Klose, and the rejuvenated Franck Ribery.

The only Fiorentina star of equivalent proven class is Alberto Gilardino, who will be hoping to perform his famous celebration – playing the air violin – in Munich.

Italian hitman prepares to open violin case

If matches were decided by form, Bayern are still overwhelming favourites.

They have won 12 games in a row while Fiorentina (beaten 2-0 by Sampdoria at the weekend) have shown the kind of inconsistency normally reserved for candidates for public office.

Coach Cesare Prandelli admits the Viola are in crisis.

The Guardian’s Paolo Bandini explores the club’s malaise entertainingly, pointing out that Fiorentina have one eye on the last eight of the Champions League and another on a relegation battle in Serie A.

No wonder the bookies offer 6/1 on a Fiorentina triumph in Munich.

Still, as Bayern club captain Mark van Bommel said earlier this week: “You never know what will happen – warranties and guarantees are for washing machines.”

Prandelli’s best hope may be to keep the tie competitive – ideally level with an away goal – and regroup for the return at the Artemi Franchi.

Despite their impressive form, Louis van Gaal has scolded Bayern for “being arrogant and lacking in concentration” and Fiorentina will hope to punish any such lapses.

"You've all been very naughty boys"

In the last 16 for the first time, Fiorentina have shown that this tournament inspires them.

They have won five in a row, including both their last two away games.

They have the wit and technique – in such players as Stevan Jovetic and Juan Manuel Vargas – to trouble Bayern and keeper Sebastian Frey has been in the form of his life in Europe.

The key to the tie, in Mutu’s absence, will be whether Gilardino is confident and on form after a lacklustre month.

Sometimes, when you are struggling, playing away from home – especially in an inspiring stadium like Bayern’s – can be easier than performing in front of your own fans who, when the chips are down, can lurch from passionate loyalty to loud, vitriolic, enervating disgust after one bad mistake.

The longer Fiorentina can keep this at 0-0, the more frustrated Bayern – and their highly critical fans – might become.

Even if Bayern ease past Fiorentina, one man believes they probably won’t win the Champions League.

That man is, of course, Franck Ribery, who may just be perfecting his alibi for a summer move to somewhere more glamorous.

His insistence that Bayern need to buy more big names – as if a football team could ever really adopt the model of the Harlem Globetrotters – is a tad depressing.

Multi-millionaires are notoriously prone to delusions of professional immortality but even big names like Ribery age and, if every club adopted his Harlem Globetrotters strategy, there’d be no big names emerging to replace them.

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It's a knockout Pt. 1: Milan, Man U, Real & Lyon

2010-02-16T12:30:00Z

There are many imperfect ways to predict a football match.

As professional soothsayers, journalists will often search for the strangest omens.

Chelsea are, according to the hacks gathered around the table for Brian Woolnough’s Sunday Supplement on Sky Sports, destined to win the UEFA Champions League because they are fuelled by a sense of injustice at the manner of their defeat in last season’s semi-final.

Call me a sceptic, but as the saying very nearly goes: revenge is a dish best served after the event.

Compulsive Tweeter Henry Winter has obviously been inspired by Sir Alex Ferguson’s “upbeat, in control” performance at the press conference at the San Siro.

Actually, Henry calls it a presser, which led me to wonder if Dazza and Wazza were at the presser with Fergie and Wints.

At ease: Fergie holds court

But somewhere in London, a multi-millionaire gambler – as the next issue of Champions will reveal – has made a fortune by using a different criterion to predict games.

He relies, to a large degree, on which team creates the most chances.

Doesn’t matter if a team converts more of them, creating them is enough for this rich recluse.

And on this basis, Manchester United, who created 109 chances in their group games (counting shots and corners), should prevail over 180 minutes over Milan, who created just 80.

In tonight’s other tie, the same stats suggest that Real Madrid (126 chances) should defeat Olympique Lyonnais (98).

Legs, shots and soap

Milan v Manchester United

The soap opera sub-plot of Beckham’s return to Old Trafford may, to the British media’s chagrin, not prove decisive in this finely poised tie.

As Tom English points out in a slightly snide piece in The Scotsman, Beckham – and Milan – have often misfired since the Rossoneri’s abject performance in the Milan derby.

Yet unlike Juve’s former coach Ciro Ferrara, Leonardo still has a shot at proving he is the new Guardiola.

His target tonight is “not conceding a goal and doing some damage to the English side.”

The stat that might trouble him, returning briefly to the gambler’s predictive formula, is that Milan only managed 19 shots on goal in Group C, making them the most shot-shy team in the last 16.

They beat Udinese 3-2 at the weekend but Gazzetta dello Sport noted: “Something more will be needed against United. In three words: speed, aggression, pressure.”

United’s four previous trips to the San Siro have yielded no goals and no points.

United fans seem divided on whether Sir Alex Ferguson should play a cagey 4-5-1 or try to settle the tie with an attacking 4-3-3.

As Jonathan Wilson has pointed out in The Guardian, United have usually preferred to counter-attack since Fernando Redondo nutmegged Henning Berg with a backheel nearly 10 years ago.

Redondo's subsequent assist for Raul helped Real beat United 3-2 at Old Trafford in the last eight.

"I'll do you, too": Redondo takes on Keano

Saying the game will be decided in midfield is to state the bleedin’ obvious.

And despite the presence of Matthieu Flamini in the squad, the Milan midfield lacks legs under 30, a deficiency not even the wizards at the Milan Lab can mask indefinitely.

I’d never say so to Gennaro Gattuso in person but against top-class opposition his snarl has, of late, sometimes seemed worse than his bite in the tackle.

United may prosper if they have their passing boots on.

The return of Pato’s pace and power is a morale booster for Milan.

If fit for either leg, striker Marco Borriello – arguably the Rossoneri’s best target man since Oliver Bierhoff left in 2001 – will surely test a United defence beset by injuries and changing selections.

Ronaldinho has made himself integral to Milan and looked motivated against Udinese after a shape up or ship out chat with Silvio Berlusconi.

The difference between this Ronaldinho and the player who won this tournament with Barcelona is that if he does get one-on-one with a United defender, he will have to beat his opponent with technique, not acceleration.

Ronaldinho and Pato: guile and pace

In no way can this tie be defined as crudely as a head to head between Rooney and Pato.

But for Rooney, this is his chance to prove he really is, as his boss maintains, the best in the world right now.

And on UEFA.com he certainly sounds up for the challenge of outwitting Alessandro Nesta.

Pato isn’t short of motivation either.

He broke Pele’s record by scoring within seconds on his debut for Brazil against Sweden in March 2008.

Sadly for Pato, the one man his talents don’t seem to excite that much happens to be his national coach Dunga.

THE SPOTTER: How United can topple Milan

La decima, the holy grail and Bart Simpson

Lyon v Real Madrid

Once a realistic ambition, then a long-cherished dream, la decima – the 10th European Cup – is in danger of becoming a holy grail for Real Madrid.

The last time they made it past the last 16 of the competition Tony Blair was still prime minister, Jose Mourinho was managing Porto and Facebook was just six weeks old.

LA LIGA LOCA: Madrid prepare for their annual knockout round

Real’s glorious dash to the last four in 2003/04 brought the curtain down on the first galacticos era.

And now it is up to the neo-galacticos – in which the megastars have been surrounded with a few players like Xabi Alonso who know how a football team actually ticks – to succeed where Zidane, the original Ronaldo and Figo failed.

It sounds melodramatic to say that this tie will define Real’s season.

Hell, it is melodramatic. But it is also probably true.

Iker Casillas will be hoping to mark his 501st appearance for Real Madrid with a clean sheet.

But Real’s record at Stade Gerland in this tournament is consistent: ie consistently awful.

They've played twice, lost both, scored none and conceded five.

And, if Miralem Pjanic is on the pitch, Real need to watch out for free-kicks: they have conceded 104 fouls in six games and collected 17 yellow cards, having the worst disciplinary record of any team in the last 16.

Pjanic: "I'll put it just there"

Mind you, Lyon’s home form in Europe is hardly spectacular: they have won just five out of their last 14 (including their 5-1 demolition of Anderlecht in the play-off round) at Stade Gerland.

And they’ve been leaky in Ligue 1: conceding 1.17 goals a game (compared to Real’s 0.68 in la Liga.)

With Cris and Jean-Alain Boumsong in defence, Lyon’s chances of progressing diminish the more open the games become.

So can Lyon’s 4-2-3-1 keep Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Higuain – and possibly old boy Karim Benzema (if he can shake off that injury to his left leg) – at bay?

Coach Claude Puel will certainly hope so.

Lyon’s recent record in the knockout stages is one of Bart Simpsonesque underachievement.

They’ve had some tough draws – facing Manchester United, Barcelona and now Real – but les Gones have been goners at this stage three seasons in a row.

If Puel had the personnel he might be tempted to emulate Jean Tigana, who steered Monaco past Manchester United into the semis in 1998 by drawing 0-0 in the billionaires’ playground and scoring the crucial away goal in a draw at Old Trafford.

Monaco's Barthez celebrates, United's Berg doesn't

But he hasn’t, so much will depend on Hugo Lloris’s excellence in goal and whether Lisandro, who hasn’t been as prolific since the winter break, can make the most of his opportunities.

Still, as Karim Benzema (who knows a bit about Lyon) points out, Puel’s team have a strong point:

"They can be playing badly and all of a sudden they surpass themselves, raising their game to their opponents’ level or beyond.”

Previewing games like this can often descend into what the cult British novelist and football reporter BS Johnson called “speculative crap.”

So it would be remiss not to say that I’ll watch this match in the hope that, as Johnson put it in his novel The Unfortunates, “this might be the ONE match where the extraordinary happens, the match one remembers and talks about afterwards for the rest of one’s life.”

If any two teams can deliver such a match at this stage of the competition, it is probably Real Madrid and Olympique Lyonnais.

Tomorrow I’ll ponder if Arsene Wenger has been playing mind games again and which Fiorentina will turn up in Munich as I preview the other two ties this week.

THE SPOTTER: How United can topple Milan
LA LIGA LOCA: Madrid prepare for their annual knockout round

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Magic numbers, bubbly & Brandreth

2010-02-09T13:00:00Z

Every World Cup is preceded by coincidences and mathematical formulas which ‘prove’ one country is destined to win.

My favourite of 2010, brought to my attention by Ulrich Hesse when researching a piece for the next issue of Champions, is that Germany will win the World Cup this summer because of a magic number: 3964.

In 2002, the Brazilians discovered that if you added two of a nation’s World Cup triumphs together you always came up with 3964.

This worked for Brazil (1962 + 2002 = 3964), Argentina (1978 + 1986 = 3964) and Germany (1974 + 1990 = 3964).

But it didn’t work for the selecao in 2006 (even though 1958 + 2006 = 3964), nor for Italy, Uruguay or England (who, according to this theory, blew their chance to win it in 1998 when 1966 + 1998 = 3964).

Germany will hope that the charm does work this summer because 1954 + 2010 = 3964.

Bring me the head of Jerome Champagne

Jerome Champagne sounds like a spoof name for one of Lenny Henry’s parodic 1970s soul singers.

But there’s nothing especially groovy about Champagne who, in photographs, looks like his expression has been curdled by too many meetings.

Until recently, Champagne was the international relations director of FIFA. His abrupt departure from that post has puzzled football’s chattering classes.

FIFA watchers are the new Kremlinologists.

Just as academics once scrutinised speeches for coded messages and studied the line-up of grey leaders waving stiffly at May Day parades for clues as to who was on the way up, FIFA watchers have become expert readers of the runes, interpreters of obscure signs.

And, like Kremlinologists, they never agree.

So Champagne’s exit will, the pundits conclude, make FIFA president Sepp Blatter more powerful.

Or less powerful – if you believe those who suggest Champagne was sacrificed to placate irate confederation bosses or to placate power brokers disturbed by Champagne’s views on rooting out corruption.

Hitherto regarded as a shoo-in to be re-elected as president in 2012, Blatter knows that much depends now on whether his gamble, giving the World Cup to South Africa, pays off.

If the tournament flops – and early ticket sales in such normally fervent countries as Germany are hardly encouraging – it will fuel demand for change at the top.

Champagne’s abrupt exit comes soon after Hans Klaus’s resignation as communications director.

Klaus had been in the job just 19 months and his departure, seven months before the biggest event in FIFA’s calendar, was hardly ideal.

The post has not been filled and it’s a sign of how odd things are in the footballocracy right now that the three biggest communications director roles in football – at FIFA, UEFA and the FA – are all vacant.

Thank god it’s all over

January 2010 was the dullest of transfer windows.

The countdown on Sky Sports News served not to heighten the tension about which mouthwatering deals might still be struck, but to promise relief that we should not have to endure this tedious, unconvincing speculation much longer.

Freddy Adu’s long and winding road to becoming the new Pele has now taken him, on loan, to Aris in Greece, his sixth club in six years.

Steve McClaren has taken a risk at FC Twente by snapping up striker Vagif Javadov, Azerbaijan’s footballer of the year.

Meanwhile, Jerome Rothen, Lucas Neill and Geremi all headed into European football’s last chance saloon, the Turkish league.

Scandal and satire

Watched Sunderland vs Stoke.

I loved Stoke in the early 1970s when, under Tony Waddington, and inspired by Gordon Banks and Jimmy Greenhoff, they beat Chelsea in the 1972 League Cup final.

Rose-tinted nostalgia can lead you astray – and it’s hard to argue with the economic imperative to play in a style that keeps the club in the Premier League – but Stoke are in danger of becoming the Gyles Brandreth of English football, smugly spreading insufferable boredom throughout the land.

Terrygate has baffled the French who find the moral outrage typical of hypocritical Monsieur Rosbif and the News of the World’s old foe Max Mosley has chipped in on behalf of the Chelsea and England skipper.

For me the highlight of le scandale was seeing Lizzie Cundy, the luminous wife of Jason and star of such zeitgeist-defining TV programmes as So Would You Dump Me Now? and Sporting Icon WAGS, gamely defending Terry on the GMTV sofa on the grounds that nobody understood how difficult it was for these young multi-millionaires being hounded 24/7 by scores of beautiful women begging them for sex.

I haven’t been so entertained since English football’s greatest living satirist, Karren Brady, said how “brilliant” it would be if her new club were renamed West Ham Olympic.

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The men who made Brian Clough

2010-01-27T17:30:00Z

Every genius seems unique.

Yet as Duncan Hamilton’s brilliant book Provided You Don’t Kiss Me makes clear, Brian Clough owed something to Peter Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Harold Wilson and Eric Morecambe.

Sadly, the football giants on whose shoulders Old Big ‘Ead stood are largely forgotten today: Alan Brown and Harry Storer.

Brown’s greatest achievements were creating a fine Sunderland side that pushed Don Revie’s Leeds all the way for the old Second Division title in 1963/64 and steering Sheffield Wednesday to the 1966 FA Cup final.

But his greatest legacy was inspiring Cloughie.

The first time Brown met Clough, he told his young striker: “You may have heard people say that I’m a b*st*rd. Well, they’re right.”

Brown inspired fear – even in Clough – set strict club rules (fining players for minor indiscretions), ordered the senior players to be ball boys for the youth team and yanked Clough off the touchline for talking to a friend during training and (Hamilton says) “dressed him down for it, like a schoolboy caught with matches in his pockets.”

When Clough graduated to the dugout, he often said: “I wish I had Alan Brown beside me.”

God, bonuses and kindness

Like Clough, Brown hailed from the north-east. A tactically aware centre-half, Brown once declared that football was “one of the biggest things that happened in creation.”

His belief that football was God’s gift resonated with Clough, who was convinced he was God’s gift to football.

Brown made his mark as a player quite late: he was 32 when he starred at the heart of Burnley’s famous Iron Curtain Defence in the late 1940s.

As Burnley manager in the 1950s, Brown invested in youth, pioneered the short corner and perfected a vast array of set-pieces.

Brown’s moral integrity proved useful when he joined Sunderland in 1957.

The Rokermen were at the foot of the First Division and disgraced by illegal payments to players.

Brown took them back to the top flight but quit in 1963/64 when directors reneged on a promised bonus.

The bitter lesson was not lost on Clough, who would rage about the “shithouses” in the boardroom of every club he managed.

Brown in 1969, back at Roker Park

Brown came agonisingly close to winning the 1966 FA Cup with Sheffield Wednesday but by 1970, when he was just 56, his career in English football management was effectively finished by Sunderland's relegation.

When Roker legend Len Ashurst visited Brown (who had retired to Devon) he found his old boss “had fallen on tough times, but Alan said: ‘Come here, see those flowers? Brian Clough sent them. And see this cheque? He sent me this as well.’”

Such secret kindness was typical of Clough – and Harry Storer, though the Derby manager could be as tough as bricks.

In Clough’s memoirs, he recalls how Storer dragged a player back to the pitch after a game and demanded: “Show me the hole.”

The baffled player muttered: “What hole, boss?” To which Storer crushingly replied: “The hole you disappeared into for 90 minutes. It has to be here somewhere.”

Such brutal candour became second nature to Clough.

A skilful midfielder in the 1920s, the square-jawed Storer took over at Derby in 1955.

As Derby player Ian Hall recalls: “He knew a lot about sport and about people. He knew a lot about many things and loved an argument about everything from literature to religion.”

Storer the player in 1920

Clough discovered the range of Storer’s conversation – and his thirst for argument – at first hand.

Storer tried to sign Clough for Derby and whenever the Rams played in the north-east, Clough and Taylor would listen as Storer held forth.

Brown was a shrewd tactician, Storer wasn’t.

If a coach got too technical when describing a player’s qualities, Storer would brusquely interject: “Yes, but can he play?”

Electricians and Eric Morecambe

Clough’s greatest signing at Derby, Dave Mackay, was inspired by Storer’s advice: “As you’re setting out for the match, look around the bus and count hearts. If you can’t count five, turn the bus around.”

Impressed, Clough would buy such bravehearts as Mackay, Larry Lloyd, Kenny Burns and Stuart Pearce.

Storer died in September 1967, just a few weeks after Clough and Taylor took over at the Baseball Ground. (Brown died in Barnstaple in 1996).

Twenty-six years later, when Clough finally retired, he remembered another of Storer’s maxims: “Directors never say thank you.”

After 18 seasons at Nottingham Forest, Clough was given a silver rose bowl. Not one director wrote to him.

“One or two of their wives did, but not the directors themselves,” he told Michael Parkinson. “Strange, isn’t it?”

Hamilton’s book has some delightful period detail – even in the 1980s, Stuart Pearce advertised his services as an electrician in the Forest programme – and sheds intriguing, unexpected light on Clough’s career.

Hamilton suggests, rightly in my view, that the pivotal life-changing event for Clough was not the knee injury that prematurely ended his playing career but the public humiliation of his 44-day spell at Leeds United.

Clough takes training at Leeds; Bremner wears prescient number

Out of disaster, a new Clough emerged, not quite so ready – whatever appearances might suggest – to believe his own hype (at least until the booze affected his judgement) and easier with players, press and, occasionally, directors.

He could even dwell amusingly on the foibles of footballers, saying they reminded him of Eric Morecambe failing to impress Andre Previn by playing all the right notes of Grieg’s concerto “but not necessarily in the right order.”

Hamilton’s painstaking account makes the mechanics of Clough’s comeback – the signing of players, the psychological tactics, the plotting within the club – vividly clear.

One overlooked reason for Clough’s remarkable success at Forest, Hamilton suggests, is that the club’s arcane constitution prevented any single tycoon taking over, leaving Cloughie free to divide and rule.

But neither Hamilton nor Clough in his memoirs has explained how Old Big 'Ead acquired his messianic self-certainty – and why that didn’t shatter forever when the most famous football club of his day discarded him.

Clough’s secret war

I never met Clough but I shared a room with him – and 80 other journalists – when he was promoting his autobiography in 1995.

It wasn’t vintage Clough, but he still had a rare mesmeric power – and a gift for saying outrageous things in such an endearing way it felt churlish to take offence.

Reading Hamilton’s book – and Parkinson’s blog describing him as a “loudmouthed prat and a significant working class hero” – I wonder how much of his rise was fuelled by old-fashioned class resentment, a burning desire to put one over on the toffs who had patronised him as a player and a coach.

The psychologist Anthony Storr notes, in his superb essay on Winston Churchill, that Hitler was a very useful enemy for Churchill – as an outlet for all the anger that this manic depressive might have directed inward.

Clough was fortunate in his enemies too: in English football in his day, there was always another upper-class twit who needed taking down a peg or three.

Maybe Clough’s real war wasn’t against Revie or Derby chairman Sam Longson, but the establishment and its many stooges.

Like Brando’s anti-hero in The Wild One, he had no shortage of causes to rebel against.

Back in 1995, none of that occurred to me. I only knew that Clough was undoubtedly the most charming retired dictatorial genius I’d ever shared a room with.

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Herrera's creative engine room: God, Freud and Yoga

2010-01-20T14:30:00Z

“He who plays for himself plays for the opposition. He who plays for the team plays for himself.”

The notebooks of Helenio Herrera, published by his widow Fiora Gandolfi, are full of aphorisms like that, which shed insight on the intriguing paradox of Inter’s famous, infamous coach.

The brilliant Argentinian football writer Marcela Mora y Araujo has just analysed Herrera's notebooks in the new issue of Champions (out now folks, at all good newsagents and here).

Brilliant analysis - and the journals are good, too

As Marcela points out, Herrera is usually remembered as a dictatorial, authoritarian leader whose greatest triumphs – winning the European Cup in 1963 and 1964 with Inter – were clouded by rumours of skulduggery, gamesmanship and bribery, and whose reputation is forever stained Darth Vader black by his association with the sterile defensive football of catenaccio.

Yet, as Marcela’s researches make clear, Herrera wasn’t just a brutal cynic. His life reads like a magic realist tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The son of an exiled Spanish anarchist trade unionist, Helenio was born, at an unknown date (some say 1910, others 1916), in the islands of the Tigre Delta near Buenos Aires but moved as a young boy to Casablanca, where he lived in poverty.

By the 1930s, when he made his name as a player in France, he could speak Spanish, Arabic, French, English and Italian and often spoke them all in the same sentence.

His personal Esperanto gave him an aura that led many to call him Il Mago (The Magician).

After impressing in Spain, he made Inter successful and notorious before drifting into self-parody (he was even repudiated by the Inter old guard, the very players he had made famous) and retirement.

When he died, in 1997, his ashes lay behind an unmarked stone on San Michele, Venice’s island cemetery, until the British royal family, which owns some plots on the island, intervened.

For tactical aficionados, Herrera’s beautifully annotated diagram of a W-M formation dated 1925 – the same year Herbert Chapman was pioneering this system in England – will be of particular interest.

For me, the intriguing aspect of Herrera’s notebooks is the breadth of his sources.

He draws on yoga, psychoanalysis and – interestingly for a man who insisted on a non-religious funeral – the lives of saints, as he jots down thoughts and sketches which might help him as a defender and coach.

He pioneered self-help psychology.

Decades before Paul McKenna promised to make us thin, rich and tobacco-free, he would stick up signs around the dressing room which challenged players: “Why not be the best?” (Ironically, Jimmy Carter, one of America’s most mediocre presidents, later adopted the slogan.)

Crystal Palace, 1965: HH shows his methods to the FA

I was struck by two of Herrera’s dictums: “Style is in limitation” and “The worst thing is to make a mistake with someone else’s ideas.”

Nobody ever accused him of doing the latter.

Though he hated being called Il Mago and could analyse football with scientific dispassion, Herrera believed in ritual.

The ball was to be worshipped, its talismanic qualities so powerful that touching it briefly was, he told players, good for the mind.

Herrera was a paradoxical man.

The Italian writer Gianni Brera, who loved him and hated him, caught his aspect brilliantly when he called Herrera a “clown and a genius, vulgar and ascetic, sultan and believer, boorish and competent, megalomaniac and health freak... he is all this and more.”

Even his adherence to catenaccio is not as unswerving as legend suggests.

The stats on his managerial career show that his Atletico Madrid team scored 2.76 goals per game between 1949 and 1952, while at Sevilla (from 1953 to 1956) and Barcelona (1958 and 1960) his side averaged 2.29 and 3.03 goals a game respectively.

At Inter, he managed a free-scoring side but won nothing and turned to a variation of catenaccio that relied on attacking full-backs or wing-backs.

Once he’d discovered that system, he never significantly deviated from it.

Herrera probably didn’t invent catenaccio, but he was responsible for the ritiro, the traditional pre-match ritual where Italian teams retreat to focus on the task in hand.

The ritiro was soon institutionalised throughout calcio.

Jonathan Wilson says that Inter’s extended retreat before the 1967 European Cup final ironically contributed to their defeat by Celtic.

Inter’s ritiro in Portugal was so claustrophobic that many players couldn’t sleep. Herrera’s invention had been so successful that he had forgotten another of his maxims: “Avoid monotony in speeches, training and meals.”

Bested by Stein in '67

The diagrams of yoga and exercise give some insight into the obsessive inner world of this great coach and, by extension, all great coaches.

As he lovingly depicts various exercises, Herrera seems engaged on a quest to understand every muscle and its relevance to a footballer’s performance.

The breadth of his curiosity is a striking contrast to the depth of his self-belief, his certainty that “Things are only as difficult as you make them.”

These notes don’t square with the stereotype of Herrera. But they are, his widow suggests, the rules he tried to live by.

Maybe, too, they helped obscure some of the unpalatable aspects of his success.

It’s easier to ignore skulduggery if you can tell yourself you are inspired by Saint Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits, and one of Herrera’s greatest influences).

Herrera’s wisdom still resonates.

“Doubt must not enter into me” is, surely, a motto to find favour with Jose Mourinho, the paradoxical genius who now reigns at the San Siro.

Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate Helenio Herrera.

On the evidence of these notebooks, Herrera looks more, as Marcela suggests, like a Renaissance Man than one of South America’s more enduring – and benign – tinpot dictators.

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The revolutionary legacy of Philippe Albert

2010-01-07T11:30:00Z

Philippe Albert’s first touch wasn’t great.

The ball rolled too far to his left but there was plenty of space and he had time to notice the keeper was out of his goal before he accelerated towards the penalty area and, from 25 yards out, chipped the ball over two defenders and Peter Schmeichel to score the goal of his life.

Albert’s chip for Newcastle against Manchester United in October 1996 wasn’t just sublime, it was 15 years ahead of its time.

The centre-back is being surreptitiously, radically reinvented.

One day, maybe, all centre-backs will be expected to score goals like Albert’s – even if they will also be expected to defend like Franco Baresi.

Going spare at the back

The tactical rationale behind this reinvention has been explained, with characteristic eloquence, by Jonathan Wilson.

Simply put, the rarity of 4-4-2 and the changing role of the striker mean that one centre-back in the traditional back four is effectively spare.

As Wilson says when predicting the return of the sweeper, “The history of tactics is the history of the manipulation of space” and this underworked centre-back may now have the most space on the pitch.

If that centre-back could – as Philippe Albert, Klaus Augenthaler, Franz Beckenbauer, Ronald Koeman and Ruud Krol have all done – play with the confidence of a libero and take the ball into midfield, starting and finishing attacks, they could transform their team’s prospects.

Albert looks to the future

With one centre-back redundant, you might expect more teams to play 3-5-2.

But redeploying that spare centre-back into the congested midfield actually throws away the space and leaves your remaining centre-back with less cover.

It's far more likely that, under a 4-5-1, 4-4-1-1 or 4-3-3, the spare centre-back becomes an attacking central defender who can swap roles with the defensive anchormen.

Ideally, both central defenders and both anchormen would become interchangeable.

Centre-backs can then make the most of the space in front of them and, by running from unexpected areas, confuse and vex opposing midfielders.

These libero-style centre-backs will need the intelligence to read the opportunity when it arises.

Beckenbauer was a master of this. In September 1965, the Kaiser seized the initiative in a vital World Cup qualifier against Sweden.

With the Swedes unsettled by an equaliser, and West Germany needing to win, his sudden run into midfield created the winner for Uwe Seeler.

And in England the following summer, Beckenbauer scored more goals than Bobby Charlton.

Becks bags in 66. Name that ground...

Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s technical director, sees the redefinition of the centre-back as the latest stage in an evolution which has transformed the roles of goalkeepers, full-backs, wingers and strikers – who have all, to differing degrees, become more multi-tasking.

The buzz word is “universality,” which Wilson explains by drawing an analogy with table football: “Get beyond a certain level and the key attacking players become the back two because they have time and the space behind them to line up a shot; the three forwards take on a function as blockers.”

Defence is the best form of attack

The complicating factor in all this is, as ever, the player.

Many attackers can defend but only a handful of central defenders – Gerard Pique and Lucio are the most obvious – have what it takes, at the very highest level, to attack.

The dearth of attacking centre-backs may be the most underrated skill shortage in football today.

The visionary coaches who encouraged the kind of fluidity that typified Total Football – Valeriy Lobanovskiy and Viktor Maslov at Dynamo Kyiv, Rinus Michels at Ajax and Arrigo Sacchi at Milan – were all great dictators who developed young teams.

In the case of Michels and Sacchi, they were also empowered by being hired in a crisis.

The most recent of these autocracies – Sacchi’s – only lasted four years and even Sacchi’s pupil, Fabio Capello, felt obliged to redesign the master’s system, making the Rossoneri more functional.

Sacchi: "Do as I say. Or else."

Today, in an age when footballers are celebrities and sportsmen, it will be much harder for coaches to systematically develop such universality.

Under Michels at Ajax, Krol could occupy any position in defence and midfield – and was happy to do so.

But in today’s game, where a multi-millionaire central defender is advised by agents, flunkies and sycophants, players might be less willing to take the risk.

After a few off-days in an unfamiliar role, it's easy to imagine an international-class defender lobbying against this approach in the dressing room, on the training ground and even through plausibly deniable whispers to the media.

A Belgian conundrum

Managers may find it easier to buy central defenders who can play a bit or train as much flexibility as they can into talented youngsters with the hunger to succeed.

Or they could just hang around Ajax youth games to see if they can spot the next Thomas Vermaelen, a versatile attacking centre-back who, like Albert, happens to be Belgian.

Given that Belgium has one of Europe’s most defensive football cultures (as one Anderlecht fan put it: “Every team plays like it is terrified of losing”), I’m not sure if the likes of Albert and Vermaelen have risen because of or in spite of the kind of football they grew up with.

Besides, Vermaelen never played professionally in Belgium but emerged at Ajax, which has nurtured such goalscoring centre-backs as Krol, Koeman and Frank de Boer.

Certainly his second goal against Wigan, an attack he started and finished, was worthy of Krol.

And in Arsene Wenger he has a coach whose approach resembles the autocratic visionaries of yore.

Football often evolves by harking back to its dim, distant past.

Under the old 2-3-5 system, centre-halves were deep-lying central midfielders. (Indeed, in Argentina, the No5 shirt is usually given to central midfielders.)

But in October 1925, Herbert Chapman’s Arsenal, partly in response to recent changes in the offside law, switched to W-M with Jack Butler told to play as a stopper.

The Butler did it – before the Belgian

Butler was too creative – and defensively vulnerable – to prosper in that role for long and he was replaced by Herbie Roberts, a gifted youngster from Oswestry Town whose genius, Chapman’s No.2 Tom Whittaker said, “came from the fact that he was intelligent and, even more important, did what he was told."

Roberts’ heirs will still be stoppers, but if they are to flourish they will need the central intelligence of Butler, Beckenbauer and Albert.

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A Dickens of a year

2009-12-23T08:00:00Z

Roll up, roll up, it’s that time of the year when columnists everywhere stare at a blank Word document until their forehead bleeds as they try vainly to remember the bon mots, players and trends that, only a few days ago, seemed to perfectly sum up the madness that was 2009 in football.

It’s traditional, at this point, to invoke Charles Dickens (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”) so I won’t.

As 2009 ends I am no further forward with my quest to decide whether a disproportionate number of left-backs really do have ginger hair.

My memories of Jimmy Bloomfield’s great Leicester City side – and Keith Weller’s tights – are slightly dimmer.

And I can’t quite believe that Fabio Capello, England’s favourite stick in the mud, has ruled out a World Cup single. Surely we need a theme this time, more than any other time, etc etc?

What a great theme that was: “We’re on our way, we’re the wrong 22” – er, sorry, that should read “Ron’s 22.”

Putting all that to one side, here are my thoughts on the year that is almost over.

Least surprising statistic of the year

The news that Pippo Inzaghi was given offside 14 times in five UEFA Champions League games only sounds slightly more remarkable when you realise he was flagged every 18 minutes he was on the pitch.

Press statement of the year

This announcement, from the League Managers Association on behalf of Martin Allen, is a masterful example of the press statement that raises far, far more questions than it answers.

“Mr Allen was interviewed by the police about an incident that occurred on 19th September 2009 in Cheltenham. He has now been informed by the police that they are not taking the matter any further and Mr Allen will not make any additional comments on this matter.”

The most overlooked trend

The rise of the former Yugoslavia. Two countries from within the old borders – Serbia and Slovenia – will play in South Africa.

Bosnia-Herzegovina reached the play-offs after scoring more goals than any other other UEFA entrants bar Spain and England.

And forget Barcelona’s academy, the former Yugoslavia is the greatest source of football talent in Europe, having given us Edin Dzeko, Eduardo, Vedad Ibisevic, Niko Kranjcar, Milos Krasic, Luka Modric, Zvjezdan Misimovic (who had the most assists in the Bundesliga in 2008/09), Ivica Olic, Miralem Pjanic, Darijo Srna (Shakhtar’s UEFA Cup-winning captain) and Nemanja Vidic.

Then there are those with roots in Tito’s old stamping ground, like Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Bojan Krkic.

If Sir Alex Ferguson snaps up CSKA Moscow’s Serbian central defender Uros Cosic in January, United will have three Serbs in their squad.

And the conveyor belt shows no sign of stopping.

Coach of the year

In his record-breaking first season it seems churlish not to select Pep Guardiola but hey, let’s be churlish. Besides, if he gets any more pats on the back his skin will be raw.

Meanwhile, Roy Hodgson’s miraculous transformation of Fulham may be the greatest living proof that coaches are not overpaid irrelevancies.

But being horribly unoriginal, and swayed by Gabriele Marcotti’s piece in The Times, I’m going to pick Jupp Heynckes, a German legend who ended Real Madrid’s 32-year wait for the European Cup in 1998 and was rewarded with the sack.

Spurning the cosy comfort of the pundits’ sofa, Heynckes has defied those who saw him as strictly old-school and led Bayer Leverkusen to the top of the Bundesliga.

Not bad for a coach of whom Christoph Daum one said: “The weather map is more interesting than a talk with Heynckes.”

Interview of the year

Uli Hesse – author of Tor!, a seminal, wry history of German football, and contributor to both FourFourTwo and Champions – on Bundesliga Talk.

I especially love his response to a question about Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp:

“I’m aware he could be a complete charlatan who uses his brains, charisma and looks to con people into thinking he’s a good coach when he might be totally useless.

"But I’ve come to suspect that this is the perfect job description for a football coach, anyway.”

Team of the year

Barcelona won everything they entered in 2009 but the relative ease with which Denmark topped a World Cup qualifying group that contained Portugal and Sweden was remarkable – especially when you consider that most pundits said this was the worst national team in 30 years.

The squad’s team spirit was so strong even Nicklas Bendtner couldn’t dent it.

A great libero in the underrated Danish Dynamite team of the 1980s, Denmark manager Morten Olsen hasn’t had tons of luck as a coach. He has been fired by every club who hired him.

The de Boer brothers effectively engineered his removal from Ajax in 1998. But FC Solidarity, as Denmark have become known, could win Olsen a job at one of Europe’s big clubs – if he wants it.

Best celebration

Landon Donovan pointing at his chest and shouting “Me! Me! Me!” after scoring against Brazil in the Confederations Cup final.

Crude, bombastic, arrogant – yes, it was all of those, but it was honest. And not choreographed.

Given that most Premier League footballers only train a few mornings a week, do they really have the time to waste perfecting elaborate homages to Aga Do Do Do Push Pineapples Up A Tree?

Best 0-0 draw

FC Twente v Steaua Bucharest in the UEFA Europa League – scoreless despite the 34 shots on goal.

Least original pub conversation of the year

As overheard in a pub in Teddington: “I mean, you’ve gotta take Crouch haven’t you? And if you take Crouch you got to take Beckham because he’s the only one who can put the ball on his head.

"And I’d take Michael Owen too, just for his finishing. Look at that hat-trick the other week!”

The sooner Capello names his squad the better.

Goal of the year

It has to be Dejan Stankovic’s wonder strike against Genoa.

It was like the Peter Kay “have it” advert remade by a genius.

Player of the year

Not wanting Lionel Messi to order an even bigger trophy cabinet, I've plumped for a man who describes his occupation simply and without hesitation as “goalscorer.”

For many South American coaches, the star of the continent’s World Cup qualifiers wasn’t Messi or Kaka but Chile and Monterrey striker Humberto Suazo.

The 28-year-old scored 10 goals in qualifying, one more than Luis Fabiano, bagged a brace against Brazil and played a vital role as Monterrey won the Mexican title.

If he does well in South Africa, some big European clubs may be prepared to overlook his reputation for getting into rows with fans, players, coaches, neighbours and postmen.

Most irritating phenomenon

The re-emergence of Jack Warner, friend and scourge of England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

Watching him perform at the Leaders In Football conference reminded me of Barbara Stanwyck’s definition of an egotist: “Usually a case of mistaken nonentity.” 

The aspect of football I enjoyed most

The bit in Ajax, Barcelona, Cruyff, the fantastic anthology of interviews with Johan Cruyff, where he says that when you’re 4-0 up and have a chance to score, sometimes it’s nicer – and more pleasing – to hit the post.

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David, Goliath and revolution

2009-12-21T13:30:00Z

Champions magazine editor Paul Simpson looks forward to the Champions League knockout games: Inter Milan v Chelsea, Lyon v Real Madrid, Milan v Manchester United, Olympiakos v Bordeaux, FC Porto v Arsenal, CSKA Moscow v Sevilla, Stuttgart v Barcelona, Bayern Munich v Fiorentina

Let’s start with the bleedin’ obvious: if Barcelona don’t make the last eight of the UEFA Champions League, it will be the biggest shock since North Korea beat Italy 1-0 in 1966.

Whatever Stuttgart say, their new coach Christian Gross – yep the very man who, as Spurs boss, waved the train ticket of his dreams in front of the British media – will surely focus on survival in the Bundesliga.

Bordeaux aren’t quite as certain to progress, but their ruthlessly efficient progress to the last 16 – they won the most points (16), conceded the fewest goals (2) and scored seven goals from set-pieces – suggests that the man still fondly recalled in Manchester as Larry White should start casting his slide rule over the other likely quarter-finalists.

Olympiakos did reach the last eight in 1998/99 but when they last made it this far – in 2007/08 against Chelsea – they played in a style football insiders refer to as “happy to be here.”

The other six ties are not that simple to call.

Being professionally obliged to do so, Alan ‘Smudger’ Smith backs Arsenal, Bayern, Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Sevilla to win.

It’s hard to fault his reasoning but this round usually springs at least one surprise.

Few expected Fenerbahce or Roma to make the last eight at the expense of Sevilla and Real Madrid in 2007/08.

Pundits invariably bet on pedigree because that way they're right seven times out of 10.

Every so often, you look a bit daft when Fiorentina do the business and Liverpool don’t, but a platitude about unpredictability being part of the beautiful game is usually enough to spare your blushes.

So who are the Fiorentinas in this 16? Well, Fiorentina for a start.

Bayern coach Louis van Gaal said he was “not dissatisfied” with the draw.

After that 4-1 hammering of Juventus, he probably thinks anything is possible.

Bayern do look stronger and Van Gaal insists that, with Franck Ribery still to return, the best may yet be to come.

But Marcello Lippi says “Some players in purple hoped to meet Bayern to get revenge for last year.”

(In Group F in 2008/09, Bayern qualified after beating Fiorentina 3-0 at home and drawing in Florence).

I’m never sure whether revenge missions are extra motivation or a fatal distraction.

Although the Viola have won five games in a row in this competition, shipping five goals against Debreceni does suggest that, even with the outstanding Sebastian Frey in goal, Fiorentina must tighten up at the back.

Don’t bet against Porto either.

Arsene Wenger’s remark that this draw gave his team a “50-50” chance was widely interpreted as mind games, but Porto keep the ball well, are fluent in attack and will look to exploit the gaps Arsenal leave if Wenger’s team defend in their usual way – i.e. about 10 yards higher up the pitch than most other teams in the competition.

Shorn of the metronomic goalscoring of Lisandro Lopez, Porto have sometimes lacked the cutting edge to make their clever approach play pay off.

But dynamic Colombian No.9 Falcao has found new confidence since his brilliant back-heeled goal against Atletico.

CSKA Moscow may yet surprise Sevilla.

They are the first Russian team to make it this far since Lokomotiv in 2003/04, have looked rejuvenated under new coach Leonid Slutsky and will kick off their tie on an artificial pitch in Moscow in February.

Sevilla attack beautifully but, like Arsenal, are vulnerable on the counter.

And CSKA have four players: keeper Igor Akinfeev, midfielders Alan Dzagoev and Milos Krasic, and striker Tomas Necid who could turn a game.

And then, of course, there’s Inter.

Their clash with Chelsea is, to quote The Guardian’s Richard Williams, “box office dynamite.”

On paper, Chelsea have a better squad and you only have to picture Didier Drogba against Walter Samuel or Lucio to convince yourself the Nerazzurri have no chance.

For me the key isn’t the coaches, it’s the players – and for Inter, in particular, Wesley Sneijder.

If Inter’s rejuvenated Dutch magician – who amusingly called Real’s president Florentino Perez and sporting director Jorge Valdano “two mafiosos” recently – could outpass the likes of Lampard, Deco and Ballack in midfield, he might lay the basis for a truly unexpected victory.

The Blues' midfield looks good enough against most teams but often lacked creativity and control in their group games and Drogba can hardly wreak the expected havoc if his supply is cut off.

The ties don’t kick off till mid-February and, with the new elongated format, won’t be done and dusted till March.

Before then – especially with the Africa Cup of Nations – this entire blog could have been rendered thoroughly redundant.

But this is roughly how the knockout round looks to me, now, after a few hours of immature reflection.

Barcelona are still the team to beat.

The one factor which could complicate Barça’s progress is being drawn against Real or Sevilla in the last four or eight.

Domestic ties in Europe have a strange dynamic that can throw out the form book: Chelsea may have won the Premier League in 2004/05 and finished 37 points ahead of Liverpool but they still lost to the Reds in the 2005 semis.

Football has away of demolishing certainties.

On Friday, I couldn’t see how Manchester United could lose to Milan; now I’m wondering if they can beat Wigan in their next home game – but I expect Pep Guardiola’s Dream Team II to make the final.

But as Milan discovered in 1995, Ajax in 1996 and Juventus in 1997, playing that game as the reigning champions is a mixed blessing.

They may be multi-millionaires, but most footballers have a revolutionary streak: they find it more inspiring to usurp than maintain the status quo.

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Cruising for a bruising?

2009-12-15T07:00:00Z

History isn’t just written by winners, it’s usually written to flatter winners.

That thought struck me when I read the Daily Telegraph headline: “Premier League heavyweights cruise into Champions League knockout stages.”

Some group stage, some cruise.

True, Arsenal progressed regally but two of their opponents changed coaches mid-campaign and, with a less cautious opposing coach, they would have never have come back from 2-0 down to snatch three points at Standard Liege.

And yep, the Gunners did field an England U17 defender called Tom Cruise in Athens.

I can understand Arsene Wenger’s pride in fielding the youngest ever Champions League team – with an average age of 21 years and 215 days – but only up to a point.

They looked comfortable against Olympiakos. But they did – though it seems churlish to mention this – lose 1-0.

In a game crippled by short-termism, Wenger’s focus on youth is admirable.

But is it blinkering the manager to the kind of deficiencies which made that 3-0 defeat by Chelsea so painful for Gunners fans?

Chelsea did seem to cruise – they had qualified by matchday four – but their performances against APOEL (home and away), Porto (home), and Atletico (away) suggested they have, under Carlo Ancelotti, adopted the Italian philosophy that it doesn’t matter how you reach the knockout stages as long as you do.

The standout performance was the 4-0 demolition of Atletico Madrid at Stamford Bridge.

Manchester United’s campaign was hardly a cruise of the kind advertised by the people who do cruises for people who don’t normally like cruises.

United did top their group with 13 points and clobbered Wolfsburg away with 15 first-teamers missing.

But they came within minutes of losing two group games at Old Trafford, kept only two clean sheets and the end of that 23-game unbeaten home record will have stung Sir Alex Ferguson.

The truth is that the margin between success and failure in most groups was so narrow that no team can be complacent.

As Amy Lawrence, a one time assistant editor of FourFourTwo, points out, the British press’s glee at Barcelona’s struggles is a tad overdone.

Barca took 11 points from a hard Group F, compared to 13 from a much easier group last season.

Barcelona top the list of teams to avoid in the draw this Friday.

But so, I would suggest, do Bordeaux and Inter who, as Amy suggests, are in their current mood wounded, unpredictable and capable of heroic feats or abject surrender.

Rafa’s Nixon doctrine

As an admirer of Rafa Benitez I was disappointed to see him using the threadbare “What have you won?” defence to rebut criticism by Graeme Souness and Jurgen Klinsmann this week.

Attacking the critic, rather than the criticism, was a desperate ruse deployed by Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon’s venal press chief, as the Watergate scandal exploded.

The tactic was characterised by Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor, as a “non-denial denial: they question our ancestry but don’t challenge our facts."

It didn’t work for Nixon then, it didn’t help Gerard Houllier when he was under the cosh at Anfield and it won’t help Benitez now.

The supreme irony is that Benitez’s entire career as a manager is a damning refutation of the “what have you won?” philosophy.

If the boards of Real Valladolid, Osasuna, and Extremadura always appointed their coaches on the basis of “what have you won?” Rafa, whose career as a midfielder peaked with a penalty in a 10-0 win over Cuba in the World Student Games, would never have got the job.

Obviously Klinsmann’s remarks sounded particularly pointed because he is a potential successor.

But the criticisms he made – Liverpool lack creativity, consistency and a world class striker apart from Torres – have been aired by many Liverpool supporters, even those who back Benitez ardently.

And the coach, a brilliant and methodical deconstructor of football games and teams, may privately have come to some similar conclusions.

Festive blunders

As those popular philosophers The Goodies once observed, Christmas comes but one a year and when it does it’s absolutely shocking.

One reason for this is many companies's idea to put a little cheer in our Christmas stockings is to bombard us with DVDs of football’s greatest gaffes, goofs and blunders, usually narrated by a past-his-best footballer whose monotonous delivery and frowning concentration bespeak of a mighty struggle with the autocue or any available football luvvie with the right street cred (which, nine times out of ten, is Ray Winstone).

I presume this annual festive avalanche of air shots, banana skin slips and Keystone Cops keepers exists primarily so we can all have fun at the expense of a detested brother-in-law.

For Christmas 2010, I would encourage the makers to push the envelope.

I’d certainly be intrigued by a compilation of “hilarious c*ck-ups and moments of madness” presented by maverick German moviemaker Werner Herzog (he recently described Wayne Rooney as “half bison, half viper.”)

And the term ‘football blunders’ gives the makers a fairly wide remit.

The term would, for example, include most of Graham Taylor’s team-sheets as England manager, the career of Robert Rosario and Giovanni Trapattoni’s notorious “The coach is not an idiot” speech.

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Matchday 6 knockouts and the Ballon d'Or curse

2009-12-08T11:30:00Z

MATCHDAY 6 FIXTURES Tue Dec 8: Atlético Madrid v Porto ; Besiktas v CSKA Moskva ; Chelsea v APOEL ; Juventus v Bayern Munich ; Maccabi Haifa v Bordeaux ; Olympique Marseille v Real Madrid ; VfL Wolfsburg v Manchester United ; Zürich v Milan Wed Dec 9: Dynamo Kyiv v Barcelona ; Internazionale v Rubin Kazan ; Liverpool v Fiorentina ; Olympiakos Piraeus v Arsenal ; Olympique Lyon v Debreceni VSC ; Sevilla v Rangers ; Standard Liège v AZ ; VfB Stuttgart v Unirea Urziceni

Matchday 6: It’s (almost) a knockout

Eight places in the UEFA Champions League knockout round remain undecided, with seven former winners – Barcelona, Bayern, Inter, Juventus, Marseille, Milan and Real Madrid – still not sure of progressing.

The game of matchday six must surely be Rubin Kazan’s visit to the San Siro in Group F.

Normally, you'd bet your mortgage on an Italian side winning 1-0 on home soil against a team of promising newcomers like Rubin.

But Inter have shipped six goals in five games in Group F and, as they showed again when losing 2-1 at Juventus, lack the ruthless defensive organisation you would expect of a club shaped by Helenio Herrera and managed by the coach who is his closest contemporary heir.

Under some permutations, Inter could draw and still progress, but Jose Mourinho needs a win.

Much may depend on Inter’s Argentine striker Diego Milito who, as uefa.com has pointed out, has been scoring at a rate of 0.767 goals a game in Serie A, a rate only surpassed in the last 80 years by Pedro Patrone (0.841 in the 1930s) and Gunnar Nordahl (0.773 in the 1950s).  

Milito in typical pose

Rubin love to fill the midfield and break, primarily through Milito’s compatriot Alejandro Dominguez – so the Nerazzurri faithful, players, coach and increasingly vexed owner Massimo Moratti may be in for a nerve-shredding 90 minutes.

Mourinho is not the only coach under pressure. Ronald Koeman and Markus Babbel have already been given the order of the boot by AZ and Stuttgart.

Louis van Gaal knows that Bayern’s trip to Turin – where the Bavarians have never won and Juventus haven’t lost at home in this competition in 16 matches – is virtually a referendum on his reign, while his opposite number Ciro Ferrara knows that a place in the last 16 will silence his critics for a while.

The only coach whose team isn’t already in the last 16 who can look forward to the action without any apprehension is Leonid Slutsky.

He’s only been in charge at CSKA Moscow since the end of October and will keep his job unless his side are thrashed 8-0 by Besiktas.

Three points in Istanbul for CSKA means Wolfsburg will need to match that against Manchester United to reach the last 16 on head-to-head results against the Russians.

The law of karma surely favours Slutsky: the former goalkeeper is the only coach in the competition whose playing career was curtailed by an injury suffered while trying to rescue a neighbour’s cat from a tree. 

Underrated and unpronounceable

UEFA Champions League coverage tends to rhapsodise about a few predictable stars (sample quote at random: “Rooney, what a player!”) and ignore others who have impressed possibly at unfashionable clubs or in a game few were watching.  

Brazilian winger Wendel has created half of Bordeaux’s goals in Group A, but you won’t hear much about him because the 27-year-old has said he will end his career with the Girondins. Hinting that you are open to offers – even if you aren’t – is a prerequisite for any footballer wanting to make a name these days.

Wendel: More sticker than twister

Unirea Urziceni – or The Unpronounceables, as they’re known in Stuttgart – could sell most of their squad next summer.

The Romanian champions’ stand-out performers include Argentine wing-back Pablo Brandan, winger/striker Marius Bilasco (long overdue a call-up for Romania), Valeri Bordeanu (once a left-sided midfielder at Steaua who shone as a right-sided defender against Sevilla) and Dacian Varga, 25, an escapee from Dinamo Bucharest’s youth system, who has been as impressive harrying opponents as he has leading Unirea’s fast, skilful counter-attacks.

With a rumoured price tag of £50 million, Ajax’s Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez sounds vastly overrated.

But with a third of the season gone and 17 goals in the bag, Suarez may, as Ernst Bouwes notes, outdo Cruyff, Van Basten et al and surpass cigar shop owner and PSV striker Coen Dillen, whose 43-goal tally in 1956/57 is still an Eredivisie record.

The most astonishing aspect of Dillen’s record is that he went 12 games without a goal that season.

Golden balls and knockout blows

Do you know how many reigning Ballon d’Or winners have won the World Cup? None.

Here, for completists, is the dismal World Cup record for the 13 Ballon d’Or winners before Leo Messi.

1957 Alfredo di Stefano (Spain). Failed to qualify for Sweden 58.
 1961 Omar Sivori (Italy). Came third in Group 2 at Chile 62. 
1965 Eusebio (Portugal). Semi-finalist at England 66. 
1969 Gianni Rivera (Italy). Losing finalist at Mexico 70, who only came on with six minutes to go as coach Ferruccio Valcareggi belatedly threw caution to winds with the Azzurri trailing 4-1.
1973 Johan Cruyff (Holland). Losing finalist to the hosts at West Germany 74.
1977 Allan Simonsen (Denmark). Didn’t qualify for Argentina 78.
1981 Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (West Germany). Substituted in 70th minute of Spain 82 final, which his side lost 3-1 to Italy.
1985 Michel Platini (France). Beaten by West Germany in Mexico 86 semi-finals. 
1989 Marco van Basten (Holland). Beaten by Germany in second round of Italia 90. 
1993 Roberto Baggio (Italy). Skied penalty in shoot-out as Italy lose USA 94 final to Brazil. 
1997 Ronaldo (Brazil). Controversially barely present at the France 98 final as the hosts destroyed the favourites 3-0.
 2001 Michael Owen (England). Gave England lead in Japan/Korea 2002 quarter-final against Brazil but the Selecao, even down to 10 men, still saw off Sven-Göran Eriksson's men.
2005 Ronaldinho (Brazil). Languished out of position as Carlos Alberto Parreira’s zombified team bowed out in the Germany 2006 quarter-final to France after having just one shot on goal in the entire match.

Leo's only golden trophy?

This is exactly the kind of history that great players like Messi rewrite.

But history does suggest it is better to win the World Cup first and round off the year with the Ballon d’Or – like Bobby Charlton (1966), Paolo Rossi (1982), Lothar Matthaus (1990), Zinedine Zidane (1998), Ronaldo (2002) and Fabio Cannavaro (2006).

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The Colonials who upstage Liverpool

2009-11-30T16:15:00Z

Chicago Cubs fans like to say that every club can have a bad century now and then.

But can underachievement, especially if it follows a golden era when the carpenters were continuously being called in to expand the trophy cabinet, gnaw away at a club and its fans?

The thought prompted a very specific question: has any club who have won the most league titles in their country gone as long as Liverpool have without winning it?

In case you need to refresh your memory, the Reds have not won it since 1989/90 under Kenny Dalglish.

This query has already been posted on FourFourTwo’s Twitter feed, which inspired an entry in Some People Are On The Pitch's Friday List Of Little Or No Consequence.

Among what we might snobbishly refer to as the major football nations, St Etienne have, as tweeter @dy158 correctly noted, surpassed Liverpool in the feast and famine stakes.

Les Verts have won 10 Ligue 1 titles (one more than the next most successful team Marseille) but celebrated their last triumph in 1981.

And since then fans haven’t had much to amuse themselves, apart from a fake passport scandal and a Brazilian striker who used to celebrate scoring by pretending to be a panther, the club’s official emblem.

1981: St Etienne, star player et al, take on Ipswich

The panther, in case you don’t know, was adopted in 1968 in honour of Salif Keita, the Malian striker (and uncle of Seydou).

His 135 goals in 167 games for St Etienne more than repaid the taxi fare racked up when, as a naive 19-year-old just off the plane from Mali, he got into a cab in Paris and told the driver to take him to St Etienne.

It's 310 miles away.

Les Verts’ 28-year-barren spell has no serious rival in Europe.

In most cases, a certain metronomic regularity – exemplified by Juventus, who have never gone more than eight years without winning a scudetto – is the norm.

Even Gornik Zabrze, who won the last of their 14 Polish titles in 1988, can’t match St Etienne.

And the Miners’ title drought might have been shorter still. In 1993/94, they only had to beat Legia Warsaw in the final match to win their 15th title.

Alas, they could only draw 1-1, not helped by the fact that the referee sent off three of their players.

In a strange coincidence, just a season after Gornik’s 14th and last title, another Silesian mining club Ruch Chorzow won their 14th and last Polish championship.

But St Etienne have been outdone by Santos FC – not Pele’s old outfit but the team who, in the glorious 1970s, were the pride of Kingston, Jamaica.

This Santos, who do play in Brazilian yellow and blue, won the first of their five Jamaican titles in 1972/73 and the last in 1979/1980.

Santos’s record is slightly marred by the fact that even the stattos at RSSSF don’t know who they beat to clinch their last title.

These normally exact folk sum up the climax of the 1979/80 season with the fragmentary note: “Final. Santos bt [?]” The square brackets bestow a pleasing hint of scholarship on this terminally vague summary.

Santos’s impressive spell of underachievement is almost matched by Horseed, who won eight out of nine Somali titles between 1972 and 1980 but have won no more since.

Their dismal record isn’t quite as dire as Santos’s because the Somali league – and Horseed – were put out of action for a while by civil war. Which, as excuses go, is better than an injury-prone winger or dodgy refereeing.

There must be something in the Caribbean waters because Martinique’s record title winners, the grandly named Club Colonial de Fort-de-France, became champions for the eighteenth and last time in 1972.

Forte-de-France, the capital of the French department of Martinique, was once chiefly famous for yellow fever.

But it may want to rebrand itself as the home of the sleeping giants: five of the capital’s clubs have won the title but none have been crowned champions since Golden Star’s 16th and last triumph in 1986.

Imagine the plight of a forty-something Club Colonial fan, haunted by past glory so distant it probably seems like a dream, stoically trying not to be embittered by 37 years of underachievement and facing a daily barrage of trophy-cabinet/Japanese-prisoner-of-war jokes in the office.

I’m sure Manchester City fans of a certain age can empathise.

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Life’s a pitch and then you dye

2009-11-28T23:30:00Z

As TS Eliot very nearly said, I will show you fear in Graeme Souness’s moustache.

In the great man’s heyday, that distinctive hair on his upper lip was fiendishly useful for intimidating opponents but in the Sky Sports studio this week, the great Scot’s silvery moustache was merely a pleasing novelty.

In width, scale and texture Souness’s moustache would, in a previous age, have been worn by a caddish, retired wing commander known to his chums at the RAF Club as Biffer or, in the movies, by the kind of grinning, evil Mexican bandit whose persecution of some hapless, innocent villagers inevitably brings forth the wrath of the Magnificent Seven, the Three Amigos or the Magnificent Seven Who Rode Again.

(Mind you, George Hamilton was wearing something similar in the jungle on ITV, so maybe these two legends are starting a trend).

It wasn’t Eli Wallach who seemed to inspire Souness after Liverpool’s exit but Dad's Army’s Private Fraser as he shook his head and said: “I fear for Liverpool.”

And he was right: he feared at length and very cogently.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was easier to focus on the moustache rather than the message I suspect Liverpool fans would have felt thoroughly deflated.

Souey, as was

Matters didn’t improve when the camera panned to David Platt who, in a desire to look more down with the kids, has taken to using industrial quantities of black hair dye.

And we’re talking jet-black dye, of the kind that looked good on Elvis when he was wearing leather in his 1968 comeback TV special, and was tolerable on Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu (but only because anyone who sniggered got sent to a labour camp), but looks utterly out of the place on the head of a slightly portly middle-aged former England midfielder with a receding hairline.

Platty aspires to be august and if he took a few style tips from Richard Gere and had the nerve to go charismatically grey he might well achieve that ambition.

This might sound pernickety but when assessing a football pundit I always start with the hair, possibly because my own head is rapidly becoming as bald as the Australian outback.

Besides, if a man can’t own up to his natural hair colour, how can I trust him, as a pundit, to tell the truth about the beautiful game?

Say what you like about Andy Gray – and people do – but he has the sense to trust that his silver-white locks and Greco-Roman bust of hairdo a lend him the kind of gravitas that no dye could improve upon.

I do find Sky Sports' UEFA Champions League punditry fascinating, possibly because of the absence of Robbie Earle, whose solution to Liverpool’s current troubles was for the players to walk up to the plate, stand up and be counted and, with their backs to the wall, run something up the flagpole to see if anyone saluted.

I exaggerate, of course, but only by 75 percent.

And I shall watch Souness with interest.

In two weeks' time, on matchday six, I fully expect him to have developed a full grown, twirlable Terry Thomas moustache.

Face-fuzz fans! Have you tried our guess-the-moustache gallery quiz? If not, why not?

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Reinventing Juventus

2009-11-24T16:00:00Z

Juventus’s satisfaction at playing their 200th European Cup game against Bordeaux this week will be tempered by the suspicion that Italy’s best supported club* really ought to have won this competition more often than Inter, Nottingham Forest and Porto.

One reason the Turin club is called Juventus (“youth” in Latin) is because the founders wanted to shun any suggestion of municipal parochialism and appeal to young people across Italy and the world.

But the surest way to achieve that ambition is to create a golden team that conquers Europe or revolutionises the game, in the manner of Real in the 1950s or Ajax in the 1970s.

Even though the club’s history has been illuminated by such legends as John Charles, Omar Sivori, Pietro Anastasi, Dino Zoff, Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio, Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro Del Piero, Juve have been neither all-conquering nor great innovators and have much work to do if they are to challenge Real Madrid or Manchester United as one of football’s dominant global brands.

The controversies surrounding Juventus’s domestic supremacy – they have won the scudetto and the Coppa Italia more than any other club – are so numerous and entertaining that Tobias Jones fills much of a chapter with them in his brilliant book The Dark Heart Of Italy.

In Florence, fans refer to Juve as “gobi” (hunchbacks, which are considered lucky in Italy).

It is not uncommon, calcio historian John Foot says, to see stickers proclaiming Fiorentine houses a “hunchback free zone.”

To rival fans, Juve’s pre-eminence in calcio is the fruit of a conspiracy almost as all-embracing as the P2/CIA/Masonic/Vatican consortium with complicates the life of enigmatic Venetian detective Aurelio Zen in Michael Dibdin’s thrillers.

And at the centre of all these plots, a veritable grassy knoll of football conspiracy theories, stood Juve’s former general manager Luciano Moggi, the Darth Vader of calcio.

The most convincing evidence Juve could offer in its defence was to show that its quality counted in Europe. But two European Cups, three UEFA Cups and a Cup-Winners’ Cup have not dispelled the doubts.

Juve’s match record in their first 199 European Cup games is good – W100, D49, L50 F323 A194 – but in this competition, winning really counts.

And even the two trophy wins have their associated question marks. Juve’s first triumph, in 1985, was (through no fault of their own) mired in tragedy.

The second, on penalties in 1996, should have ushered in a golden age for Marcello Lippi’s flexible, easy on the eye Juventus but led, instead, to successive defeats in the 1997 and 1998 finals.

Sometimes catastrophes, if they are big, sudden and comprehensive enough, can sow the seeds of victory. And the devastation wrought by calciopoli created space for a new club.

New president Jean-Claude Blanc (who gives a pretty frank interview about his challenge in the latest issue of Champions) calls this entity “Newventus.”

His Newventus is, he admits, very much a work in progress.

But a new coach (Ciro Ferrara, chosen on the Guardiola precedent), a new stadium (the Juventus Arena, due to open in 2011) and a new playmaking genius (Brazilian master Diego) are part of that vision.

Will this quiet revolution work? Some bad habits are easier to shed than others.

So far in Group A, Juventus have lived up to the Italian adage of doing the minimum required to win.

They have shipped only one goal, but scored just three and their football has been efficient rather than spectacular – especially in their 1-0 win away to Maccabi Haifa – and singularly bereft of the style that could romance the world.

The idea that Diego could single-handedly reinvent Juve’s image, making a team synonymous with physical power as famous for its flair and technique, always seemed a stretch.

But if midfielders Claudio Marchisio, Felipe Melo and Sebastian Giovinco fulfil their potential, the Juventus Arena becomes an atmospheric stadium worthy of champions, and Blanc invests in such stars as Rubin ace Alejandro Dominguez next summer, anything is possible.

The political challenge for Blanc and Ferrara is how they negotiate the Del Piero question.

One of Paolo Maldini’s many services to Milan was that he was largely happy, in the twilight of his career, to play the ambassador, personify the club to the world, and not fret too obviously about how many games he played.

Del Piero’s old teammate Ferrara must ensure he doesn’t alienate the club’s greatest global icon, who still looks in good nick for 35, while ensuring that Juventus’s new talent can form the core of a team that might deliver a third European crown.

When Juventus visit Bordeaux, that bright future might seem more like a mirage than a vision.

But a place in the last 16 might be the single step that kicks off Newventus’s thousand-mile journey back to the summit of European football.

* A 2009 Sport + Markt survey found that Juventus have 17.5 million fans across Europe, compared to 21.0 million for Milan and 44.2 million for Barcelona. But the club claims 14.0 million supporters in Italy which, most estimates suggest, is more than Milan. Yet more evidence of domestic domination not turned into continental competition...

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Sex, drugs & mountain goats

2009-11-20T16:00:00Z

Watch out Brazil, Slovenia are coming!

That, in a nutshell, was the headline in Slovenia’s sports daily Ekipa after their triumph over Russia.

Nobody will fancy meeting this small Balkan nation in South Africa but the World Cup isn’t quite in the bag for the Slovenes yet.

The first target for Matjaz Kek will be to improve on Slovenia’s 2002 showing: P3 W0 D0 L3 F2 A7 and to avoid the sorry fate of other World Cup minnows through the ages.

Olympian feats in Chile Colombia 1962

The Chilean port Arica used to be famous as one of the driest cities on earth.

But in 1962, Colombian midfielder Marcos Coll gave the city another claim to fame when he scored the only goal straight from a corner in World Cup history.

The Colombians had qualified from a bijoux group consisting of them and Peru. After losing 2-1 to Uruguay, they sensationally drew 4-4 with the USSR.

The Soviets were 3-0 up after 11 minutes and leading 4-1 early in the second half when Coll scored from a corner – against the legendary keeper Lev Yashin – inspiring a remarkable revival as winger Marino Klinger tortured the USSR.

Los Cafeteros were then thrashed 5-0 by Yugoslavia, but Coll had made his mark in a game that L’Equipe said, a tad prematurely, marked “the end of the greatest modern goalkeeper, Lev Yashin.”

Dope, beatings and a trip to the zoo Haiti 1974

The Caribbean nation, under the thumb of dictator Jean-Claude Duvallier (aka Baby Doc), swept through the CONCACAF qualifiers like a hurricane.

Mind you, the entire campaign was played on their turf and El Salvador did have four goals disallowed in a vital game against Trinidad by a referee who was soon suspended.

Not so much the hand of God then, as the whistle of Satan.

In Germany, Haiti had a cracking start, going 1-0 up against Italy through, ironically, a classic counter attack.

Haiti’s powerful striker Emmanuel Sanon was the first player to beat Dino Zoff in 1,142 minutes of international football. But the Azzurri rallied and won 3-1.

Still on a high, the Haitians strolled around Munich zoo the next morning. But their centre-half Ernst Jean Joseph failed a dope test – he claimed the pills were for asthma.

Team morale literally took a beating after the players watched Joseph get dragged out into the car park and beaten by Haitian officials and they sunk to bottom of Group 4, losing 7-0 to Poland and 4-1 to Argentina.

Sanon, who died last year of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56, is still the only Haitian to score in a World Cup finals.

It wasn’t All-White on the night New Zealand 1982

The All Whites, one World Cup preview claimed, would show the endurance of mountain goats.

Maybe the Kiwis qualifying campaign – in which they had travelled 55,000 miles, played 15 games and scored 44 goals – wore them out because in Spain they were about as indomitable as I’m A Celebrity escapee Camilla Dallerup, losing 5-2 to Scotland, 3-0 to the USSR and 4-0 to Brazil.

The highlight of the All-Whites’ maladroit campaign was briefly coming back from 3-0 down to 3-2 against the Tartan Army.

Various members of the squad are now gainfully employed as printers, swimming pool designers and physios.

If the 2010 All Whites get a point or concede less than 12 goals, they will have made progress.

No sex please we’re in the World Cup Nigeria 1994

“It isn’t the sex that tires young players, it’s the staying up all night looking for it.”

That was how Dutch coach Clemens Westerhof described one of his challenges as he steered Nigeria to their first World Cup finals.

Westerhof was tough, happy to drop Finidi George and Emmanuel Amuneke to teach them a lesson and saw off an attempted coup by striker Rashid Yekini (who, ironically, scored his country’s first ever goal in a World Cup finals, in a 3-0 win over Bulgaria).

Nigeria played some lovely attacking football, reaching the last 16 with a 2-0 win over Greece.

As the game wore on, Westerhof got a message to Daniel Amokachi urging him to get the ball and run through the entire Greek defence.

Amo did just that to make it 2-0.

Facing Italy in the knockout round, Samson Emeke Omeruah, president of Nigeria’s football federation, decided to ramp up the hysteria, telling the Azzurri: “We’re the champions of Africa, who are you?”

Despite such crude kidology, the Nigerians came to within two minutes of the last eight.

The great Paolo Maldini defended like a donkey – he accidentally set up Amuneke’s first goal and, as the last man, should gave been sent off for hauling back Yekini.

But Roberto Baggio broke the Super Eagles’ hearts with an equaliser and a penalty that snuck in off the post.

Nigeria have never come as close to the last eight since.

Bora can’t break Peking’s duck China 2002

Bora Milutinovic, the Alan Whicker of football coaches, once cryptically observed that: “In my country, fish die in the mouth.”

His tactical instructions to his Chinese players must have been as mysterious because his willing, but limited, team lost all three games without scoring.

After two near misses in qualifying (fans had rioted in 1986 after the team blew a place in Mexico by losing 2-1 to Hong Kong), expectations were ludicrously high.

Sadly, the 10,000 fervent fans probably performed better than the team.

“Milu mania” rapidly subsided as the Chinese lost 2-0 to Costa Rica, 4-0 to Brazil and 3-0 to Turkey.

Striker Yang Chen (who played 20 games for cult German club St Pauli) came the closest to breaking China’s duck with a thunderous right foot shot that had the Turkish post wobbling.

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The ultimate YouTube footballer?

2009-11-16T12:00:00Z

One of the minor tragedies in the life of Italian midfielder and water polo legend Luigi Burlando is that YouTube hadn’t been invented when he was in his heyday.

If this online archive of the great, good and compellingly weird had existed in the 1920s, Burlando would be a household name because he is probably the only player to score with a header for Italy – from 45 yards.

Burlando played 17 games for the Azzurri and scored just once – that remarkable headed strike in Italy’s 4-2 win over Belgium in May 1922.

Reproduced today, that feat would surely make him the ultimate YouTube footballer.

Many footballers are now described as “a YouTube player” but what does it mean?

Gary Parkinson, who edits the FourFourTwo.com network, defined this phenomenon perfectly in an email the other day:

“Players who have enough eye-catching moments to fill a YouTube clip show but are, in fact, pants. In Bolton, such a player is known as a ‘Daniel Braaten’.”

The quest to identify the ultimate YouTube footballer reached FourFourTwo on Twitter where Oftd pointed out that this phenomenon has pedigree:

“This is the contemporary equivalent of the Championship Manager player – Cheron Samba’s going to be the best striker in the world.”

When he was 13, Samba had a fair shot at becoming the world’s best striker. The Gambian prodigy had just scored 132 goals in 32 games.

But his career nosedived after Millwall spurned a £1.5 million bid from Liverpool and his subsequent meandering progress around Europe – ending up on trial at Portsmouth after spells at Cadiz, Malaga, Plymouth Argyle, Wrexham, FC Haka (in Finland) and Millwall reserves – has, as far as the stats can be confirmed, yielded just one first team goal.

The Guardian analysed his spectacular fall from grace in 2005 and, though he’s changed clubs since, their piece still conveys the essence of his story.

Ali Dia, the man who wasn’t a cousin of George Weah, may be, as twitterer bicyclekicks suggested in his tweet, the patron saint of YouTube footballers.

His “Bambi on ice” cameo for Southampton against Leeds is faithfully preserved here where, after 45 seconds, the clip cuts to the footage that proves he was “Dia by name, dire by nature.”

But Dia’s pantomime antics give the game away too easily.

There’s no glorious promise to beguile us, as there is with Kerlon (thanks to jakepjohnson for the suggestion) whose seal dribbling antics have earned the 20-year-old Brazilian a loan to Ajax.

I did consider Oleg Salenko, still the only player to score five goals in one World Cup game, as a candidate for this dubious honour.

But after watching his goals against Cameroon at USA 94, I was more struck by the naivety of the defending than by the Russian’s ruthless finishing.

Salenko never scored in a full international either before or after the 1994 World Cup.

Osvaldo, the Argentine-born striker who has broken into the Italian U21 team and now plays up front for Bologna, but apart from a prolific 2006/07 for Lecce (banging in 18 goals in 31 games) isn’t pants.

But he is best known for this remarkable over-head kick in Fiorentina’s 1-0 win over Torino in May 2008.

Glorious isn’t it? This goal wasn’t just beautiful it was important, securing the Viola’s UEFA Champions League place in 2008/09.

But Osvaldo only scored four more for Fiorentina and joined Bologna this summer.

Birmingham City supporter sameboat suggests Carlos Costly, a name which, in my ignorance, I took to be a satirical play on Alan Sugar’s foreign mercenary Carlos Kickaball.

Having googled this fabulously named Honduran striker, I found a YouTube compilation which only lasts three minutes and 15 seconds.

It includes a minute of him running around the pitch looking chuffed, shows one goal – and the skilful build up by a team-mate – three times and features tantalising snippets of such stupendous feats as Costly chipping the ball in a team-mate’s general direction.

The Honduran may have been pants at St Andrews but he bagged six as his country qualified for their first World Cup since 1982 so next summer the world can judge for themselves.

Do suggest your own YouTube stars but, for me, the ultimate YouTube footballer whose most eye-catching moments are preserved online is Obafemi Martins.

If a football match was the duration of the typical YouTube clip, the Nigerian striker would be as great as Pele.

His strikes against Reggina and Ireland are mesmerising glimpses of a talent that waxes and wanes as if he was a poet in intermittent touch with his muse.

Still, even coaches, who do this for a living, have failed to solve the mystery of talent.

Until they do, we can all watch every game, hovering between expectation and disappointment, sustained by the hope that this is going to be the one when we see something – maybe even a headed goal from 50 yards? – we will remember for the rest of our lives.

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The greatest half-times ever

2009-11-11T15:00:00Z

The half-time whistle blows, your team is 2-0 down. As the coach, it’s your job to inspire them. What do you do?

Easy, says Andy Roxburgh, former Scotland manager turned UEFA’s technical director. “Look for something, anything, positive.”

And he does mean anything.

As Liverpool left the pitch 3-0 down at half-time in Istanbul in the 2005 UEFA Champions League final, coach Rafa Benitez noticed the fans were still singing.

That was the positive he needed.

Apart from a legendary tactical talk in which, at one point, had 12 Liverpool players on the pitch, Benitez’s core message was: “The fans haven’t given up. Give them a goal and let’s see what happens.”

Benitez was canny enough not to focus on victory. At that point, against that opposition, such talk would have sounded absurd to his dazed players.

Instead, he gave his players a realistic goal that, if achieved, could be a step towards victory.

As inspirational as Rafa was, some players, notably Steven Gerrard, have since admitted they were too miserable to really focus on what he was saying.

Roxburgh faced a similar predicament in September 1991, when Scotland needed a point against Switzerland in Berne to qualify for Euro 92.

At half-time, the Scots were 2-0 down and all seemed lost. But, as Mario Kempes once noted, “Two-nil is the most dangerous score in football.”

As the Swiss players left the pitch, Roxburgh realised they were celebrating. That became his positive.

In the dressing room he told his players: “They’ve gone, mentally.” One goal, he insisted, was all Scotland needed.

One goal – by Gordon Durie two minutes into the second half – was all it took for the Swiss to succumb to Shrinking Lead Syndrome.

After 90 minutes, Scotland had their point and place at Euro 92.

Sometimes, the losing coach has to change the team’s perspective on the game.

In 1999, with Bayern 1-0 up in Camp Nou, Sir Alex Ferguson invited his players to imagine how it would feel to stand right next to the European Cup and not be able to touch it.

“Don’t you dare come back in here without having given your all,” he admonished them. The rebuke worked. Just.

Every manager uses half-time in their own way.

Some throw crockery to grab attention. Some wait till the crockery is in use before addressing the team. Others talk to players individually.

Brian Clough had a vast anthology of half-time tactics.

Roxburgh recalls one incident when, after a dire first half, Cloughie came into the dressing room and sat down. The players waited for the usual bollocking. And were kept waiting.

Clough sat there, silently, for the whole of the interval. His team found this even more unsettling than his rants and played much better in the second half.

You couldn’t use that tactic too many times, but it was effective – and is the exact opposite of how Hollywood imagines such a scenario, like Al Pacino’s half-time speech as the coach in Oliver Stone’s gridiron epic Any Given Sunday.

Pacino's speech, on what it means to be a team, is so inspiring that Diego Simeone liked to use it when he was coaching.

The speech must have yielded diminishing returns: he quit River Plate a year ago after 11 games without a win.

The greatest half-time speech must, judged purely on results, be Alan Mullery’s as QPR boss on 22 September 1984.

Rangers were 4-0 down at home to Newcastle United. Mullery wasn’t especially eloquent, just livid. But that was enough: QPR pulled it back to 5-5.

This was probably the effect Phil Brown was hoping for when he kept his players on the pitch at Manchester City last season.

Instead, his public rollicking suggested to many that he had lost the plot.

Real life often throws a curve ball that no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare imagine.

In September 2004, with Peterborough losing 1-0 at Bristol City, the volatile monobrow that is Bobby Gould quit as coach.

After remaining silent during some heated exchanges in the dressing room, Gould nudged manager Barry Fry as the players left for the second half and said: “That’s me, I’m packing up, I can’t be associated with that side.”

The Posh still lost 1-0.

At least Gould got to make the decision.

In 1999, goalkeeper turned coach Toni Schumacher was giving his half-time team talk to the Fortuna Cologne players when club president Jean Loering popped his head around the door and fired the astonished coach, ordering him to leave the stadium immediately.

Asked to explain the bizarre timing of this decision, Loering said: “He is arrogant and selfish. He always thinks he's the only one who knows anything about football.

"But with regard to his tactics, he did not know whether he was a man or a woman.

"One minute we were all defence, the next we were all attack. It was not just the fans who were confused, but the players.

"I idolised Schumacher as a player but I am not going to sit on my hands while he takes my club to the grave.”

Sometimes, a coach will turn to comedy rather than melodrama.

Take Scottish wing-half Tom McAnearney, who managed Aldershot for most of the 1970s.

When they came in after conceding a goal just before half-time, the players braced themselves for a lecture.

Instead, McAnearney read his paper while the players got their cups of tea.

Eventually, he broke the silence asking: “What time was the goal scored?”

“The 44th minute,” came the reply.

“Brilliant,” McAnearney said, “that means I’ve won the golden goal.”

You could say McAnearney was following Roxburgh’s advice. He’d found something positive.

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Reds, Real, Rubin & rubbish

2009-11-03T03:02:00Z

MATCHDAY FOUR FIXTURES Tuesday Nov 3: APOEL v Porto , Atlético Madrid v Chelsea , Bayern München v Bordeaux , Besiktas v VfL Wolfsburg , Maccabi Haifa v Juventus , Manchester United v CSKA Moskva , AC Milan v Real Madrid , Olympique Marseille v Zürich Wednesday Nov 4: Arsenal v AZ , Dynamo Kyiv v Inter Milan ,Fiorentina v Debreceni VSC , Olympique Lyon v Liverpool , Rubin Kazan v Barcelona , Sevilla v VfB Stuttgart , Standard Liège v Olympiakos Piraeus , Unirea Urziceni v Rangers

This week’s UEFA Champions League action – as seen by the papers, some remote parts of the interweb, and Duran Duran...

Reds not dead

As Liverpool fans fly to Lyon for what the media is dubbing a “must win” game – technically, as we’ll see later, it’s a “must draw” – the only crumbs of comfort offered them by the media are the news that Pepe Reina is to sign a new contract and a thoughtful piece by Matt Dickinson in The Times pointing out the idiocy of replacing Rafa Benitez at this point.

I have heard no clamour, not even a whisper, for the return of King Kenny among Liverpool fans as Dickinson suggests.

But he makes a persuasive case against such a sentimental move.

Even Matt cannot resist damning Rafa with faint praise, acknowledging his “maddening bloody-mindedness” and “duff deals”.

Yes, Rafa has made some “duff deals” but he has also signed Reina, Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres, Glen Johnson and Javier Mascherano.

As for his

The question that should haunt Capello

2009-10-29T11:00:00Z

...and it isn't whether to pick Michael Owen.

Football is a simple game, Terry Venables likes to joke, it’s the players who make it complicated.

And one way they seriously complicate football is by forcing each coach to decide how much freedom to give them.

Rinus Michels and Otto Rehhagel represent the polar extremes of this dilemma.

Such a strict disciplinarian off the pitch he was dubbed The General, Michels gave the stars of Ajax and Holland in the 1970s the freedom to make decisions during a game as long as they remembered their first duty was to the team, not themselves.

In contrast, Rehhagel drilled his Greek players like a regimental sergeant major knocking rookies into shape.

His players were told how to play, when to run and which space to occupy in many different scenarios.

By character, experience and tradition, Fabio Capello is more Rehhagel than Michels.

The Italian’s “Let’s hear them eyeballs rolling in their sockets!” approach instilled a useful discipline, earned cheap tabloid applause and had ITV commentator Peter Drury drooling into what must, by now, be a very soggy microphone.

Capello’s subsequent sessions with the squad highlighting every error – even one as minor as a central defender jogging back at three-quarter speed – have undoubtedly been instructive and contributed to England’s efficient qualification from a relatively easy group.

But Capello’s feat should not blind us to the fact that players, not coaches, usually write the World Cup script.

The trophy is not often won by robotic efficiency. And the true greats who become synonymous in our memory with a particular World Cup aren’t just talented.

They have the audacity and ingenuity to depart from their brief if things aren’t going well.

England’s only World Cup victory, in 1966, is in part a contrasting tale of two geniuses and the way their coaches handled them.

Recognising that Bobby Charlton was, as Alan Ball put it, “our Pele”, Sir Alf Ramsey gave him a roving brief.

He was such a threat – scoring three goals, including a brace in the semi-final – that West Germany manager Helmut Schoen ordered his best player, Franz Beckenbauer, to mark the comb-over king in the final.

If the Kaiser, who was only 20, had ignored Schoen, football history might have been very different.

In 1974, Schoen gave Beckenbauer the freedom, as libero, to decide when to hit a pinpoint pass or rampage down the middle.

British industry – and football is no exception to this rule – has been slow to accept the growing body of evidence, largely generated in an America that likes to call itself a meritocracy, that the best way for a business to solve a problem is make it the employees’ problem.

If you think about your own experience, the American approach makes sense: imagine how satisfying it would be if the next time you rang customer service, the person who answered had the authority and the wit to solve your query on the first call.

On the pitch in a World Cup, the speed with which problems are resolved can be the difference between triumph and despair.

The question that will haunt Capello as national hysteria mounts ahead of 2010 is: will he give his players the freedom to use their ingenuity on the pitch?

As David Pleat noted in The Guardian, the troubling aspect of England’s final World Cup qualifier was the way the team – laid out in a two-wingered 4-4-2 in the absence of Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard – were “unable to command the ball” against Belarus’s tight, fluent, one-touch passing in a five-man midfield.

It was hard not to watch England doggedly persevering with Plan A with ever-diminishing conviction – and returns – because they didn’t know what else to do and wonder what such hapless obedience might cost England against a side like Spain.

Luckily David Beckham came on. Steve Bruce’s man of the match award irritated Don Fabio.

But I could understand Brucey’s reasoning: Beckham was the only England player who imposed his vision on the game.

Whether so ordered by Capello, or believing that with 115 caps, he should just have a go, he struck long, audacious passes that disrupted Belarus, changing the pattern of play and the momentum of the game.

Granted, Beckham has the touch to make most of these passes productive but why couldn’t Frank Lampard have passed more creatively?

Lampard is a vital source of energy, goals and craft but for his country he is typically a bellwether player, impressing if England are on song and looking frankly average if England aren’t.

And Beckham’s 35 minutes had more impact than Lampard’s 90.

Beckham is one of a handful of players in the England camp with the ingenuity to be given their heads.

The re-emergence of Joe Cole, one of the few England players with Charlton’s versatility, gives Capello another.

Patrick Barclay nominates Rooney as the “creative and dynamic force capable of turning a team into world champions.”

But two things must happen if Rooney is to become Charlton’s World Cup-winning heir: he will have to start making his own decisions on the pitch, and Capello will have to let him do that.

In the last two quarter-finals – against Brazil in 2002 and Portugal in 2006 – England were dumb and dutiful as they chased a lost cause.

With expectations rising almost on a daily basis, the nation will not easily forgive Capello – or the FA – if, next summer, England are knocked out in the last eight after a slightly more efficient version of dumb and dutiful.

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Rangers causing headaches - for the fans

2009-10-23T13:30:00Z

Fifteen years ago, when I was editing FourFourTwo magazine, one of my colleagues’ husbands would ‘quite literally’ (as David Pleat would say) beat his head against the wall every time Rangers embarrassed themselves in Europe.

Since then with every AEK Athens or Kaunas, I have winced as I envisaged the successive collisions between stone and bone.

But I shudder to think how many dents this particular Rangers fan has in his head after Tuesday’s debacle.

It was nice of the club to give the away tickets Unrea Urziceni didn’t use to British troops. But these soldiers must have shuddered too, surveying what, in military terms, looked like unconditional surrender by Rangers.

The Sun, as so often, got it the wrong way around with the headline Rangers 1 Minnows 4.

As many of the appalled, grief-stricken Rangers fans who couldn’t bear to watch all 90 minutes have been testifying online, there was only team that looked like minnows at Ibrox on matchday three. And it wasn’t Unirea.

Rangers' boss Walter Smith doesn’t look like a Joan Armatrading fan. Maybe Ally McCoist is.

But someone at the club, possibly inspired by her famous boast that she is so lucky she can walk under ladders, has stored up enough bad luck not to fret about breaking mirrors.

This UEFA Champions League campaign could have turned on two penalties: one not given against Sevilla, the other not taken against Unirea.

And three of Unirea’s goals were scored – or deflected into the net – by Rangers players. With a Unirea own goal giving Rangers the lead after less than two minutes, this fixture earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first Champions League game to feature four own goals.

But there’s more to Rangers’ plight than pure bad luck. They were outclassed in the second half by a compact, organised team whose play alternated between moments of rare technical proficiency and an amateurish propensity to pass the ball into touch or to an opponent.

I had rashly tipped Jerome Rothen to be instrumental in this campaign. The French winger was – just not in the way I imagined.

He was at fault for two of the goals – not tracking back to let Pablo Brandan (the best player on the pitch) cross for Unirea’s equaliser, and conceding the free-kick from which Brandan applied the coup de grace to make it 4-1.

Rothen’s errors were more conspicuous than his team-mates’ but on the evidence of the last 45 minutes, Rangers have every attribute you would expect from a big club – except a talented squad.

To his credit, Smith didn’t dissemble in his post-match interview. This was, he admitted, one of Rangers’ worst nights in Europe. The question is: where does he and the club go from here?

Their destroyers may offer a glimpse of the solution – and the problem.

Unirea, whose average league gate last season was 4,335 (compared to Rangers’ 49,143), have assembled a squad that can compete on the European stage without ever spending more than £350,000 on a player.

Although the Romanian national team is in the doldrums, the country continues to generate a phenomenal amount of raw talent. While Cluj won the Romanian title in 2008 with a host of foreigners, all but six of Unirea’s squad are home-grown.

Which brings me to my point. (You knew I’d get there eventually). Would Smith, drawing primarily on talent within the Scottish game, be able to assemble as gifted a squad as Petrescu has?

The opprobrium, as always after such a disaster, is heaped upon the players, coaches and club.

But this humbling of the Scottish champions raises questions about the future – and quality – of Scottish football which are much too big to be answered with a mere change of coach, tactics, player or owner.

In the meantime, I’ll email my old friend and tactfully suggest that, before Rangers’ next game, she buy her husband a crash helmet.

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Matchday three: Missions implausible

2009-10-20T10:00:00Z

Pure, old-fashioned loneliness.

That was the reason Maccabi Haifa’s Georgian striker Vladimir Dvalishvili gave for his recent goal drought.

As he eloquently explained to coach Elisha Levy: “It’s not easy for me personally. I have nothing – I come to practice and then I go home.”

While it’s tempting to just sigh, “ah diddums,” Dvalishvili is only 23. He has one good friend in Israel – Zurab Menteshashvili at Hapoel Tel Aviv – who he doesn’t see very often.

And the only other person in Israel he knows who talks his language is Georgi Derasilia, Haifa’s assistant coach.

The striker tried to lift his depression by vowing to score in Bordeaux on matchday two.

That didn’t work. But the bad news for Juventus is that he grabbed a brace at the weekend, so he may have put his personal problems behind him.

Maccabi Haifa are one of four teams who enter matchday three of the 2009/10 UEFA Champions League looking to end their pointless existence.

The others are Besiktas, Debreceni and Marseille.

This mission looks most plausible for Didier Deschamps’ team away to Zurich.

Marseille’s veteran striker Fernando Morientes sums up the club’s position succinctly: “The problem is that we have no points; two matches and no points so we have to play to win.”

Although Zurich’s shock win over Milan kept Group C alive, Marseille still have it all to do.

In Group B, the odds seem similarly stacked against Besiktas, away to Wolfsburg, who have never beaten a Bundesliga side in this competition and have lost their last four away fixtures in the group stage.

In Group E, Debreceni are hoping, as their coach Andras Herczeg put it, for a flawless display – especially at the back – to have a chance to earn at least a point against Fiorentina at Budapest.

On paper, Maccabi Haifa face the ultimate mission implausible against Juventus in Turin in the Group A.

But the bianconeri, on a run of five games without a win, have lost their way.

Defensive talisman Giorgio Chiellini has tried to rally his team-mates saying this double-header must be the moment Juventus turn their season around.

It might be tougher than Chiellini expects. Juve have won not won in their last six Champions League games and have only scored three goals in those matches.

The Israeli champions pushed Bordeaux all the way before losing 1-0 and played better than the scoreline in their 3-0 defeat by Bayern suggests.

And if Dvalishvili has put his blues behind him, who knows?

Haifa fans hope Levy starts with Shlomi Arbeitman. The pacy 24-year-old striker is one of those players – like David Ginola – who is more popular with fans than coaches.

In a stop-start career, he scored a hat-trick on his debut for the Israeli national team in February 2004 but these days is more often used as an over-age player in the U21s.

Arbeitman played alongside Dvalishvili in attack at the weekend as Haifa maintained their 100 percent record in the league.

The Israelis will miss their skipper Yaniv Katan sidelined by a fever.

Rangers' grip on a place in the last 16 is almost as slender as Haifa’s.

With one point from two games in Group G, they face Dan Petrescu’s Unirea at Ibrox in the Scottish club’s 150th game in this competition.

This might look like a banker for Walter Smith’s team, but Rangers have failed to score in six of their last eight home games in Europe and only won one of those eight.

Rangers played their best 45 minutes of football this season against Stuttgart but Petrescu had a point when, in a wondrous back-handed compliment, he said the danger man for Unirea wasn’t a Rangers player but Walter Smith.

The history books tell us that the last Scottish team to defeat a Romanian side in European competition were indeed Rangers, who beat Steaua 2-1 in the European Cup quarter-finals in 1988.

This isn’t quite the great omen it might seem as the Gers lost the tie 3-2 on aggregate.

APOEL Nicosia, who travel to Porto, will certainly be hoping to avoid what Shirley Bassey might call a little bit of history repeating itself.

On their only previous trip to Portugal, in the 1963/64 Cup Winners’ Cup, they lost 16-1 to Sporting, a record defeat in a European game.

For Rubin Kazan supporters, just travelling to Camp Nou to face European champions Barcelona in Group F is quasi-official confirmation of how far their team has come.

But if they need cheering up after the game, they might want to go here and marvel at this gallery of photos which captures a little known phase in Pep Guardiola’s career when he was auditioning for the Spanish Take That.

Pop’s loss of Pep was European football’s gain.

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The fuss that Jack built

2009-10-12T08:00:00Z

Austin ‘Jack’ Warner is the Muhammad Ali of football administrators.

In other words, he’s not like Ali at all but he occasionally delivers a pungent phrase or gag almost worthy of The Lip.

He speaks with the confidence of a man used to being listened to. And he knows how to incite the media.

Like Ali in his prime, the only headlines he doesn’t like are those that don’t have his name in them.

The CONCACAF president’s speech at the Leaders in Football conference at Chelsea’s Millennium Hotel was a virtuous performance, as entertaining, in its way, as one of those one-man shows where Simon Callow pretended to be Charles Dickens.

Warner’s brief was to give the 1000 or so delegates a global perspective on football.

What he gave them was a very personal perspective on football history, England’s World Cup bid, cricket (“a dying sport, it’s dying in the West Indies and it’s infectious”), Michael Jackson’s doctor, how hard it is to get refunds on business class tickets for players who are mysteriously unavailable for international duty and the future of women’s football.

Warner said it would be a good idea if Europe started a women’s Champions League – obviously unaware that this was such a good idea that UEFA has already started one.

As if that wasn’t enough, Warner chucked in some novel ideas to improve the laws of the game.

Ten-a-side, new technology at the service of the referee, time restrictions on the taking of free-kicks, throw-ins and corners.

It would be intriguing to know how many of these ‘improvements’ were testing the water for, as Warner called him, the “visionary” Sepp Blatter.

Warner’s speech aspired to be inspirational.

He even tried his variation on JFK’s inauguration speech, effectively telling delegates: ask what you can do for football, not what football can do for you.

But at times, the note of resentment was so strong I was reminded of that old gag about the Australians being the most well balanced people in the world – because they have a chip on each shoulder.

Warner argued persuasively that Europe – and England in particular – could not afford to ignore the rest of the football world and, by being more socially responsible, would set an example others would be bound to follow.

One of his suggestions was that clubs pay a sum worth 10 percent of a player’s salary to the country he came from so it could be invested in grassroots football.

In the same vein, he suggested 2018 World Cup bids could be judged on whether they promised to invest in developing football outside their own confederation.

Warner was right to highlight the interdependency of this new, globalised football industry.

But the one word that never appeared in his bracing address was transparency.

There was not even a tacit recognition that the financial shenanigans at some FAs might lead some to question where all this cash might really be invested.

This is the same Jack Warner who, according to former Scottish FA boss George McBeth, asked for the cheque to cover the match fee for a 2007 friendly to be made out to him personally.

The year before that, Warner’s Trinidad and Tobago FA rowed so bitterly with players over bonuses after the World Cup the issue went to the Sports Dispute Resolution Panel.

Understandably Warner was keener to talk about 2018 than 2006. His well-publicised objections to England’s bid boiled down to four points.

1. England have been too slow off the mark and seem to think they have a ‘divine right’ to stage the finals.

2. There were no freebies in the Leaders in Football conference reception from England, whereas Australia thoughtfully gave delegates a free case and Qatar, already looking to 2022, had strewn bags of goodies around.

3. England weren’t making enough of David Beckham and the Queen.

4. England’s U20 team had refused to play a friendly against Trinidad and Tobago in Cyprus.

NEWS: Warner - England 2018 bid needs Beckham stardust

None of these raise fundamental questions about England’s ability to host the finals.

Points 1 and 3, as Football League boss Brian Mawhinney tactfully pointed out later, are a matter of tactics.

This sparked several minutes of futile linguistic debate between Mawhinney, the press and (in absentia) Warner, about whether bidding for a World Cup is a sprint or a marathon. Or the 10,000 metres. (Okay, I made that last bit up).

London and Rio’s success in winning the 2012 and 2016 Olympics suggests, to switch sporting metaphors, that the best approach is to come up on the rails in the final furlong.

Still, Warner’s barbs had the desired effect. There is nothing your average British football correspondent likes better than writing a story accusing the FA of doing sweet FA.

The story practically wrote itself but I caught two seasoned hacks rehearsing across the press room: “Football’s coming home... arrogance... divine right, yeah, that’ll do it.”

They nodded, trying to look their usual phlegmatic selves but I could see glee in the corner of their eyes.

Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s likeable technical director, took the refreshing, if old fashioned, view that his speech ought to be useful – and delivered an insightful address on the coach’s many roles.

His most charming story concerned a coach in Argentina who had drilled his defenders in where to stand and how to jump to stop a Maradona free-kick.

After 40 minutes, when Maradona won a free-kick just outside the area, the coach peered over to make sure the wall was right.

His players lined up correctly, they even jumped in unison, but the coach’s admiration turned to fury when he saw his players, as one, turn sideways.

As they came off at half-time, the coach demanded to know why they had all turned sideways.

One player was honest enough to admit: “We just wanted to see the goal boss.”

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Will the Icelandic Messi please stand up?

2009-10-02T16:00:00Z

There’ll be no more "Gnomes of Zurich" gags after matchday two of the UEFA Champions League, a round of games which also saw Rubin’s Argentine striker Alejandro Dominguez score his 11th goal in 10 games, making you wonder what Dick Advocaat didn’t see in him.

While Stevan Jovetic gave the best performance by a Montenegrin in this tournament since Dejan Savicevic hung up his boots.

STATS: Champions League results, fixtures & tables

The perils of Silvio

That faint whirring noise you hear is the sound of Silvio Berlusconi back-pedalling as his campaign to make Leonardo the new Guardiola runs into trouble.

It's ludicrously early to judge the Brazilian’s coaching prowess but a meltdown at Milan could do more to undermine Berlusconi’s premiership of Italy than the scandals that have titillated the foreign press.

Berlusconi’s bedrock support in Italy doesn’t pay a great deal of attention to the outside world and would probably reject any aspersions cast on Berlusconi by foreign journalists just out of indignant patriotic pride.

But in a country that takes football more seriously than politics, if the vaunted Rossoneri do crumble the damage to Berlusconi’s image as a "can do" kind of guy could be immense.

Hence the feverish speculation that Marco van Basten may take over. But even the Dutchman would struggle to get the best out of Ronaldinho.

That task, as Gabriele Marcotti noted on ITV, can only be performed by someone with a time machine at the bottom of their garden.

Morris, Baldini and Anderson

Franco Baldini, probably the best football scout in Europe, says the only way you can truly judge a footballer is to watch him in person – to watch their team-mates’ body language and understand what they really think of him.

You didn’t have to be Desmond Morris to decipher the signals Anderson was being sent by team-mates when Manchester United played Wolfsburg, especially when he passed to an offside Rooney in the box with Giggs, onside, out wide.

The Brazilian’s inconsistent decision-making left United misfiring in midfield.

On Wednesday, United were sparked into life by Berbatov, whose speed of thought and passing put his Brazilian team-mate to shame.

Kings of contrariness

Dutch coaches can be funny buggers. Dominguez has now scored in his last 10 games for Rubin.

The grace, skill and speed with which he took his goal against Inter deepens the mystery about his marginalisation at Zenit St Petersburg by Dick Advocaat, the coach who had campaigned for his signing.

Such a quixotic approach is reminiscent of the Dutch coach’s treatment of Gennaro Gattuso. The Italian left Rangers in 1998 because, he says, “Advocaat told me I was just a kiddie and had to play at right-back.”

How Rangers could do with Gattuso’s classy tenacity in midfield.

The misuse of Gattuso recalls Johan Cruyff’s stubborn determination to play Gary Lineker, the Inzaghi of the '80s, on the wing at Barcelona.

Because Lineker couldn’t do everything well but could do one thing – score goals – very well, Cruyff exiled him to the flanks in sheer disgust.

But the king of Dutch coaching contrariness is Co Adriaanse.

The manager known affectionately as Psycho Co because of his idiosyncratic approach to training – he once notoriously ordered AZ players to hunt for Easter eggs before revealing that he hadn’t actually hidden any – ignored playmaker Diego at Porto.

The Brazilian left for Werder Bremen, was voted player of the Bundesliga in his first season and moved to Juve for four times the fee Porto received.

Diego wasn't the only Brazilian to leave Porto under Adriaanse's watch.

It probably made sense to get £1.9m for a striker who, distracted by the kidnapping of his mother, had only scored three goals in 22 games in 2004/05. But Sevilla must be glad they took a risk on Luis Fabiano.

Adriaanse didn’t coach Ajax for very long, but his reign in 2000/01 is best remembered for hardly playing the young Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Mind you, any coach who can call a club chairman a “talking lampshade” can’t be all bad.

Stuttgart’s stuttering helps Rangers

On matchday one, Stuttgart had a hatful of chances against Rangers, went 1-0 up and snatched a draw from the jaws of victory.

They did the same in Bucharest against Unirea. Their 1-1 draw was the only good news on a dismal night for Rangers who didn’t have the luck or, in the second half, the quality to deny Sevilla.

Four points from back-to-back games against Unirea is the minimum if Walter Smith’s team are to make the last 16.

Still, with Sevilla in such imperious form the runners-up in Group G could progress with as few as seven points.

Messi business

Liverpool were undone by the Montenegrin Messi (Stevan Jovetic) while Dynamo Kyiv could console themselves with the thought that they were beaten by the original.

Sadly, the Greek Messi – Vasilios Koutsianikoulis – hasn’t featured in this tournament yet because he plays for PAOK, not Olympiacos.

And the Italian Messi, Sebastian Giovinco, is having the “pressure taken off him” with a spell on the Juve bench.

The English Messi hasn’t lit up the Champions League because there isn’t one. (Though you might, like Sir Alex Ferguson, believe Wayne Rooney can grow into that role.)

This seems a tad unfair as Barcelona have two: Leo, the European Footballer of the Year in waiting and Gai Assulin, the 18-year-old Israeli attacking midfielder who has scoring freely for Barcelona B.

In a few years, Spain could house three Messis, with Leo, Gai and Marko Marin, Werder Bremen’s 20-year-old attacking midfielder – aka the German Messi – who has already indicated, as footballers do these days, that he’d like to play for Real Madrid one day.

A Google search suggests that there may be some national typecasting here.

New Messis usually hail from Latin countries. I have yet to unearth a Messi from Scandinavia (feel free to tell me otherwise).

Even the German Messi, Marin, is of Bosnian Serb descent. So it seems unlikely a player will ever be dubbed the Icelandic Messi.

Just as, sadly, I have never yet heard of a player being dubbed the Brazilian Norman Hunter.

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When transfers go bad

2009-09-29T12:30:00Z

The least significant thing about the Sofia derby was the score.

CSKA beat Levski 2-0, their task eased by the fact that Levski’s four core players – Darko Tasevski, Jose Ze Soares, Youssef Rabeh and Zhivko Milanov – were in Moscow, expecting to complete surprise last-minute transfers to the Russian champions Rubin Kazan.

True, the transfer window had already shut but Levski were advised that Rubin had been allowed to reopen the window because many of its players had swine flu.

Levski fans, gutted about the loss of players and a probable derby defeat, tried to cheer themselves by thinking of the money – around £4 million – the sales would generate for club president Todor Batkov to invest.

Things began to go wrong when the financial director Konstantin Bazhdekov arrived in Moscow with the players for their medical tests.

When new terms were demanded to complete the deals, Bazhdekov called Batkov, who then rang the president of Rubin Kazan.

To Batkov’s horror, the Rubin president Alexandr Gusev knew nothing about the deals, UEFA’s special permission or the epidemic of swine flu that had decimated his squad.

Levski had been conned. The people who had encouraged them to sell these players had business cards and documents bearing the Rubin club logo but they were not connected with the club at all.

What was the sting supposed to achieve?

Some have accused CSKA supporters who, so the conspiracy theory goes, wanted revenge after a letter from Bulgaria persuaded UEFA not to let CSKA compete in the 2008/09 Champions League because of the state of their finances.

Others blamed, more credibly, Asian gambling syndicates wanting to make millions by betting on a CSKA win in the Sofia derby.

There is some – though hardly conclusive – evidence of large bets on a CSKA win being placed with certain Asian bookies.

It’s worth noting that eastern European clubs are at the heart of UEFA’s probe into 40 games that may have been fixed.

The only definite outcome was to make Bazhdekov and Batkov look like muppets and Levski, in the eloquently indignant words of one fan, “like the idiots of Europe.”

In truth, Bazhdekov and Batkov were gullible, but unlucky.

The Byzantine way players are bought and sold now makes this kind of scenario terrifyingly plausible.

Each transfer is, in its way, a clandestine conspiracy, conducted in a race against time.

The global trade in footballers – and the disturbingly common practice of businessmen buying a stake in a player – have just made the conspiracies more labyrinthine and complicated.

And the transfer business is peopled with a Damon Runyonesque cast of chancers who love to deal beyond their means, fixers who imply with a nod and wink they can mysteriously get such and such a player, and cocky go-betweens who boast of their remarkable access to other coaches and presidents.

Such skulduggery is far more elaborate and sophisticated than an agent ringing up Graeme Souness pretending to be George Weah and recommending the signing of his ‘cousin’ Ali Dia, who had played 14 games for PSG.

Mind you, on a much smaller scale, even the great and good have indulged in gamesmanship to clinch the right deal.

When Arsenal signed inside-forward David Jack from Bolton in 1927, Herbert Chapman’s assistant Bob Wall recalled: “We arrived at the hotel half-an-hour early. Chapman immediately went into the lounge bar.

"He called the waiter, placed two pound notes in his hand and said: 'George, this is Mr Wall, my assistant. He will drink whisky and dry ginger. I will drink gin and tonic.

We shall be joined by guests. They will drink whatever they like. See that our guests are given double of everything, but Mr Wall's whisky and dry ginger will contain no whisky, and my gin and tonic will contain no gin.'

"When the Bolton pair arrived, Chapman ordered the drinks. We quickly downed ours and he called for the same again. The drinks continued to flow and our friends were soon in a gay mood.

"Finally, when Chapman decided the time was opportune for talking business, they readily agreed to letting him sign Jack - and for £10,890, which we considered a bargain."

The Sofia derby, by the way, was a riot. Literally. Levski fans attacked cars, buses, trams and bins.

Although there were 150 arrests, there seem, from reports, to have been few serious injuries – except to Levski skipper and goalkeeper Georgi Petkov, whose busted shoulder forced him to leave the field halfway through the second half and will sideline him for at least two matches.

This strange tale has one bizarre footnote: even with four Levski stars rested, the Eternal Derby was absolutely bloody thrilling.

Frenetic, end-to-end, competitive, football of a kind seldom seen in the Bulgarian league these days.

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Jazz, dinosaurs, bulls and binmen

2009-09-22T16:25:00Z

What did the first UEFA Champions League matchday teach us?

1. That ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce is a “great man” (according to Blackburn’s new galactico Michel Salgado).

2. That Pep Guardiola’s remodelling of Barcelona is a work in progress. Though Barça had more chances at the San Siro, 0-0 was, given the influx of new players, a tactical victory for Inter. Indeed, at an entertaining press conference, Mourinho joked that keeper Julio Cesar was exhausted after touching the ball three times against Barcelona. That was probably twice more than Victor Valdes touched the ball.

3. That if most football club owners tried to join a jazz band they’d fail the audition because they have no sense of timing. The biggest upsets happened off the pitch last week. Peter Kenyon’s replacement as Chelsea chief executive by Ron Gourlay was strangely timed but not as bizarre as Temuri Ketsbaia’s exit as Olympiacos coach on the eve of their first group match.

Since 1999, Olympiacos have hired 15 coaches and one caretaker in their search for who knows what. Ketsbaia, hired in May, left after taking seven points out of nine in the Greek league. Fans were upset by a 5-0 friendly defeat in the summer and the players reportedly didn’t take to him.

Olympiacos fans’ joy surely turned to abject terror when it looked like Bryan Robson might take over. The rumour that Robbo is your new coach is the second most chilling news any fan can hear (the scariest rumour being a credible whisper that that your manager, in a bid to end the team’s goal drought, has signed Francis Jeffers). Luckily, Zico, fearing imminent eviction at CSKA Moscow, stepped in for Olympiacos. Even with players left in the dark about their new coach, they beat AZ 1-0.

4. That some dinosaurs refuse to become extinct. Somebody should tell Pippo Inzaghi the days of the fox in the box are over. Now 36, Inzaghi still seems boyishly, absurdly delighted to score.

His ability to lose a marker and his ruthlessness from close range remain undimmed by age. Pippo is the new Gerd Muller: he scores ugly goals, poachers’ goals, opportunist goals… offside goals. Glorious 30-yard screamers just don’t interest Inzaghi.

Gordon Strachan trained his strikers by showing them videos of Pippo. The Italian, Strachan noted, is a master of the diagonal run away from the ball. He is probably a better lurker than Lineker and tries to ensure he is the last player to touch the ball. More often than not, when he does touch it, he scores. As he did twice against Marseille.

5. That Bayern have a new Muller. He may be called Thomas, not Gerd, but this attacking midfielder scored twice against Maccabi Haifa. Anybody who saw his goal against Borussia Dortmund will know these strikes were no fluke.

IM Scouting’s verdict, written in the style of a professionally unimpressed headmaster finishing an end-of-term report, praises his off-the-ball movement and finishing but notes he “needs to improve his passing ability”.

Thomas looks more like a footballer than Gerd, whose squat, stout body prompted one Bayern president to declare: “I will never allow that bull amongst my thoroughbreds.” Fortunately, the president was overruled and Der Bomber’s goals laid the foundation for Bayern’s greatness.

Thomas probably won’t change history in that way. But after 10 years at Bayern, this may be his season of opportunity. With Louis van Gaal able to pick Klose, Gomez, Olic or Luca Toni (now launching a comeback with Bayern reserves), Muller can’t let his form dip.

6. That Alan Dzagoev is as good as the hype suggests. The CSKA star’s goal was a sublime moment in a dismal performance against Wolfsburg. Already hailed as the “future of Russian football” (no pressure there then), Dzagoev has the ability and intelligence to play as an attacking midfielder or second striker.

Only 19, he may be the next Russian starlet to defect to the West. Dzagoev’s favourite club, Chelsea, can’t buy players until 2011 but playing alongside boyhood idol Frank Lampard would be a dream come true.

7. That Rangers can probably make the last 16. The draw was kind and a draw against Stuttgart was kinder still.

Though Rangers shone in the second half, they would have been down and out if Stuttgart’s strikers had been less selfish. Brazilian forward Cacau (who, to be fair, did make the goal) summed up the rampant egotism by trying to shoot past keeper Allan McGregor from the byline.

Jerome Rothen’s quality means Walter Smith can dispense with the “anti-football” that won so few friends on the road to the 2008 UEFA Cup Final. The Frenchman showed enough to suggest that, at 31, he – with Pedro Mendes – could steer Rangers to the knockout round.

8. That the team who dares wins. Standard Liege coach Laszlo Boloni was right: Alex Song did handle the ball when Arsenal equalised. But Liege fans must have wondered what baloney Boloni told his players at half-time. Only 2-1 up, against one of Europe’s most fluent attacks, the Reds tried to sit on their lead. And lost.

Still, as Kevin McCarra noted on The Guardian’s football podcast, Arsenal are probably the only team in Europe who would go a goal down because their centre-forward tried an overhead chip near his own penalty area.

9. That behind some successful footballers is a career in waste. When he was 22, Grafite scored 22 goals in 27 games for Ferroviaria in the Sao Paolo league. But the Brazilian striker was sometimes so broke he sold bin-liners.

Since he joined Wolfsburg in 2007, his progress has been exponential. Grafite was top scorer last season with 28 goals in 25 Bundesliga games and he has now capped that with a hat-trick against CSKA on his Champions League debut.

Grafite’s part-time job prompted me to recall other footballers with rubbish careers. I could only think of Uruguayan striker Walter Pandiani, who always insisted his stint as a dustbin man kept him fit. Feel free to suggest others.

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The greatest pub cliché of all

2009-09-19T08:34:00Z

Apparently, great players don’t make great managers. Diego Maradona’s anguish as Argentina disintegrate seems compelling proof of the pub cliché. The Guardian’s Paul Hayward has called the Argentine the “best advert serious football coaching will ever have. Managers who couldn’t summon 5% of his brilliance understand the game better than he ever will because he only comprehends his own small part of it, where the splendour is to be found.”

But watching Maradona on the touchline, you have to wonder if his unsuitability as a coach is entirely due to his greatness as a player. You could equally argue that his travails merely prove that notoriously addictive personalities don’t make good managers. Or that men who use industrial quantities of black hair dye and wear tracksuits that are three sizes to big for them don’t make good managers. Maradona is too sui generis to be clinching evidence of any cliché.

Suffering for greatness
Of course, proponents of the great players don’t make great managers theory can cite many other examples. Tony Adams, John Barnes, Bobby Charlton, Ruud Gullit, Glen Hoddle, Paul Ince, Kevin Keegan, Billy NcNeil, Lothar Matthaus, Bobby Moore, David Platt, Bryan Robson, Bernd Schuster, Graeme Souness, Hristo Stoichkov, Marco van Basten and Billy Wright have all been used as evidence even if, in some cases, they stretch most people’s definition of the word ‘great’.

Hayward believes great players don’t understand football as deeply as a coach like Jose Mourinho, who made up for his lack of playing time by studying the game academically. Chris Waddle believes great players suffer because fans, directors and the media expect more of them, believing their teams will magically start to play football in the style they associate with the player.

Waddle’s other explanation is that “Lesser players who can go into management can relate to less talented players better. Top players can get frustrated because what they did naturally, not many players can do.” Yet you hear some players say that being coached by someone who has been there, won that is truly inspiring.

As football changes, maybe these greats will find it easier to communicate with multinational dressing rooms than a rival brandishing a coaching badge.

Bob Paisley, a decent half-back at Liverpool, always reckoned his experience of being dropped for the 1950 FA Cup final, helped when he had to break the bad news to his players. When he said he knew how they felt, they knew he meant it.

The magnificent seven
The idea that great players don’t make great managers sounds clear enough. But how great is great?

Of the top ten in the International Federation of Football Historians and Statisticians player of the century poll, seven became managers: Maradona, Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, Alfredo di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Michel Platini and Bobby Charlton.

Of these seven, two were outstanding successes (Cruyff and Beckenbauer), two were pretty successful (Puskas led Panathinaikos to the 1971 European Cup final while di Stefano won the Argentine title with Boca and River and la Liga and the Cup-Winners’ Cup with Valencia).

One was an outright failure (Charlton, who led Preston to relegation and quit after directors sold players behind his back) and one will probably become an outright failure (Maradona). Platini’s mixed reign as French coach – a record 19-match unbeaten run followed by a dismal first round exit at Euro 92 – was enough to convince him that managing teams wasn’t for him.

So the flat statement that great players don’t make great coaches looks much less solid. And there are other great players who made it as managers.

Like Frank Rijkaard, unfashionable, but still the coach who delivered Barcelona’s second European Cup.

Like two-time World Cup winner Didi, who steered Peru to the quarter-finals in 1970, that country’s best ever performance, and won back to back titles with Fenerbahce in the mid-1970s. Or like his countryman Mario Zagallo, an exquisite winger who coached Brazil to victory at Mexico 70 (knocking out Didi’s Peru on the way) and pioneered the use of attacking full-backs.

Like Carlo Ancelotti, who won the European Cup as a player in 1989 and 1990 and as a coach in 2003 and 2007. Ancelotti was not in the same class as Milan’s Dutch masters but won 26 caps for the Azzurri and dribbled around two Real Madrid defenders to seal the Rossoneri’s 5-0 demolition in the European Cup semi-final in 1989.

Like Ernst Happel, one of the finest defenders Austria has ever produced, who won 51 caps and scored a hat-trick against the great Real Madrid in 1956 before coaching Feyenoord and Hamburg to European Cup glory.

Like Kenny Dalglish, who inherited a great team at Liverpool (but had the sense not to tinker and the aura to inspire his former teammates) and then built Blackburn into title-winners with Jack Walker’s money.

And Fabio Capello could play a bit: 32 caps for Italy and four scudetti with Juventus and Milan. As could Giovanni Trapattoni, who marked Cruyff out of the 1969 European Cup final, and one of only two coaches (the other being Udo Lattek) to win all three major European club competitions.

Accept no substitutes
When great players move into the dugout, the scope for them to show their greatness narrows. As a player, a genius like Hoddle could prove his greatness through sheer artistry even if he didn’t win that much silverware.

As a coach, the accolade of greatness is only bestowed on those who win a title or cup or transcend their team’s previous performance in an extraordinary way. The disparity between these two definitions of greatness can prove fatal.

Great players are often appointed for the wrong reasons – to placate irate fans, quieten the media, because the directors are star struck or are daft enough to believe that a returning messiah can turn back time – and they learn, at brutal speed, that greatness is no shield against volatile opinion, player unrest or boardroom shenanigans (like Bobby Charlton at Preston).

Maybe the grain of truth in the cliché is that great players don’t always stick at being coaches, as the Mourinhos and Wengers do. If the theory that many coaches are driven by resentment over their failed playing careers holds true, does the reverse apply? Do legends like Bobby Charlton realise that coaching is absolutely no substitute for playing and, having made their name once anyway, find it easier to walk away?

So some great players do make great managers. It’s just that when these geniuses royally screw it up, as Maradona is doing, they show us how far they can fall and make us all secretly feel a little better about ourselves.

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Fabio Capello, Johan Cruyff & Robert Redford

2009-09-11T13:30:00Z

England’s refreshingly decisive qualification for 2010 has prompted an inordinate, one might almost say prurient, interest in the national team’s luggage.

“There is no chance Capello will allow England to fly to South Africa with complacency in their luggage,” Jonathan Norcroft claimed in the Sunday Times.

Presumably Don Fabio has his very own X-ray machine which can isolate hidden pockets of “I’m taking this for granted”-ness when waved at a left-back’s Louis Vuitton.

On Thursday, dear old Henry Winter suggested the squad should “slip some humility into their luggage along with the iPods, cards and Aston Martin catalogues.”

The Capello cult in the British media is almost as intriguing as the granite-jawed one’s rejuvenation of England.

He only has to look slightly vexed on the touchline for ITV’s Peter Drury to rhapsodise over his no-nonsense management style, a “Let’s hear them eyeballs rolling in their sockets!” approach that commentators and journalists love to applaud when it is applied to someone else – especially England footballers.

Of course, the vicissitudes of the England manager’s job are such that admirable determination can quickly be recast as deplorable pigheadedness.

Before the Croatia game, a few hacks had the temerity to question Capello’s perverse insistence on picking the England team himself and not yielding to popular demand – that is, a back-page epidemic of synthetic outrage – and starting with Jermain Defoe up front.

Times reader Eduardo Pierce isn’t convinced by England.

He noted, in fractured prose, that Gerrard “cannot make two triangulations in a row and you can never find him when you need him because he is running around like a chicken without a head.”

That’s Stevie G nailed then.

“Chicken without a head” sounds so much less clichéd than “headless chicken,” don’t you think?

By the way, the longest surviving headless chicken, Mike – he wasn’t completely headless but had one ear and a brain stem left after a botched chop by a Colorado farmer – lived for 18 months after losing 83.9 percent of his bonce, finally dying in 1947.

Celestial spectacles

The World Cup just won’t be the same without the two-time winners from South America.

Yup, no mundial is complete without Uruguay, a nation that has football where other countries have history.

So I tuned in on Sky Sports to watch 60 minutes of Uruguay vs Colombia in Montevideo, the other 30 minutes being occupied (thanks to a technical fault) by Ossie Ardiles’ yellow tie.

Ossie’s tie was louder than his mumbling analysis of Argentina’s entertainingly dismal World Cup qualifying campaign.

It got so bad that one Argentine football writer I know has decided to support Chile.

The Uruguay game was utterly enthralling. Four goals (three to Uruguay), two red cards, periods of play when the home side looked simply incapable of passing to someone in a light blue shirt, and a Colombian forward line that was fast, enterprising and comically inaccurate.

The diagonal cut-back from Diego Forlan for Sebastian Eguren to score Uruguay’s third was sublime.

Eduardo Pierce would not have been impressed as most of the players ran around like chickens without heads.

Both the Uruguayan and Colombian coach fulminated on the touchline to no avail: their players had gone collectively mad on adrenaline.

But the qualifier was utterly gripping. For sheer manic urgency, I have seen nothing quite like it since extra time in the 1970 semi-final between Italy and West Germany.

Inglorious Ajax, glorious Bastia

Johan Cruyff may not have kicked a ball in 25 years but the John Lennon of European football can never stay completely out of the limelight.

After revealing last year that he missed the 1978 World Cup because of kidnap threats, he has now told Esquire in Spain that he turned down Real Madrid when he left Ajax.

The Dutch club had, Cruyff says, sold him to Real but he was so fed up with his treatment in Amsterdam that he joined Barcelona.

This historical revisionism raises a whole series of intriguing What Ifs, but Wim Jansen’s take on the Cruyff legend is even funnier.

Jansen says he invented Cruyff’s wandering style: “Every time we played Ajax, I’d tell him: ‘You can pass me, or the ball can pass me, but you will never get past me with the ball’.

"And he wouldn’t come near me. I was responsible for him wandering over the pitch.”

For fans of that Ajax side – and who isn’t? – the next Champions contains a frank interview with Johnny Rep.

From the tone of the conversation, Rep probably enjoyed St Etienne – alongside Michel Platini – more than Ajax, where he had to force his way into the first team over the determined opposition of Sjaak Swart and a clique of older players.

Ernst Bouwes’ piece is accompanied by a photo of Rep looking a bit like Robert Redford in the 1970s, while playing for Bastia.

The Corsican club’s 1978 UEFA Cup final first leg was captured by the great French movie director Jacques Tati, the creator of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, and released posthumously as Forza Bastia! in 2002.

There’s an obvious Quentin Tarantino remake gag in there somewhere but as it eludes me, feel free to supply your own.

Rep’s big problem at Ajax was that he was too good-looking for the established players to take him seriously.

I had the same trouble when I tried to oust the left-back in the Higham Lane junior school team in Nuneaton. (Yes, I am joking).

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How Barca are looking to improve on perfection

2009-09-05T08:00:00Z

How does Pep improve on perfection?

Claudio Ranieri was crucified for his tinkering tendencies by the British press. But the truth is that every good coach, deep down, is a tinkerman.

Pep Guardiola is a case in point.

While European journalists ran out of superlatives to describe Barcelona last season, their obsessive, workaholic perfectionist coach was less interested in the compliments than the semi-final against Chelsea when his team failed to function like a well-oiled machine.

It would be truly, deeply stupid to draw any conclusions from the soporific Super Cup game with Shakhtar Donetsk.

But the manner in which Shakhtar Donetsk stifled the European champions suggests Guardiola might be right to rebuild.

The best way to unsettle the reigning champions, Shakhtar’s performance suggested, is to bore them to death.

The genius that is Lionel Messi became so frustrated he invented his own variation on the Glasgow kiss, a gesture that may henceforth be known as the air butt.

"Nab him, jab him, tag him, grab him..."

Shakhtar’s clever counter-attacking style could, with a smarter referee, have put them 1-0 ahead in extra time.

Coach Mircea Lucescu, who looked more animated when he ran onto the pitch in protest than most players had been all night, was shrewd enough to realise that the more open the game the more likely Barcelona were to win.

So he organised his troops accordingly, with players blocking the zones where Barca might create, squeezing play on the flanks, packing the middle of the park, and trusting that in any match, even against the European champions, you will get opportunities and, if you can take them, you might just win.

In the first half, Shakhtar had an easy time because Barcelona were too predictable, always trying to play through the middle.

Gerard Pique’s passing was especially one-dimensional – always moving the ball into the congested centre, where finding the right pass was like trying to thread the eye of a needle, rather than releasing Daniel Alves on the right.

At half-time, I wondered if Guardiola would start his team talk by saying to Pique: “Let me introduce you to Dani Alves. He’s a team-mate. Why don’t you try passing the ball to him occasionally?”

Certainly in the second half, Pique released Alves more often, initially with promising results. Messi then drifted out wide to exploit the space as Shakhtar tired.

So Chelsea and Shakhtar have both shown that if you don’t care about the spectacle, you can seriously disrupt Barcelona.

And that’s one reason, according to a very entertaining discussion on Sky Sports' ever-entertaining Revista de la Liga, that Guardiola has set out to improve on perfection.

The goal is to make Barcelona even more awesomely effective by varying the threat up front, making more devastating use of the flanks and improving their dismal record from set-pieces.

Central striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic will sometimes pull back to draw defenders out, creating space for Xavi and Iniesta to run into.

As tactically sophisticated as football can sometimes seem, defences and coaches have still not devised a way to cope with midfielders running into the area, even though this ploy is at least half a century old.

Both full-backs – Alves on the right and Abidal or Maxwell on the left – can bomb forward simultaneously, because one of the central midfielders will come deep so Barcelona have three at the back when attacking.

Ibra: key to a new tactical philospophy

In the interchange of players and formations, this is much more Total Footballish, echoing the 3-4-3 Johan Cruyff deployed as a coach at Ajax and Barcelona.

With players as good as Guardiola, he could risk exposing his defence because he was so confident he would control midfield.

Rinus Michels said this “spectacular but risky” formation depends on the quality of the players in the middle of the park and their intelligence.

But get it right, as Guardiola believes his players will, and your team becomes much harder to predict and nullify.

Against Shakhtar, even with Ibrahimovic, they were so ineffectual from corners they could have taken them all night against an undefended goal and not scored.

But against Sporting Gijon, in their first la Liga game, all the goals in their routine 3-0 victory came from headers.

Shakhtar showed enough speed and technique on the counter to create chances but didn’t always make the right decisions.

In one passage of play in the first half, Lucescu’s men passed the ball around in front of the Barcelona penalty area and the Catalans looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Carles Puyol was caught out a few times – so the £22 million arrival of Shakhtar’s steely, shrewd centre-back Dmytry Chyngrysnkiy, who looked far more composed and accomplished in Monaco than any Barcelona defender, looks superbly timed.

The good news for Barcelona’s opponents is that the Super Cup might have already done for the European champions.

The last team to win the Super Cup and go on to win the European Cup the next May was Milan in 1990.

Since then, only Sevilla, who outclassed Barca in the 2006 Super Cup, have gone on to win a major European competition (the UEFA Cup).

As curses go, it must be on a par with the Community Shield’s.

But maybe Guardiola’s thoughtful tinkering can defeat that curse too.

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JT, Zlatan, Maldini & Ms Vinegar

2009-08-28T13:00:00Z

John Terry looked bloody uncomfortable. “Are you alright?” asked his other half.

The Chelsea skipper, pulling the sleeves of his jacket straight as if he wasn’t happy with the fit, insisted, rather unconvincingly, that he was alright.

He had every reason to be at odds. He was in full jacket-and-tie clobber in 82 degrees heat in a hotel lift that could barely contain its eight passengers.

And the lift had no air conditioning.

Terry had that coiffed look that most men only attain once in their lives: when their mother has dressed and groomed them for their first day at school.

And he was in Monaco, at the chintzy Meridien Beach Plaza hotel, to collect his third award as the best defender in European club football.

Luckily, Terry and his entourage were chauffeured to the Grimaldi Forum in air-conditioned comfort.

Otherwise one of the world’s finest central defenders might have melted away on the humid streets of Monaco.

During the ceremony, Terry insisted that motivating himself was easy.

Casting a longing look at the cup with the big ears, he said the thought of lifting the trophy fired him up in the gym, on the training field and on the pitch.

JT and fellow award-winners, glowing gently

If the English press are right, he may get his chance next May.

Many of the broadsheet hacks seemed to agree with the Telegraph’s Henry Winter, who believes that 2010 is destined to witness Barcelona vs Chelsea in the Bernabeu.

The European football writers polled for the season preview in the next issue of Champions came to the same conclusion.

None of them tipped Manchester United, who are plotting to reach their third final in a row. Not that this will worry Fergie too much.

The transfer deal that provoked most debate in Monaco among the Europress was Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s move from Inter to Barcelona.

Patrick Barclay, the erudite chief football correspondent for The Times, wondered if it was possible for a team to have too much technique, suggesting that Barça might miss the directness of Eto’o.

Those who favoured the deal suggested that Ibra would pose another dimension of problems for opposing defences – that teams won’t know whether to double-mark Ibra or Messi. They can hardly do both.

Yet in Italy, his sale isn’t regarded as a bad piece of business.

Double European Cup winner Sandro Mazzola, previewing the tournament for Champions, suggested that this could be a career-defining season for the Swede.

He would, Mazzola suggests, have to put up or shut up.

And just to ensure the transfer stayed in the spotlight, the UEFA balls kindly drew Barça and Inter in the same group.

"Oooooh, it's Inter!"

Happiness indexes are now much in vogue and on the way back from the draw, to distract myself from the stifling heat, I tried to figure out the scale of happiness of all 32 coaches.

The smiliest face must belong to Walter Smith, who couldn’t have hoped for a better draw as he tries to earn some much-needed dosh and raise the spirits of Scottish football by steering Rangers to the last 16.

Arsene Wenger’s grin must have been almost as wide when the line-up for Group H was confirmed: Arsenal, AZ, Olympiacos and Stuttgart.

In contrast, Marseille boss Didier Deschamps just have been as miserable as a man who has been locked in a room and forced to listen to Leonard Cohen’s Dress Rehearsal Rag for a month.

Deschamps’ mission – to ensure that Marseille don’t just play a part but make an impact on the tournament – looks more implausible than ever after being drawn with Milan, Real Madrid and Zurich.

His best hope is probably that Milan implode as their Guardiolaesque gamble of replacing Ancelotti with Leonardo backfires.

One underlying question that this season’s competition might answer is how much doo-doo is Italian football in?

There is a general feeling that calcio, like Italy, has lost its mojo.

Juventus and Milan are rebuilding under new young coaches while Inter, even under the special one, do not yet suggest they have found the formula to conquer Europe.

Serie A is no longer the sexiest league in Europe – la Liga is – and the retirement of Paolo Maldini suggests that calcio has reached some kind of watershed.

Maldini looked a lot more comfortable than JT in the heat of Monaco.

Heading to the beach for the afternoon, he looked ridiculously glamorous as he signed autographs and posed for photographs with fans.

One middle-aged Italian was so taken with Maldini that, after getting his autograph, he vamoosed off to fetch his son and, as the two of them peered over the beach, pointed out Maldini as if he was a monument.

Which I suppose, in a way, he is.

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

It was quite sweet to see the evident pleasure with which Michel Platini gave Maldini his special award at the Grimaldi Forum, even going so far as to order the attending grandees to give the legend a standing ovation.

That was probably the highpoint of a ceremony in which the gorgeous, wonderfully-monikered Melanie Vinegar did her level best to convince the world that the UEFA Champions League is really called the “Wafer Champions League."

Despite her surname, Vinegar was warmer and more human than CNN’s eerily multilingual sports anchor Pedro Pinto, who hosts these occasions with a solemnity and gravitas worthy of a state funeral.

So remember, if it’s Barcelona vs Chelsea in the Bernabeu, you read it here first.

If it’s not, blame those know-nothings in the British football press.

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Wildebeest, the Alamo & Dudu's voodoo

2009-08-21T11:00:00Z

The cliché coaches like to use when their teams win the first leg of a cup tie is that their team has a foot in the next round.

After their 5-1 demolition of Anderlecht, Lyon have both feet inside the door and are just about to close it behind them.

Even on television, the atmosphere in the Gerland felt like a carnival – unless, of course, you were an Anderlecht fan for whom it felt more like a burial.

Les Mauves coach Ariel Jacobs pointed to one minute – when Anderlecht didn’t get a penalty at one end, while Lyon were awarded one at the other – as the turning point, but he had the grace to admit his team had been undone by a “collective stampede."

A horde of rampaging wildebeest couldn’t have done more damage.

Also with both feet inside and their hand wrapped firmly around the door handle are FC Zurich, whose victory in Latvia was even more comprehensive than the 3-0 scoreline suggests.

The minute-by-minute account on uefa.com captures the game brilliantly in Hemingwayesgue staccato:

“86: Djuric (Zurich) has a shot blocked; 87: Okonkwo (Zurich) misses the target; 88: Okonkwo (Zurich) misses the target; 90: Alphonse (Zurich) has a shot blocked; 90: Djuric (Zurich) has a shot blocked; 90+3: Nikci (Zurich) hits the crossbar.”

If they had done a minute-by-minute report of the last hours at the Alamo, it might have read a bit like that.

Three sides won 2-0 away from home (Arsenal, Olympiacos and Stuttgart) and must be regarded as almost through.

Celtic were wholehearted and desperately unlucky but lacked the quality to trouble the Gunners.

Until Brazilian playmaker Dudu did the voodoo that he does so well, the Moldovan champions Sheriff were holding their own against Olympiacos.

The Brazilian playmaker’s fierce swerving shot broke the deadlock for the Greeks and probably safeguarded coach Temuri Ketsbaia’s job.

Huub Stevens may be worried about his after Salzburg’s 2-1 defeat at home to Maccabi Haifa.

Under the former PSV coach, the Austrians have failed to win in three home qualifiers, drawing against Bohemians and Dinamo Zagreb and losing to the Israelis.

Debreceni won by the same score away to Levksi Sofia and their only regret may be that they didn’t score more.

Still, in the absence of any Czech or Polish teams, it would be good if Debreceni became the first Hungarian club to make the group stage since Ferencvaros in 1995/96.

Atletico Madrid, Fiorentina and Copenhagen all have the edge in their ties but none of the three have a decisive advantage.

The Danish champions may rue only taking a 1-0 lead to Nicosia. In their last 10 home games in Europe, Cypriot champions APOEL have won five, drawn three and lost two.

Only Schalke, 4-1 winners in the UEFA Cup last season, have really mullered APOEL in Nicosia in recent years.

The record doesn’t offer much comfort for teams who are up against it.

In last year’s third qualifying round, 15 of the 16 sides who had a foot, or even a toe, in the door after the first leg went on to complete the job.

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Egil Olsen’s ugly little secret

2009-08-18T08:00:00Z

Watching Norway thrash Scotland was, one waggish Guardian reader noted, like watching a one trick pony beat a zero trick pony.

Norway’s trick – the precise, early long ball struck to a target man like John Carew – is regarded as an aberration by pundits and journos besotted with the fluent possession of Barcelona.

But is it?

In the pantheon of tactical gurus, Egil Olsen sits rather oddly alongside such masters as Rinus Michels and Arrigo Sacchi.

While Michels had the air of a military strategist and Sacchi the fervour of a zealous academic, Olsen is too much of a character to be revered.

A Marxist, poker-playing, wellington-boot-wearing fanatic who endlessly quotes statistics and percentages (often culled from the works of Charles Reep, an accountant whose prophetic analysis of football was used by Stan Cullis at Wolves in the 1950s) to justify his mutant strain of football.

But not every team can play like Barcelona. And Olsen may offer teams that can’t a Plan A or Plan B.

His Norway were never easy on the eye but Olsen led them to No.2 in the FIFA rankings, two successive World Cups and a double defeat of Brazil in 1998. Not bad for a nation of 4.8 million people.

Olsen’s Norway weren’t all about the long ball. He developed zonal defending to such a level that the Norwegians conceded just one goal from open play between 1993 and 1996.

Olsen’s counter-attacking style let opponents carry the play in the belief that they would make mistakes that could be exploited with a rapid attack.

And in playing hefty striker Jostein Flo on the wing, Olsen presented full-backs with an aerial threat they didn’t know how to handle.

Flo often switched wings with Mini Jakobsen just to befuddle opposing defences a bit more.

Was it great to watch? Not often, but the right long pass in a counter-attack can, as the Scots discovered in Oslo, be devastatingly effective.

Officially, there are two schools of football. The beautiful stuff, played by Real Madrid, Ajax in the 1970s, the Oranje, Wenger’s Arsenal and Guardiola’s Barcelona.

And then there’s the ugly stuff, played by Norway under Olsen, Graham Taylor’s Watford and England and a few other misfits.

In truth, this division is artificial, misleading and plain wrong.

You only have to read a few pages of Rinus Michels’ seminal book Teambuilding to unearth one ugly little secret: even the perfector of Total Football believes the long ball has its uses.

Michels is the tactical godfather of Guardiola’s Barcelona, yet he suggests that the build-up to an attack “needs to create situations to be able to play the ball deep as quickly as possible.”

He warns against indiscriminate use of the long pass but admits he had the Dutch practicing long balls before Euro '88 and reminds coaches and teams that “midfield play is a means to be able to play the ball deep and not an end in itself.”

As Cologne coach between 1980 and 1983, if his side were cashing the game, Michels would switch to an English “kick and run” game, where his players got the ball into or near the penalty area as quickly as possible and pressure the opposing defence.

His sweeper would convert into an extra striker so seven of his outfield players could contribute to the build-up or attack.

This isn’t the romantic revolutionary football with which Michels’ Ajax enthralled Europe. But to Michels, such play is a perfectly valid response to certain situations.

And the situation that presents itself to most teams at the top of the European game is a congested midfield.

You can try to pass through it (difficult), dribble through it (almost impossible), circumvent it down the flanks (not as easy as it used to be) or, as Olsen’s Norway do, play over it.

I’m not suggesting that every team should ape Olsen. But such ideas could successfully surprise, just as Otto Rehhagel’s Greece did at Euro 2004.

I didn’t especially enjoy watching Greece, but I was fascinated to watch teams regarded as vastly superior – such as France and Portugal – being utterly confounded by Rehhagel’s use of man-marking, sweeper and shape.

The discipline with which the Greeks controlled the match without having the ball by policing space was awe-inspiring.

If a team could ping a long, accurate pass to a John Carew-type, it would, at a minimum, give their opponents something else to worry about.

So I would dearly love it if, this season in Europe, some enterprising iconoclast resisted the temptation to emulate Barcelona and had the self-belief and wit to devise a challenge to the beautiful game in the manner of Olsen or Rehhagel.

Because, you know what, even beauty can become monotonous when it monopolises.

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Billionaires, Bulls & Blofelds

2009-08-14T07:00:00Z

James Bond villains die in many ways. But in essence they are all killed by the same thing, as 007 says: “Ah, that old dream – world domination.”

The fantasies of global hegemony spun by Blofeld, Dr No & co have infected many businessmen who have applied them, usually disastrously, to football.

Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz has the looks to play a Bond villain – think Charles Gray suavely stroking a cat as Blofeld.

Not content with owning an island off Fiji, two F1 racing teams and 49 percent of Red Bull drinks, Mateschitz runs or owns four football clubs on three continents.

His most notorious purchase was SV Austria Salzburg, so thoroughly rebranded as Red Bull Salzburg that, even though the new regime has delivered trophies galore, many outraged fans support a club they formed under the old name.

Since then Mateschitz has acquired the Metro Stars (renamed New York Red Bulls) and founded Red Bull Brasil, mired in the second division of the Sao Paolo league.

He’s just rebranded SSV Markranstadt in east Germany as RB Leipzig.

Mateschitz has had to compromise to comply with German football regulations, softening its stance on the club name – note the subtle RB? – and not owning the club outright.

Even though Mr Red Bull has, effectively, taken over the German equivalent of a Conference North club, his strategy has a Blofeldian sweep.

A £60 million plan to climb four rungs to the Bundesliga within eight years would make RB Leipzig the biggest club in the populous region of Saxony, and the club is moving to the capacious 44,000-capacity Zentralstadion in Leipzig, recently vacated by FC Sachsen Leipzig who are broke.

We have been here before, most famously with ENIC, the investment group run by Bahamanian billionaire Joe Lewis, whose pan-European football business has been quietly, expensively, abandoned.

At one point, ENIC had stakes in AEK Athens, Basel (now owned by a Swiss billionaire, Gisela Oeri, whose husband is an heir of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffman La Roche), Rangers, Slavia Prague, Spurs and Vicenza.

The theory sounds good – run one club efficiently and apply the nous you’ve acquired in marketing, scouting, coaching, administration and purchasing to less developed markets where you should have a competitive edge.

But theory seldom became reality.

Often these clubs were still run by existing management and, when results on the pitch weren’t as forecast, ENIC sold up, sometimes messily – the sale of AEK Athens led to a legal wrangle over whether ENIC had waived its debt.

ENIC’s Mini-Me, to continue the spy movie analogy, might well be Kevin McCabe, the property tycoon who owns Sheffield United.

McCabe has bought Chengdu Five Bull (now Chengdu Blades in the Chinese Super League) and the grand old Hungarian club Ferencvaros (back in the top flight) and invested in Belgian club Royal White Star Woluwe.

The Blades have looser links with Australia’s Central Coast Mariners.

Football is a multi-billion pound industry that seems ripe for consolidation and, let’s be frank, the injection of some vaguely competent management.

But it’s hard to see how these clubs make serious money without flourishing in the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League.

And UEFA won’t jeopardise the integrity of its competitions by allowing two clubs with the same owner to meet.

This is all a long way from football as the people’s game.

But then, as Mike Ashley has shown, you can burn £200 million in just two years chasing success in football, so we’ll probably see more billionaires like Mateschitz – Red Bull Newcastle anyone? – not less.

Indeed, Swiss billionaire Markus Liebherr, the son of the founder of the Liebherr crane group, has emerged as the unlikely saviour of Southampton.

While Notts County have been acquired by a finance group linked to a Qatari investor in Sudanese oil and fronted by a man described by Sky Sports as “the 16th most powerful Arab.”

There will also be much more talk of alleged cross-border synergies and global brand building.

Even Barcelona, hailed as a shining exemplar of the democratic, member-funded approach, have mooted investing in a Major League Soccer franchise in Miami or Philadelphia.

(And many blaugrana fans are disturbed by the club’s strange links with the Uzbeki club Bundyodkor).

The downside of football’s global popularity is that it will attract billionaires of all kinds, intrigued by the chance to build a profile, make a fortune or polish their ego.

And – back to Bond villains – these billionaires may come from regions where the source of their wealth will be a matter for conjecture, rumour and investigation.

Are football’s regulators ready for this?

As David Conn pointed out in The Guardian, under the Premier League’s current “fit and proper test,” a convicted criminal could own 29.9 percent of a Premier League club. And anyone can own 9 percent without having to reveal their identity.

Is that fit and proper regulation? Or a standing invitation to looney tunes, malfeasants, and dodgy geezers to use English football for their own ends?

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The Donna, Phil, Roman & Lenny show

2009-08-11T13:00:00Z

Donna Summer might not agree but Fredy Bickel, FC Zurich’s general manager, believes the Swiss champions’ game for a place in the 2009/10 UEFA Champions League group stage against Latvian titleholders Ventspils will be “hot stuff.”

While Arsenal drew Celtic, the team their supporters most wanted to avoid, Ventspils feel the UEFA balls have been awfully nice to them.

Former coach Roman Grygorchuk (who this week has been replaced by ex-Udinese assistant Nunzio Zavetteri - see below) was honest enough to admit he didn’t care who the team faced: “All five seeded teams probably wanted to play against Ventspils as we are not known at this level.”

Grygorchuk: A then-happy chappy

They are no mugs, accomplishing one relatively simple task – disposing of Luxembourg’s F91 Dudelange – and capping that with something much harder, a plucky progress on away goals against Belarus’s BATE Borisov who drew with Juventus and Zenit St Petersburg last season.

The Latvians had the better of the first leg on home soil, winning 1-0 and missing more chances than BATE. In Belarus, they snatched a 14th-minute away goal through versatile, technically accomplished Moldovan midfielder Igor Tigirlas.

Despite a rearguard action worthy of John Wayne at the Alamo, Ventspils could still have lost 3-1 if Maksim Skavysh hadn’t shot wide from a good position with 14 minutes to go.

Though the Zurich general manager and coach were careful not to say anything daft or complacent after the draw, nobody gives the Latvians much of a chance. Which may suit them.

Still only 44, Grigorchuk led Ventspils to three Latvian titles in a row, the kind of domestic monopoly enjoyed by the club he admires most (Manchester United).

But he remained disarmingly modest, noting: “When you start learning, you know nothing. Then, as time goes by, you start to think you know a lot. Then you learn a bit more and you realise you know nothing.”

Ventspils drew away to Newcastle United in a UEFA Cup qualifier in 2006, even though only one supporter travelled to St James’s Park – and was promptly mocked by the Toon Army with various choruses of “You’ve only got one fan!”

It is a mark of how rapidly fortunes yo-yo in football – and the tragicomic ineptitude of Newcastle United’s senior management – that, only three years later, it is the team with only one fan – rather than the side with 30,497 – that are only 180 minutes away from the UEFA Champions League group stage.

The odds on Tigirlas’ old club, Sheriff, reaching the last 32 would seem longer still.

Still, Leonid Kuchuk, the wily Belarussian who coaches the Moldovan champions, does have one thing in his favour.

Temuri Ketsbaia, the passionate Georgian who steered Anorthosis to the group stage last season, has only been coaching Olympiacos since May and, given the volatility of Greek football, this tie could easily become a referendum on his job.

Ketsbaia: No pressure...

But for new boss Zavetteri and Kuchuck, the appropriate soundtrack might not be found in Donna Summer’s oeuvre but in the surprisingly controversial (well, in Southport anyway) body of work by Phil Collins: Against All Odds.

...

God famously works in mysterious ways. But even his works don’t cause quite as much perplexity as European football.

Since I wrote this blog, with Ventspils just 180 minutes away from becoming the first ever Latvian club to reach the UEFA Champions League group stage, the club has changed coaches.

Udinese’s old assistant Nunzio Zavetteri has replaced Grigorchuk who, internet scuttlebutt suggests, has walked out, though he says the decision was taken by both sides a long time ago.

Success can exacerbate tensions within clubs, it would be a pity if it scuppers Ventspil’s heroic attempt to reach the last 32.

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In praise of Sir Bobby Robson

2009-07-31T14:00:00Z

Sir Bobby Robson’s death hurts.

In a game that often seems to have the morality of a snake pit, he was a thoroughly decent man who was revered for his passion, success and commitment throughout European football but mysteriously, never got the respect he deserved in England.

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A fine inside-forward and half-back for Fulham, West Brom and England, he starred in the great 1960/61 England side that beat Scotland 9-3 but missed the 1962 World Cup with an ankle injury.

If he and striker Bobby Smith had been fit, England might have done better than the last eight. Such ill luck would pepper his career as manager.

Heading home against Hull - 1953

For many years after the semi-final of Italia 90, he would recall, with incredulity, the width of the post that had denied Chris Waddle and England a place in the final.

In his first proper managerial job at Fulham in the 1960s, he learned he had been fired from an Evening Standard hoarding.

At Sporting Lisbon, his reward for steering a shambolic club to the top of the Portuguese league for the first time in 15 years was the sack in December 1994.

At Barcelona two years later, given the impossible task of replacing local football deity Johan Cruyff, he won the Cup-Winners’ Cup but was still moved upstairs to make room for Louis van Gaal.

At Newcastle, he was their most successful manager since Kevin Keegan but was summarily dismissed after an iffy start to 2004/05.

Yet Robson was no nearly man.

He won the FA Cup and UEFA Cup with Ipswich, the Eredivisie twice with PSV, the Portuguese league twice with Porto (where fans dubbed him “Bobby Five O” because the team won 5-0 so often), the Cup-Winners’ Cup and the Copa del Rey with Barcelona.

Leading Ipswich to the runners-up spot twice was, even in the more open context of English football in the 1970s, some feat, especially as he only signed about 14 players in 13 years at the club.

Honoured in Ipswich

His England reign has never been properly evaluated.

His World Cup record – the last eight in 1986 and the semis in 1990 – puts him behind only Sir Alf Ramsey in the pantheon of England managers (although Robson’s record in the European Championships was much less impressive).

He had the misfortune as England manager to be confronted with a peculiarly vicious press pack who made fun of his habit of misnaming players, his expression (he had the demeanour, said one writer, “of a man who suspects he has left the gas on at home”) and tactical acumen.

At one point, Robson ruminated: “The papers think the World Cup is just for them.”

He had a point and, as his successors struggled to match his achievements, it became clear that he had actually managed England far more effectively than many hacks cared to admit.

Even so, some writers have tried to take the shine off his glory at Italia 90 by insisting that the tactical shift to a sweeper and away from 4-4-2 was the players’ idea, not his.

Robson denied this vehemently but even if you take the least flattering view of this episode, you have to credit Robson for having the imagination and the flexibility to try the tactical switch.

His greatest legacy to European football, apart from his dignity, passion and the cultured football his teams invariably played, is probably the talent he has nurtured and discovered.

Gazza, Romario, Ronaldo, Arnold Muhren, Peter Beardsley, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Terry Butcher and Kevin Beattie all owe a debt to him, while Frank Arnesen and Jose Mourinho learned a lot from working with him as they rose through the coaching system.

"Here's a tenner, go and do something about that hair..."

Robson’s integrity, courage and determination reminds me of Albert Camus’s remark that “a man does not show his greatness by remaining at one extreme but rather by touching both at once.”

Robson’s life has spanned the extremes of European football.

He will be particularly mourned in Barcelona, Birmingham, Eindhoven, Ipswich, London, Newcastle and Porto, but his memory will endure throughout the European game.

He once said of Neil Webb: “Everybody’s special, but Webbie’s special special” – and then left him on the bench for most of Italia 90.

Many coaches and players are special, but Sir Bobby was “special special.”

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Icarus allsorts

2009-07-24T09:00:00Z

If you want to explain the mysterious decline of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, you might have to gen up on Greek mythology.

The Icarus paradox sounds like a bad thriller, written by a ghost of the late Robert Ludlum, but it is actually an elegant theory, coined by a business writer called Danny Miller, to explain why apparently successful companies collapse.

In a nutshell, Miller says the reason is that their strengths, like Icarus’s waxwings, can turn into fatal weaknesses.

Between 2001/02 and 2004/05, Arsenal won the Premiership twice and were runners-up twice. They never amassed less than 78 points and their average tally was 84.5.

In the last four seasons, they have racked up three fourth place finishes and one third and averaged 72.5 points a season.

You can put this into a context that includes such factors as the advent of Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea, but the decline is still stark.

And, for me, Miller’s business theory helps explain it.

One of the ways that strengths turn into weaknesses, he suggests, is that the bits of an organisation that are strongest – it might be product development or marketing or sales – become stars that begin to attract the resources previously devoted to less glamorous, but vital, bits of the company.

And that, in essence, is what has happened at Arsenal.

The qualities that were most attractive about Wenger’s team in their all-conquering era – youth, fluidity, intelligence, pace and confidence in possession – have effectively taken over the team.

And the other qualities that side shared with many great teams – physical power, the ability to close down opponents in midfield, competitive spirit, experience of big games, a certain ruthless selfishness in front of goal, and competent defensive organization – have all been crowded out.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s jibe that Arsenal are a junior team was unfair but not entirely stupid.

Instead of trophies, the fans are being consoled with visions of how good this team – if it stays together – will be at some unspecified point in the future.

This is the rhetoric you use to justify unexpected defeat in the FA Youth Cup, not the language that inspires the self-belief that led Barcelona to triumph last season.

You can see a similar process at work at many other great teams.

The Total Football that made Ajax legendary degenerated, within five years, into a regime where some players put their preferences ahead of the team.

Even the great Cruyff retreated into midfield either through exhaustion or, some have suggested, a desire to protect himself from enraged cloggers, and often abandoned his original role as the most creative attacking spearhead since Alfredo di Stefano.

Di Stefano was always the fulcrum of the greatest Real Madrid side, even though such geniuses as Puskas, Gento and Kopa surrounded him.

But as Real declined, they lost their shape and began to rely ever more heavily on Di Stefano and Puskas.

By 1964, Di Stefano, who was nearly 38, could not control the game against opposition as strong as Helenio Herrera’s Inter.

In the European Cup final that year, Di Stefano flitted in and out of the game. Real lost 3-1 and the Nerazzurri became the first team to win the trophy without losing a match.

The most blatant footballing example of Miller’s paradox is probably Real Madrid in the galacticos era, where the transfer budget was spent entirely on artistes, the craft and graft of Makelele was surplus to requirements, and the player who could have replaced him, Patrick Vieira, wasn’t offered the right deal because he wouldn’t sell enough shirts.

Real Madrid fans must hope that Florentino Perez has learned that shirt sales and artistry are not the only criteria on which teams can be judged although after watching his interview with Mihir Bose I’m not so sure.

In his blog, Bose draws entirely the wrong lesson from Hollywood history when analysing Perez’s summer spending spree.

He likens it to the Hollywood studio tactic of hiring as many stars as possible.

It’s true that MGM, for example, used to boast it had more stars than in heaven. But those stars were often signed cheap, tied to punishing contracts, suspended if they didn’t want to make a particular film or were deemed to have broken the infamous morals clause and released as soon as they were deemed to be past their best.

Behind the glamour and the hype, Hollywood studios were run by ruthless autocrats who could – and did – break the careers of the world’s greatest stars.

And the stars all knew that. When fear and autocracy no longer ruled Tinseltown, the studio system collapsed. I’m not sure if there is a parallel with Real there at all.

Bose – and Perez – are right to point out that Real, since the days of Santiago Bernabeu, has always been a president’s club.

This model worked brilliantly in the 1950s, when European football was a very different business, but has only worked sporadically since – either at Real or at other clubs like Inter.

One of the fascinating sub-plots this season will be to see whether the Bernabeu strategy can still work, 31 years after its originator died.

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The annual football famine

2009-07-22T07:00:00Z

Do you remember when football shut down for the summer?

It’s hard to believe there was a time when managers didn’t daily accuse each other of hypocrisy in the back pages.

When we only knew of transfers after they had happened, like a bolt from the blue, and when you didn’t show your allegiance by wearing a replica shirt but by spraying, carving or daubing your club’s initials on any convenient surface.

And if you didn’t add the “FC” at the end you just weren’t doing it right.

July was always the cruellest month when I was a kid.

The FA Cup final was a distant memory, the annual, eternally unsuccessful quest for the Shoot league ladders had not yet begun and my aunt was grappling with the exotic mundanity of the Australian football pools.

So to fill my football-starved summers, my cousin and I would play fantasy football.

My cousin Mick’s fantasy football involved Subbuteo, lovingly staged international tournaments, and the results recorded with a black fountain pen in a Silvine exercise book.

He was such a perfectionist that underneath his team-sheets he even wrote in the half-time scores and the referee’s name with the nationality thoughtfully added in brackets: “Lo Bello (Italy).”

My fantasy football was more rudimentary. You started with the ball at one end of the lawn and had five touches to get it into the goal at the other end. After the fifth touch, possession passed to the other side.

Looking back, it seems as if, by osmosis, I had absorbed this rule from that weird northern cult known as rugby league.

My fantasy was more elaborate than Mick’s. I was, of course, the free-scoring centre-forward in a fictional team called Stanton Rangers.

Fictional football team names are crap aren’t they? My team was a rip off of Stafford Rangers who, to my limited, boyish understanding, were bossing non-league back in the 1970s.

To be fair, Stanton Rangers is no better or worse than Melchester Rovers.

My results were written down too, but scrappily in an exercise book mysteriously covered in the kind of ink blots my sarcastic Maths teacher used to circle in red and write “Eek!” – or if they were really big “Triple eek!” – next to.

I never showed these results to anyone because, mysteriously, such football make-believe wasn’t as cool as the slavish recreation of World Cups many of my mates were engaged in, as they relentlessly upgraded their plastic stadia with corner flags, TV tower and fencing.

At weekends, I would be drilled by an exacting tutor, my father, in the intricacies of curving the ball from a free-kick.

I had watched Rivelino do it and, with the confidence of youth, I assumed that I could to. All it took was hours of practice.

I might have too, but after a summer of practice, with the ball stubbornly refusing to curve around any object, I rebelled and announced I wanted to go back to kicking a ball around the lawn.

Father rebuked me for wanting to play “kick and rush like all the other bloody Europeans.” I forgave Dad the lecture but have nurtured an irrational grudge against Brazilian football ever since.

The inevitable result of such sporting deprivation was that hope built throughout the summer.

By the time you had collected the league ladders and tried – and failed – to find someone who could swap you for the Scottish Division Two clubs, you were utterly, irrationally convinced that this would be the season.

And on the opening day, some Saturday at the end of August, hope collided with reality.

And reality, more often than not, won.

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Purple Monkey business

2009-07-20T08:00:00Z

Willie McStay’s new employer, Ujpest, were very nearly immortalised in the Half Man Half Biscuit song All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit.

But football’s funniest troubadours once told Champions they weren’t sure how to spell or pronounce Ujpest Dosza (the club’s old name) so they settled on Dukla Prague.

That said, Dukla Prague does scan better.

McStay called the decision to move to Budapest to coach one of Hungary’s most famous teams a “no brainer.”

The ‘golden age’ that McStay, like every other Ujpest coach, will somehow have to come to terms with started in 1967, when Lajos Baroti arrived as coach, and petered out in the early 1980s, as the Hungarian game degenerated.

The Purple Monkeys could have won the 1969 Fairs Cup. Trounced 3-0 by Newcastle United in the first leg, they were 2-0 up in front of their own fans at half-time in the second leg in Budapest.

But Newcastle manager Joe Harvey made his legendary speech in the dressing room (“Get one goal and they’ll fold like a pack of cards”), Bobby Moncur scored within a minute of the restart and the Magpies never looked back.

In England, that is the extent of Ujpest’s fame. But from 1971/72 to 1973/74, Ferencvaros’s fiercest rivals always made the last eight of the European Cup.

In 1973, they only missed out on the last four on away goals (lucky Juventus) but in 1974, they reached the semis, losing to eventual winners Bayern..

In Hungary, Ujpest were utterly dominant. In 1968, they contrived to finish as runners-up despite racking up 102 goals in 30 matches.

In 1969, they won the first of seven consecutive Hungarian titles. After plummeting to third, they bounced back to win the league again in 1978 (banging in a mere 95 goals this time) and 1979.

In the cavalier/roundhead entertainers/winning ugly dichotomy that divides football, Ujpest were definitely cavalier entertainers.

Their success was built upon an astonishing front line.

Laszlo Fazekas scored 252 goals in 407 games and Antal Dunai was one of the most prolific strikers in Europe in the late 1960s.

While the greatest of them all, the dashing, skilful Ferenc Bene averaged a goal every other game for Hungary (despite being forced to play on the wing because Florian Albert was usually deployed as the central striker).

And his stats for his club were, as Motty might say, “quite remarkable”: 303 goals in 417 games. He won gold with the Hungarians at the 1964 Olympics but didn’t hang up his boots until 1979.

Bene was one of the unsung heroes of the 1966 World Cup, scoring in every game for Hungary (who were then managed by Baroti), twisting and dribbling past most of the Brazilian defence before beating Gylmar – just two minutes and 20 seconds into this clip – in a 3-1 victory that many pundits still describe as the game of the tournament.

If Bene hadn’t played for the country that gave us Puskas, Hidegkuti, Kocsis, and Kubala he’d have been even more famous.

Ujpests’s genetic predisposition to attack reflects, in part, the feats of such pre-World War II strikers as Ferenc Szusza (whose astonishing stats – 392 goals in 463 games – stand comparison with any goalscorer from any era and explain why the club chose to name its stadium after him) and Gyula Zsengeller who, in 1938/39, scored six goals in a match on three separate occasions.

Ujpest stars have been less prolific of late – and haven’t won the league since 1998 (they were runners-up last season, nine points behind Debreceni.).

Ending that famine would help McStay escape from Baroti’s shadow. His timing might just be immaculate.

Hungarian football looks livelier than it has for decades. The national team, guided by Erwin Koeman, are a surprising second in their 2010 qualifying group.

The league seems resilient, despite the credit crunch. Foreign investment (Sheffield United have linked up with Ferencvaros, Ujpest have links to Celtic and West Ham while Honved is owned by George Hemingway, an American businessman of Hungarian origin) and foreign coaching expertise have helped Hungarian football crawl back from the abyss.

Budapest even has a Scottish themed pub The Caledonian where the chefs occasionally deep-fry Mars bars.

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Ivan Hasek’s double trouble

2009-07-15T07:00:00Z

Ivan Hasek, the midfielder who skippered Czechoslovakia at Italia 90, has done something very brave. Or very stupid.

The newly elected Czech FA president has decided, after failing to persuade Slavia Prague manager Karel Jarolim to become the country’s fourth national coach in 13 months, to do the job himself.

Adviser Karel Bruckner will help Hasek, who has successfully managed Sparta Prague.

Hasek: "Oh 'eck, what I have done"

Thirteen and a bit years ago, on a sunny afternoon at Wembley, I quietly cheered on the Czechs in the Euro 96 final. I’d had a soft spot for the Czechs ever since Lladislav Petras scored that stunner against Brazil in the 1970 World Cup.

What Petras started, Alexander Dubcek and Milan Kundera consummated. Dubcek was the hero of 1968’s doomed Prague Spring, a heroic effort to humanise the eastern bloc that was 21 years ahead of its time.

Kundera wrote the great novel The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting. As an impressionable youth in the 1970s and 1980s, I found the Czechs tragic, heroic, funny and sexy, even though I’d never met any.

I hadn’t even realised that Petras and Dubcek were actually Slovakian.

The boys of 1996 – especially Pavel Nedved, Patrik Berger, Karel Poborsky, and Vladimir Smicer – made a decent living from European football. Smicer, now back at Slavia Prague, won the UEFA Champions League with Liverpool while Nedved won the Ballon d’or.

Poborsky gave his name to the Poborsky lob (recreated for Phoenix From The Flames) an inspired impromptu bit of vision and trickery against Portugal that earned him a dream move to Old Trafford that turned nightmarish.

As a member of the Czech FA’s new ruling committee, Poborsky’s new mission is to help lead Czech football out of the doldrums.

The last national coach, Frantisek Straka - dismissed after one victory against Malta - believes Czech football is paying for nostalgia: “None of us wanted to admit that one generation of players was on the way out. We forgot to give chances to certain players who went unnoticed.”

The Germans, he said, had faced a similar problem but dealt with it: “We just closed our eyes.”

The national side’s decline has been marred by the kind of scandals that once disfigured England campaigns.

Six Czech players were photographed at a restaurant till 6.30am with three ladies of the night after losing 2-1 to Slovakia, a result that jeopardized their 2010 World Cup place.

All six players – including Milan Baros and Martin Fenin – were banned from the national team for life.

Bad boy: Milan Baros

No wonder Straka, in his brief reign, made a rousing appeal for players to feel proud to wear the Czech shirt.

Sadly his speech reminded me of Michael Parkinson’s recasting of Dr Johnson’s most famous aphorism: patriotism isn’t just the last refuge of the scoundrel, it’s also the last resort of a lost cause.

It is tempting to draw parallels with the Czech Republic’s political troubles. Lacklustre as the Czech team have been, they look stellar when compared to the shambling incompetence that typified the Czech’s six-month presidency of the European Union.

Among the highlights was the Czech prime minister appearing naked and (a Czech tabloid gleefully suggested) “slightly aroused” at Silvio Berlusconi’s villa and an official artwork called Entropa that depicted fellow EU member Bulgaria as a toilet.

The recent history of Czech football has seen the wrong kind of laughter and prompted much forgetting. But Hasek has some talent to call on.

Like 22-year-old midfielder Ludas Kalouda (aka the new Nedved) and 19-year-old striker Tomas Necid. Marek Suchy, Czech young player of the year in 2006, has shown promise as a centre-back with the versatility to play in midfield.

The two Czech stars who are genuinely world class are Petr Cech and, when he finally returns, Tomas Rosicky.

But Czech football is suffering from an affliction known, in Budapest, as “the Hungarian syndrome,” a mysterious condition that prevents promising young, technically accomplished, footballers from ever fulfilling their potential.

In Hungary, the problem used to be that many young stars could earn more warming benches in Austria’s lower divisions.

Young Czech internationals play their club football for Besiktas, CSKA Moscow, Dnipro Dnipropetrosvk, Viking (in Norway) and Wolfsburg. Tomas Pekhart, the prolific U21 striker signed by Spurs in 2006, may get some regular football now he’s back at Slavia Prague on loan.

In three years at Spurs, Pekhart didn’t start a single first-team game.

Pekhart struggles to shine

The good news is that, with Barcelona and Spain triumphing, the traditional Czech emphasis on possession football is back in fashion.

Midfielder Lubo Lapsansky describes Czech football as “always about playing short balls, a lot of movement off the ball, trying to create the space for the players for the ball to be played into. It's a fairly tactical game. Players are required in any position, and need to be technically smart in advance.

"You drag the players out, and open up the space behind and you start attacking. You learn your patterns, you don't panic, you keep the ball till things open up. That's pretty much what Czech football is all about.”

With predictable perversity, the fixture list has decreed that the first shot at redemption for the Czechs – and Hasek – comes against Slovakia in Bratislava this September.

Czech hopes of a place in South Africa are not completely dead – they trail runners-up Northern Ireland by five points with a game in hand.

The Bratislava game may tell us whether Hasek has, with his unprecedented dual role, shown a lot of guts or no sense at all.

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Super trooper

2009-07-13T09:00:00Z

You can tell there’s no football being played because Matthew Syed, The Times columnist by-lined as ‘sports journalist of the year’, has chosen to fill the pages of The Thunderer with that old standby of a desperate hack with nothing to say and column inches to fill.

That’s right: another piece proclaiming the inevitability of a European super league.

To be fair, Syed has an excuse: Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has put the idea into circulation again.

But pieces proclaiming the inevitability of a super league have been appearing since I edited FourFourTwo back in 1066, er 1994, and the formula is as predictable as the template for a football autobiography.

"Boys, I've got an idea..."

First, someone like Perez is invoked to justify raising this dreary old spectre.

Second, Stefan Szymanski, a London-based academic who wrote the very good book Winners And Losers: The Business Strategy Of Football is roped into saying that the economic case for a super league has never been stronger.

(Szymanski is a very bright bloke, a favourite source of opinion for Champions. but he does lose all sense of perspective when the European super league is mentioned.)

Third, a few inflated figures, taken completely out of context, are thrown in to suggest just how many billions such a venture would create.

Fourth, the franchise system, which characterises America’s major sports, is cited as a model and approving noises are made about salary caps and the draft, where the best young players can be assigned to some of the smaller teams.

And finally, the journalist concerned, mindful of the political difficulties involved in wholeheartedly recommending such an enterprise, cries a few crocodile tears and effectively says that, much as we are all appalled by the idea, the logic is inescapable.

Syed’s piece touches most of these bases. He even throws in the prospect of the enriched owners of these super league clubs, out of a sense of noblesse oblige, subsidising ticket prices for fans out of their new wealth.

Hmmm, now how likely is that exactly?

“So long as the regulatory issues are surmounted.” These are my favourite eight words in the column.

Syed mentions “regulatory issues” as a mere aside, conveniently glossing over the fact that surmounting the regulatory issues that prevent the arrangements that make American sports profitable – a salary cap and the draft – working in Europe will be about as simple and straightforward as reuniting north and south Korea.

Despite prodding by UEFA, the European Commission has not yet recognised what Eurocrats call the “specificity” of sport.

In other words, it hasn’t yet formally said that sport is a special field of human endeavour and, as such, is immune to the rules and regulations which govern other industries.

And until it does so, salary caps and drafts will remain in breach of the pact that lies at the heart of the European Union: the Treaty of Rome which guarantees freedom of labour.

Will Europe’s heads of state agree to amend that for the convenience of Florentino Perez? Bear in mind, this process would require the unanimous consent of EU members and, in some countries, a referendum.

Even with Milan’s impresario Silvio Berlusconi running Italy, Europe’s leaders might conclude that they have more important things to be doing right now.

"Errrrr, I'll get back to you"

Even if the European Commission recognises sport’s specificity, it is far from clear whether that would give clubs the right to cap salaries.

The European Commission, despite the flak it is regularly exposed to by the intellectual pygmies on the Daily Mail’s leader desk, has been pretty sensible in its approach to sport.

When UEFA asked it to support Platini’s attempt to ban international transfers for players under 18, the Commission effectively said: “OK, prove to us this will actually stop football hiring ‘child labour’ and we’ll consider it.”

Somehow, I can’t see it agreeing to waive the rules on salaries for the convenience of a few billionaires.

Szymanski always seems to suggest that money will solve the problem as if the European Commission is uniquely susceptible to corporate clout.

Go tell that to Microsoft who, in 2004, were fined £331 million by the Commission for abusing its market dominance.

Syed, like every super league prophet, seems to take it as read that the prospect of Europe’s big clubs meeting each other twice a week would thrill supporters, the media, sponsors and broadcasters.

I would refer him to the law of diminishing returns, a concept he seems never to have heard of but is memorably cited by the great Europhilosopher Martin Fry in the ABC song Many Happy Returns.

Surely one of the reasons that Barcelona vs Manchester United is such a compelling spectacle is that it doesn’t happen every week?

In Hollywood, the usual guideline is that sequels only make 66-75 percent of the revenue racked up by the original movie. A few break that rule. Most don’t, a fact for which we should all be thankful, as it has stopped the studios trying to foist Police Academy 75 on us.

The timing is just plain wrong. The world’s broadcasters, reeling from vanishing advertising revenues and shrinking audiences, won’t all be willing to stump up the extra billions needed to screen such a tournament.

The market for sports sponsorship is pretty lean. And can you imagine the writs that would fly if, for example, the Premier League’s 'Big Four' pulled out of it?

Sheffield United vs West Ham would, in comparison, be a tempest in a teacup.

"Good game. See you next week..."

Syed concludes that, horrible as all this sounds, the super league clubs will probably come to some kind of compromise with UEFA and FIFA to avoid players being banned from international competitions.

I’m not quite sure what kind of compromise he has in mind, or even if he is using the word compromise in the way that you and I might understand it.

Don’t compromises usually involve two parties giving up something they want to protect something they hold dearer?

If the super league wrecked the Champions League, what would there be left for UEFA to compromise over?

So to recap then, despite what our sports journalist of the year says, a super league is not inevitable. Nor, indeed, would it necessarily be that super.

But it is a super way to fill a few column inches on a slow day. And will be for years to come.

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Why Real Madrid haven't got Kaka’s number

2009-07-03T13:00:00Z

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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Betamax, Best & Buzz

2009-06-29T09:00:00Z

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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The outlaw known as CR7

2009-06-26T09:00:00Z

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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Matt, Macca & Johnny Foreigner

2009-06-21T11:00:00Z

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

2009-06-19T11:00:00Z

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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Cristiano, Alf & the world’s most expensive racehorse

2009-06-16T07:30:00Z

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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Galacticos, urchins and why CR7 let United down

2009-06-12T10:00:00Z

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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Rebels or robots: Which would you prefer?

2009-06-08T09:30:00Z

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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The perfect man to coach Chelsea

2009-06-04T13:00:00Z

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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The King, Rosbif and Cruyff

2009-05-29T13:00:00Z

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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2009-05-27T07:00:00Z

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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By far the strangest team…

2009-05-24T11:00:00Z

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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Seven ways to lose a European Cup final

2009-05-21T09:00:00Z

1. Turn the match into a holy war
Johan Cruyff had a messianic streak as a manager. And in 1994, as his Barcelona dream team reached their second European Cup final in three years, he was rash enough to bill the contest, against Fabio Capello’s AC Milan, as a battle for the soul of European football.

Attack vs defence, romance vs pragmatism, flair vs efficiency, good guys vs bad guys. If Milan won, Cruyff suggested, it would be the death of football.

Cruyff may have hoped such rhetoric would unbalance the opposition by enraging them. All it really did was ensue that such gifted professionals as Maldini, Boban, Donadoni, Massaro, Savicevic and Desailly were truly motivated.

Cruyff was so busy casting the final as a jihad he was undone by Capello’s surprisingly attacking game plan. By the 47th minute, when Savicevic lobbed Zubizarreta to make it 3-0, the contest was over.

Two trophyless years later, Cruyff was ousted from Camp Nou. His exit was a disgrace but his messianic conviction (“Before I make that mistake I do not make that mistake”) hadn’t always done his players any favours.

Desailly helps Milan destroy Barca

2. Misunderestimate the opposition
The build up to a game as historic as a European Cup final is so tricky that even the masters can get it wrong.

Researching the 1970 Feyenoord vs Celtic final for the latest issue of Champions, I was astonished to discover that even the great Jock Stein could be caught out by the occasion.

Stein’s Celtic had thrilled Europe in 1967 with their demolition of Inter in Lisbon. But at Inter’s ground, the San Siro, his team came unstuck against Ernst Happel’s Feyenoord.

This defeat is such a sore point its causes are still being debated. Stein maintained that too many of his players had a bad night. Most of his players thought Stein had kept the build-up too low key and underestimated the Dutch champions.

Just as Inter coach Helenio Herrera had done in 1967, Stein set out his team in their usual way. As his players took to the pitch, his suggestion that the Feyenoord team would be “sh*tting themselves” rang in their ears.

But Feyenoord’s Austrian coach Ernst Happel did for Stein. Celtic, Happel said, did one thing better than anybody else: attack. Stop them attacking and you could beat them. Feyenoord did just that.

They triple marked Jimmy Johnstone, slowed the game’s tempo so much that Celtic could find no rhythm and then played some fine attacking football, deservedly winning 2-1 in extra-time. No Scottish side has made the European Cup final since.

3. Write your victory speech in advance
Bayern president Fritz Scherer did this in 1987, believing that this European Cup final would mark “the dawning of a great new era” for the club.

With 77 minutes gone, and Bayern 1-0 up, such confidence seemed well placed. But in three minutes, Bayern conceded twice – the equaliser that superb nonchalant back-heel by Rabah Madjer – and lost the final. Scherer ripped up his speech.

Madjer back-heels home

4. Be outfoxed at half-time
Rafa Benitez isn’t the only manager to turn a final with a half-time switcheroo. In 1962, Benfica returned to the dressing room 3-2 down to Real Madrid.

But their coach Beta Guttman just told Cavem to mark Alfredo Di Stefano in the second half, cutting off the supply to Ferenc Puskas, who had already scored a hat-trick. The ploy worked. Benfica won the second half 3-1 and the game 5-3.

5. Concede the initiative
Liverpool’s return from the living dead in Istanbul wasn’t just remarkable because it was the only time a team has comeback from 3-0 down to win a European Cup final.

Even more amazingly, this resurrection happened against Milan, a club with a glorious tradition of winning the European Cup so swiftly and mercilessly their shell-shocked opponents are left wondering ‘what just happened?’

In 1969, under Nereo Rocco, the Rossoneri abandoned the catenaccio that had stifled Manchester United in the semi-final, to shock Rinus Michels’ talented young Ajax side, going 2-0 up after 39 minutes and restoring their two goal margin in the 67th minute.

They did the same against Steaua (in 1990) and Barcelona (in 1994). Bizarrely, Inter and Juventus, who faced Ajax in the 1972 and 1973 finals, ignored Rocco’s successful attacking game-plan, stuck to counter and catenaccio and were comprehensively outplayed.

6. Be caught out tactically
There’s a lot to be said for approaching a final – as Barcelona will almost certainly do – with the attitude that: this is who we are, this is how we play and let the other team worry about us.

The risk is that the opposing coach will worry so much they find a way of beating you.

Happel did just that against Giovanni Trapattoni’s Juve in 1983 to win the European Cup for a second time with Hamburg. He simply switched his Danish striker Lars Bastrup to the left, so he would face Juve’s attacking full-back Antonio Cabrini.

Trap tried to neutralise this ploy by asking Claudio Gentile to follow Bastrup and man-mark him. That left a hole on the right which Marco Tardelli failed to cover and from which Felix Magath popped up to score the only goal.

When you watch the goal you can see, just before Magath’s great strike, a veritable prairie’s worth of space on that side of the pitch.

Stein’s demolition of Inter in 1967 was built on his use of attacking full-backs, the very weapon Herrera had perfected by schooling Giacinto Facchetti to bomb forward for the Nerazzurri.

And Milan’s victories in 1969 and 1994 were inspired by their coaches refusing to stick to the script as they set out their teams.

Magath lets rip from long-range

7. Go two goals down
In 53 European Cup finals, only three teams have recovered from a two goal deficit to win: Real Madrid (in 1956), Benfica (in 1962) and Liverpool (in 2005).

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The European Cup final that sparked a revolution

2009-05-19T10:00:00Z

In 1960, a 19-year-old trainee striker on Queens Park’s books watched in wonder from the schoolboys’ enclosure at Hampden Park as Real Madrid walloped Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 to win the fifth European Cup.

That trainee striker was called Alex Ferguson. And the final he was watching wasn’t just magical, it was revolutionary.

Real celebrate in 1960

Before that game, the British attitude to European football was summed up, at its worst, by Rangers manager Scot Symon, who on landing in Germany before the semi-final away leg asked: “Eintracht? Who are they?”

He didn’t bother to inspect the pitch because Rangers would do that “during the game.” His reward for such insouciance? A 12-4 thrashing over two legs by Eintracht.

After the 1960 final – with the likes of Andy Roxburgh, ‘Jinking’ Jimmy Johnstone and Billy Bremner also in the crowd – the blinkers came off.

The Hungarian genius Ferenc Puskas, still the only man to score four goals in a European Cup final, and the Argentine total footballer Alfredo di Stefano (who only scored three at Hampden) were idolised by the likes of George Best, Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Charlton.

The 7-3 inspired a young manager called Don Revie to make Leeds United wear white.

Manchester United’s Scottish coach, Matt Busby, had challenged British football’s isolationism by ignoring the apparatchiks to enter the European Cup. His countrymen – managers like Jock Stein and Willie Waddell – began to seriously study Europe’s methods.

When Stein was moonlighting as Scotland coach in 1965 he quizzed Giacinto Facchetti about the catenaccio with which Helenio Herrera’s Inter dominated European football.

Stein used that knowledge to devastating effect in 1967 when Celtic beat Inter, recording the most comprehensive 2-1 victory ever in a European Cup final.

Cosmopolitan, tactically sophisticated, glamorous, Inter looked, one Celtic player said, “like Ambre Solaire men.” But they were vanquished – some estimates suggest Celtic had 42 shots on goal – by what Stein called “pure, inventive football.”

To ensure Celtic were in the right attacking mood, the manager showed a tape of the 1960 final before the game.

Celtic tonk Inter in '67

The magical, flickering black and white footage of Puskas and Di Stefano had also entranced two 14-year-old Dutch kids, Barrie Hulshoff and Gerrie Muhren.

As striker and midfielder, they won three European Cups with Ajax. But for Muhren, the greatest moment of his career came in April 1973 when, in a European Cup semi-final against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu, he juggled the ball on the half-way line and was applauded by the home crowd.

As Muhren told David Winner in Brilliant Orange: “It was always my dream to play good soccer against Real Madrid.”

Ajax’s greatest player, Johan Cruyff, was the most complete footballer since Di Stefano. With his old boss Rinus Michels and another Ajax escapee, Johan Neeskens (who would later assist Frank Rijkaard as Barca coach), he founded a school of football in Barcelona.

A Dutch school based on movement, possession and technique but influenced, strongly, by the skill, passing, interaction and movement, of the great Real side.

That Dutch school acquired an unorthodox Italian influence when Frank Rijkaard, a Dutch master in Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, took over at Camp Nou.

A former shoe salesman, Sacchi was a zealot, determined to change the defensive culture of Italian football. As he told Jonathan Wilson, “Holland in the 1970s really took my breath away. The television was too small: I felt like I needed to see the whole pitch to fully understand it.”

Inspired by Honved (where Puskas made his name), Real, Brazil and Holland, Sacchi created an attacking Milan team based on movement, pressing and the conviction that to be truly great you didn’t just have to win, you had to entertain.

Rijkaard’s team initially did both, before the team spirit evaporated, but the same belief underpins Pep Guardiola’s Barca.

So this UEFA Champions League final should be a fascinating contest.

Guardiola, who very nearly joined United when he left Camp Nou in 2001, learned his craft in midfield under Cruyff and is steeped in a school of football that stretches back to Real Madrid in 1960.

Guardiola’s opponent, Sir Alex Ferguson, treasures his memories of the 1960 final and has often, as a manager, shown a weakness for players of technique and vision in midfield and strikers who are more than just predators.

It is crass to say he was searching for a new Puskas or Di Stefano but Cantona, Veron, Rooney, Berbatov and the near signing of Gazza are all testimony to the United manager’s determination to find attackers and midfielders with technique, imagination and vision.

Ferguson’s first European trophy – a Cup Winners’ Cup with Aberdeen in 1983 – was won against a Real Madrid side coached by Di Stefano. Ferguson’s mentor Jock Stein famously suggested that the Dons boss should present The White Arrow with a bottle of whisky, as if Aberdeen were just happy to be there.

Ferguson was delighted when Di Stefano accepted the gift with a puzzled smile.

Aberdeen and Alex Ferguson (r) lift Cup Winners' Cup in '83

In 1960 in Glasgow, an Argentine genius orchestrated a European Cup final that changed football forever. In 2009 in Rome, another Argentine genius will hope to be half as influential as Di Stefano.

The biggest threat to Messi’s supremacy is a Portuguese No.7 who seems to nurture the hope that, one day, he will join Di Stefano, Puskas, Gento and Zidane in Real’s pantheon of legends.

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Calcio’s Venetian tragedy

2009-05-12T07:00:00Z

You will be relieved to hear that Didier Drogba is not castigated or lauded in this blog which contains no jokes about the synthetic Brezhnevian quality of Gordon Brown’s smile and has nothing to say about Ledley King’s nightlife.

Seeking some solace from the hysteria surrounding events at Stamford Bridge last week, my thoughts turned to poor SSC Venezia, a club sinking almost as fast as the city it calls home.

I should probably explain why.

In my eyes, you either support a big club (Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid) or you don’t.

And if you don’t – I write as someone whose football allegiances have been hopelessly split between Leicester City and Nuneaton Town (nee Borough) since the 1960s – you tend to instinctively sympathise with the game’s other fringe outfits. Teams like SSC Venezia, aka the Leoni Alati (Winged Lions).

You can tell a lot about a club by scanning the ‘notable players’ on their Wikipedia page. On Venezia’s, five names stand out for different reasons: Can Bartu, Maurizio Ganz, Nil Lamptey, Andrea Silenzi, Christian Vieri.

Seasoned goal-getter: Maurizio Ganz

Bartu, a Turkish striker, is best known for scoring for Fenerbahce’s football and basketball teams on the same day in January 1957.

Lamptey was one of many ‘new Peles’ who spurned greatness. Silenzi, signed by Nottingham Forest in 1996/97 had done enough, after 10 games, to be officially named the worst foreign player ever bought for the Premiership.

Vieri played 29 games for Venezia in the mid-1980s on his road to infamy. Maurizio Ganz was a ‘have boots will travel’ striker whose impressive haul of 204 goals in 469 games at 14 clubs included eight for Venezia while on loan.

I remember Ganz well because, on my first trip to Venice in 2000, we bought my five-year-old son a Venezia brown, green and orange shirt – yep, very much like a humbug – with Ganz’s name on it.

As my son played one afternoon in Campo San Stefano, young Venetian men waved their arms in ironic homage. Ganz had scored twice that afternoon for Venezia, then still in Serie A but already destined for relegation.

It’s odd the ties that bind us to clubs we have no business supporting.

From then on I have followed Venezia, albeit largely over the internet and, alas, this Easter, just missed them taking on the not so mighty Pergocrema in Serie C1. (The Winged Lions won 1-0).

Their ground is the only stadium in Italy that away supporters must take a boat to and run the (increasingly slight) risk of pirate attacks from home supporters. Just take the No.41 vaporetto to Saint Elena or, if you’re really flush, a motoscafi.

Unlike Leicester, who have choked in four finals, the Winged Lions have won the cup.

They enjoyed a brief heyday (winning the Coppa Italia and coming third in Serie A) in World War II and were recently run by Maurizio Zamparini who, incensed by council shilly-shallying over a new stadium, bought a new club (Palermo) and took the best players with him.

The Venezia side that shone briefly in the 1940s contained such greats as Valentino Mazzola and Enzo Loik who joined Il Grande Torino and died in the Superga crash in May 1949.

To lose one strong side is unlucky, but to lose another – in the Zamparini affair – is careless. Venezia lost its bearings in the 1940s and has never steered itself back on course.

In 1940/41, Mazzola and Loik both scored as the Winged Lions beat Roma, after a replay, to lift the Coppa Italia. In 1942/43, Venezia reached their second cup final in three years but lost 4-0 to a Torino side that included Loik and Mazzola (who scored against his old team.)

Walk around Venice today and you very rarely see the black shirt, trimmed with orange and green that is Venezia’s new home kit.

Even the kids I spotted kicking a football against a church wall in Campo Santa Margherita one sunny evening weren’t wearing Venezia shirts. There is a backstreets supporters club in Castello where 111 mostly old men gather to drink cheap red wine and bemoan the old days.

Venezia's Stadio Pierluigi Penzo

Ominously, on the island of Guidecca, I spotted a reasonably spruce café/club for Milan supporters.

With so much else going on – canals, 20 million tourists a year, magnificent buildings – it is easy to see why Venice might not care about football. But that wasn’t always so.

In the 18th century, as the painter Jan van Groevenbroeck famously recorded, calcio was the sport of local noblemen. A forced merger with the mainlanders of Mestre in 1987 didn’t help the club’s standing in Venice.

And, in recent years, this most romantic, yet ruthless city may just not want to be associated with a team that is near the bottom of Serie C1A.

Yet if Venice is to be more than a living heritage museum, a proper football team, bankrolled by a Venetian Silvio Berlusconi, could give its communal life some vitality. The post-match pub crawl along the Via Garibaldi was one of the finest in European football.

As the 60th anniversary of Superga nears, the homage paid to those fallen heroes will be bitter sweet for Venezia fans who will also mourn the break-up of a team that could have changed their history.

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Are Ronaldo & Rooney the new Di Stefano & Puskas?

2009-05-06T11:00:00Z

The short answer is: well, no.

The long answer is that though they don’t have the range of talents of the brightest stars ever to shine in Real Madrid’s firmament, they showed the kind of joy, technique and verve in their humbling of Arsenal that made the European Cup so special in the first place.

Ferenc Puskas and George Best would have approved of Cristiano Ronaldo’s performance at the Emirates, while even such professionally unimpressed living legends as Alfredo di Stefano and Johan Cruyff might privately concede that United's No.7 didn’t have a bad game.

Tactics, luck, and talent all helped decide this all-England semi-final.

But the hinge factor the tie swung on was that Manchester United had four players who could make and take chances, while Arsenal had just two: Robin Van Persie, injured for the first leg and not as effective as he would have wanted in the second, and Andrei Arshavin, who was cup-tied.

Ronnie and Rooney help outgun Arsenal

The Italians, who analyse football with a scientific rigour worthy of Galileo, like to classify their creative midfielders and strikers. A director (or general) like Gianni Rivera is a regista, a visionary playmaker (or No.10) is a fantasista and a striker is a goleador.

The European Cup has – from Puskas to Rivera, Cruyff to Platini and Stoitchkov to Zidane – been enriched by players who are all three. They’re probably better at two of the roles but do the other if need be.

In the last five years, with lesser teams realising that tediously defensive tactics can bridge the quality gap and coaches knowing almost as much about their opponents’ formations as their own, these three-players-in-one have often defined the difference between success and failure.

The last four UEFA Champions League winners have all featured a creative goalscorer at the very top of their game: Cristiano Ronaldo (2008), Kaka (2007), Ronaldinho (2006) and Steven Gerrard (2005).

Four out of the last five winners of the Golden Shoe, the award for Europe’s most prolific goalscorer, have fitted this template: CR7 (2008), Francesco Totti (2007) and Thierry Henry (2004 and 2005).

And the player most likely to succeed Ronaldo as European Footballer of the Year is a fantasista/goleador called Lionel Messi.

The rise of such talents is an inexorable consequence of the game’s lucrative pact with television.

Once you’ve accepted a billion or seven from TV networks to broadcast your wares, it would be stupid and churlish to insist that football is a sport not an entertainment.

Even Jose Mourinho, the Helenio Herrera for the new millennium, has had to accept that. So Manchester City’s bid for Kaka may have been ridiculous. But it was not stupid.

Di Stefano and Puskas celebrate in 1960

At their best, these artistes have the vision to find space, a particular trademark skill (Cruyff had his turn, Cristiano Ronaldo has two: the stepover king has now developed a cannonball shot from distance that is almost worthy of Puskas) and the ability to devastatingly change tempo as if they can accelerate or decelerate time.

Di Stefano did just that in the 1960 final, which Real Madrid won 7-3. With Real 6-2 up, he called for the ball in his own half and set off on a bewildering run which, after a few rapid-fire passes, ended with a powerful shot that flew into the bottom left-hand corner.

Above all, these greats are improvisers.

Remember Ronaldinho’s goal under the wall against Werder Bremen in 2006? Or that toe-poke goal against Chelsea in the first Battle of Stamford Bridge in 2005?

Petr Cech, like Eintracht’s unfortunate keeper Egon Loy, was left shell-shocked, asking, as a Hollywood executive might put it, “What just happened?”

They also, and it’s a trait they are rarely appreciated for, have guts.

It takes nerve to try a trick in front of 90,000 people in the stadium – and untold millions worldwide – fail and have another go.

And to bear the kicks from outraged defenders or the slings and arrows of critics like Italian football writer Gianni Brera, who derided this kind of player as “abattino” (a young priest) because of their perceived reluctance to do the dirty stuff.

The Brera view, which influenced Italy’s 1970 World Cup campaign, was that such players were luxuries. A team could only afford one of them.

So Rivera and Sandro Mazzola alternated in Mexico to no great effect. 39 years later, Ferguson has four of them in a squad and, when necessary, has played all four.

Ronaldinho bamboozles the Blues

England’s first dominance of the European Cup, with five 1-0s in six finals between 1977 and 1982, is not fondly remembered on the continent.

True, Nottingham Forest’s plucky triumphs were cherished by the kind of romantics who will always have a soft spot for St Etienne. And the majestic talent of Kenny Dalglish, another supreme maker and taker, is still spoken of in hushed tones in bars across Europe.

But this was not regarded in mainland Europe as one of football’s golden ages. This time, English clubs, albeit often with the best foreign talent money can buy, may finally win in a style that would cheer Puskas. That would, in a way, be perfectly fitting.

The Galloping Major’s artistry at Hampden Park in 1960 was, after all, one of the main reasons that the young Alex Ferguson fell completely and utterly in love with the European Cup.

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Welcome to the Tom, Jerry and Guus show

2009-05-01T11:00:00Z

I am not the first person in football to be duped by the genius of Guus Hiddink. Nor will I be the last. But I am undoubtedly the poorest.

Hiddink told Pedro Pinto, CNN’s roving football correspondent, Chelsea are a team that wants to attack and “cannot sit back”.

The trick in the UEFA Champions League, Hiddink confided, was to make sure you did some damage in the away leg. And then, in the pre-match press conference, he told the media this semi-final was a game between two teams who loved to attack.

What he really meant was: “This is a game between two teams who love to attack, one of whom has been ordered not to.”

The 4-2-3-1 – which at times felt more like 8-1-1 – did its job. Kind of.

The “uber-catenaccio” left Barcelona unsettled, depleted by injury and feeling cheated, with Xavi complaining that one team wanted to play football and one didn’t.

"Ye shall not pass..."

Certainly, a few Italian journalists I spoke to were ironically amused by the British press’ praise for Chelsea’s heroism. Such acclaim, they said, would never be lavished on any Serie A side that came to England and shut up shop.

Jean Tigana might say the odds slightly favour Barca. His Monaco side knocked Manchester United out after just such a result at home, drawing 1-1 at Old Trafford in the quarter-finals back in 1997/98.

Without an away goal, Hiddink cannot be as defensive in the second leg. And he will remember the wise words of Juande Ramos: “Barcelona are at their most dangerous when you’re attacking them.”

If Chelsea complete the job at Stamford Bridge, the closing stages of the 2009/10 Champions League will resemble one long advert for the versatility of Guus Hiddink.

Till now, under Roman Abramovich, the dilemma has been: you can win with Mourinhoesque efficiency or you can entertain, like Scolari at the start of the season, but you can’t have both.

But Hiddink has synthesized these contrasting strategies, giving us a new genetic blend of football you might call 'Moulari'.

One week it’s an eight goal thriller, the other it’s an exhibition of the lost black art of catenaccio. If you have the nous and the players to pull this off, this could be the best of all possible worlds.

And, after his misdirection ahead of the first leg. I can’t wait to see if Hiddink turns up for the next pre-match press conference carrying a giant red herring.

Arsene Wenger played a 4-2-3-1 to completely contrasting effect at Old Trafford. The final possession stats – 55 percent to United and 45 percent for Arsenal – don’t really reflect how badly the Gunners were overrun and how lucky they were not to leave Manchester 4-0 down and out.

Almunia keeps Gunners hopes in tact

This was the only semi-final I have ever seen played with the pace, rhythm and demented energy of a classic Tom And Jerry cartoon (one of those with Fred Quimby as producer).

Gazzetta Dello Sport felt, I think rightly, that Wenger’s tactical wheeze ceded control of midfield to United’s 4-3-3. As the Spanish daily Marca put it, Arsenal looked “tormented and flabbergasted by the fury of the Red Devils,” as tormented, in fact, as Tom whenever Jerry turned the tables on him.

In attack, the Gunners passed without penetration, never managing the kind of combination play that would open up United. Emmanuel Adebayor, Gazzetta noted, “resembled a Ferrari racing at Cinquecento speed”.

L’Equipe drolly described Arsenal’s marking as “rather lax, almost symbolic.”

That’s certainly how it looked for the ricochet that let in John O’Shea. Every set-piece can become a melodrama for Arsenal this season and, struggling to regroup after the corner, they gave United the freedom of the back post.

Still, both coaches will wonder if United will regret not killing the tie in the first leg.

The good, but irrelevant, news for United is that the whole of Belgium will be cheering them on, because an Arsenal triumph in Rome would deprive the Belgian champions (either Standard Liege or Anderlecht) of an automatic spot in the 2009/10 group stage.

The known unknown, as Andy Roxburgh, UEFA technical director, put it is that “Both away sides look capable of scoring.” And if United score first, will Arsenal manage to score three?

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Will Hiddink play one at the back?

2009-04-28T11:00:00Z

If you want to know who’ll win the UEFA Champions League semi-finals, don’t ask me.

Head to Alkmaar’s cheese market and find the fortune teller who told Louis Van Gaal AZ would win the Dutch title on 19 April 2009. Van Gaal was sceptical – his team didn’t have a game on that day – but PSV’s 6-2 thrashing of Ajax on the 19 April gifted AZ the Eredivisie.

Instead of predictions – mine usually stink – I bring you stats...

Eight out of the last 10 semis have been decided by a goal or less on aggregate, and five of the last 10 sides to play the first leg at home have progressed.

The last reigning champions to reach the final the next season were Juventus in 1997. That was the last time a side (Borussia Dortmund) won the Champions League for the first time.

Dortmund triumph in 1997

This season’s semi-finalists all broadly favour attack, play four at the back and look a bit dodgy in defence.

Pep Guardiola could have emulated his mentor Johan Cruyff’s 3-4-3 but wisely uses a better organised version of Rijkaard’s 4-3-3. Barcelona’s defence looks in the best nick, although Deco thinks they are too short as a unit.

For the record, Carles Puyol is 5ft10in, four inches shorter than Chelsea’s Serbian not-so-secret weapon Branislav Ivanovic.

Battle of the 4-3-3 squadrons...

Pep Guardiola once said that Johan Cruyff created the chapel and it was every Barcelona coach’s job to improve or restore it.

The one question vexing this smart, obsessive, skinny coach, who has done such a cracking job of sprucing up the Barca chapel this season, will be 'what trick does Guus Hiddink have up his sleeve?'

Surprise can be as effective a weapon in football as it was in comedy for Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition.

Hiddink’s Australia played one at the back against Japan in the 2006 World Cup (as the Socceroos recovered from 0-1 to 3-1). He has used 3-5-2 (at PSV in 1988), 4-4-1-1 (Holland, France 98), 3-4-3 (South Korea, 2002), and 4-3-3 (PSV 2005, when he terrified Milan in the semi-final second leg, and now at Chelsea).

He will probably prefer 4-3-3 against Barca. Coaches often like to mirror the opposing formation (daft as it sounds, it can confound the other team), but the Blues’ 4-3-3 is designed to counter, while Barca’s 4-3-3 is all about keeping the ball and suffocating opponents, pressing so that Messi, Henry, Eto’o can strike.

While the papers focus on Messi. Hiddink may scheme to stop Xavi, who initiates most attacks (although Iniesta scored one and had a hand in three against Sevilla).

As a coach, it’s hard to legislate for Messi’s genius. But if Chelsea can deny Barca’s skilful, industrious midfielder space – will Essien do to Xavi what he did to Gerrard at Anfield in the quarters? – they could isolate the forwards.

"It's my ball, and you're not having it"

Hiddink won’t ask Chelsea to sit back as United did against Barca. In a CNN interview, he says “In Europe, it’s important to get some harm done in the away game.”

Especially as keeping clean sheets can’t be taken for granted at the Bridge where set-pieces have become a concern. And, if we come to the last 10 minutes at home with Chelsea chasing the game, Hiddink will play one at the back – or something equally radical – if he sees fit.

In certain crannies of the internet, fans laughingly call Hiddink “The semi-finalist.” (He has only won one, with PSV back in 1988, losing with Holland in 1998, Korea in 2002, PSV in 2005 and Russia in 2008).

This is his chance to bury that tag. All that stands in his way is a gifted, young coach strongly influenced by Johan Cruyff who, like Hiddink, learned much of his craft as a coach from Rinus Michels.

Who will tinker?

The other semi-final should be a clash of 4-4-2s, if Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger don’t tinker.

Arsenal’s one up front against Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final looked limp. The 4-5-1 Arsenal played away in their 2006 Champions League run worked because, man for man, Wenger had a better team and because the Gunners didn’t face an English team in the knockout stages.

Alan ‘Smudger’ Smith has noted one vital difference between the 2008/09 Arsenal and the invincibles of 2003/04.

Gone are technically gifted, physically powerful athletes like Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira. Wenger has assembled a nimble, pacy, technically gifted team that lacks physical presence.

This has cost them in the Premier League and may hurt them against United. Some Arsenal fans have, only half-humourously, urged Wenger to buy some players with bones.

A 4-4-2 would make sense. The tie could give Nicklas Bendtner the chance to become more than a legend in his own mind. (Bendtner has actually scored 12 goals this season without significantly endearing himself to Arsenal fans.)

And, as porous as the Gunners’ defence can be, Aalborg and Porto scored twice at Old Trafford.

Arsenal vs United, Wenger vs Ferguson is a perplexing double rivalry that has inspired the Gunners to astonishing heights or led them to the kind of shambling incompetence hitherto reserved for certain Elvis Presley movies of the mid-1960s.

Nobody knows which Arsenal will turn up at Old Trafford. Or which United – the one that played the first half against Spurs? Or the second?

With five Premier League games left, United’s unsettled defence have already conceded one goal more in the league than 2007/08. And there was nothing especially subtle about the attacking play that put Spurs 2-0 up at half-time.

United stuttered with one up-front in the first half at home against Porto so Ferguson may prefer a 4-4-2 or a 4-4-1-1, perhaps encouraging Cristiano Ronaldo, who led the line superbly in Porto, to play ahead of Berbatov or Rooney.

With a richly talented foursome of Berbatov, Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez (who will surely feature as an impact sub) Ferguson may see the chance to settle the tie this week.

Let’s hope that one semi is decided by a goal as sublime as Thierry Henry’s against Sevilla.

"Someone order a goal?"

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Review: Romance, redemption & Didier Drogba

2009-04-17T11:00:00Z

For a tournament often pilloried as a giant money-making machine, the UEFA Champions League delivered enough old-time romance this week to satisfy purists raised on the early glorious days of the European Cup.

The 4-4 at Stamford Bridge was worthy of the Benfica vs Real Madrid 5-3 final in 1962, and Cesc Fabregas’s brilliant back heel to create Arsenal’s opener against Villarreal would have inspired the goal of the week if it hadn’t been for Cristiano Ronaldo’s rocket against Porto.

Ronaldo lets rip

With 28 goals in eight quarter-final matches, the 2008/09 goals per game average now stands at 2.66, higher than in the last five World Cups.

Didier Drogba, destroyer of Juventus, ripped through Liverpool’s defence like a tank in the second half.

On form and motivated, he is the greatest centre-forward in the world today. In an era when the old-style striker is an endangered species - for reasons Jonathan Wilson explores in the latest issue of Champions – Drogba proved that a great No.9 can still turn a game.

In this vein, the Ivorian may yet redeem himself for the red card in Moscow.

I enjoyed his post-match press conference too, although it was a shame no one asked him if the second syllable of his surname really is pronounced - as ITV’s irrepressible commentator Clyde Tyldesley would have it - like the “Bah!” in Scrooge’s cry of “Bah! Humbug!”

The Blues must now overcome Barcelona, who represent the Rest of Europe.

When Hiddink watches Barca’s 1-1 draw in Munich, he will be encouraged by how much trouble Franck Ribery gave Daniel Alves and Carlos Puyol.

Barca’s triumph was not the cakewalk the 5-1 aggregate scoreline suggests. With Luca Toni sharper, and the penalty they deserved in the second leg, Bayern might have made Pep Guardiola’s team sweat.

Certainly Bayern coach Jurgen Klinsmann deserved better than to be crucified on a German newspaper front page.

As for Toni, quoted as tipping Roberto Mancini to replace Klinsi, he should consider the old adage about players doing their talking on the pitch. If he doesn’t buck up, he could become the first striker in the history of football to have effectively ended his career by wearing a silly moustache.

The tactical dilemma facing Barcelona’s opponents is simple: how can you score if you can’t get the ball? Barca have enjoyed 62 percent of the possession on average in the tournament this season – more than any other side. But this may suit Chelsea who have been lethal on the counter in Hiddink’s 4-3-3.

It will be intriguing to see how Hiddink marks Messi. Does he, as Martin Lipton suggests in the Mirror sacrifice Michael Essien to stop 'The Flea' biting?

Can Chelsea swat The Flea?

That runs the risk of repeating the famous mistake Helmut Schoen made in the 1966 World Cup final when he sacrificed Franz Beckenbauer’s threat by telling the Kaiser to mark Bobby Charlton.

Guardiola’s Barcelona have often looked awesome but have not seriously been tested in this tournament. Their group draw (pitting them against Basle, Shakhtar and Sporting) was easy and they have faced two transitional sides in the knock-out stages.

Their dominance of this season’s la Liga is no great indicator of quality. With Barca the only Spanish side to reach the last four of either European club competition, the Spanish top flight isn’t the force it was.

Watching Villarreal, missing their Senna-Cazorla midfield axis, lose 3-0 to Arsenal only reinforced that view.

Apart from Robert Pires, hailed with heartfelt choruses of “Superbob” from Gooners, Villarreal (fifth in la Liga) looked overawed. Watching Pires’s valiant effort, I was reminded of Raymond Kopa’s lament about the pain of playing with team-mates who aren’t as good as you.

At one point, Pires shaped to hit the ball right and forward down the flank for a team-mate to run onto. But the run was never made and the ball pootled harmlessly into touch. That mis-read pass summed up Villarreal’s performance.

Arsenal look bright, creative and confident. But they would have lost the first leg if Villarreal had been ruthless upfront. Which makes Arsenal vs United as impossible to call as Liverpool vs Chelsea.

The key for United isn’t the artistry of Cristiano Ronaldo but the fitness and focus of Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand.

Porto’s heroism against United was embarrassing for Jose Mourinho’s Inter. The Nerazzurri and Celtic are the only sides United have beaten at Old Trafford in the tournament this season.

Jesualdo Ferreira’s Dragons paid for not making their supremacy count on the scoresheet. But Porto’s trickery, guts, pace and technique suggested their gung-ho approach might be a better strategy for away sides at Old Trafford than stifling the game by packing midfield.

Of the four coaches left, Ferguson and Hiddink have won this trophy before, Guardiola has won it as a player and Wenger has never won it – or any other European trophy.

Guardiola is the most inexperienced coach and faces, in Hiddink, one of the great touchline improvisers.

But, as Bobby Robson notes in his memoirs, Guardiola was effectively the manager in the dressing room when Barcelona ended their European Cup hoodoo in 1992.

Pep (third right) triumphs in '92

The odds slightly favour Ferguson being able, on May 28 in Rome, to say “Veni, vidi, vici.”

But Chelsea, on the principle that - like every winner since Milan in 2002/03 - they have knocked out the team that knocked out Real Madrid, must fancy their chances.

This is anyone’s tournament now...

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If we don’t win, the lizard gets it…

2009-04-13T09:00:00Z

Sorry folks, but my considered analysis of the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals will have to wait as I am in Venice, wondering if the suggestion that I sneak out to watch SSC Venezia take on the mighty Pergocrema in Serie C1A might lead to divorce.

Then again, Pergocrema does sound like an Italian cure for piles.

Suffice to say: how good were Porto! And how crap was my pre-match analysis!

In the meantime, I have cobbled together a series of random thoughts on training, ritual slaughter and the madness of coaches.

Porto upset the Prof's predictions...

Training daze...

I read a flattering profile of Frank Lampard the other day which said he was invariably the last player on the training ground.

This set me wondering. Frank may be a tireless trainer but if every footballer who claimed they were the last one to stop training really was last the last to hang up their boots, there would be no lasts. Training would simply never end.

There’s also the implicit, Protestant work ethic assumption that such diligence is always laudable. There’s one tiny flaw in that theory. It’s utter b*llocks. Gary Lineker’s idea of a tough training regime was getting out off the bath, but it didn’t stop him scoring 48 goals for England.

As Ed Smith points out in Intelligent Life, training hard doesn’t account for the difference in greatness between, say, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Nor, Smith adds, would David Gower necessarily have been a better batsman if he’d trained as hard as Graham Gooch.

So can we stop this sports jock snobbishness and just accept that different players have different training needs? And treat every claim that a player is the last in training with due scepticism.

Lampard: Last in the showers again

If we don’t win, the lizard dies…

The lizards of Marseille must be getting nervous. In 1993, before OM met Milan in the UEFA Champions League final, Basile Boli’s wife sacrificed a lizard for luck.

It worked for the final – but couldn’t stave off Tapiegate. Now OM are back in the UEFA Cup quarter-finals, against Shakhtar, further acts of ritual slaughter cannot be ruled out.

Just after reading about Boli’s animal sacrifice, I flew to Geneva to see UEFA. On a concourse plastered with posters for watches, I noticed one promoting a timepiece made out of original parts of the Titanic.

As brand extensions go, this struck me as hideous, tacky and, surely, unlucky. What next? Cuff links containing lumps of the iceberg that struck the ship?

Can’t see either of these fashion accessories catching on with footballers who are, on the whole, a deeply superstitious bunch, obsessed by rituals, lucky underpants and fortuitous rabbits’ foots although, there again, you have to wonder? How lucky can a rabbit that's lost its foot be?

"Quick... leg it"

You don’t have to be mad to coach but…

Continuing my occasional series on football professions where a streak of insanity is a useful asset, coaching surely requires a degree of obsession that could unbalance many ordinary mortals.

I am thinking – and I’m afraid this has to be a no names kind of story because of the laws of libel – of the gaffer who, on arriving at a club, had all the portraits of past glories torn down from his office walls to be replaced with pictures of himself.

I am also struck by my memory of an interview with a top-flight coach where talk turned, as it often does, to tactics. The interviewee leant over and said: “I don’t want to talk too much about this because I think I’ve spotted something in midfield that no one else has seen.”

I watched his team for the rest of the season, trying to discern or deduce what secret wisdom this coach had uncovered and how his team were putting it to use.

Whatever it was, it didn’t work. The team got relegated and the manager’s fluctuating subsequent career did little to suggest that this secret stood him in good stead.

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Wingers: Wide, glorious and daft

2009-04-10T08:00:00Z

If goalkeepers are crazy, wingers must be a bit daft.

The thought occurred to me last weekend, watching No.11 Anthony Gale, son of West Ham old boy Tony Gale, create two goals as Walton Casuals beat Merstham 3-1 in the Ryman League Division 1 South.

Gale Jr had been barracked by Casuals fans because, apparently oblivious to the effect on the team’s shape, he constantly drifted in from the left flank to central midfield.

That left a prairie or two of space from which Merstham raided at will (the visitors should have been 4-1 up at half-time, not trailing 2-1) and confusing his team-mates who kept passing into the space where Gale would have been if he’d stayed out wide.

But all was forgiven as Gale struck two superb free-kicks for Nick Burton to head home. Merstham never recovered from the shock.

I can sympathise with Gale Junior. The sheer social isolation of life on the wing, hugging the touchline in the hope your colleagues will remember to pass to you, is too much for many wide men.

Rinus Michels, in his seminal book Teambuilding, complements David Beckham for his ability to cross the ball with feeling and his discipline in staying out wide.

But as Beckham’s star rose, the idea that he was a gifted, but marginal, influence on a match gnawed at him and he became a frustrated midfield general, often rushing into the centre and discombobulating the team.

Doing what he does best...

Like Gale Jr, Beckham is an unusual winger in that he doesn’t have a trick with which to beat a full-back.

Such majestic egoists as Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews had the swerve, the dribble, and the change of pace to torture any defender. The England selectors’ distrust of Matthews seems bizarre now but Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s technical director, can probably understand it.

Wingers are soloists with their own muses, wide boys who can play as if they have their eyes wide shut, and some degree of inconsistency is the price of their trade.

As Roxburgh says: “In the old days, you had what I call the ‘lazy winger’ who might have one good game in three or five. The crowd loved them but they were the kind of players who could get a manager the sack.”

Neither Matthews nor Finney were lazy but even the latter, as great as he was, could over-elaborate.

Matthews and Finney so terrorised Portugal in a 1947 friendly that the Portuguese, in John Moynihan’s fine phrase, “melted away with tears in their eyes” and lost 10-0. But even Finney and Matthews couldn’t guarantee to be that gloriously destructive every game.

So Sir Alf Ramsey – either because of the rationale outlined by Roxburgh or because truly great wingers were scarcer in England in the 1960s – preferred to give the No.7 and No.11 shirts to roving midfielders.

1965: Fleet-footed Matthews outfoxes Fulham

Even Brazil have not always cherished their wingers. The great Garrincha notoriously almost missed the 1958 World Cup because the team psychologist, after contemplating a few of the winger’s stick drawings, decided he was mentally sub-normal.

Luckily, Brazil coach Vicente Feola ignored the psychologist and picked the Little Bird for the third vital group game against the USSR. The selecao won 2-0 with Garrincha simply glorious.

If anything, he was even greater in 1962 when, with Pele struggling for fitness, he almost won the World Cup on his own. Yet his team-mate Mario Zagallo later admitted: “Garrincha was too unpredictable, even for us his team-mates.”

Bill Shankly once told a player: “The trouble with you son is all your brains are in your head.”

Most wingers, even the best ones, seem to think with their feet, their ability to enthral and appal perfectly captured by one Partick Thistle fan’s comment on Denis McQuade: “An eccentric winger from the 1970s. He would beat five players in a mazy dribble and miss an open goal.”

There are many wing commanders in the game today but they no longer have a kingdom of their own – a domain that once stretched from the halfway line down the flank to the opposing penalty area – and don’t have the same licence to dribble.

One glorious exception is Arjen Robben, who symbolised the perversity of the breed by being both sublime and ineffective against Liverpool.

There are few things in football quite as thrilling as watching a player like Aidan McGeady or Theo Walcott run at defenders with the ball at their feet and Robert Pires has brilliantly analysed the tricks of the trade.

But in a utilitarian game, coaches may prefer to rely on wide players like Beckham who has made an immense virtue of his own deficiency by perfecting the art of the pass, the cross and the set piece.

Much like Anthony Gale at Walton Casuals.

Walcott bamboozles Bolton...

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Previews: Karma, Porto & the Gunners

2009-04-07T09:00:00Z

And so 32 have become eight.

Four of the 16 possible permutations for the final in Rome would reprise old finals (1987: Porto vs Bayern; 1999: United vs Bayern; 2006: Barcelona vs Arsenal; 2008: United vs Chelsea). Four of the eight teams left standing are English and the draw ensures that at least one will reach the semi-final. But as we look ahead to the quarter-finals what else can we sure of?

Riise: Revenge for Garcia's ghost goal

Not very much. Arsenal and Porto should be wary of the John Arne Riise principle of karmic recompense. The Norwegian’s own goal in last year’s semi-final against Chelsea was explicable only as a karmic equaliser for the ghost goal of 2005. Villarreal and United both enter their ties convinced that fate owes them a favour.

Barcelona vs Bayern

The most romantic tie of the quarter-finals, dripping in European pedigree, a veritable clash of the titans, etc etc. These sides have scored 48 goals between them in the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League, so don’t be surprised if this is 0-0 after 210 minutes and goes to penalties.

Actually that would be a turn up. The Italians, as Ray Wilkins never tires of noting, do know how to defend. Barcelona and Bayern don’t. Not all the time. Pep Guardiola’s men have not kept a clean sheet at Camp Nou in Europe this season, while Bayern have twice shipped five in the Bundesliga (against Werder Bremen in September and last weekend against Wolfsburg).

Bayern won this competition in 2001 but have lost at this stage in 2002, 2005 and 2007. Jurgen Klinsmann’s hopes of defying that dismal record sank when Miroslav Klose ruptured a tendon. Though Klose doesn’t grab the headlines as often as Luca Toni, he works harder and is more pivotal to Bayern’s play.

Klose: Crucial to Bayern's cause

In the latest Champions, Bastian Schweinsteiger says Bayern dream of a final against United and vengeance for 1999.

Klinsmann should check out his old deputy Joachim Low’s gameplan for the Euro 2008 final. If Bayern are to progress, they must seize the initiative, disrupt Barcelona’s possession play and expose the Catalans’ rearguard to the physical and mental quickness of Schweinsteiger, Franck Ribery and, possibly, Lucas Podolski. Germany almost disturbed Spain’s midfield supremacy at Euro 2008 and six of the players in that final should face each other in this tie.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s remarks about Barcelona being the main non-English threat are intriguing. As he has just suggested too much media flattery has upset his team’s rhythm, is this praise designed to flatter Barca? Or wind up Bayern by suggesting they have already been discounted?

With no karmic debts to be repaid here, there is everything to play for.

Chelsea vs Liverpool

In a world of sequels, the fifth clash between these clubs in as many Champions League seasons could be as compelling as The Bourne Ultimatum or as unsatisfactory as Pirates Of The Caribbean 3.

The media will package this recurring melodrama using familiar plotlines – key battles (Torres vs Terry, Gerrard vs Lampard, Drogba vs Carragher) and all that, but nobody – not pundits, journalists, players nor coaches – has any idea how this quarter-final will pan out.

Rafa Benitez and Guus Hiddink almost faced off in Istanbul in 2005. Hiddink’s PSV showed up the Rossoneri’s defensive deficiencies in the semi-final that year.

In the second leg in Eindhoven, Hiddink brought on Brazilian striker Robert who very nearly put PSV 3-0 up and won the tie. But the gamble – Robert replaced defender Wilfred Bouma – backfired, giving Milan the space to gain a foothold and score that crucial away goal. PSV lost 3-3 on away goals. Benitez won the final after another 3-3 – and, Brian Glanville suggests – erring tactically by fielding the patently unfit Harry Kewell.

Hiddink's PSV denied in '05

Benitez’s six-year record in Europe with Valencia and Liverpool is phenomenal – 2004: UEFA Cup winners; 2005: Champions League winners; 2006: last 16 of knockout round; 2007: losing finalists; 2008: semi-finalists. Hiddink won the trophy in 1988 and, if he beats Liverpool, would have a good shot at being the third coach (after Ottmar Hitzfeld and Ernst Happel) to conquer Europe with two different clubs.

This will be portrayed as a battle of tactical wits. But Chelsea under the not so inspirational Avram Grant won the 2008 semi, the most one-sided instalment in the franchise. Sometimes, as Drogba showed in that tie, coaches are helpless because players write the script.

Manchester United vs Porto

81-1. Those are the odds on this UEFA Champions League season ending with a reprise of the 1987 final. Porto beat Bayern in that thriller, partly due to the most famous backheel in a European Cup final – courtesy of Rabah Madjer – and conquered Europe again in 2004 after a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in 2004, a result Ferguson still regards as robbery.

It would take a Madjer or Mourinho-style upset for Porto to reach the semis – they are 10-1 to win at Old Trafford, astonishing odds for this stage in a major competition – and their hopes rest on Lisandro Lopez sneaking an away goal, Lucho’s midfield leadership, the Hulk unsettling United’s central defence and the Red Devils having two bad days at the office in the competition Ferguson prizes above all others.

This may be one of the United manager’s last chances to become only the second coach, after the great Bob Paisley, to win this competition three times.

Karma – with Paul Scholes’ goal dubiously disallowed at Old Trafford in 2004 – favours United. As do the stats. Porto’s away record in England is W0, D1, L10. United’s home record against Portuguese opposition is W8 D1, L0.

Scholes goal chalked off in 2004

Villarreal vs Arsenal

Almost as finely poised as Liverpool vs Chelsea. William Hill are offering 2.6/1 on a victory by either side in El Madrigal and 2.8/1 on a draw.

The form book, injury news and the fact that Arsenal play the second leg at home should help the Gunners. Adebayor, Fabregas and Walcott are back, while a dislocated fibula rules out Villarreal midfielder Santi Cazorla, their only ever present in the 2008/09 Champions League.

Arsenal’s 17-game unbeaten run is the longest in the 2008/09 Premier League, while Villarreal have, coach Manuel Pellegrini admits, developed a worrying habit of just not turning up for games.

You may hear talk of Villarreal’s mean defence. This is based on a memory of their miserliness in 2006 and against Manchester United in the group stages. After their 3-0 defeat by Almeria, they have kept just four clean sheets in their last 30 games.

Robert Pires, sent off against Almeria, must keep his emotions in check to torment the Gunners. The Frenchman played 18 minutes of the 2006 final for Arsenal, before being sacrificed after Jens Lehmann’s dismissal. He admits that when he saw his number being held up on the touchline in Paris he thought it was a practical joke.

His team-mates aren’t short of motivation either. The feeling in Villarreal’s dressing room after the 2006 semi-final was that they so vastly superior to Arsenal in the second leg that they deserved to win. So, on the Riise karmic recompense principle, Pellegrini’s team might surprise everyone with an undeserved victory.

Cazorla: Stuffed, along with Villarreal's chances

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Messiahs, flying Dutchmen and whippets

2009-04-05T11:00:00Z

So the messiah is back. He has swapped the pundit’s comfy sofa for the heart-melting melodrama that is life in the dug-out.

I’m referring, of course, to Hans Krankl, Austria’s greatest living footballer, who has nine games to save his managerial career as the new boss at LASK Linz.

Krankl is the third man to coach Linz this season, a dismal time for a club that, in its 1965 heyday, became the first side from outside Vienna to win the Austrian league. Linz haven’t won a game since December, and Krankl has admitted that the team’s recent form has been “scandalous.” But so high are expectations that he has already had to advise the press: “I am not a messiah.”

The confusion may have arisen because in his last job, as Austria’s national coach, he was crucified by the media after failing to reach the 2006 World Cup finals.

Not the Messiah, etc

Krankl has three things going for him. Two of them are SCR Altach and SV Mattersburg, the teams immediately below LASK Linz in the Austrian Bundesliga. With nine games left, Altach (who have also hired three managers this season) have 18 points (nine fewer than LASK) while Matterburg have amassed just 16 points but have the same goal difference (-30) as LASK.

Luckily for Krankl, only one team can go down.

The third thing working in Krankl’s favour is that the 56-year-old’s aura of greatness has not been entirely dissipated by his disappointing reign as national coach. Kranklmania has erupted in Linz, much to the delight of local sports photographer Martin Parzer.

But Krankl inherits an ageing, mediocre squad short on confidence. His most famous player, midfielder Ivica Vastic, is now 39 and his most prolific striker, Christian Mayrleb, is 36. Krankl and his assistant Heinrich Strasser have nine games to turn LASK Linz around and then the summer to ponder their future.

Austria doesn’t just have its own returning messiah, it has its own David Beckham.

Unfortunately for Andreas Ivanschitz, aka the Austrian Becks, his career has taken a quantum leap into the doldrums – as Becks’ did at Real under Capello. Benched by Henk Ten Cate at Panathinaikos, the 25-year-old Austrian midfielder was sensationally omitted from the squad for the World Cup qualifier against Romania.

Coach Dietmar Constantini, hired after Karel Bruckner and the Austrian FA parted “by mutual consent,” gambled by dropping two other experienced stars: defender Martin Stranzl and midfielder Rene Aufhauser.

Stranzl (left) and Ivanschitz: dropped

His audacity was rewarded with Austria’s first win in six games, a morale boosting 2-1 triumph over a Romania side that looks increasingly likely to miss the 2010 World Cup.

Confirming the idea that Austrian football is a funhouse mirror reflection of the English game, the Austrian Bundesliga is also puzzling over the future of a globetrotting Dutch coach who, as the season nears its end, has a should I stay or should I go Guus Hiddink-style dilemma.

Co Adriaanse has done a terrific job at Red Bull Salzburg, a club that has been knocking on the door of the Champions League for some years but, so far, always be left out on the step. But he is tempted by the likely vacancy at PSV, Hiddink’s old club.

If the Austrian national side had an up and coming young winger who sprints like a greyhound – and usually crosses like one – you’d begin to suspect that Austrian and English football had been separated at birth.

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Jari's game: How did Litmanen fade away?

2009-03-31T08:00:00Z

Coaches and fans see players differently.

Watching Jari Litmanen, now 38, give the definitive performance as a midfield general against Wales at the weekend, it was hard not to wonder what - eight years ago - Gerard Houllier failed to see in a player the Finns call Kuningas (The King).

Against Wales, Litmanen was perpetually able to find space, circumvented the opposing defence with imaginative, precise passes (one of which led to Jonatan Johansson’s goal, scored slightly against the run of play) and only made three mistakes in the whole 90 minutes.

The riposte may come that this was against a Wales team that has lost its mojo, but you can only beat what’s in front of you. Litmanen may find he has less time and space against, say, Germany but he will still have the same impeccable technique, coolness and vision.

Watching the way he timed and placed his passes was exhilarating but saddening. Here is a player whose goals won the Eredivisie and the UEFA Champions League for Ajax by the time he was 24. (It helped that Edgar Davids would dole out retribution to any opponent who tried to clatter the Finn.)

Litmanen nets in the 1996 Champions League final

But in the last 10 years, since Litmanen left Ajax, a horrendous run of injuries and a lack of faith from coaches like Houllier have condemned him to a nomadic career on the fringes of the European game.

At Ajax, where the fans sang “Litmanen ooh ooh” to the tune of Volare, he is rated alongside Cruyff and Van Basten.

In Finland, he is a god. 10,000 fans turned up in hope of seeing him play for FC Lahti in 2004, and he is the most capped Finnish international and all-time record goalscorer (30 in 121 games – not bad for a country that peaked at 33 in the FIFA rankings and for a player who has often played in the hole behind strikers like Johansson).

But to most of Europe, he remains an enigma, an enormous What Might Have Been. His big move from Ajax to Barcelona didn't work out. Liverpool fans still talk about his solo goal that almost put them through to the Champions League semi-final in 2002 and wonder why he was twice benched after scoring in two games in a row for them.

Litmanen had idolised Liverpool as a kid, irritating Ajax players with his constant references to the Merseyside club. But the dream move became a nightmare and he slipped away back to Ajax.

Signing for Liverpool from Barcelona in January 2001

When Roy Hodgson took a gamble on Litmanen at Fulham last season, the coach was ridiculed. It didn’t help that the Finn was sidelined by injuries, heart palpitations and a bizarre training ground accident in which the reserve goalkeeper accidentally blasted the ball into the back of Litmanen’s head from just four yards.

Hodgson ruefully noted: “Litmanen must be the unluckiest fellow in football. When I first went to the Finnish FA, he was standing next to the sporting director of Malmo who opened a can of Coke and the ring popped into Jari’s eye.”

Through all these vicissitudes, Litmanen has remained imperturbable, apparently harbouring fewer regrets than Edith Piaf. But his career has not been worthy of his talent.

Frank Rijkaard said once: “Dennis Berkgamp was brilliant for Ajax but the best No.10 we ever had was Jari.”

The best we can hope for now is that, for Finland at least, he has many more glorious games left in him.

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Confessions of a league table addict

2009-03-24T09:00:00Z

Some obsessions are truly magnificent. Sir Alex Ferguson’s love affair with the European Cup is worthy of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.

But I don’t need to spend gazillions on players or risk a ship and its crew to indulge my obsession. I just need a newspaper with some league tables in them.

I’d recommend studying league tables as an obsession: it’s cheap, unlikely to cost you your job and doesn’t do disastrous things to your body – apart from a slight curvature of the spine as you lean forward to check whether only eight points really did separate the 1965/66 Moroccan champions from the team that finished bottom and got relegated.

It’s true – see for yourself.

I pore over tables as if my intense scrutiny could decode their innermost secrets. Cursory inspections of the points totals are for dilettantes.

First, I scour the table for bizarre variations – teams that have scored 100 goals, sides where the contrast between their home and away form is perversely great – before getting down to start the serious, time-killing business of comparing different team records, feeling strangely joyful when I discover that, say, the team in 14th has conceded less goals than the one in sixth.

I blame my childhood. It came too early. With three TV channels, no internet and phones only for use in emergencies, there were so many hours to fill. I was hungry for data.

American presidential elections were great – I’d nick the pages from dad’s Telegraph to scrutinise the tally of votes in all 50 states – but they only happened every four years.

So I got my fix from league tables. Even today, when I am old enough – but not, alas, smart enough – to know better, I study this data as if it were a higher form of truth.

Some tables spotlight the comedy inherent in competitive football. Truly impressive in the 'won none' stakes are Kalev Tartu who lost all 18 games in the 1950 Estonian Soviet league.

The strikers who played for Kalev that season must have hung their heads in shame as they contemplated this table. Their defence wasn’t bad, but their forwards showed such ineptitude – their collective strike rate was 0.22 goals a game – they must be celebrated in the next edition of Stephen Pile’s Book Of Heroic Failures.

Other tables are historic. Take this one from Serie A in 1969/70.

No side has ever won a title and conceded as few goals in a major league as Cagliari in 1969/70. The Sardinians kept 20 clean sheets that season in Serie A. Bologna’s feat – drawing 53 percent of their games – is almost as remarkable.

Look at this extraordinary Hungarian league table from 1988/89.

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted the extra column. That’s because the Hungarian FA decided there should be no drawn games, penalty shoot-outs settled any match that finished level.

Teams got three points for a win, two points if they won the shootout, one point if they lost it and none if they were defeated in the old-fashioned way. How mad is that?

Honved were champions because they won 16 games within the usual 90 minutes and six in a shootout. Under any normal system, Honved would have had 55 points and come third behind Ferencvaros on goal difference and Videoton, with 56 points, would have been champions.

This wheeze was such a glorious success that Hungarian football rebelled, imprisoning the Mad Hatter who had devised this scheme and scrapping the shootouts for 1989/90.

And you thought it was only Americans who had a phobia about drawn games.

I’ll shut up now.

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The dullest European Cup winners of all time

2009-03-20T09:30:00Z

Showboating. That’s how some would regard the 7-1, 4-0 and 5-2 we saw in the UEFA Champions League last week.

While it was joyous to watch Barcelona, Bayern and Liverpool playing with boyish enthusiasm and scoring, as that dreadful old cliché has it, for fun, I’m sure some of the more curmudgeonly members of the coaching trade would have regarded such performances as a bit suspect. Even slightly unprofessional.

Do the minimum necessary to win, they’d say. Sounds brutal, even cynical, but it works in many spheres of life.

I’d take a “nope” from Gary Cooper over a passage of fancy rhetoric by Al “If I’m not overacting how can I be sure they’ll notice me?” Pacino anytime. And in football, it’s hard not to grudgingly admire such masterful economisers of effort as the Milan side that conquered Europe in 2003.

OK, this particular Rossoneri vintage did briefly lose their heads and beat Deportivo 4-0 away in Group G. But after qualifying with four wins in four games, Milan lost to Lens and Depor.

This worked so well they did the same in the second group stage although, in a remarkable feat of sporting minimalism, they managed to win their first four by the same wonderfully functional scoreline: 1-0.

In the quarters, an efficient 0-0 at Ajax was followed by an unusually nervy 3-2 victory at the San Siro, with Jon Dahl Tomasson’s injury-time winner denying the Dutch the chance to go through on away goals.

Tomasson breaks Ajax hearts

After that it was steady as she goes. They made the final courtesy of an ‘away’ goal against Inter at the San Siro and beat Juventus on penalties after another 0-0. Gary Cooper would have been proud.

It wasn’t entertainment, as Johan Cruyff famously complained. But then, as Carlo Ancelotti replied: “When Cruyff wants to enjoy himself, he can go to the cinema.”

Milan’s economical mastery left me thinking the diktat that a player should cover every blade of grass, which seems inspired more by the English football’s all-pervasive Protestant work ethic than any realistic assessment of what a team needs to do to win.

I’ve often watched a Premier League game and wondered whether some players are running for the team or the cameras.

Considering successful teams who had done the absolute minimum, my thoughts turned, naturally enough, to Guus Hiddink’s PSV side that won the European Cup in 1988.

It wasn’t a bad team. Four players – Hans van Breukelen in goal, Ronald Koeman, Soren Lerby in midfield, Gerald Vanenburg on the wing, and Wim Kieft up front – would have been coveted by most managers in Europe. But they won the European Cup in remarkably functional style.

Shootout hero Van Breukelen settles sterile final

In the old-school knockout format, it took PSV just nine games to lift the trophy. They won just three of them, drew five and lost one.

What makes Hiddink’s European champions even more astonishing is that they drew their last five games in the competition. A 1-1 away and a 0-0 at home to Bordeaux in the quarters was enough to reach the semis, where the same combination of results disposed of Real Madrid.

The final against Benfica was one of the most sterile games ever to decide the destiny of a major trophy. A DVD of the first half, which featured one shot on goal, has just entered phase-three clinical trials as a cure for insomnia.

Benfica played for penalties from the start, putting 11 men behind the ball because their playmaker, Diamantino, was injured. But PSV were wary and the shoot-out, which the Dutch won 6-5, came as a blessed relief.

Maybe Hiddink wasn’t attracted to Chelsea by Abramovich, the opportunity to tear a strip off Ashley Cole, or the chance to win the Champions League. Perhaps he just felt an instinctive sympathy with a club that, in 1954/55, lost 10 games (out of 42) but still managed to win the league.

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1970: The definitive World Cup...

2009-03-14T12:00:00Z

Which is your World Cup?

One of my pet theories is that we all have a mundial that, as it unfolds, feels less like a football tournament than a rite of passage, introducing us to idols, emotions and intrigue we will remember for the rest of our lives. Mine was 1970. I was nine then.

Back Home was at No.1 (with Elton John on backing vocals), there were Esso World Cup medals to collect, altitudes to worry about and I had special dispensation to stay up late to watch England, a privilege hitherto reserved for Michael Bentine’s Golden Silents.

That was the last World Cup I greeted with a naïve certainty that England would win. Or, at worst, reach the final.

My idol Bobby Charlton was destined, I was secretly convinced, to score the winning goal. My cousin Mick preferred – and styled himself on – George Best but he was cooler than me. And contemplating the foreheads on my dad’s side of the family, I may have already suspected, without admitting it to myself, that I was foredoomed to adopt Bobby’s hairstyle.

Bobby and combover tackle Brazil

Last week, in a collectors’ fair in Shepperton Village Hall, I snapped up the official programme for the 1970 World Cup for £4.

This seemed a thrilling addition to my pitiful archive of 1970-related stuff: one Esso World Cup medal (Terry Cooper), the International Football Book annual, and a video of the greatest semi-final in World Cup history: Italy 4 West Germany 3. (Actually, the game is so-so but the extra-time is wondrous.)

There is virtually no editorial in the programme, but a lot of adverts, bad pencil drawings of the Czech team and an incomprehensible grid for each group that you need an A in technical drawing to fill in. On the inside front cover, British Leyland explain why they had supplied the England team bus: “Let’s just say champions tend to attract each other.”

In my memory, David Coleman narrates the whole tournament. Every player’s name, every move (Gordon Banks’ save, Jeff Astle’s miss, Bobby Moore’s tackle) all delivered with that peculiar conviction that Coleman brought to every match, no matter how insignificant or dull.

England didn’t win, of course. Their exit has generated almost as many conspiracy theories as the assassination of JFK and several stories, too libellous to relate, about the bizarre build up to a quarter-final from which, despite England being 2-0 up after 50 minutes, West Germany emerged as the kings of Leon.

I wept when Uwe Seeler equalised. 32-years later, when England choked in the 2002 quarter-final against Brazil, I looked across at my seven-year-old son and saw the exact same expression of stricken disbelief I had worn in 1970 when Gerd Muller scored the winner. He’s worn it twice since. I call it 'The England Look.'

Muller sends England home early

With England gone, I supported Italy, mainly because of Luigi Riva, the rumble of thunder.

I had tried to shoot as hard as him in the back garden. I wasn’t that successful but it was better than failing, to my dad’s chagrin, to curve the ball like Rivelino. Riva scored his only goal of the tournament in a semi-final that, in extra time, became so extraordinary it is quasi-officially known as The Game Of The Century.

I can still picture the disgust and despair with which Franz Beckenbauer, his injured shoulder strapped up, kicked the ball out of the German goal after Gianni Rivera scored Italy’s fourth. Only a minute before, Muller had equalised.

I watched the final wanting Italy to win. But when they equalised and invited Pele, Jairzinho, Gerson (who smoked 30-a-day even when he was playing) and Rivelino to come at them it was clear that was never going to happen.

Against West Germany, Italy had swashed and buckled. Against Brazil, they just buckled.

That Brazil team were the beautiful team – and they played so well I could enjoy each goal – but I was on the wrong side of history.

Years later, when I talked to Don Howe about that World Cup, he went a bit misty-eyed as he talked about that Brazil side. He was part of a delegation of British coaches in Mexico and the highlight of his trip wasn’t any of the matches but the joy of watching Brazil training. It was, he said, like watching a different species playing a more elevated, joyful, accomplished kind of sport.

For me, 1970 will always be the definitive World Cup.

Carlos Alberto thunders home

Not because it was the best but because I have never known such a heady mixture of joy, despair, memorabilia and intrigue since. What neither I nor British Leyland could foresee was that it would be 12 bleak years before I would watch England in a World Cup again.

I even discovered my all-time favourite kit: Peru’s. It was later adopted by Crystal Palace when they were billed as the team of the eighties.

To be fair, they didn’t say which eighties, so it’s always possible that, 71 years from now, the Palace will dominate European football.

Do tell me what your definitive World Cup is and why...

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England expects – but is it wise to do so?

2009-03-10T13:00:00Z

Anybody who wants to predict the future of European football should remember the cautionary tale of the Sydney Opera House.

The makers of this gorgeous building thought it would cost $7m. They ended up spending a munificent $104m – on a cut down version of the original design.

In his thought-provoking, self-congratulatory bestseller The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleeb points out that our models of the future are always undermined by three flaws: we are never in possession of all the information, very small variations can have a huge impact (the butterfly effect) and we cannot account for events which have never taken place before.

So, bearing Taleeb’s cautions in mind, if all four English teams reach the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League this week, does this mean the Premier League will reign forever?

After all, no English team has lost to a non-English team since the 2007 final and six of the last eight semi-finalists have come from the Premier League.

Liverpool: Last side to lose to foreign opposition in 2007

Such domination is impressive. But not unprecedented. One of the fascinating themes recurring throughout European Cup history is the fluctuating balance of power between north and south.

Real Madrid won the first five. No team from northern Europe won the trophy until 1967. But from 1970 until 1984, Gabriel Hanot’s brainchild was monopolised by teams from England, Germany and the Netherlands.

From 1985 until 1994, only one bunch of northerners got a look in: PSV (1988). Since Ajax’s surprise victory in 1995, the pendulum has swung pretty regularly between north and south.

So if you take the long view, English domination doesn’t seem as complete. Nor does it necessarily seem destined to be permanent.

One known unknown which could affect England’s future performance is the new qualifying system.

The top three will automatically make the group stage from 2009/10, while whoever finishes fourth will join a new play-off round where they could face either the runners-up from the likes of Belgium, Romania, Russia, Scotland and Turkey, fourth-placed teams in Italy and Spain or third-placed sides in France and Germany.

This is a slightly tougher route to the group stages for whoever comes fourth in the England. And look how nervy Liverpool’s 2008/09 qualification over Standard Liege was.

The big known unknown is the system that emerges to level the playing field across European football and stabilise club finances.

None of the formulas so far suggested – such as the idea that clubs could only spend a percentage of turnover on players’ wages – have garnered unanimous support. And it’s unclear how the European Commission will view such schemes. The wages/turnover formula seems, for example, in breach of competition law.

Liege push Liverpool to their limit in 2008/09 qualifying

So everything is still up for grabs. This season we have seen Manchester City bid over £100m for Kaka while the club that owns him has just announced a 30% wage cut and may sell him to Real Madrid this summer.

Meanwhile Chelsea, once the world’s richest club, will reduce their £148m wage bill at season’s end by selling players.

That’s enough about money. I’m sure that, like me, you have read enough “football in the credit crunch” articles to last you a recession or six.

These pieces can usually be boiled down to this:

1. Things will get worse.   

2. We don’t know how much worse.  

3. We don’t know long things will be worse for.  

4. Err that’s it.  

If all four English teams do make the last eight, The Sun’s Neil Custis will feel his eloquent suggestion on Sunday Supplement that “Serie A has been rubbish for four years” has been vindicated.

I’ve never been able to watch this show since they evicted poor old Jimmy Hill from his own breakfast room. But Custis’s claim prompted a furious, well-reasoned response from Andrea Tallarita on Football Italiano.

If the Premier League is such a great league, Tallarita asks, how come so many teams can’t even get a shot on the Manchester United goal?

Tallarita also points out that if FIFA’s 6+5 homegrown player rule came into force, 16 Serie A teams wouldn’t have to change their squads. Only a handful of Premier League clubs could say the same.

And if all four English teams do progress, who will stop then? Of the likely challengers, only Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona look a real threat – if they pull themselves out of their slump.

The only team who can stop United this season?

Who has the best league is a great pub argument. But Arsene Wenger has already resolved this debate when he said: “Everybody thinks they have the most beautiful wife at home.”

And finally...

The press is already talking of Manchester United’s unprecedented quintet. Statistically, winning five trophies isn’t unprecedented at all.

Celtic did it in 1967 although, to be fair, that haul included the less than stellar Glasgow Cup.

And Linfield won a septuple in 1922 while Valletta clinched a sextuple in 2001.

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Bigmouth strikes again: Cloughie, Ali and Carry On

2009-03-05T11:00:00Z

“Football hooligans? Well there’s 92 club chairman for a start” - Brian Clough

Brian Clough was the Muhammad Ali of British football. The tragedy for him – and Peter Taylor – was that he couldn’t fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee himself. He had to cajole, charm and bully 11 players into doing that for him on the pitch.

He managed with the conviction of a messiah even if many (especially in the football business) regarded him not as a messiah but as a very naughty boy.

For much of his career – at Hartlepools (as he called it), Derby and Nottingham Forest – Clough’s teams were almost as eloquent as he was.

The dark exception, his 44 days at Leeds United, forms the gloomy heart of Tony Hooper’s remarkable movie The Damned United, based on the even more remarkable novel by David Peace.

"Don't come any closer Brian..."

I loved the book and feared for the film, even when the mercurial Michael Sheen was cast as Cloughie.

After watching the movie this week, I wouldn’t say Sheen is the best British actor at work today, but he’s certainly in the top one.

His Clough is brilliant. There are echoes of his previous roles – Kenneth Williams and Tony Blair – at times but, oddly, this somehow added to the resonance because, watching Sheen, I realised there had always been something of Kenneth Williams’ archness about the real Clough.

Sheen is not the only reason to watch Hooper’s movie.

If you are, like me, old enough to remember the 1970s, this is a moving, funny nostalgia trip into a more innocent age when Clough, invited to dine free at the tandoori as reward for steering Derby into the top flight, tells his wife: “Throw the chips away, we’re going posh, chicken bhoona!”

At which point, the entire Clough family jig with such delight they could have won the pools.

The clothes, the decor, the cars, the transistor radios are all spot on. The film’s rainy, grainy, grimy, shiny texture brilliantly evokes the knackered, grey England of the 1970s, a country whose imminent irrelevance is prefigured by the decline in the national football team.

And the training scenes, for once in a football movie, don’t stink.

The performances vary. Many actors playing real people take their cues from Mike Yarwood. Luckily, Sheen, Timothy Spall (who looks nothing like Peter Taylor but is still utterly credible as the character) and Colm Meaney don’t.

Casting an actor called Meaney as Clough’s nemesis Don Revie was a masterstroke. And Meaney has the solidity, smugness and presence of The Don in his prime, although his face is such an odd shape he reminded me of Al Pacino’s synthetically enhanced gangster in Dick Tracy.

Revie’s team aren’t so well cast – Billy Bremner looks like Tom Jones’ stumpy little brother wearing an orange syrup of figs – but an opening montage of their acts of brutal carnage on the pitch sets up the movie beautifully and goes some way to explaining one of the roots of Clough’s antipathy.

I don’t know if Clough was really obsessed with beating Revie. He may, as tyros do, have used The Don as a target. If you were going to be the best, which Clough believed he was, then you had to beat the best.

And in the long run, he did beat him. He won two European Cups, Revie never got past the semi-final.

And Clough had a point, too, when he told Revie’s players they had to change their ways if they were to be loved. They never really did and are remembered more for their cynicism and brutality than for the occasional splendour of their team play.

They adopted Real Madrid’s strip but never consistently played in that glorious tradition.

The miracle, really, is that Clough was given the chance to come back in Nottingham. Football was a close-kit industry and Clough didn’t play by the rules.

He had been reckless and/or outspoken enough at Derby, Brighton and Leeds to have made him a pariah. It wasn’t just Revie who distrusted him. Matt Busby makes it clear, in his memoirs, that he was no great admirer nor, much later, was Sir Alex Ferguson.

"I think it's time I was going..."

But Clough vindicated himself just as Revie’s career was dissolving. There’s a curious trajectory to their rival careers at this point, as if the eclipse of Revie mysteriously helped Clough focus.

Allan Clarke, Eddie Gray and Bremner all had a shot at recreating the glory that was Revie. They lasted longer in the Elland Road hotseat than Cloughie but failed.

As indeed did Jock Stein who, like Clough, spent much of his 44 days in charge in a Leeds hotel, effectively waiting for the chance to manage Scotland. Not much material for a sequel there.

The movie left me wondering how and if Leeds had changed Clough.

Like all the best superheroes, he realised he was never the same without, his sidekick, Taylor and patched up their rift. And he found Forest, a club that fitted him, felt part of him, just as Derby had.

But I left the cinema wondering if his 44 days at Elland Road was the defining trauma of his managerial career. It nearly broke him. But on the Hemingway principle that people are strong in the broken places, perhaps, in the end, it made him.

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So what did we learn from this week’s action?

2009-02-27T11:00:00Z

Anarchy in the Champions League...

First, only seven quarter-final places are still up for grabs.

It is simply inconceivable that Bayern’s 5-0 win in Lisbon, a record away victory in the UEFA Champions League, will be overturned in Munich. It would be a far greater turnaround than Ajax’s remarkable recovery in the 1968/69 last eight.

Rinus Michels’ team hadn’t quite perfected Total Football – does that mean they were playing Partial Football? – and lost their home leg 3-1 to Benfica. But they then thrashed the Eagles by the same score in Lisbon and, in those innocent, pre-penalty shoot out days, won the play-off in Paris 3-0.

Ribery cooly converts No.3 of five for Bayern

Sporting coach Paulo Bento took his thrashing by Bayern well. “We had the chance to equalise but conceded two goals in six minutes. There was anarchy in the team. Even the best teams have their bad moments. Life doesn’t end here.”

Anarchy is not too strong a word for Sporting’s second half performance. When the great Polish forward Zbigniew Boniek was at Juventus in the 1980s, he was dubbed a “tactical anarchist” by the Italian press. This week we saw compelling evidence that Lisandro Lopez is the new Boniek.

The Argentine striker has been, as Gianni Agnelli said of Boniek, like the moon – he only comes out at night. (To be clear, Agnelli meant that Boniek only shone in Europe.)

Lopez’s record this season is simply bizarre: five goals in 19 Liga Bwin games and, after his point saving brace against Atletico, six goals in seven in the UEFA Champions League.

Champions League hot-shot, Lisandro Lopez

How times have changed. The cliché about teams not travelling well now applies to Italian sides. Juventus and Roma have lost their last six Champions League games in England and the bianconeri have lost their last seven on the road in the knockout stages.

At Stamford Bridge, I was shocked at how poor Juve were in the first half. Only Alessandro Del Piero showed much.

They grew stronger as the game wore on, but their recovery was aided by Chelsea’s strange passivity. After the well-worked early goal, the Blues should have delivered the knockout blow.

But, lively as Salomon Kalou was, they lacked the spirit expected from a Guus Hiddink team.

The vapidity of their second half performance was symbolised by Michael Ballack who, in one five minute period, hit three passes back to the player who had just passed to him.

Ballack: 'To me, to you'

The near thing of the week was Xabi Alonso’s shot at the Bernabeu.

The Rafa Benitez saga is turning into the best Merseyside soap since Brookside. But for me, the biggest puzzle about the Liverpool coach has nothing to do with Robbie Keane, and everything to do with Alonso.

Did Liverpool seriously want to sell the sublime midfielder this summer? Or was it an inspired, motivational double bluff by Rafa?

The free-kick of the week had to be Juninho’s against Barcelona.

Nobody can really blame Victor Valdez for the goal. But watching him watching the ball sail into the top of the net, I was struck by how few of the last 16 teams can field world class goalkeepers on top of their game.

Gianluigi Buffon, Iker Casillas, Pepe Reina and Edwin Van Der Sar stand out.

Lyon’s Hugo Lloris may be the best young keeper in the last 16 – the way he twisted to keep out a deflected shot on Tuesday was remarkable – and Julio Cesar almost single-handedly kept Manchester United at bay in the first half at the San Siro.

Cesar keeps Mourinho's men alive

Petr Cech is one of the world’s best but, to my mind, has not fully recovered from that grievous incident with Stephen Hunt. The other keepers vary – some are making their mark, a few are good but not great, others have chocolate wrists.

So, Bayern are effectively through, and Arsenal, Barcelona, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Panathinaikos and Porto, are ahead on points.

But Massimo Moratti, for one, thinks Inter will beat Manchester United, while Luciano Spalletti estimated the balance in the Roma tie as “maybe 49% for us and 51% for them.”

As Jimmy Greaves liked to continually remind us, football is a funny old game.

At the start of the season, three Chelsea managers – Ranieri, Scolari and Ten Cate – had teams in the Champions League. And now, five months later, the one closest to the quarter-finals is Henk Ten Cate.

As Martina Navratilova said on I’m A Former Celebrity Can I Stay A Bit Longer Please? “Who’ have thunk it!”

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The spotters guide to the first knockout round

2009-02-24T10:00:00Z

Oh frabjous day! Callou, callay, the UEFA Champions League is back. As you’ll read match previews aplenty, here is my Q&A guide to the action. And don’t worry – there are no more spurious Lewis Carroll references.

Should Inter play for 0-0?

If you kick off a knockout tie at home, 0-0 isn’t bad. That’s how Jean Tigana’s Monaco stunned Manchester United in the quarter-finals in 1997/98. After a scoreless draw in Monaco, Tigana told his depressed players the odds had shifted in their favour. And so it proved: they drew 1-1 at Old Trafford to go through.

Mourinho may be tempted to ape Tigana. A cautious formation, which plays for 0-0 in the hope that Ibrahimovic or Adriano can magic up a goal, would suit Inter. But you can never tell with Jose, he may want to be more forceful to exploit United’s inexperience in central defence.

Monaco send United packing in '98

Can two of Europe’s most prolific goalscorers get off the mark?

Top scorer in the 2007/08 Champions League, Cristiano Ronaldo’s haul so far in the 2008/09 competition is zero, zip, nada etc.

Some say CR7 is discombobulated by his non-move to Real and Berbatov’s arrival. But he usually scores most goals after Christmas and, the stats suggest, remains on course for 32 in all competitions.

Fernando Torres hasn’t scored in five Champions League games. In the Premier League, Torres averages 0.68 goals a game compared to 0.37 in the Champions League.

CR7’s averages are 0.42 (Premier League) and 0.25 (Europe). Those stats don’t do Ronaldo justice: in the last three seasons, his league average is 0.66 and in Europe 0.46. Remarkable stats for an attacking midfielder/winger.

Who defends for Barcelona?

Barca kept just one clean sheet in their group. Against Basle.

Barca fans haven’t warmed to Pep Guardiola’s preferred central pairing, Rafael Marquez and Gerard Pique. Marquez’s form has fluctuated – strong in 2005/06, dodgy in 2006/07, good in the first half of 2007/08, injured (or out of form) for the second – but he is a capable reader of the game, good in the air and a useful cross-field passer.

With Abidal injured, Puyol may stand in as full-back, although fans would prefer Sylvinho at left-back and Puyol reunited with Marquez in the middle.

Can Maxi Rodriguez top this?

Atleti are in indifferent form – even under new coach Abel Resino – so if the mattress makers are to beat Porto it would help if their skipper did something like this. Atleti’s home record in this tournament is P26, W19, D4, L3 so the game at the Vicente Calderon may prove key.

Will Lyon get an early goal?

2-0 is the ideal, attainable score for Claude Puel’s men. So Barca should expect an opening onslaught at the Stade Gerland.

Last time Guardiola and Puel met they were opposing midfielders. Guardiola had the better of it, pulling the strings in the 1993/94 Champions League as Barca beat Puel’s Monaco 2-0 at home and 1-0 away.

Puel’s best hope of avoiding a similar whitewash is to trust the attacking genius of Karim Benzema – who has averaged 0.7 goals a game in the Champions League – and Juninho’s free-kicks. Benzema and Frank Lampard were the only players to score against Manchester United in the knockout stages last season.

Juninho & Benzema: Lyon's best (and only?) hope

Will Joao Moutinho score?

The Sporting midfielder has been “the new Rui Costa” for so long it’s easy to forget he’s only 22.

He can look like a match-winner or a passenger but, at his best, he is brave, technically accomplished, creative and disciplined. If Moutinho is to become Rui Costa 2.0, he needs to score more goals: 1 in 33 Champions League matches isn’t enough for a player of his quality.

Sporting have played 14 games against German teams. And won none. But Bayern have lost three out of their last four, their keeper Michael Rensing says his defenders “get on my nerves” and Luca Toni is injured. Sporting have only one world class attacker, Liedson, but they could frustrate Bayern.

How many free-kicks will Chelsea concede near their box?

Not many if they heed Guus Hiddink’s instructions. Alessandro Del Piero has already scored six from free-kicks this season, including a glorious 40-yard strike against Zenit.

If the Juventus skipper does take one – and Sebastiano Giovinco is playing – watch out for Giovinco’s position. He usually stands directly behind Del Piero so he can pick up a few tips.

Del Piero: Deadly with a dead ball this season

Will Arjen Robben smirk as he flies past a Liverpool full-back?

Billed as a clash of icons: Raul vs Gerrard. Yet anyone who watched Robben’s wonder goal against Villarreal will know that the 25-year-old Dutch master, who has that rare ability to cut a swathe through hapless defences while looking annoyingly supercilious, could be the key to unlocking Liverpool.

The Reds only kept one clean sheet in Group D – against Marseille at Anfield. The media usually blames Rafa Benitez’s insistence on zonal marking but only one of the five goals shipped in Group D was from a set-piece: PSV scored from a corner in a 3-1 defeat by Liverpool.

How badly will Pana miss Loukas Vyntra?

Nearly 28, Vyntra has matured into a pacy, versatile defender who has been an indispensable, ever present for Panathinaikos in Europe in 2008/09.

A bruised left leg has sidelined him for the trip to Spain. After beating Inter and Werder Bremen, Pana seem confident of sinking Villarreal’s Yellow Submarine, but will Joseba Llorente and Giuseppe Rossi exploit Vyntra’s absence?

Villarreal’s creative anchor man, Marcos Senna, needs to show the authority, consistency and discipline he displayed at Euro 2008. His team have kept just two clean sheets in 23 games.

Will Philippe Mexes get the recognition he deserves?

Against Siena at the weekend, a shocked hush fell over the Stadio Olimpico as Philippe Mexes fell badly. Luckily for Roma, he recovered to initiate several great moves as Luciano Spalletti’s men won 2-1.

At 26, Mexes is coming into his prime. Once renowned for charging up midfield and leaving gaps for opponents to attack, he has learned to time such forays and is, in many ways, the epitome of the modern central defender: good at winning the ball and making use of it.

Touted as the new Alessandro Nesta, he says that, like his skipper Francesco Totti, he wants to end his career in Rome. If he can quieten Robin van Persie, Roma could progress.

Mexes: Roma's rock that Gunners must destroy

What do Arsenal need to turn their season around?

If Arsenal are to win the silverware that will keep the likes of Van Persie, Adebayor and Fabregas at the Emirates, they need to win the Champions League or come at least fourth in the Premier League.

The average points tally of fourth-placed teams in the last five seasons is 66.4. Arsenal have 45 from 26, so to be reasonably sure they need 22-25 points from 12 games.

If we assume Aston Villa struggle, Arsenal could requalify with 67 points. But they’d need to pick up two more points in their last dozen games than they did last season.

The easiest way for Arsenal to qualify for the Champions League may be to surprise everybody and win it.

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Curses, wallies & the return of the Russian linesman

2009-02-20T14:30:00Z

The Russian linesman is back...

Sixteen years after his death, the Azerbaijani linesman Tofik Bakhramov is the inspirational centrepiece for an exhibition by artist Mark Wallinger at London’s Hayward Gallery.

The exhibition is called The Russian Linesman because, for years, few people in England knew or cared that a) a place called Azerbaijan existed and b) that Bakhramov, the linesman who gave England’s third goal in the 1966 final, came from there.

The blurb for Wallinger’s exhibition is absurdly pretentious and self-important but the show isn’t.

Bakhramov is such a hero in Azerbaijan that the national stadium is named after him. Five years ago, before England’s game in Baku, a statue was unveiled in his honour but many Azerbaijanis feel their linesman still hasn’t had due recognition.

England's heroes: Bakhramov (R) and fellow 1966 final officials

One fan, Aydyn Zarbaliev, even went so far as to suggest: “Many people in London won’t agree with me but I think Bakhramov deserves a monument from the English no smaller than Nelson’s column.”

Geoff Hurst once presented the linesman’s son with a shirt that read: “Thank you very much” in Azeri. Computer analysis has suggested, but not conclusively proved, that the ball didn’t cross the line leading many to wonder about the linesman’s motivation.

There is an apocryphal story that, when Bakhramov was lying on his deathbed, he was asked why he’d given the goal. Legend has it that the former official mumbled one word: “Stalingrad.”

Masterminds and wallies...

“Sack the coach” was how Danish football journalist Morten Crone Sejersbal greeted the appointment of Magnus Persson as Aalborg coach.

The fact that Persson, a Swede, was replacing Danish caretaker Allan Kuhn was a blow to Denmark’s pride. But Persson masterminded the result of the week in the UEFA Cup, a 3-0 victory over Deportivo La Coruna in his first European game as coach.

Funnily enough Sejersbal now admits: “I’ve changed my mind. It’s good that Aab don’t listen to the media.”

Elsewhere, the UEFA Cup brought some solace for two coaches under fire: Marco van Basten (Ajax won 1-0 in Fiorentina) and Mircea Lucescu (Shakhtar beat Spurs 2-0 despite some ludicrous finishing).

I still wouldn’t be surprised if Lucescu moved on at the end of the season, especially now that Valeriy Gazzaev is in the market for a new post.

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation of the wally with the brolly gathers momentum as Steve McClaren’s Twente comfortably beat Marseille 1-0 in the Velodrome.

Schteve celebrates conquering the French

The curse of the Brazilian World Cup winning coach...

Mario Zagallo, Carlos Alberto Parreira and Phil Scolari have two things in common: they have all coached Brazil to World Cup glory – and have never lasted more than a season at a European club.

Zagallo didn’t even try, Carlos Alberto Parreira endured one forgettable season (1994/95) at Valencia and Scolari spent five months at Chelsea.

But perhaps the curse isn’t restricted to World Cup winning coaches. Vanderlei Luxemburgo had a torrid time at Real in 2004/05, best remembered by the cognoscenti for a pioneering (for which read: suicidal) 4-2-2-2 formation known as the Magic Rectangle.

Zico lasted two years at Fenerbahce and at least left of his own volition, suggesting he’d be up for the Newcastle job.

But Dennis Wise, a man steeped in football history and the power of the Brazilian curse, wisely gave Zico the swerve and the legend is now tasked with reviving CSKA Moscow.

Maybe the curse isn’t restricted to Brazilian coaches. As we point out in the new issue of Champions – look if I don’t plug it, who else will? – Argentine coaches have, since the 1960s heyday of Helenio Herrera, had a marginal influence on European football.

Does this mean there’s something wrong with Brazilian and Argentine coaches? Or with the European game?

Big Phil confronts the dreaded curse head on

And finally, the day James Joyce joined the Hungarian midfield...

The most influential novelist of the 20th century was no master of the “greasy leather orb,” as he referred to the ball but, according to this intriguing post on The Global Game he was happy to rub shoulders with the Hungarian football team at a lecture in Paris in 1937.

Vladimir Nabokov, the goalkeeper and novelist, was giving the lecture and the sight of Joyce “arms folded and glasses glinting in the middle of the Hungarian soccer team” unnerved him.

Fortunately, Joyce just sat there and paid attention. As did the Hungarian players.

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How do you solve a problem like Spain?

2009-02-17T11:00:00Z

From Queen’s Park to Seville...

“The Englishman had all the advantage in respect of weight and pace. The strong point with the home side was that they played excellently well together.”

This is from the Glasgow Herald’s match report on the first ever international – England vs Scotland in 1872 (Scotland were entirely represented by Queen’s Park players and the game finished 0-0) – but could as easily have been the verdict on England vs Spain last week.

Phil Jagielka’s unfortunate assist for Spain’s opener symbolised a carelessness with the ball that has, since the 1870s, been part of English football’s DNA and which must, even for a coach as iron-willed as Capello, be a constant source of irritation.

Villa strokes home Spain's opener in Seville

In fairness, England did not disgrace themselves in Spain but they never really looked in serious contention either.

In Spain, the papers are touting Del Bosque’s side as “the Brazil of Europe” and, in the last year, four very different coaches have failed to devise a plan to defeat them.

In the Euros, Hiddink failed twice with Russia, as his players struggled to keep the ball, Donadoni stifled the Spanish in the quarter-final but the Azzurri were so drained they posed no attacking threat, and Low made the best fist of it with Germany, trying to seize the initiative with some fast, direct play in the final (as Andy Roxburgh, UEFA technical director points out in the latest issue of Champions) but still lost.

Capello’s plan was harder to discern. It may be he wanted England to emulate Germany (with the pace of Agbonlahor), but after about 15 minutes, the battle for midfield supremacy had been lost – and with it the game.

The only reason I’m not convinced Spain will win the World Cup in 2010 is that, in modern times, it is rare for a form team’s reign of supremacy to last that long. France managed it in 1998 and 2000 but the norm has been for the world or European champions to hit their stride either just before or during the tournament or even – in Italy’s case in 2006 – in the semi-final.

Reasons for Brazil to be cheerful...

Brazil’s victory over Italy dispelled some of the gloom surrounding Dunga’s team. At lunch the other day with Jonathan Wilson, the football writer and author of the seminal tactical tome Inverting The Pyramid, he suggested another reason for the selecao to be optimistic.

Pausing over his croque monsieur, he pointed out that the team that won the World Cup usually had the best full-backs in the world.

Fab full-backs: The secret to World Cup success?

The record shows he has a point:

2006 Italy: Grosso, Zambrotta
2002 Brazil: Cafu, Roberto Carlos
1998 France: Thuram, Lizarazu
1994 Brazil: Jorginho, Branco
1990 Germany: Berthold, Brehme

The weakest pair of World Cup wining full-backs is 1994. But Ray Wilson and George Cohen were no slouches in 1966, Paul Breitner and Berti Vogts shone in 1974 and, in 1958, Brazil ushered in their golden age with Djalma Santos and Nilton Santos.

Djalma was the more defensive of the two but he was an effective attacker down the right, while Nilton was one of the best full-backs ever. If he had played in a more televisual age, he would be as famous as Roberto Carlos. Still, in 2010, any nation with Maicon and Daniel Alves at the back is going to have a chance.

With Sergio Ramos and Joan Capdevilla, Spain are hardly under strength in this position. The sooner Capello perfects his pairing – on pure talent it would have to be Micah Richards and Ashley Cole – the better.

And finally…

The owner of my favourite football tache, Artur Jorge, has a fantastic Wikipedia page which ends: “God knows where he is now.”

You would have thought that with a moustache as luxuriant as a small forest, it would be hard for Jorge to vanish. But the veteran coach, who won the European Cup in 1987 with Porto, was last heard of in 2006/07 coaching Creteil, who now languish in France’s Division Three.

Any sightings will be rewarded with a free copy of the latest Champions.

Artur Jorge sports his famous face fungus

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What Chelsea need most... (and it isn’t a quick fix)

2009-02-13T14:00:00Z

If you consider many of the great European clubs, they have one thing in common... one, possibly two, transformational managers who, in partnership with a board or a strong chairman/owner, laid the foundations on which a successful club must be based.

The glorious exception to this rule is Real Madrid. But Santiago Bernabeu, the club’s greatest president, was almost a surrogate transformational coach in the 1950s, seizing the opportunity provided by the European Cup, signing a galaxy of players and inspiring a style of play that became a club trademark.

The transformational manager pattern works if you consider Ajax (Rinus Michel; Louis Van Gaal), Arsenal (Herbert Chapman in the 1930s and Arsene Wenger in the 90s), Inter (Helenio Herrera in the 60s), Dinamo Kyiv (Valeriy Lobanovsky), Liverpool (Bill Shankly in the 60s), Manchester United (Sir Matt Busby in the 50s and Sir Alex Ferguson in the 90s) and Milan (Arrigo Sacchi in the late 80s).

These managers are usually of a certain age when they take on their transformational challenge. Herrera was 50, Shankly and Wenger were 46, Ferguson 45, Sacchi 41, Michels 37, Busby 36 and Lobanovsky 35. They create a successful model which, all being well, could last 20-30 years.

But at some point, typically around 25 years, this model will become rusty and uncompetitive and need to be partially or wholly reinvented.

Have Chelsea waved goodbye to their best chance of sustained success?

United’s failure to modernise the Busby model in the early 1980s coincided with a Bart Simpsonesque period of underachievement that persuaded the club to gamble on a tenacious, relatively unknown Scottish manager called Alex Ferguson.

Dinamo Kyiv, Inter and Real Madrid still have their reinventing to do – and their volatility may, ultimately, have more to do with this challenge than the calibre of coaches or players they hire.

Chelsea have not had such a manager. Even if Hiddink was so inclined – and Russia let him go – he may, at 62, be too old to inspire the kind of root and branch transformation the club needs to become an enduring, great power in European football.

Chelsea have the players, the backing, and much of the infrastructure – notably a £20m training ground in Cobham – but they don’t seem, from the outside, to have developed the division of responsibility and boring structural stuff that underpins a club with the longevity of an Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United or Milan.

Nor, under Abramovich, have they developed a ‘Chelsea way’ of playing football in the way that Wenger’s Arsenal and Ferguson’s United have.

What Chelsea need, above all, is a gifted, inspirational manager in his 40s who pledges his long-term future to the club.

That could have been Mourinho. It could still be Ancelotti, who only turns 50 this summer. But it almost certainly won’t be Hiddink even if he does become the first Chelsea coach to win the UEFA Champions League.

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King Arthur Mourinho, Archangel Guus & Perry Groves

2009-02-11T10:00:00Z

Hiddink, schmiddink. Most of the Chelsea fans I spoke to wanted one man to replace Scolari. The one man Roman Abramovich will never appoint. The outlaw Jose Mourinho.

When Mourinho and Abramovich parted 17 months ago, the Special One stormed out challenging the billionaire to find someone who could do a better job. Accepting that challenge has already cost the Chelsea owner £32.5m in pay-offs alone.

Guus Hiddink may be Abramovich’s best shot – he has at least won the European Cup, in its old guise. And if he wins the trophy with Chelsea, he may yet banish the ghost of Mourinho.

The key word there is ‘may’. Mourinho is Chelsea’s king in exile, a legendary Arthurian kind of ruler whose glorious, yet too brief, reign ended in betrayal, conspiracy and deceit. Arthur, so myth has it, is resting in the mysterious Isle of Avalon, awaiting his country’s summons in hour of dire need.

Mourinho is more visible, making headlines in Serie A with Inter Milan but still, so some fans secretly dream, liable to make a messianic return to Stamford Bridge to lead the Blues to glory. In truth, it could only happen if Abramovich sold the club.

The Arthurian complex is not unique to Chelsea. In hours of need, Bayern have invariably sent for Franz Beckenbauer. Barcelona’s Arthurian hero hasn’t vanished into a mystical, parallel universe; Johan Cruyff is available on the end of a phone if either Pep Guardiola or Joan Laporta need his sage counsel.

"Scuse me mate - which way's Stamford Bridge?"

In a remarkably short time, Mourinho became part of Chelsea’s soul. And he may, unlike Arthur, have bowed out at the right time. The knights of the round table/three musketeers solidarity he had inspired had begun to crack, replaced by what Cruyff’s mentor Rinus Michels identified as a syndrome where players, under pressure, begin to play, as he put it, “as if they are a kingdom of their own”.

Michels noticed this tendency in underperforming Barcelona sides – he even used it, as Köln coach, to beat the Blaugranas 4-0 at Camp Nou in the 1980 UEFA Cup.

Koln had lost the first leg 1-0 in Germany but Michels told his players that if they got just one goal, the Barcelona players would get nervous, forget what they had to do for the team and start playing for themselves. And so it proved.

Golden Guus
Guus is, of course, pronounced Goose, an immense boon to headline writers who have exhausted their stock of Phil-tastic puns. If Hiddink’s Chelsea triumph in Rome this May, he’ll be Golden Guus.

If he loses his rag at half-time when they are 1-0 down against Wigan, at least one back page will cry out: “Wild Guus”. A succession of drab 0-0 draws will be greeted with “Grey Guus”. If Chelsea lose 4-0 to Juve at Stamford Bridge, it will surely be a case of “Guus cooked”.

Hiddink is a great coach but he might want to reflect on Simon Barnes’ fine words in The Times. “Chelsea have reached the limit of human possibility in their quest for the right man. The logical next step is to hire an archangel… So Chelsea fired Luiz Felipe Scolari.

"You may be good enough for Brazil, but if you think you're good enough for Chelsea, you've 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?”

As the Sports Illustrated archive points out, firing Scolari is in the club’s great, masochistic tradition. In the 1930s, the idea of the Blues winning silverware was considered so unlikely a vaudeville performer called Norman Long performed a comic novelty song entitled The Day That Chelsea Went And Won The Cup.

On such an unlikely day, Long side-splittingly suggested, a pigeon would hatch a guinea pig and the sun would come out in Manchester.

"I'd hatch a what in the where now?"

Hiddink’s job is to ensure that someone doesn’t remake this satirical masterpiece and entitle it The Day That Chelsea Went And Won The Champions League.

And finally…
A useful corrective to the cult of the boss is offered by football academic Stefan Szymanski here. He suggests that fans can judge players as well as coaches. Not sure about that.

When Thierry Henry arrived at Highbury, for example, many Gooners (including Nick Hornby) thought Wenger had splashed out millions on a pacier Perry Groves.

Still, Szymanski’s piece is worth reading even if, ultimately, I felt, as Roy Walker says again on that insurance ad: “It’s good, but it’s not right.”

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Blizzards, bursting bubbles & barmy Benitez

2009-02-04T10:00:00Z

The snowman scarf count in Shepperton this week is Chelsea 3 Arsenal 1.

Meanwhile, away from Blizzard Britain, football continues to suggest that it is full of, to paraphrase the classic Elvis’ gospel song Run On, long tongued liars, ramblers, gamblers and back biters.

Red divide

Explaining why he sold Robbie Keane, Rafa Benitez said: “We still have [Ryan] Babel, [David] Ngog and Dirk Kuyt as well as Torres. It is a risk but the situation was not good and we needed to do something.” 

Here are the stats on the strikers supporting Torres: 

Ryan Babel: 76 games, 13 goals, 0.17 goals a game. 

David Ngog: 9 games, 1 goal, 0.11 goals a game.

 Dirk Kuyt: 128 games, 32 goals, 0.25 goals a game. 

Luckily, Torres’s stats are: 68 games, 41 goals, 0.60 goals a game.

Who needs Robbie Keane when you've got David Ngog

Compare this to Manchester United’s firepower.:

Dimitar Berbatov: 25 games, 11 goals, 0.44 goals a game.

 Cristiano Ronaldo: 271 games, 106 goals, 0.39 goals a game.

Wayne Rooney: 218 games, 89 goals, 0.41 goals a game.

Carlos Tevez: 80 games, 29 goals, 0.36 goals a game.

Most tedious metaphor of the week

Don’t know if you caught Mihir Bose’s report on BBC’s 10 o’clock news about the Premier League's bubble bursting.

To save you searching for it online, here is the item in a nutshell.  

1. The Premier League’s bubble may be about to burst. 

2. Quite a few Premier League clubs are effectively up for sale. 

3. See point 1.  

That was it.

And what graphic device did they use to illustrate the point that the Premier League’s financial bubble may be about to burst?

That’s right. A bubble.

Presumably the BBC think us incapable of understanding the point about financial bubbles bursting unless we are constantly looking at bubbles. Big ones, cuddly ones, like the bubbles we blew as kids.  

Look out! It's going to blow...

The device might have been vaguely witty if they’d shown West Ham in a bubble. Instead, Fulham were cocooned in one as gentlemanly Roy Hodgson tactfully did his best to make the story seem half valid.

It was an odd item to run on the day the Premier League announced it looked set for another record TV deal, a daft whim.

Presumably the bubbles came from the same graphic whiz who decided, at the height of Olympics fever, that we couldn’t understand a story on Britain’s economy without our performance being rated gold, medal or bronze.

(Obviously, we now know, thanks to the IMF, that if economic performance were an Olympic event, Great Britain wouldn’t get out of the heats).

I can’t wait for Mihir’s next report. His searching expose of the difficulties facing Fabio Capello’s England will be presented, in its entirety, from a cage at Whipsnade Zoo occupied by three lions. Hey, we can all dream can’t we?

Backhanded compliment of the week

Arsenal nut Christian Skindballe’s defence of Nikolas Bendtner, quoted in Arsenal’s official newsletter would be a bit more rousing if it didn’t include this sentence:

“People need to remember you don´t have to like the person to appreciate the talent and contribution.”

Gamble of the week

Andrei Arshavin’s arrival at Arsenal had me wondering: has any Russian footballer ever really done the business when playing for a foreign club?

Arshavin: Will he break the mould of Russians flopping abroad?

When Rangers bought Oleg Salenko, joint Golden Boot winner at USA '94, the Russian striker did more shooting mucking around in Paul Gascoigne’s garden than he did on the pitch.

Midfield schemer Aleskandr Mostovoi was so popular at Celta Vigo the fans dubbed him “The Tsar of Balaidos.”

Can’t think of too many other Russian stars in exile but feel free to suggest a few.

I hope Arshavin is the catalyst Arsenal needs because the Premier League is poorer without the Gunners on song. This season has – thanks to Manchester City’s massive good fortune – been more exciting on the back pages than on the pitch.

Why Sheikh Mansour has bought the wrong club

2009-02-03T11:00:00Z

If football in the North East was a Marlon Brando character it would be Terry (“I could have been a contender”) Malloy in On The Waterfront.

In the last 30 years, only Kevin Keegan - the Geordie Bonnie Prince Charlie - has looked capable of delivering some long overdue glory.

It wasn’t always like this, as the 1908/09 league table shows. That season Newcastle were convincing champions, Sunderland finished third and Middlesbrough ninth.

Maybe the rot started with Alf Common.

Middlesbrough paid a world record fee of £1,000 to lure the striker from Sunderland in February 1905. Terrorising defences with skill and a walrus-like moustache, he scored for fun. But in 1910, he headed south to Woolwich Arsenal, a move that marked the end of a golden decade for North East football.

Common: Catalyst for North Eastern decline?

After World War I, the North East was never as great a football power.

Newcastle won their fourth and final title in 1926/27, dominated the FA Cup in the early 1950s, won the Fairs Cup in 1969 and lit up in the Premiership in the 1990s.

Sunderland enjoyed a glorious mid-1930s (winning the league in 1936 and FA Cup in 1937) but have not had masses to cheer since apart from the Bob Stokoe/Ian Porterfield/Jim Montgomery FA Cup final triumph over Leeds.

Middlesbrough, third in the league in 1913/14, have won the League Cup and have never broken a transfer record since Commons’ departure – though under Bryan Robson they set a record for the highest fee ever paid for an immobile, overweight Brazilian left-back when they acquired Branco.

The North East’s loss has, largely, been the North West’s gain, as this table shows:

Eight of the North East’s 10 league titles were won before 1915 – five by Sunderland and three by Newcastle. Sunderland’s galactical “team of all the talents” won the league three times between 1891and 1895. In 1892/93, they were 11 points ahead of Preston – an 18 point margin in today’s money.

After buying some gifted players (mainly from Scotland) Newcastle won three titles in the 1900s and reached five FA Cup finals in seven years with a rousing style of possession play that defined the expectations of generations of Toon fans.

Until the late 1950s, the Tyne and Wear teams had a decent run winning a proper trophy every so often and nurturing stars like Jackie Milburn and Len Shackleton. Then Sunderland, wounded by a scandal over payments to players, slipped out of the top flight in 1958; Newcastle followed suit in 1961.

The gap between North West and North East was cruelly exposed in the 1974 Liverpool vs Newcastle FA Cup final, a bleak counterpoint to Sunderland’s heroism in 1973, and one of the most boring, uncompetitive finals I have ever seen – with the possible exception of the 1998/99 Newcastle vs Manchester United showpiece.

1999 FA Cup final: One for the purist

Economics is partly to blame.

The North East’s dominance on the pitch in the late 1890s and 1900s was, in part, fuelled by a boom in coal, iron, steel, ships and engineering. Rich captains of industry happily funded Sunderland’s “team of all the talents.” But even in 1895/96, with results worsening, such funding was harder to find. Such crises have periodically rocked club boardrooms on the Tyne, Tees and Wear ever since.

Once, one in every three ships in the world was made on the Tyne, Tees and Wear. By the 1920s and 1930s, demand for coal, ships and steel had slumped.

The North East’s economy – like its football industry – has never really recovered. Even in the 1950s, when Toon legend Milburn was asked by cousin Cissy Charlton which club her son Bobby should join, he recommended Matt Busby’s Manchester United because they had a far better youth system.

Bobby wasn’t the last star the Toon missed: Jack Charlton, Peter Beardsley, Michael Carrick and Alan Shearer all had to make their mark elsewhere.

Economic troubles encourage prudence but Newcastle’s history is shot through with pure meanness. In 1951, directors were so delighted to win the FA Cup they bought a job lot of handbags for £17, stuffed them with newspaper clippings and gave them to the players’ wives.

In 1956, Stan Seymour rewarded defender Frank Brennan for his loyal service by slashing his wage from £15 to £8. And in 1977, when Newcastle were reasonably successful, six players nearly quit the club after contract talks stalled.

The decline is partly about quality of management over a long period. In the dugout, there has been no Shankly or Busby to lay the foundations for a great club.

In the boardroom, the directors have scored more own goals than Dennis Wise’s old teammate Frank Sinclair and have, since the 1950s, largely failed to nurture and retain a nucleus of quality players that could make a great team.

From Supermac to Gazza, they have sold stars and, too often, invested the money in the likes of Stephane G’uivarch. Newcastle’s remarkable genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory has, rather unfairly, made the Toon Army’s passion seem comically grotesque.

The tragic-comic result of Newcastle’s unerring instinct for self-destruction is that Abu Dhabi United Investment And Development Limited bought the wrong club. If any Premier League club stood to be transformed by halfway decent management and the infusion of a few hundred million quid it was Newcastle United.

The average gate at St James’s Park last season was 51,231, higher than for Serie A winners Inter, and nearly 9,000 more than the average at the City of Manchester Stadium.

The Toon Army deserve something to shout about

And Newcastle, unlike Manchester City, own their stadium. That’s partly why, last year, American business magazine Forbes estimated that Newcastle United was worth £220m, almost £80m more than Manchester City.

If Newcastle fans ever feel inspired to repeat the paper plane throwing feats that illuminated a dull 0-0 with Crystal Place in May 2005, they may want to make them out of dirhams, the Abu Dhabi currency, just to remind Mike Ashley what he has lost.

Sunderland and Middlesbrough do, at least, have stable ownership now. In a story littered with missed opportunities, Newcastle’s failure to find the right owner from the Middle East may just be the biggest missed opportunity of all.

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Insomnia, Dimitar Cantona & the Roy Race biography

2009-01-30T13:00:00Z

The strangely selective amnesia of Joe Kinnear...

Let’s be honest, we’ve all forgot stuff.

Bobby Robson, still revered on Tyneside, once famously referred to Lauren Robert as Lauren Bacall, often puzzled Shola Ameobi by saying: “Hello Carl” (mistaking him for Carl Cort) and, as England manager, often addressed Bryan Robson as “Bobby.”

Jack Charlton, when he managed Ireland, gave up trying to remember Tony Cascarino’s name and settled for calling him “ice cream man.” In both cases, such slips didn’t seem to matter because Robson and Charlton ensured their teams did the business on the pitch.

Joe Kinnear has no such defence. And his memory loss is perplexing.

Apparently unable to remember Charles N’Zogbia’s surname, he did manage to recall the cruel nickname "insomnia” with which Sunderland fans derided N’Zogbia.

Kinnear has suggested the player is just using the row to engineer a move. The puzzle being that, if that is the case, why was Kinnear daft enough to give his wantaway star the ammunition?

"Ere Tony, I'll have a 99... with a flake"

From Cantona to Dimitar...

Dimitar Berbatov is, as a Manchester United fan said to me the other night, “a proper player.”

The media - so keen to berate him for getting lost in games and not showing enough appetite for the fray - should cut him some slack.

I am baffled by the criticism of his sulky demeanour on the pitch. Football may be a branch of the entertainment industry but that doesn’t mean every player should be contractually obliged to play to the cameras.

The game will be much more monotonous if every midfielder or attacker is compelled to run around like Action Man and cover, as the cliché goes, every blade of grass on the pitch. Berbatov has the technique, vision and instincts to be as important to United today as Cantona was in the 1990s.

The class vs effort controversy is almost as old as football. (And having watched Brian Talbot at Arsenal in the early 1980s I know which side of the argument I come down on.)

Roy Race, when he managed Melchester Rovers, struggled with a similar dilemma. In one instalment, he wrestled with misgivings about signing a striker who only really featured in a game for two minutes but in that period scored two goals to win the match.

Berbatov: United's 21st century Cantona?

Roy, Lennie and Barry...

Roy Race brings me to the question of the great football novel. Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland (a Gatsby-esque novel in which the morose hero alleviates his mid-life crisis by playing cricket in New York) has pointed out that such a novel doesn’t yet exist.

David Peace’s Damned Utd is a superb fictionalisation of the worst 44 days of Brian Clough’s life. And the trailer for the film looks magnificent.

But there is, as far as I’m aware, no classic novel that does for football what, say, Walter Tevis’s The Hustler did for pool or Don DeLillo’s End Zone for NFL.

O’Neill recommends Barry Hines’s debut novel The Blinder about a gifted working class footballer called Lennie Hawke who struggles to juggle sport and school.

I’ve just ordered it. If it’s as good as the PE teacher/Bobby Charlton/Denis Law sketch in Hines’s more famous A Kestrel For A Knave, I’m in for a treat.

If you’ve read any great football novels please let me know. And, I must admit, I haven’t yet read the Roy Race ‘biography'.

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Serbian football crawling back from wreckage

2009-01-28T10:00:00Z

When Radomir Antic accepted, at the umpteenth time of asking, the job of Serbian national coach, many pundits assumed it was an act of sheer desperation.

His predecessor Miroslav Dukic had been ousted without managing a full competitive game after arguing with Serbian FA boss Tomislav Karadzic. But Antic decided, as he suggested in one remarkably frank interview, “football mirrors the social situation in a country.”

With fewer football executives in jail and a new government engaging with the West, rather than nursing paranoid suspicions about it, the time seemed right. And with Serbia top of their 2010 World Cup qualifying group, Antic’s faith has, so far, been vindicated.

Serbia celebrate at Croke Park

One of the smaller consequences of the break-up of Yugoslavia was that it wrecked Serbian football.

UN sanctions barred the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav team from Euro 92, USA 94 and Euro 96. The gloom was deepened when newly independent Croatia reached the semi-finals of France 98, while a very Serbian Yugoslav team were knocked out in the last 16 by a long distance screamer from Edgar Davids.

In 2006, Serbia, briefly hyphenated with Montenegro, were famously routed 6-0 by Argentina in the 2006 World Cup, conceding to a 24-pass move which showed the kind of technique, patience and guile Serbian football had once been renowned for.

But things are finally looking up for the Serbian game. This has been a good transfer window for Serbian players and clubs. Partizan Belgrade have – to use a technical term much in use among the financial cognoscenti – ‘trousered’ £8m from the sale of promising midfielder Zoran Tosic to Manchester United.

Partizan will earn more when his team-mate, attacking midfielder Adem Ljajic, joins United in 2010. After a three-day-trial, Eintracht Frankfurt gave left-back Nikola Petkovic, a star of the Serbian side that reached the 2007 European Under-21 final, a three and a half year contract.

The catalyst for this export drive was Nemanja Vidic’s arrival at Old Trafford in 2006. The reported fee – around £6m – now seems like one of the bargains of the 21st century. In football, nothing succeeds like success and the ease with which the redoubtable central defender settled had scouts wondering if they could find similar talent, at the right price, in Vidic’s homeland.

United's new recruit: Zoran 'the new Kaka' Tosic

Last year alone Chelsea paid £9m for defender Branislav Ivanovic, Hertha Berlin snapped up versatile defender/defensive midfielder Gojko Kacar for £2.5m (not bad for a player who became the first Serb to score five goals in a game for his country, against Hungary last September), Borussia Dortmund paid £2m for right-back Antonio Rukavina, Nantes bought striker Filip Djordevic and Genoa took attacking midfielder Bosko Jankovic on loan.

There is still more talent coming through. Red Star’s 25-year-old skipper Nenad Milijas, yet another promising defensive midfielder, has already been linked with CSKA Moscow, Borussia Dortmund, Hertha Berlin and Roma.

20-year-old left-back Ivan Obradovic only made his first team debut for Partizan in April 2007 but he has already been given the captain’s armband and scored his first goal for the national team. Partizan and Red Star are also rumoured to be tracking two U21 stars: midfielder Dusan Tadic and striker Danijel Aleksic.

If this money enriches Serbian football, rather than a few directors, the boom may continue. At the very least, such sales might prevent the kind of financial problems which turned the climax of the 2007/08 season into a byzantine, bureaucratic mess.

FK Zemun couldn’t compete in the UEFA Cup because their finances were so dire. Their place was given to Borac Cacak whose Intertoto Cup spot was given, after four teams turned it down, to OFK Beograd.

The relegation battle wasn’t any prettier. Mladost Lucani were relegated because they were broke. This meant one bottom-three side had to be reprieved. Eventually, 11th placed Banat Zrenjanin were saved because they had more supporters than 10th-placed Smederevo, who were so livid they appealed, to no effect, to UEFA. Hopefully, this season such issues will be decided on the pitch.

Serbian fans could yet hold their national game back. Partizan were expelled from the 2007/08 UEFA Cup after fighting. Partizan supporters may be nicknamed the gravediggers but there’s no need for them to dig their own club’s grave.

Partizan fans threatening to hold club back

Racist fans still disfigure the Serbian game – though the authorities are probably working harder to combat this than they are sometimes given credit for. Last November, 26 Borac Cacak supporters were jailed after wearing Ku Klux Klan outfits and shouting abuse at their own Zimbabwean player.

Serbians have always played football with a swagger that the rest of the world can find offputting. One of Antic’s tasks, as national coach, is to use that arrogance to his team’s advantage. But his biggest challenge, he admits, is to end the culture of “the typical ‘yes, but’ excuses in the Serbian game.”

Ironically, the very process many Serbs laboured to prevent – the complete break up of Yugoslavia – may, ultimately, liberate the nation’s footballers.

If Antic can end the “yes, but” culture, 2010 could be Serbia’s best World Cup ever. Not that that’s saying much.

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Every wannabe football tycoon needs a history lesson

2009-01-23T15:00:00Z

The worst thing that could happen to the German-Swiss investors allegedly researching a bid for Chelsea is that they fall prey to one of the popular delusions that have destroyed countless wannabe football tycoons.

The most powerful of these is the belief that, with the right calibre of management, a club’s performance can be transformed – and that cash, gazillions of it, can expedite this transformation.

Investors who know little about the heritage of the game – or the club they buy – are prone to exaggerate the impact they can have on a club’s status, a tendency you might call “Bigger than Real Madrid” syndrome.

  "£100m for one player!? You'll have to make do with a cheque..."

Some new owners can’t even spell due diligence, let alone do it. But the Swiss/German/Gulf investors eyeing Chelsea will examine the club’s finances in detail.

If they’re trying to decide how much money they might have to spend if they acquired Chelsea, they should analyse one set of figures in particular depth: the number of trophies Chelsea has won.

By my reckoning, if you throw in a couple of Full Members Cups and Division Two titles, that comes to 21 – nine less than Jock Stein won in his career.

With speculation rising over the depth of Roman Abramovich’s continuing commitment to Chelsea, the idea that he has mysteriously ‘failed’ has become a cliché.

This is utter rubbish. If you take the long view, Abramovich has led one of the most sustained, successful, challenges to the established order in the history of European football.

True, he has not won the UEFA Champions League, but three semi-finals and a runners-up spot in five years is pretty decent. And the back-to-back Premiership titles, largely overlooked now, are an impressive feat.

Apart from Liverpool and Manchester United, the only other club to win consecutive English titles in the last 50 years is Wolves (1957/58 and 1958/59).

The lists of champions in France, Germany, Italy and Spain show how hard it is for new contenders to emerge. Since 1929/30, only six clubs (Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Valencia) have won La Liga more than once.

Serie A is a little more open: 104 titles have been shared by 16 clubs but three (Juve, Inter, Milan) have won 58% of those. In the Bundesliga, only Bayern, Gladbach and Hamburg have won successive titles.

France is different. Lyon, who have won Ligue 1 seven times in a row, were a mediocre Ligue 2 club when Jean-Michel Aulas took over in 1987.

Aulas has transformed Les Gones but it still took 15 years to win the first title. Aulas isn’t as rich as Abramovich but is operating in a league where the average club budget for players is just £40m.

Aulas: Transformed Lyon from mediocre to miraculous

Football can seem a fast moving business. But at the very top, continuity, not change, is the norm.

Abramovich acquired a club with a reputation, as one fan put it, for flashy underachievement. Some half a billion pounds – and six years – later, he has made them serious contenders. By football’s standards, that is some feat.

But if Chelsea want to become the world’s most charismatic, marketable club, Abramovich – or the potential new owners – may have years to wait and untold millions more to spend. (And, if Manchester City are to become the new Chelsea or, as Robinho suggested, as big as Real Madrid, they may find the eventual price tag steeper still.)

Many clubs have golden ages (Huddersfield in the 1930s, Kilmarnock in the 1960s, Napoli in the 1980s), and the game’s great powers endure spells in the doldrums (Milan in the 1980s, Manchester United in the 1970s and Liverpool in the early 1960s) but, over the long term, the usual suspects generally win the big European leagues.

Chelsea have had a golden noughties but will it last?

A 2008 study by the University of Navarra ranked Chelsea as the world’s fourth most popular club ahead of Real Madrid but behind such traditional aristocrats as Milan, Manchester United and Barcelona.

To go from fourth to first, the Blues need major silverware – they’re three European Cups behind Barcelona and Manchester United – and, the Navarra study suggests, to nurture their own global Messi(ah).

(Note to Manchester City’s new owners: the allegedly iconic signing of Thierry Henry may sell a few sky blue No14 shirts, but the real breakthrough will come when City bloods an Henry of its very own.)

When Chelsea’s owners have unearthed their own Messi, and conquered Europe a time or three, there’s the small matter of stadiums. The club needs a theatre of dreams to compete with Camp Nou, the Bernabeu, Old Trafford and the San Siro.

Stamford Bridge: It's good, but it's no San Siro

It’s the difference, in essence, between playing at a cathedral named after a legendary double World Cup winner like Giuseppe Meazza and having a ground where hospitality areas are named after David Speedie and Nigel Spackman.

Chelsea could become the biggest club in the world. So, though the odds are longer, could Manchester City. All they need is a fair wind, to discover the new Messi and an owner so determined to achieve this goal that they’re willing to stick with it even if they don’t see much change from a billion.

And there’s always a risk that, like a chagrined Bond villain, they discover that talking about world domination is easy. Achieving it is the hard bit.

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Oi Kaka, fancy becoming the new Denilson?

2009-01-20T13:00:00Z

The law of unintended consequences may complicate Real Madrid’s interest in Cristiano Ronaldo. If Kaka, the fourth best player in the world (according to FIFA) is worth £103m, how much is CR7 worth?

The rumoured Real offers – £50m, £60m, even £80m – for Ronaldo once seemed generous but now, post-Kaka, look a bit paltry. Indeed, what’s to prevent City outbidding Real?

Whoever wins the election to replace interim Real president Vicente Boluda might want to reconsider this strategy anyway.

The history of such deals – where one club bets the farm for a galactically talented player – suggests they fail as often as they succeed. Zinedine Zidane’s £46m move to Real was a treat for fans and gave us one of the greatest goals to grace a UEFA Champions League final. But Zizou arrived in 2001, conquered Europe in 2002, and by the end of 2003 Real had begun to implode.

Zizou wallops home in 2002 final at Hampden Park

For every masterly record signing – Cruyff to Barcelona, Maradona to Napoli, Gullit to Milan – there are loads of deals which went awry.

The Kaka/City circus must have fascinated a 39-year-old recently retired attacking midfielder called Gianluigi Lentini. His world record £13m move to Milan in 1992 was dubbed “an offence to the dignity of work” by the Vatican and after a bad car crash in 1993 he never recovered his old form.

Perhaps Kaka wasn’t swayed by his Christian beliefs at all. Maybe he just glanced at the history books and decided that risking he might become the new Denilson wasn't worth it – not even for a sheikh’s ransom.

Much has been made of Robinho’s exit from Manchester City’s Tenerife training camp. I wouldn’t worry too much. I suspect the imminence of Craig Bellamy has prompted the hyperactive young genius to return to Brazil to buy some industrial strength golf clubs.

Same as he ever was?

“He has seen a lot of football and I’m sure he has a plan.” That was how Fulham defender – and Norwegian skipper – Brede Hangeland greeted the return of Egil ‘Drillo’ Olsen as caretaker national coach.

Critics – many of whom coach top flight clubs in Norway – worry that Olsen’s plan is, as Talking Heads might say, the “same as it ever was”: zonal defence and long diagonal passes for a striker to nod into the box.

But Drillo’s return has done something useful: excited interest in the national team which, under Age Hareide, had begun to slip off the media’s radar. The April 1 friendly against Finland may sell out.

Olsen: "Hello boys... I'm back"

Olsen’s wellies, Marxism and the ability to identify the height of every mountain on earth should make for entertaining press conferences.

Jim White sees Olsen’s return as proof of football’s unerring ability to reward failure. But Drillo did manage the most successful Norway team ever – the national side won 30% of their games before he took over and 70% while he was in charge – and he is still only 66. LarsArhus’s stats show why so many Norwegians still hope he may get the job permanently.

And finally…

PR email subject of the week: “Aston Villa FC hero flies Air Malta.” I kid you not.

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Why the transfer market is like a brothel...

2009-01-16T10:00:00Z

Bricks and brothels

The football transfer market is like a brothel: no man can enter it and emerge with his reputation for probity intact.

So Arsenal, who have often threatened to report Real Madrid for trying to pilfer players, hope to sign Andrei Arshavin, a player who during Euro 2008, completely unprompted by a journalist, waxed lyrical about his desire to play for Barcelona and is now quoted as saying that if this transfer falls through he will remain a Zenit St Petersburg player only “on paper.”

Arshavin would be a brave move given that Russian players have hitherto had about as much impact on English football as Liechtenstein on the development of naval warfare.

Arshavin: Aiming to break mould of rusty Russians in England

If Arsene Wenger is desperate to sign a Russian, he might find CSKA Moscow’s 18-year-old playmaker Alan Dzagoev better value. Those hard to impress folks at Gazzetta Dello Sport say Dzagoev, Russia’s Young Player of the Year in 2008, could be even greater than Arshavin and he’s young enough to be moulded by the Arsenal boss.

The Kaka/Manchester City stuff makes me want to put a brick through the transfer window. The January transfer window ought to be sponsored by the football media. It cushions their return from the festive season. They can fill any yawning space with idle speculation of the “Villa grab Bergkamp” variety – a Daily Mirror scoop from the glory days of 1995.

Eastern (lack of) promise

Gornik Zabrze, Ujpesti Dozsa, Spartak Trnava… where, to quote the blonde in the defunct Australian tourism ad, the bloody hell are you?

No eastern European team from outside Russia has reached the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League since 2003/04 when Sparta Prague lost to Milan. Last season, there were no Bulgarian or Hungarian players in the tournament at all.

Dzagoev: "Arsene, up here... pick me"

There were 10 Poles but no Polish clubs – the last representatives from the footballing nation that gave us Lubanski, Lato and Deyna to grace the group stages were Widzdw Lodz in 1996/97. Wisla Krakow, who have won the Polish league five times already this century, have come closest since: in 2005/06 they beat Pana 3-1 at home but lost 4-1 in Athens in the third qualifier.

Poland’s economic resurgence – and the patronage of telecoms billionaire Boguslaw Cupial, who has backed Wisla – has not yet been reflected in the Champions League.

One club from the other side of the former Iron Curtain I expect to challenge in the Champions League is Dinamo Zagreb.

The Blues have a productive youth system and a sensible transfer policy. Adrian Caiello, the 22-year-old Argentinian holding midfielder who was in Inter’s sights, is a good acquisition and Miroslav Slepicka, the striker just arrived from Sparta Prague, looks a decent bet. The fees aren’t outlandish and the deals don’t hog headlines but Dinamo Zagreb are making progress.

Miroslav Slepicka: "My ball, give it to me, it's mine..."

Their UEFA Cup campaign peaked too early with a win over NEC but they’ll be back. It would help if they had some better luck in the Champions league qualifiers. In four seasons, they have had to face Arsenal, Dynamo Kyiv, Milan and Werder Bremen.

All they need now is some continuity on the bench: former goalkeeper Marijan Vlak is their fourth coach in 2008.

Incidentally Gornik Zabrze are bottom of the Polish Ekstraklasa, Ujpest are second in the Hungarian top flight and Spartak Trnava are third in the Slovak Superliga.

Zico

The best Brazilian footballer that Peter Gabriel very nearly wrote a song about (all together now… “Zico, oh oh Zico”) has left Bunyodkor, the most famous team in Uzbekistan, after just two months to replace Valeriy Gazzaev at CSKA Moscow.

The club’s owner, oil millionaire Isok Akbarov, still has one Brazilian legend – Rivaldo – on his books and his team are still unbeaten in – and top of – the Uzbeki league. But talk of persuading Johan Cruyff to give up his role as the footballing conscience of Barcelona to manage Rivaldo and chums seems a tad ambitious.

And finally…

As football effects go, is the “Juande Ramos effect” now more powerful than “the Harry Redknapp effect”?

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Champions League pub trivia preview

2009-01-12T10:00:00Z

Roll up! Roll up! it’s the pub quiz, triviatastic guide to the last 16 of the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League.

Which is the only team Lionel Messi has scored against in the knockout stages?
Celtic, in the last 16 in 2007/08. Since 2004/05, Messi has featured in eight knockout games but has scored just twice – both goals coming against Celtic when Barca won 3-2 win Glasgow.

When the UEFA Champions League nears the business end, even great strikers struggle to do the business.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is yet to get off the mark in the knockout stages, a duck he would love to break against Manchester United. In four Champions League seasons with Chelsea, Didier Drogba’s knockout haul stands at just five goals.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s strike rate – six in 12 knockout games, including the header in the 2008 final – looks prolific in comparison.

Messi bags only knockout stage goal to date at Parkhead

What was so significant about the 2003/04 quarter-final between Deportivo and Milan?
Because Milan were the last reigning champions to make it as far as the last eight. In the last four years, the holders have always been knocked out in the last 16.

Who was the last non-English team to eliminate a Premier League side in the Champions League?
Milan, when they beat Liverpool 2-1 in the Athens final. In 2007/08, Arsenal were eliminated by Liverpool who lost to Chelsea who lost to United. Will Premier League sides be as dominant in the closing stages this year?

Which striker is in the best Champions League form?
Statistically, it has to be Karim Benzema whose strike rate – 12 goals in 17 games in the competition – shows why Lyon are so desperate to hold on to him. And the frightening thing is that the 21-year-old knows he can be even better if he can work on his physical stamina.

You can understand Real’s obsession with Cristiano Ronaldo - he is the very definition of a ’galactico’ – but Benzema might represent better value for money. Lionel Messi’s not in bad form either: he has scored a goal every 63 minutes he’s been on the pitch in the tournament this season.

And – free plug alert – he’s on the cover of the next Champions talking about Ronaldinho, Guardiola and what really goes in the Barcelona dressing room.

Inzaghi double beats Liverpool in 2007 Athens final

What do Frank Lampard and Karim Benzema have in common?
They are the only players to score against Manchester United in the 2007/08 knockout stages. For a club with a reputation for attacking football, United have turned into right misers in Europe. This season, United – and Juventus – have had the tightest defences, both shipping just three goals in the group stages.

How many coaches have won the European Cup with two different clubs?
Just two: Ernst Happel with Feyenoord in 1970 and Hamburg in 1983, and Ottmar Hitzfeld with Borussia Dortmund in 1997 and Bayern in 2001. So if Mourinho could win it with Inter, he would join a very select group.

What record is up for grabs in the San Siro?
United have now gone 19 Champions League games without defeat. That equals the record runs of Ajax (between September 14 1994 and April 3 1996) and Bayern (March 14 2001 to April 10 2002). So just a draw in Milan will earn this United team another place in the record books.

United aiming to break record in same stadium where they last lost

Which is the only city to have won the European Cup with two different clubs?
Milan. Inter (winners in 1964 and 1965) have a chance to catch up on the Rossoneri (winners in 1963, 1969, 1989, 1990, 1994, 2003 and 2007), who are in the UEFA Cup.

Atleti, slight favourites in their tie against Porto, could change that stat. If they win, Madrid will have two winning clubs and have won 10 European Cups to Milan’s nine. This isn’t the outcome that Real fans dream of when they talk of “la decima.” Atleti are one of eight teams who could do something no side has done since Borussia Dortmund in 1997: win the trophy for the first time.

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Shocks, stalkers and streakers

2009-01-05T11:00:00Z

“Jeff Stelling will be going mad,” my father-in-law Den said, after Michael Nelson majestically headed Hartlepool United into a 1-0 lead in the FA Cup Third Round against Stoke City.

Stelling’s response was uppermost in the minds of jubilant Pools fans as they streamed out of the Victoria Ground on a bitter, bright January afternoon. “He’ll be doing his nut,” said one, while another rang his missus: “We won 2-0. Put the telly on and see what Jeff Stelling’s doing.”

Stelling was, indeed, doing his nut in the studio, insisting Pools’ 2-0 dismissal of Stoke was the “shock of the day.”

It was a delightful shock for my father-in-law who, as we strolled down to the ground had noted: “The way Pools are playing we could get beaten by anybody.” The week before Pools had been whopped 4-1 at home by League One’s bottom side Crewe.

Jeff: He feels good etc

Stoke boss Tony Pulis made seven changes in personnel but left the team’s game plan intact. Stoke’s play was brutal, direct and swift, a campaign of aerial bombardment which would have thrilled Charles ‘Route One’ Hughes, Norman Schwarzkopf and Bomber Harris.

The characteristic Stoke move of the afternoon was for someone – occasionally even goalkeeper Steve Simonsen – to hit a long diagonal aerial ball to the left touchline, hoping it would be deflected off an opponent into touch, so Rory Delap could throw it into the box. If that didn’t work, the Potters grudgingly settled for a corner.

The plan succeeded. For four minutes. They hit the post. After that, the first half was 50/50.

Pools upped the pace in the second half. In the 48th minute, Nelson soared above Stoke’s defence. 1-0. There was poetic justice in the fact that the Potters were beaten in the air. After that, although Delap shot wide of the post when he could have scored and Liam Lawrence schemed from the flank, Stoke never really convinced.

The second goal by young David Foley was sensational. The sun glared over the Stoke goal and the ball, struck from 25 yards, floated in a kind of haze. As it neared the goal, time seemed to slow and the ball looked as if it might swerve too far, but it nestled into the top corner as the PA played Tom Hark and the Pools fans danced.

In fairness, Stoke were woefully short of strikers but Pools lost full-back Antony Sweeney to injury early on, have missed their most creative attacker James Brown nearly all season and played Joel Porter upfront though he didn’t look fully fit.

The injury that deprived Pools of the ineffective Michael Mackay brought Foley into play and, late on, as Stoke attacked, Foley and winger Matty Robson were a constant threat on the break.

With Sam Collins magnificent at the heart of Pools defence, Stoke’s aerial bombardment became increasingly ineffective but, even though the Potters caused more trouble around Pools’ goal with the ball on the ground, they never convincingly changed tack.

In one curious move, the Premier League side strung together 12 or 13 passes on the ground until, possibly in sheer bewilderment, a Stoke player hoofed it straight to an opponent.

Pulis’ success in steering Stoke to the top flight is impressive and so is the team’s work ethic and organisational discipline. But a less basic playing style might be required to build on that success.

The clue, really, lies in the name of the game: football is a game to be primarily played with feet and ball, not the hands of Rory Delap and the heads of his teammates.

The giant-killing got cursory treatment on ITV. In a highlights programme where adverts for furniture sales were occasionally interspersed with snippets of football action, Pools didn’t even get both their goals replayed. Maybe ITV willl make amends when the Hammers come to town in the fourth round.

Hartlepool heroes Nelson and Foley

One final mystery at the Victoria Ground. One bloke walked in front of us scanning the rows of seats with a puzzled, anxious expression. I assumed he was looking for someone. Till he walked past again. And again.

Was he plain-clothes security I wondered? Or a stalker suffering from short-term memory loss? I have seen his ilk at many other grounds. Can anyone explain what these blokes are doing?

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt

“Ooooohhhhhh.” 1,900 Nuneaton Town (nee Boro) fans winced in unison as the young male streaker, making his escape at the Bedworth Oval, got tangled up in what looked, from our vantage point, like a holly bush. He reappeared briefly later but wasn’t quite so fleet of foot as he scarpered into town.

Bedworth United vs Nuneaton Town in the BGBG Football League Midlands Division on December 27 was more than a game. It was a derby with all the usual accoutrements: fan segregation, slightly OTT police presence, players who had crossed the line and could be branded “Judas!” and dire ditties about the opposition.

The twist this year was that Nuneaton Borough, after amassing absurd debts, have been reconstituted as Town, enabling frustrated Bedworth fans to chant “You’ve got no history.”

Outnumbered probably 5 to 1 by Boro/Town fans, Bedworth supporters spent much of the afternoon speculating, in song, exactly how much brown matter Nuneaton consisted of. Boro/Town hit back, when superiority on the pitch had been converted into a 2-0 lead, by taunting them about the score.

Justin Marsden put Nuneaton ahead, which was ironic as the fans next to me had been screaming at coach Kevin Wilkin to take him off. Marsden is one of those Nuneaton players – the great Trevor Peake was another – who infuriate some fans because they sometimes play the ball into spaces where their team-mates ought to be but aren’t.

The players seemed less affected by the hysteria than the supporters. As we strolled off, smug with our 2-1 win, the volume and venom of the insults hurled at us suggested it wasn’t just the streaker whose pride was stung that cold afternoon.

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The blacksmith, the bobsleigher and the architect

2008-12-31T12:00:00Z

The festive season is a time for cheap nostalgia. And the nostalgia in this blog is free, give or take the cost of your broadband connection and electricity.

For reasons that largely elude me, I'm honouring some greats who had the misfortune to play before the global melodrama we call the World Cup had been invented, an era full of tennis playing centre-forwards, goalscoring blacksmiths and bobsleighing strikers.

The goalscoring blacksmith
As a kid, I read about Joe ‘Ten Goal’ Payne, who once scored 10 in a game for Luton. The definitive account of Payne’s heroics is now online, but his most famous feat was matched by a Danish striker called Sophus Nielsen.

On the Danish national team site Nielsen looks more of a bruiser than his half-namesake Poul. In October 1908, Sophus starred in the Danish team that beat France 17-1. After six minutes, Nielsen was on a hat-trick. He scored the next seven in the 39th, 46th, 48th, 52nd, 64th, 66th and 76th minutes. Not bad for a part-time blacksmith.

A blacksmith, yesteryear

Two years later, he and his brother Carl, an unemployed carpenter, decided to travel Europe as journeymen. They only made it as far as Kiel, where they agreed to play for Holsten Kiel after the chairman promised to employ them as blacksmith and joiner.

Before and after his time in Kiel, Nielsen was prolific for Frem, a working class club in Copenhagen long sponsored by the metalworkers union.

The bobsleighing Belgian Rossoneri
Louis van Hege won gold at the 1920 Olympics with Belgium's football team, came ninth in the bobsleigh at the 1932 games and scored 98 goals in 91 games for AC Milan. There’s a nice photo of him on this Milan site looking like a schoolboy who has been told to wait outside the headmaster’s study. Van Hege lived to the ripe old age of 86, dying in 1975.

"Going down, GO-ING DOWN, going down..."

Belgium’s gold in 1920 was controversial. In the Antwerp final, the Czechs were so incensed by the English officials that they walked off the pitch. Their letter of protest, ignored by the IOC, noted: “During the match, Belgian soldiers were introduced to the crowd until they circled the pitch and because of their provocative presence our players were unable to play their normal game.

"As a result of the very regrettable incident at the end of the match when there was a pitch invasion led by the soldiers and our national flag was insulted we will not participate until we have received an apology from the (Belgian) soldiers.”

That must be the very opposite of what Ernest Hemingway meant when he defined courage as “grace under pressure”.

The oppressor of the Norwegians
They called him “Tist”, short for “gratist” because he snuck into games without paying as a kid. But whatever income Poul Nielsen deprived Danish football of as a youngster, he more than made up for as a striker for club (KB) and country.

Outside Denmark, Nielsen is largely forgotten – he hung up his boots in 1927. But his picture on the Danish national team website makes him look like a sly poacher of goals, and he was: he scored 52 goals in 38 caps. From October 1911 to June 1916, he was never off the scoresheet for Denmark.

In an astonishing 10-game run, he scored 23 goals, including six in a 10-0 thrashing of Sweden in 1913. And he'll never be forgotten in Norway, where defenders of a certain age still flinched at his memory years later: in 11 games against Norway, he scored 29 goals.

The gentleman player
Who is England’s all-time record goalscorer? Bobby Charlton, surely.

And yet on RSSSF.com, that online cavern of football statistics, you’ll see one Vivian John Woodward credited with 73 goals in 53 England games between 1903 and 1914. But a footnote points out that 44 of these goals were scored for England’s amateur team in fixtures that were deemed full internationals by England’s opponents.

There’s a thorough biog of Woodward here. He was a gentlemanly, posh kid, told by his father to concentrate on tennis and cricket, but he was so good at football that he made his debut as a centre-forward for Clacton Town at the age of 16.

Contemporary accounts suggest he was the complete attacker, a superb dribbler, passer, striker and header of the ball who could play as centre-forward, inside-right or inside-left and score with either foot.

He kept up his tennis; in 1912 and 1913, he even reached the final of Wimbledon. He was also a dairy farmer and an architect, who designed the main stand used in Antwerp for the 1920 Olympics.

Those Olympics, that stand, but not that man

A glorious career – with Clacton, Spurs, Chelmsford, Essex and England (he twice won Olympic gold with the amateurs) – had an inglorious aftermath. In 1953, he was found in a nursing home in Ealing, bedridden and paralysed, complaining that “no one who knew me in football has been to see me in two years”.

It was the kind of scandalous neglect that would hasten the demise of another gentlemanly England hero – Bobby Moore. Still, Woodward’s plight moved the FA to respond. They sent him a TV set.

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Ibra, Best and a Boxing Day bonanza

2008-12-23T09:00:00Z

His Zlatanic majesty

The 2008-09 UEFA Champions League draw was a bit of a peach. Not only does it offer Rafa Benitez and Claudio Ranieri the chance to stroll down Memory Lane, it pits Ferguson against Mourinho or, more importantly, Ibrahimovic against Ronaldo.

Inter’s boss – now known as SuperMou to denizens of the Italian football media – has suggested that the Swede is better than the artist formally known as CR7.

From a technical perspective, he may have a point. Ibrahimovic has been in astonishing form this season in Serie A, setting up goals with flicked passes and scoring with strikes that would have impressed Hamish Hotshot.

Cynics insist that Ibra is just a very gifted YouTube player. That's unfair but it’s easy to see why the charge is being made.

A player of his gifts should be able, more often, to take a game by the scruff of the neck and control it, in the way that the likes of Best, Cruyff – and even Cristiano Ronaldo – have all done.

"Think you can do better?"

In big games in Europe, Ibra has sometimes seemed distracted or oppressed by the pressure; it’s almost as if his picture of the game has been distorted. And his goal tally – nine in 39 Champions League matches – isn’t worthy of a player with his gifts.

Now, against United, would be the perfect stage for him to prove to Europe that he can, as all the true greats have done, dominate a game when it matters.

Best on Best

Rereading Gordon Burns’ Best And Edwards, I am startled by how good it is.

Burns doesn’t quite succeed in bringing the great Duncan Edwards into focus – maybe, given his tragically short career and the power of his myth, that just isn’t possible unless you’re prepared to take the kind of risks David Peace took in his brilliant novel about Cloughie, The Damned Utd – but Burns brings fresh insight into the more protracted tragedy of George Best’s decline and fall.

The irony at the heart of Best’s tragedy is that through sheer talent, looks and charisma, he had conquered the world by he time he was in his early twenties. And then discovered that the only person he really wanted to spend anytime with was himself.

After all, who else – apart from, say, Elvis and The Beatles – could understand the strange laws that governed his existence? The women – even the Miss Worlds – seem a distraction, a useful time killer.

In Burns’ narrative, Best seems only finally to achieve a kind of peace when he semi-retires to a pub in Chelsea where he is protected by the regulars and landlord and settles into a regular, alcoholic routine.

"Yes, Zlatan, I do"

I interviewed Best once, for FourFourTwo, back in the mid-1990s. And it struck me then, although this required no special insight, that he was different to most of the other celebrities you interview.

He didn’t set out to light up, or dominate the room. He just sat, rather quietly, on the sofa, telling a few lovely anecdotes as one of his old matches flickered on the TV set.

Only when his younger self ghosted past the Southampton defence in black and white did he show much emotion, jumping from the sofa and saying “God I was f***ing quick” and pointing at the screen as if I might not believe him and had to be confronted with the evidence.

After I interviewed him, everyone I knew asked me two questions. Did he turn up? And, was he drunk? To which I answered yes and no – although it was rumoured that after I left he went on a bender.

I did notice that, as the interview progressed, the little mini-bottles of champagne were increasingly in demand and Best, despite the frantic urgings of his PR man, was stubbornly refusing to eat any sandwiches.

Afterwards, I struggled to connect the young Best, whose talent still shines on YouTube, with the man I met. Burns’s book has probably given me more insight into Best than anything else I have ever read – even more than Eamon Dunphy’s sublime A Strange Kind Of Glory.

And finally…

As my contribution to the festive spirit, I thought it would be worth recording the results from Division One (Premier League in newspeak) on December 26 1963. This works best if you imagine James Alexander Gordon reading them as you read them.

Blackpool 1 Chelsea 5
Burnley 6 Manchester United 1
Fulham 10 Ipswich Town 1
Leicester City 2 Everton 0
Liverpool 6 Stoke City 1
Nottingham Forest 3 Sheffield United 3
West Bromwich Albion 4 Tottenham Hotspur 4
Sheffield Wednesday 3 Bolton Wanderers 0
Wolverhampton Wanderers 3 Aston Villa 3
West Ham United 2 Blackburn Rovers 8

Here’s hoping for another 66-goal fest on Boxing Day.

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Surplus strikers, hat-trick Hans & belated Golden balls

2008-12-15T11:00:00Z

Strikers on the dole
Being a striker has always been an insecure profession. They have long been afflicted by mysterious fluctuations in form, a variable quality of service from team-mates and ridiculous expectations from fans and directors.

But their trade is now more uncertain than ever. Across Europe, from youth teams to first teams, coaches are increasingly reluctant to attack with two forwards. Many strikers in their 20s will face a stark choice... retrain or retire.

Stick someone else up here gaffer, I'm lonely

Why has this happened?
First, it’s the culmination of a trend which has seen teams shift from such cavalier formations as 1-1-8 in the 1870s to 2-3-5, 3-3-4, 4-2-4, 4-3-3, 4-4-2 and now 4-2-3-1 or 4-5-1 or even 4-6-0.

The offside rule hasn’t helped. Uncertainty over how the law will be applied has prompted many teams to defend deep, squeezing the space strikers thrive in.

In response, even attack-minded managers find it more productive to have players running defences from midfield or from the flanks. The brutal truth is that two strikers, permanently stationed up-front, are much easier for central defenders to manage. It is far trickier to defend when any one of five midfielders – or either full-back – can run into the area from nowhere.

A lone striker doesn’t necessarily mean a team is playing defensively. Their attacking intent will have more to do with the balance between screeners and creators in midfield, the space they are encouraged to play in and whether either or both full-backs are encouraged to bomb forward.

As Spain showed in the Euro 2008 final – and the recent World Cup qualifier against Belgium – teams can be more threatening if they just play with one striker, providing they have the right calibre of passing and running in midfield.

At Euro 2008, Spain passed the opposition to death. After losing to Spain in the quarter-final, Christian Panucci complained he was exhausted because: “they never played it long.”

"Stop passing it you little sod. I'm knackered..."

The popularity of one up front will, effectively, halve the number of positions available to strikers on the team-sheet.

This concern was raised by Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s technical director, after the U19 European Championship this summer: “By restricting the strikers’s representation to 10% of the outfield workforce, are we laying the foundations for senior national team coaches to complain, as some did at Euro 2008, about a lack of goalscorers?”

The old-fashioned penalty box predator – think Pippo Inzaghi or Michael Owen– is already an endangered species. After all, the last two Golden Boots have been won by free-scoring midfielders Francesco Totti and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The next generation of strikers will need to multi-task, like the industrious Carlos Tevez. But there is a risk that something – the lethal instincts of a striker like Inzaghi – may be lost to the game for good. Young players hoping to be the new Inzaghi might want to retrain as goalscoring midfielders.

Who needs Hans?
The idea that strikers are out of fashion would strike Red Bull Salzburg fans as ludicrous.

This season they have had the privilege of watching Marc Janko score 29 goals in 20 league games. He has hit five hat-tricks. The 25-year-old, just voted Austrian Footballer of the Year, has already broken the club’s record for goals in one season – and still has half a season to play.

Salzburg goal-machine Marc Janko

His goals have earned Salzburg 15 points (out of 46) and in one astonishing performance as a second half substitute, he scored four in 24 minutes as his side turned a 2-0 defeat into a 4-3 victory.

Barring injuries, the 25-year-old Leonardo da Vinci fan could break the great Hanks Krankl’s record of 41 goals in the Austrian league, set back in 1976.

By Juve!
Jorgen Juve is still Norway’s all-time top international goalscorer. His haul of 33 goals in 45 games in the 1920s and 1930s is impressive, even by the freescoring standards of the era.

What is truly astonishing is that Juve only played 22 of those games as a centre-forward. He made his debut as a right-back, was switched to No.9 against the Netherlands (scoring a hat-trick), bagged 31 in his first 25 internationals and was then redeployed to right-back or centre-half for the last 20 games.

Versatility was a curse for Juve whose strike rate when played as a No.9 – 31 in 22 matches – is better than Gerd Muller’s.

Belated Golden balls
It’s Yuri Zhirkov I feel sorry for.

Nominated for the 2008 Ballon d’Or, and getting exactly no votes, the left-back was the true architect of Russia’s surprising demolition of Holland at Euro 2008.

Unsung hero Yuri Zhirkov, No.50 in FFT's Top 100 list

Almost as tricky as Ronaldinho, Zhirkov works as hard as Deco in his Porto prime. His poor showing is especially galling given that, only last year, the Mexican keeper Guillermo Ochoa received one vote even though he has never played any club football in Europe, while Iraqi striker Younis Mahmoud bagged two. Not bad given that he has only played for Iraqi and Qatari clubs.

Mahmoud was my own, sadly ignored, tip for FourFourTwo’s latest 100 Best Players in the World poll. Still only 25, his talent already transcends mere geography.

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Champions League: Stats, jibes & Dutch pranksters

2008-12-13T10:00:00Z

There’s one UEFA Champions League stat I haven’t been able to track down... how many passes Arsenal didn’t complete against Porto.

For Manchester United fans, hoping to retain the UEFA Champions League trophy, the key numbers, as Mystic Meg might say, are four and 18. The last four winners have all gone out in the next round and it is now a mere 18 seasons since Milan became the last team to be crowned European champions twice in a row.

"I predict rain..."

Here’s the tournament in statistics, with a few cheap jibes, Dutch pranksters and movie references thrown in.

29 months. The average tenure of a Real Madrid manager. Which compares unfavourably to the average tenure of Liz Taylor’s husbands: 41 months.

0 Dutch teams in the last 16. Ajax didn’t even qualify and PSV didn’t make the UEFA Cup. This might be just as well as the only time PSV won it, in 1977/78, their replica of the trophy was stolen, an episode highlighted in this classic YouTube clip from April 2007 in which comedian Theo Massen returns the UEFA Cup he had stolen as a prank live on a Dutch TV talk show.

12 match unbeaten run Aalborg have staged under Bruce Rioch’s successor, Allan Kuhn. Rioch, Schuster and Marius Lacatus are the three Champions League coaches to lose their jobs already. Kuhn won’t keep the job. He’ll stay on as assistant to Magnus Pehrsson.

2 of the last five winners clasped the cup with the big ears to their bosom despite coming second in their group: Porto in 2004, Liverpool in 2005. Two is also the number of games Manchester United won to top Group E.

Coach Kuhn celebrates Aalborg draw at Old Trafford

7 points dropped on their travels by Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League compared to 0 – up until December 12 – in the Premier League. Martin Samuels has been vociferous in The Times suggesting that minnows like Cluj have no place in this competition. A better question might be: why can’t Premier League sides, with much greater budgets, push Chelsea as hard as Cluj?

The Romanian champions’ team ethic, technical competence, fearless approach and tactical discipline stifled the Blues in Transylvania. And, for 10 minutes at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday, after Cluj equalised, you could smell the fear.

2.57 goals a game on average in the 2008/09 group stage, compared to 2.79 in 2007/08. Barcelona averaged three a game in Group C.

5 seasons since an east European team made the last 16. Lokomotiv Moscow and Sparta Prague were the last teams from the other side of what used to the Iron Curtain to make the knockout round – back in 2003/04. Five teams – Atletico, Bayern, Juventus, Liverpool and Manchester United – have reached the last 16 undefeated.

1 game won by a Scottish club in Europe this season. Yes, Celtic’s 2-0 over Villarreal was the first – and only – victory. The fact that no Scottish side is left in Europe is not good news for the nation’s UEFA co-efficients or for the Scottish Cup winners/finalists.

6 seasons in a row the Champions League has been won by the team that knocked out the team who knocked out Real Madrid. This remarkable run started in 2003 when Juve beat Real in the semi and then lost to Milan at Old Trafford. (A big thanks to Champions staff writer Sheridan Bird for this uber-stat.)

Roma knock out Real, before losing to Man United...

40 percent chance that Chelsea will face a team managed by a former member of staff. The Blues might like to face Panathinaikos, coached by the man mountain Henk Ten Cate who looked, last time I saw him in the flesh, like the result of a scientific experiment involving the genes of Tom Jones and Graeme Souness.

They might be less keen to do battle with Juve, coached by Claude ‘Tinkerman’ Ranieri who, with his new winter-proof hooded coat, looked like a monk in the movie The Name Of The Rose.

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The football ABC: Adolf, Bruno and Chelsea

2008-12-04T15:00:00Z

Hitler, The Times and Schalke

Having fallen for the Hitler diaries, you would have thought The Times would check its facts before declaring here that Adolf Hitler was the worst famous football fan ever and informing readers that “the Fuhrer had a soft spot for Schalke who, funnily enough, were German champions six times between 1933 and 1945.”

Hitler’s soft spot was so extensive that, until the 1936 Olympics, he had never watched a football match. Agonising over which sport to grace with his presence at this showcase, he opted to watch Germany vs Norway.

After six minutes, the Norwegians were 1-0 up and Goebbels noted: “The Fuhrer is very agitated. I almost unable to control himself.”

Hitler’s agitation overcame him in the 85th minute when, utterly against the run of play, Norway scored a second and he stormed off in a huff. As Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger notes in his book Tor!, this defeat so turned the *** against football that they didn’t even bother to ask the German FA to fire the manager Otto Nerz.

Nerz (centre) rests easy

If Hitler liked Schalke so much, why didn’t he ask Nerz to build the German team around them? In 1925, the Gelsenkirchen club had pioneered a short passing game known as the Schalke Kreisel (literally "spinning top").

Yet Ernst Kuzorra, that team’s greatest player, only won 12 caps for Germany. Nerz, bizarrely, didn’t like the Schalke style, preferring the fast, physical attacking style of English football.

Sometimes, the influence of politics on football is not as simple as it appears. Yes, Schalke were German champions six times between 1934 and 1942. But they did so chiefly because they had one of the strongest teams their country has ever produced.

Bruno, Bruno!

Sorry Harry, but the Bruno in question isn’t Frank, it’s the Portuguese genius Bruno Aguiar whose class in the middle for Hearts was key to their 2-1 triumph over Rangers. Aguiar carved Rangers open with set pieces and his speciality – a long free-kick curled into the area at the opposing keeper with height and pace – was just too much for the Gers.

Aguiar celebrates; Hibees are less chuffed

In the pre-match interview I could only just make out what Hearts’ Hungarian boss Csaba Laszlo was trying to say. But he must get his point across to his players: in two years as Uganda coach, he helped them climb 76 places in the FIFA rankings. And if he can find a striker in January, Hearts could become the third force in Scottish football

Conquering Wembley

At Alwyns Lane, Chertsey, Wembley Town’s coaches were grumbling about their team’s deficiencies on set pieces.

On a damp, dark, freezing Saturday afternoon, Chertsey Town, the most unpredictable team in the Combined Counties League premier division, beat struggling Wembley Town 3-1 to end a poor run which had seen them win one in five.

The third goal, a superbly worked corner benefitted from some zombie-like defending by the visitors.

Wembley, who played in the famous old Ajax strip, were gifted a late penalty. Even that couldn’t damp Chertsey’s spirits. Their coach Matt Paterson shouted at Aaron McLeish, a pacy forward who can dazzle with his dribbling, “Go and get another!” McLeish shook his head and moaned: “I haven’t got one yet. Should have had a hat-trick.”

Wembley Town were formed in 1946, partly because it seemed a bit rubbish for the famed home of the hallowed turf not to have its own football team. The Lions, as they are known, don’t play at Wembley but at Yale Farm.

I was curious to hear if they had any interesting songs – a variation on “Whatever will be will be/We’re going to Wembley” perhaps – but the away fans were too sparse and too miserable to sing.

No such thing as a free credit crunch

Unexpected benefits of the credit crunch, No.1: Roman Abramovich has had to shrink Chelsea’s scouting network. This will, the press suggests, mean curtains for Frank Arnesen, the club’s sporting director, slammed for failing to produce a Blue Fabregas or Rooney.

Arnesen (left): Hard done to?

Spotting and developing the right young players is still a dark art. Even Arsene Wenger, better at it than most, bumbled on Jose Antonio Reyes, although the Spaniard had been watched 45 times by Arsenal before they bought him.

And although Abramovich recognised that to become a proper football club, Chelsea had to grow its own talent, the pressure on his managers has made it hard for them to do an Arsene and play the youngsters in the Carling Cup.

Many of Arnesen’s signings may fail – that's par for the course in youth development – but have any really had a decent chance to prove they could be the new Wayne Rooney?

Good Times with Tony

Having slagged The Times off, I’ll close by doing something I try to as little as possible: agree with their columnist Tony Cascarino.

But in a column bemoaning the style of many mid-table Premiership clubs he noted: “Here's the standard Premier League substitution: if you are behind, bring on a forward; if you are winning, take off a forward.”

The Big Four may look likely to reach the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that we have all become master tacticians.

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Champions League Round-up: From Dani to Danny

2008-11-27T12:00:00Z

Damn Zenit. Especially Dani, a ridiculously talented player whose inability to distinguish between the back of the net, posts and crossbars has sunk my outside tip for the 2009 UEFA Champions League.

He and his team-mates squandered opportunities with a recklessness that even the late, great John Belushi might have found over the top.

Group A

Crisis what crisis? The media hysteria that surrounds football has now created a situation where Chelsea are only two successive draws away from a "crisis."

What rubbish. If they beat Cluj at home, as Bordeaux did, the Blues qualify. And if Bordeaux draw in Rome – and Chelsea lose to the Transylvanians – Big Phil’s boys still go through courtesy of their head-to-head record against the Girondins.

Scolari wasn’t the biggest loser in Bordeaux. That must surely be the genius at Milan who decided Yoann Gourcuff could head offski. Bordeaux could buy the silky visionary for just £12.5m this summer.

Gourcuff runs rings round Chelsea's back-line in Bordeaux

Group B

In The Times, Gabriele Marcotti was inspired by Gianluca Vialli’s suggestion that Jose Mourinho is a Nietzschean superman. So if it’s true that whatever doesn’t kill the Special One makes him stronger, he’ll be all the better for the 1-0 defeat by Panathinaikos.

On the other hand, the bloke that came up with this kill-you-stronger theory was Ernest Hemingway. And he shot himself.

Anorthosis have to beat Pana in Athens to make the last 16 which may, for all their heroics, be a victory too far.

Group C

A record win for Shakhtar marks Basel’s second 5-0 defeat in Group C and earns the Ukrainians a UEFA Cup slot. Shakhtar coach Mircea Lucescu suggested the direction of his team’s attacks had “puzzled the big and slightly slow Basel players.” Catty. But true.

Paulo Bento, the Sporting coach, was frank about his team’s shortcomings against Barca. Not aggressive enough, dawdling too deep with the ball, and poor in the first half. Although it was 5-2, this was no rout. When Sporting fought back to 3-2, even Pep Guardiola looked worried.

History is against Barca. The last four teams to win this competition in a year ending in nine have all had red in their shirts. And the only other team – Real – wore white. Sorry Pep.

Messi pops in Barca's third in 5-2 win at Sporting

Group D

This is an intriguing one. Liverpool and Atletico have both qualified. Their head-to-head record is identical but Atletico’s goal difference is one greater than Liverpool’s. If the two sides finish on the same points, goal difference and goals scored, Liverpool will top the group because they have the better UEFA co-efficient.

Group E

Caca made Aalborg’s night. Celtic were unlucky but they were also, after they went 1-0 up, not very good.

And, to their credit, Gary Caldwell and Gordon Strachan effectively admitted as much. By the way, that’s Caca the Brazilian who scored out of nowhere against Celtic – not Citizens Against Crap Advertising, an Ohio pressure group.

Scottish clubs have performed so badly in Europe this season that fitba may lose the automatic European place awarded to the Scottish Cup runners-up when they lose to a team that has already qualified.

The best player in the fourth successive 0-0 between Villarreal and Manchester United was Yellow Submarine keeper Diego Lopez, who made two stunning saves. I expect United, at home to Aalborg next, to finish top.

Late Caldwell own goal ensures Celtic's away misery goes on

Group F

Claude Puel’s 'Operations Champions League' is back on.

To top the group, Lyon need a 0-0 draw in the Stade Gerland. Gutted for Fiorentina because Cesare Prandelli is such a lovely bloke and they have played better than their meagre points tally would suggest. Sporting director Pantaleo Corvino says the Viola may sell players in January.

Good to see Bayern stabilising under Klinsmann. As the legendary Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger points out in Tor!, his seminal history of German football, the German game stagnated in the late 1990s when Berti Vogts didn’t have the guts to challenge the past in general and the sweeper system in particular.

Klinsmann – and his former deputy Joachim Low, now running the national side – are trying to change fussball, eliminating the win at all costs mentality that disfigured the game when Jupp Derwall was national coach and not relying as heavily on the traditional German virtues: solid defence and team spirit.

Change will take time but the alternative – the cynicism of the 1990s – is far worse.

Group G

In the first 35 minutes of their home game against Porto, Fenerbahce produced their best football of the season. No, I haven’t gone mad, that’s what their coach Luis Aragones reckons. He then added: “In football, if you don’t take your chances and the other side do, you will lose.” Luis the philosopher prince!

Porto, who did play their best football of the season, could have had four. The Dragons need to beat Arsenal in Portugal to go top and with the Gunners’ season already having more highs and lows than Amy Winehouse, anything can happen.

Lisandro Lopez double sends Fenerbahce packing

Group H

Zenit have proved Aragones’ point and now return to the UEFA Cup. Juventus have sailed through what looked like a tough group and only need a point at home to BATE to finish top.

Man of the matchday in the tournament this week was probably Gourcuff. Mind you, PSV striker Danny Koevermans scored again, as the Dutch lost to Atletico. PSV have only managed four goals and Koevermans has scored all of them. Some record.

Any PSV fans who are feeling a bit down might enjoy this.

The Farmers crop up about two-thirds of the way through.

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Battered Bulgars, bereft Belgians and miserable Maltesers

2008-11-20T10:00:00Z

The human teleprinter here, with utterly off the cuff reactions to last night’s other results – i.e. not England’s or Scotland’s.

Serbia 6-1 Bulgaria.

Hristo Stoichkov, Yordan Letchkov, Trifan Ivanov, Dimitar Penev, Georgi Dimitrov: your boys sure took a hell of a beating.

What has happened to Bulgarian football? I grieve for the nation that beat Germany 2-1 at USA 94, probably the most enjoyable World Cup game of my life. (Too young to remember 1966. Just.)

I still remember Terry Venables sagely predicting: “I fancy the Bulgarians here.” How right he was. Stoichkov was immense, a one-man Total Footballer who even turned up at right-back. And now this.

Losing 6-1 is bad enough. But Savo Milosevic missed two penalties – and still managed to score twice in his last appearance for Serbia. If The Sun splashed this the headline would presumably be “Serbs 6 Twerps 1.” Or, indeed, “Silly Bulgars.”

Milosevic says a tearful goodbye

Greece 1-1 Italy.

The Italians aren’t as frenzied about friendlies as the English, so Marcello Lippi will be chuffed to have equalled Vittorio Pozzo’s record of 31 matches without defeat as Azzurri coach. And Luca Toni scored, which was nice, as that bloke said in The Fast Show.

Azerbaijan 1-1 Albania.

Decent result for the Albanians. I watched Wales play Albania in Tirana in 1995, on a surface of lunar craters lightly dusted with grass and sand. That was 1-1 too.

Albania was just emerging from Stalinist isolation and a gang of middle-aged autograph hunters huddled at the airport, one of whom came up to me, brandishing a notebook and pen, saying: “Mark Hughes?” I briefly contemplated pretending to be Sparky – I had 78% more hair then – before mumbling that the man himself wasn’t with us.

He briefly contemplated asking Neville Southall but, intimidated by the size of Big Nev’s ghetto blaster, beat a hasty retreat.

Luxembourg 1-1 Belgium.

Arguably the humiliation of the night. Six years ago the Belgians gave Brazil their biggest scare of the 2002 World Cup. Now, they can’t even hold onto a 1-0 half-time lead against the Grand Duchy. Nice way for the duchy to celebrate their 100th anniversary as a footballing nation.

Incidentally, the term Benelux was coined by an Economist correspondent in 1946. He thought it sounded better than Nebelux and it stuck.

San Marino 0-3 Czech Republic.

At least the microstate kept it to 0-0 until the 47th minute.

Czech keep-ball: You can't hold out forever

Denmark 0-1 Wales.

Craig Bellamy’s first international goal in 14 months earned John Toshack’s young team a deserved win against Morten Olsen’s much-fancied team. Has the Dragons' luck turned? Are there many more dragon-related puns left for the media to use in headlines?

Malta 0-1 Iceland.

The Icelandic nation may have cost the British government a billion or two with their creaking banks but they can still make the Maltese cross. That’s one gag where, even as you write it, you can hear the ghost of Basil Brush crowing “Boom boom!”

Ireland 2-3 Poland.

Leo Beenhakker’s boys, who have been in the stocks since Euro 2008, return to Poland with a morale-boosting win while Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland, though a tad erratic on the night, continue to suggest that their coach is certainly not, as he memorably suggested years ago in Germany, an idiot.

Trap: "So that's E... equals... M... and C..."

Montenegro 2-1 Macedonia.

A pride-swelling victory in the Balkan derby for the mountain state who hadn’t won in five. The ghost of Alexander the Great will probably sink a few bottles of wine and rage drunkenly at the plight of his old kingdom, felled by a dodgy penalty.

Macedonia’s Slovenian coach Srecko Katanec will get a drubbing as he again left out Goce Sedloski, the team’s inspirational skipper, for questioning his tactics.

The Sun headline here would surely be The Full Monty.

Slovenia 3-4 Bosnia.

Maybe Katanec ought to flee Macedonia and get his old job back. Quite a result for Miroslav Blazevic, the coach of Bosnia, best known for guiding Croatia to third place at the 1998 World Cup and not doing very much since.

Ukraine 1-0 Norway.

Seven without a win now for the Norwegians, who haven't won this year, a feat they last managed in 1983. Ukraine could have scored more. Beleaguered Norway coach Age Hareide better hope that Valerenga’s young striker Moa Abdellaoue really is the new Solskjaer.

"Ooh! A ball!"

Fiji 2-0 New Zealand.

A cracking result here that must unnerve the All Blacks before they take on England in the egg-chasing at Twickenham.

Trying to discover when Fiji lost won a game, I found this on rsssf.com: Thanks to Hans Schloggl, the record of Oceania’s greatest football rivalry – Christmas Islands vs Cocos Islands. For those who think this is a link too far, the Christmas Islands have won eight out of 10 – a ratio I thought only happened when cats’ owners were tested for pet food ads.

Northern Ireland 0-2 Hungary.

On this form the green and white army may just, as Nigel Worthington warned afterwards, lose to San Marino.

France 0-0 Uruguay.

In 1974, the great forecasting guru Herman Kahn predicted that the UK was finished and that France would dominate the 21st century. Kahn obviously hadn’t factored in the force that is Raymond Domenech.

"Pah!"

Germany 1-2 England. OK, I know I promised not to but... if fawning was an Olympic event, Clyde Tyldesley would win gold for Great Britain. That man can fawn over any distance – 5000 metres, 90 minutes...

If I faced England in South Africa, my tactical plan would be simple. Draw England out and hit balls that force John Terry to chase back towards his goal. It isn’t his forte.

He was honest enough to own up last night. But that wasn’t a fluke. I still remember him scrambling after Fernando Morientes when Monaco stuffed Chelsea in 2003/04. And Morientes, even then, wasn’t that pacy.

If the World Cup was held now two things would happen: Sepp Blatter would faint and England would probably win it. The only fly in the ointment is that, in recent history, the World Cup has rarely been won by the form team.

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How do minnows stop being muppets?

2008-11-15T12:00:00Z

Inter, schmInter.

If Jose Mourinho really is The Special One, we should ask Silvio Berlusconi to pass a law that the Portuguese genius must spend the next two years coaching the national team in the Most Serene Republic of San Marino.

Giampaolo Mazza has managed this microstate’s football team since 1998, making him the longest serving national team manager in Europe.

And unlike David Rodrigo, his counterpart at Andorra, he does not confuse the defensive arts with martial arts. San Marino’s part-timers set out to play football. They’re just not – with a population of less than 31,000 – very good at it.

Gualtieri takes 8.3 seconds to net against England, 1993

San Marino were abysmal when Mazza took over in 1998 and, with only one victory in the last decade (a 1-0 triumph over Liechtenstein in a 2004 friendly) they are only slightly less abysmal today.

They are officially the worst European national side. They have amassed a pleasingly round, but statistically insignificant, zero points in the FIFA rankings where they trail in joint 200th place, with the likes of American Samoa (who lost 31-0 to Australia in 2001), Montserrat and Timor-Leste.

In competitive games, San Marino have drawn two World Cup qualifiers (against Turkey in 1993 and Latvia in 2001) and one Mediterranean Cup tie (against Lebanon in 1987). Every other game they have lost. Being drubbed 13-0 by Germany in the Euro 2008 qualifiers set a new record for the Euros – and a new low for San Marino.

It is hard for these small footballing nations to make the transition from utterly atrocious to merely mediocre. Yet Mazza may feel his team are progressing. In the Euro 2008 qualifiers, they only lost to Cyprus, Ireland and Wales by a single goal in their home stadium, the Stadio Olimpico.

It’s easy to sneer at the attendances for San Marino’s home games. For example, Wikipedia estimates that 2,500 of the crowd of 3,294 watching the Ireland game in February 2007 were Irish.

But 794 home fans is 2.6% of the population, equivalent to 1.5m watching England at Wembley. And that day San Marino were level until Stephen Ireland scored in the fifth minute of injury time to secure a victory greeted in one Irish paper with the headline: “Minnows 1 Muppets 2”

Although Sanmarinese midfielder Massimo Bonini won the European Cup with Juventus in 1985, the current squad includes only two professionals in record international goalscorer Andy Selva and keeper Aldo Simoncini.

Selva’s strike rate – eight goals in 41 games – is almost miraculous. In 46 Euro qualifiers the whole team has scored just six goals. A more typical return for a San Marino striker is Marco De Luigi’s haul of no goals in 17 caps. De Luigi deserves some credit for sheer perseverance.

Ireland saves, err, Ireland to break San Marino hearts

So how do San Marino improve?

Short of The Special One’s surprising arrival, there are no easy answers. The Sanmarinese champions Murata have featured, albeit briefly, in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers and had the Brazilian veteran Aldair and Massimo Agostini - the Italian striker whose Serie A career never really soared even though his nickname was Condor - on their books. (Agostini is now coach.)

In a very small way, the presence of such stars may replicate the effect the arrival of stars such as Dennis Bergkamp, Ruud Gullit and Gianfranco Zola had in the exciting, but uncultured, Premiership in the 1990s. And the money from forays into the qualifying rounds of the Champions League and the UEFA Cup will be useful.

And the Sanmarinese game has something English football still lacks: a brand new technical centre, courtesy of a grant from UEFA’s Hat-Trick programme.

The odds on San Marino scoring a hat-trick on the pitch are still incredibly long. But they have shortened slightly.

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Matchday 4: Strong men, wronged women and tongues

2008-11-10T10:00:00Z

Firstly, an apology.

This blog would have been posted much earlier but my computer blew up twice. But I managed my anger, forcing myself to adopt that “I’m more disappointed than angry” look that Trevor Francis always wears on Sky Sports. Anyway, to business... here's my thoughts on Matchday 4.

ARSENAL'S TERRIBLE BEAUTY

For a team that play the beautiful game, Arsenal can be very hard to watch.

Against Fenerbahce on Wednesday, they played as if they were in a Nike advert: tricks, flicks, clever back-passes. But when they neared goal, there was a strange reluctance to do the basic things – like shoot and cross the ball – that win games.

One of the qualities on which footballers should be judged – but rarely are by pundits – is the quality of their decision-making. And judged on that alone, Arsenal were woeful against a Fenerbahce side that could, with more conviction and a less defensive formation, have snuck three points on the break.

Robin van Persie’s skills are sublime, but on Wednesday his decision making was poorer than a journeyman’s pro. The only player who showed a real instinct for the kind of common-sense decisions that win games was Cesc Fabregas and, late in the second half, presumably depressed by what was going on around him, even he faltered, repeatedly passing into nowhere or to an opponent.

"...and not just for passin'"

There were a few boos at the end. I’m not sure where I stand on booing. It doesn’t do the team much good. On the other hand, if I watched that every week, I’d be tempted.

It reminded me of the Arsenal of 1982/83, only that team had a good excuse – they were mainly rubbish. Wenger’s team are far more gifted, with superb technique, but they seemed, against Fenerbahce, to have forgotten how to play a match.

The papers have been quick to suggest that time is running out for Wenger, but what do they know? It’s possible that Wenger has been conducting a cunning, secret experiment to see whether a football team can prosper, at the very highest levels of the game, without a functioning defensive midfielder.

The short answer is no. Now that experiment is done and dusted, that nice Gabriele Marcotti has even given him some advice on finding an enforcer.

IT'S A KNOCKOUT!

Alessandro del Piero’s astonishing renaissance has clinched Juve’s place in the last 16. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think the-sticking-your-tongue-out celebration will ever catch on.

The Bianconeri are joined by Barcelona and Sporting Lisbon, while Manchester United and Villarreal are just a point shy of the 16. Zenit could still make it if they beat Real Madrid at the Bernabeu – which, with the way the blancos defended against Juve, is eminently possible.

Put that thing away before the wind changes

Aalborg are nearly done for. But how weird is their European campaign? The Danes’ form has been so bad it earned Bruce Rioch the boot yet in two games against Villarreal, who have one of the tightest defences in Europe, they score five goals!

Group B is turning into a bizarre, epic contest. Inter are all but home and dry but the race between Panathinaikos, Werder Bremen and Cypriot debutants Anorthosis Famagusta is wide open.

To qualify, Werder have to beat Anorthosis away (they could only draw with them in Germany) and then, to be certain, beat Inter at home. But the Cypriots are unbeaten at home and will go through if they beat Thomas Schaaf’s fabulously unpredictable side in Nicosia.

Shakhtar Donetsk’s umpteenth failure to reach the last 16 may finally have done for their coach Mircea Lucescu if rumours of an approach to Juande Ramos are true. The curse of late goals – remember Barcelona 2-1 Shakhtar? – struck Shakhtar’s domestic rivals Dynamo Kyiv this week. At 1-1 in Kyiv, two minutes into injury time, they hit the post and Porto scored off the rebound.

WOMEN'S ISSUES

Sad to see Clare Tomlinson serving time on Sky Sports News, the gulag of sport on TV. Can we please have her back, standing in front of the results board on Sky Sports Champions League nights?

I'll be back: Name the co-hosts in this 1998 SSN pic

And sad, too, not to hear more of Jackie Oakley, the first woman commentator on Match of the Day. Her voice did get a bit screechy describing goalmouth action, but no more so than Jonathan Pearce’s. Maybe she’s having voice coaching. I’d recommend she tried to sound a bit less like Pearcey and more like Nina Simone.

FUNNY OLD GAME

With a perverse unpredictability typical of their season so far, Arsenal rack up a victory over Manchester United in which Samir Nasri, who had looked as useful against Fener as a chocolate fireguard, scored twice by having the nous to take an early shot at goal.

I heard the score at Chertsey Town’s Alwyn Lane ground. The Curlews, as they are known, are the great entertainers of the Combined Counties League, beating Hartney Wintney 6-0 last time I watched them and, on Saturday, missing a penalty as they went down 4-0 to Colliers Wood.

Three of the goals were gifts, the third set up by a suicidal pass under pressure back into the penalty area. Chertsey’s last three games have produced 18 goals – they only scored six of them – and some invigorating melodrama.

So, a bit like Werder Bremen, then...

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No time for losers in east and north Europe

2008-11-03T09:30:00Z

The fat lady has sung in Belarus, Finland, Latvia, Norway and Russia. These league titles have now been clinched by BATE Borisov (for the fifth time), Inter Turku (for the first time), Ventspils (for the third year in a row), Stabaek and Rubin Kazan (who both won their respective leagues for the first time ever)

It’s at this point, traditionally, that triumphant fans sing “It’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise…” and so on.

But for Stabaek, the Queen anthem certainly doesn’t apply. Their season had been a bed of roses, climaxing with a deeply pleasureable title-clinching 6-2 trouncing of Valerenga. I’ve bored people rigid about Stabaek here so it’s time to move on, as Tony Blair used to say.

Rubin Kazan won the Russian title courtesy of a last minute winner from the evergreen Serbian striker Savo Milosevic who, at 35, must be the most durable largely one-footed striker of the last 15 years.

The players have already been given gold-embroidered skull caps, a Tartar tradition, by their grateful board. The club’s only previous silverware was the La Manga Cup but they will make their UEFA Champions League debut in 2009-10, hopefully still under their coach Kurban Berdyev, memorably described here by Jonathan Wilson as a Turkmeni Harry Redknapp.

Rubin's Redknapp is flung skywards

Rubin’s triumph, as Wilson notes, is only marred by persistent rumours of match-fixing in the Russian game. There is no evidence that the new champions have benefited – just predictions in betting circles last May that the boys from Kazan were bound to win the title.

BATE’s triumph was more predictable than Rubin’s, but coach Viktor Goncharenko’s reaction was untypical. Confessing it would be “virtually impossible” to keep this squad together or to motivate a team that has won everything in Belarus, he admitted: “We have already started looking for replacements. Mentally, I’m prepared to start building a new team.”

Ventspils have now won three Latvian titles in a row, 11 short of Skonto’s run of record-breaking championships, yet, according to UEFA.com’s Mikhail Korolev, their Ukrainian coach Roman Grigorchuk is already pondering how his side can emulate the likes of BATE and Anorthosis and prosper in the Champions League.

That might sound a tad ambitious, but they only lost to Norwegian champions Brann on away goals in the second qualifying round this season.

Grigorchuk: Pondering, even as we speak

That same hope has inspired Inter Turku who won their first Finnish title under Job Dragtsma, yet another expat Dutch coach. Dragtsma was less bullish than Grigorchuk, possibly because the club will probably mark its triumph by selling talismanic skipper Jos Hooiveld to AIK Solna, the Swedish club supported by former UEFA president Lennart Johansson.

Inter Turku’s success was built on a miserly defence which conceded just 12 goals in 26 games. According to the anorak’s paradise rsssf.com this is, if you judge it on goals per game, the seventh best performance by a defence in a European league season.

Inter Turku’s 0.46 goals per game conceded is slightly better than Torino’s in 1976-77. But it is still some way short of Cagliari’s 11 goals in 30 games – 0.37 goals a game – when they won Serie A in 1969-70.

And the most famous player in that side? The legendary Luigi Riva... a striker. No time for losers, indeed.

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Matchday 3: Trains, ship's whistles and Jeremy Beadle

2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

Fewer goals, no great surprises, and one sound thrashing: Wednesday was not a vintage night of Champions League football. It was if the clubs were hungover from Tuesday’s champagne football.

Barcelona and Chelsea are effectively through to the last 16, but best entertainment of the night was Shakhtar coach Mircea Lucescu’s post-match rant about his players’ lack of aggression.

GROUP A
Chelsea 1-0 Roma
Bordeaux 1-0 Cluj

Roma showed enough quality, intelligence and nerve against Chelsea to placate those irate fans who recently chased coach Luciano Spalletti around the training ground.

As Spalletti noted afterwards, the result didn’t change the situation much: Roma need at least six points from their last three games.

Bordeaux were better against Cluj, especially in the second half, but only won thanks to a fluky own-goal and will surely need to be more fluent in attack in Romania to progress. Yoann Gourcuff continues to mystify Milan fans with his impressive form for the Girondins.

Though they lost, Cluj are making history. No team associated with trains has really impressed in this competition since Lokomotiv Moscow reached the last 16 in 2003/04.

I found this short and not entirely pointless meditation on the intertwined destinies of football and railways, which you may enjoy. The key word there being ‘may’.

There's always been a close relationship

GROUP B
Inter Milan 1-0 Anorthosis Famagusta
Panathinaikos 2-2 Werder Bremen

Inter only beat Anorthosis 1-0 but looked convincing enough, squeezing the Cypriots into their own half for most of the game. Adriano headed the winner, his second of the campaign, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Ricardo Quaresma could both have got on the scoresheet.

Anorthosis showed a spirit their 2,000 travelling fans appreciated, but lacked Inter’s quality. Maicon is the best Brazilian full-back since Roberto Carlos and Esteban Cambiasso is one of the most flexible, intelligent midfielders on the planet.

Werder Bremen’s last four Bundesliga games have featured 27 goals, so the only surprise about their 2-2 draw with Panathinaikos in Athens was that it wasn’t even more free scoring.

The Green-Whites haven’t had the rub of the green in the Champions League in the last few years. Keeper Tim Wiese’s attack of dropsy against Juventus robbed them of a place in the last eight in 2005/06 and in 2006/07 they finished third in their group with 10 points.

So when Dimitrios Salpingidi’s shot cannoned off the bar, with Pana 2-1 up, Werder coach Thomas Schaaf must have thought his luck had turned. His entertaining side are unbeaten in Group B but, after three draws, still trail Anorthosis. Three points in the return against Pana is essential.

It says on Wikipedia that every Werder Bremen goal is celebrated with the toot of a ship’s whistle. Dunno if I believe that.

"Honk! Parp! Hooray!"

GROUP C

Basel 0-5 Barcelona
Shakhtar Donetsk 0-1 Sporting Lisbon

Basel boss Christian Gross will really be looking forward to visiting Camp Nou after this 5-0 thrashing. The Swiss had lost to Sporting despite being the better side, but this game was over as a contest after Leo Messi scored in the fourth minute.

That goal was made by Dani Alves’s brilliance and, although most of the plaudits will go to two-goal Bojan Krkic, Gross felt Alves was largely responsible for his side’s humiliation: “We couldn’t stop him at the back. His influence was far too great.”

With Barcelona essentially through, the race for the runner-up spot was thrown wide open with Sporting’s surprise victory in Donetsk. Shakhtar deserved at least a draw; as their coach Lucescu put it: “Sporting had one chance and they took it.”

He was unsparing in his verdict on his team: the midfielders were “sluggish”, central defenders “nervous”, the strikers didn’t play to their usual level, and he even found the subs “disappointing”. Shakhtar have the quality to win in Lisbon; assuming they beat Basel at home, that could see them reach the last 16 for the first time in nine attempts.

But after two home defeats, do they have the spirit?

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this any more!"

GROUP D
Atletico Madrid 1-1 Liverpool
PSV 2-0 Marseille

Simao Sabrosa has now foiled Liverpool – the club that tried to buy him for £8m in 2006 – twice in two games. He scored as Benfica humbled the Reds 2-0 at Anfield in the last 16 in 2005/06 and his 83rd-minute strike snatched a point for Atleti this week.

True, he had a little help from Alvaro Arbeloa, whose run across to Jamie Carragher and Diego Forlan left the goalscorer in a prairie’s worth of space. The BBC review of the Benfica game back in 2006 had the headline: “Benitez rues poor finishing”. The more things change, the more they stay the same?

PSV old boy Eric Gerets’ return to Eindhoven with Marseille was truly miserable. True to form, he didn’t gloss over his side’s deficiencies: “I’m going to talk with the players because in the second half I saw everyone make mistakes. I was glad when the game was over.”

PSV coach Huub Stevens was chuffed by the victory but knows he is still, barring major upsets, in a battle for a UEFA Cup spot with l’OM.

While researching for my interview with Stevens last week, I discovered that when PSV (with Huub at the, er, hub of the defence) won the UEFA Cup in 1978, their replica of the trophy was stolen by the Dutch comedian Theo Maassen. Why didn’t the late Jeremy Beadle ever do something like that?

"Will this do?"

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Fabulous finishes, heroic comebacks and rockin’ Robben

2008-10-22T10:00:00Z

Has Spain’s triumph at Euro 2008 inspired coaches to play attacking football? Or are defenders and goalkeepers seriously rubbish?

In truth, it’s a bit of both (and yes, two of the goals looked offside) but after a night in which 36 goals were scored in eight UEFA Champions League games, who’s complaining?

Group E

Villarreal coach Manuel Pellegrini’s beautifully judged verdict on his side’s 6-3 triumph over Aalborg was “It was a dark night defensively but I enjoyed the goals we scored.”

His opponent Bruce Rioch was more exhilarated saying: “To come here, score three and concede six is amazing.” Joseba Llorente’s second half hat-trick took 17 minutes, eight minutes longer than Mike Newell took to score his treble against Rosenborg in 1995/96.

Llorente helps himself to hat-trick in 6-3 goal-fest

If Group E keeps going by the form book, Man United will need to win or draw 1-1 at the El Madrigal on matchday five to come top. The Yellow Submarine’s home record in the Champions League is Played 8, Won 4, Drawn 4 so United will have to be at their best to earn a point against a runner-up in the knockout stages.

And remember the last four winners of this tournament have all gone out in the last 16.

Group F

Home defeats against Bayern and Lyon mean that, with head-to-head coming into play if teams are level on points, Steaua are all but out of it.

Bayern look secure after beating Fiorentina 3-0. Viola coach Cesare Prandelli philosophically noted: “Mistakes are part of football. Otherwise every game would be 0-0.” Lyon have half a brilliant team – the attacking half – and have already salvaged four points with second-half comebacks and head to Florence on matchday five for a game that could decide their fate.

Schweinsteiger celebrates getting Bayern back on track

Group G

Arsenal emphatically ended Fenerbahce’s 15-game unbeaten run in Europe. Arsene Wenger was sufficiently cheered to drop his recent Grinch who stole Christmas persona in which he seemed to suggest that clubs buying players they couldn’t afford and Sunderland trying to stop his team winning were both somehow immoral.

It’s obviously going to be heaven (Sheffield United, Fener, the second half against Everton) or hell (Fulham, Hull, the first half against Everton) this season for the Gooners and nowt in between.

In Porto, the Hulk, deployed as a second-half striker, was less incredible than the free-kick by Olexandr Aliyev, a 33-yard belter that sealed Dynamo Kyiv’s first away win in the tournament in over four years.

Porto coach Jesualdo Ferreira complained that Dynamo only came to defend, playing the match like part of a two-legged cup tie, but he now needs his side to win away in Kyiv and Istanbul if they are to progress.

Walcott pops in No.2 of five Gunners goals in Turkey

Group H

Zenit St Petersburg’s profligate finishing cost them two more points against BATE, the Belarusian champions, Dick Advocaat grumbled: “I cannot score goals myself. I did when I was younger but not now.”

BATE striker Vitali Rodionov, who hit the frame of the goal from an absurd angle, looked especially useful. The Russian champions, with a point from three games, should be out of it, but a win in Borisov could change all that.

Juventus vs Real Madrid was a truly odd game. A makeshift bianconeri team won – the opening goal from Alessandro Del Piero was a stunner – but with so many injuries, it’s hard to tell how strong Claudio Ranieri’s team will be in the knockout stages.

Del Boy curls home stunning opener for Juve against Real

In the battle of the talismanic veteran skippers, Del Piero outshone Raul who barely featured. Although all the talk was about a crisis at Juve, it was Real who, despite a late rally, looked out of sorts.

Arjen Robben was brilliant and, once again, left the pitch so immaculate he looked like the ‘after’ shot in a Daz advert. How does he do it?

Johnny Haynes: Fulham's big headed pass master

2008-10-20T10:00:00Z

“What are you effing up to?”

That was how England and Fulham maestro Johnny Haynes often rebuked team-mates who had just screwed up. Sometimes, he wouldn’t say anything, just stand, hands on hips, in an accusatory manner.

Sometimes, a legend’s impatience and imperfection are more telling than all the misty-eyed, nostalgic tributes. Haynes’ perfectionism once earned his best mate and Fulham room-mate Tosh Chamberlain a booking for calling him an “effing bighead.”

“What are you effing up to?”

Asked by Michael Parkinson what he remembered most about his career, Haynes replied: “One season we scored 100 goals and didn’t come top. We couldn’t work it out until someone pointed out we had conceded 100 goals.”

Haynes was the England captain between Billy Wright and Bobby Moore but, outside west London, is less famous than either. The statue unveiled outside Fulham’s Johnny Haynes stand last weekend should signal the long overdue re-evaluation of a player Pele called the greatest passer of the ball he had ever seen.

Reverse passes, cross passes, 40-yard passes, passes into space he couldn’t see to a team-mate who, he intuitively knew, should be running on to receive it – these were all in Haynes’ repertoire.

George Cohen, Fulham’s World Cup winning full-back, remembers one moment of genius at an otherwise forgotten charity match: “The ball came to him at speed on a wet, slippery surface but with the slightest of adjustments, one that was almost imperceptible, he played it inside a full-back and into the path of an on-running winger.

I looked at our coach Dave Sexton on the bench and he shook his head as if to say 'fantastic.' Haynes could give you goose bumps on a wet night in a match that didn't matter.”

An Arsenal fan as a boy in Edmonton, growing up on Spurs’ doorstep, Haynes joined Fulham after a sensational performance for England Schoolboys either because his best mate, Chamberlain, was on the Cottagers’ books or because big clubs thought he was too slight to make it.

Either way, he blossomed at Fulham. Like Totti at Roma, Haynes never seemed tempted by offers from big clubs (Spurs, Milan and Roma assiduously sought his signature). In 18 years at Fulham, he made 658 appearances and scored 158 goals, leading them out of the old Division Two in 1958. In 1958/59, he scored 26 goals in 34 games, a prolific goalscoring midfielder before Bobby Charlton and Frank Lampard reached their peak.

Wallop! Lincoln City on the receiving end in 1958

If there is a blot on his reputation, it is his performances for England in two World Cups.

In 1958, he played through the pain in Sweden with blistered feet as England disappointed. In 1962, England lost their opener against Hungary because the Hungarians, noting that England had no Plan B, marked Haynes out of the game. In the quarter-final, Garrincha’s brilliance undid England, who lost 3-1.

That would prove to be his last international. A car crash two months later damaged his cruciate knee ligaments and, out for a year, he didn’t fully recover as a player, never showing the form that would force Sir Alf Ramsey to recall him.

Losing in the quarter-final to Brazil was a respectable exit but, for once, England had realistically expected so much more. In 1960/61, with Haynes as skipper, England’s record was P9, W7, D1, L1, F45, A14. The most famous result in that run was the 9-3 demolition of Scotland (in which Haynes scored his last two goals for his country) but a 3-2 victory over Italy in Rome in May 1961 was probably more significant for a side that aspired to win the World Cup.

But it never happened for Haynes. Instead, his admirers must dwell on the day, in October 1958, when he exorcised his frustration at being knocked out of the World Cup by the USSR by scoring a hat-trick against them as England won 5-0.

"Have I really got to pose like this forever?!"

After gazing at sculptor Douglas Jennings’ fine statue, I watched Fulham take on Sunderland from the back of the Johnny Haynes stand. Neither the statue – nor the presence of several of Haynes’ illustrious team-mates (including Jimmy Hill, who did a Mr Universe pose to wind up the Sunderland fans at half-time), inspired Roy Hodgson’s black and white army.

Jimmy Bullard, who can pass in a fashion Haynes might approve of, had an off day. The maestro would probably have been more impressed by Kieran Richardson who struck two sublime free-kicks. The first hit the post three times but somehow never went in. The second soared into the net but was bizarrely disallowed because of some shenanigans in the wall.

As the final whistle sounded, there were a few disgruntled boos from the home fans. As Fulham retired to the dressing room, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they heard the ghost of Johnny Haynes grumbling: “What were you effing up to?”

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Dictators, Scolari and Rio the statesman

2008-10-17T12:00:00Z

Hello, good evening and welcome to our version of That Was The Week That Was. It’s been a great seven days for football dictators, Scolari and the new, statesmanlike Rio Ferdinand.

Football dictatorship of the week

Constitutionally, the republic of Uzbekistan is a democracy, but it regularly features in such top 10 lists as The World’s Most Repressive Societies.

But the regime takes its football seriously and the 1-1 draw with Japan in Tokyo may bump the country back up the FIFA rankings: it currently lies at number 70, just ahead of Zambia and behind Costa Rica.

Uzbekistan’s surprising away point was partly down to Zico, the former Japan national coach who now manages Bunyodkor, one of the richest Uzbeki clubs, where his most famous charge is Rivaldo.

The former World Player Of The Year decided he owed it to himself and his family not to snub a £7m offer to play in Uzbekistan – and was so enthusiastic about his new home he persuaded Zico to join him.

This Brazilian flair came too late to save Bunyodkor’s Asian Champions League campaign; they lost 3-0 to Adelaide United in the semi-final first leg. Still, for a club that’s only three years old, that’s not bad going.

Their ‘secret’ talks to land Eto’o, Puyol and Iniesta didn’t pay off this summer. But they might be luckier when the transfer window reopens.

"'Ere Ron, you heard from this Uzbek bloke?"

The Stans – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, not to mention Madeupistan (sorry, couldn’t resist the opportunity to pitch in with an old Lee Evans gag) – are on a roll, unlike China which, despite its economic momentum and passion for the beautiful game, remains considerably worse at football than the Brazilians are at table tennis.

Debate of the week

The Gerrard/Lampard boreathon – sorry, debate – is a classic illustration of what scientists call ‘the White Christmas effect’, the tendency which leads many listeners, advised by a DJ that they are about to play White Christmas, hears the song even if it is played at very low volume or not played at all. (The subject is discussed in illuminating detail by Oliver Sacks in his new book Musicophilia – see here.)

The Frank 'n' Steve issue trundles on, in part, because we are predisposed to assess their respective performances in a certain way. I have a slight preference – for Gerrard – but no supreme confidence that I am right.

I remember in the 1970s watching Ken Goodwin, a squat, nippy Nuneaton Borough winger who looked a bit like Kenny Sansom might look if he’d been through the crusher, and turning round to my mate Martin and saying: “He’s having a good game, isn’t he?”

Martin chuckled and pointed out that the game had only kicked off five minutes ago. That seems, to me, to sum up most football analysis – it is as much about what or who we like as it is about lucid, reasoned argument about the game.

Ken Goodwin (artist's impression) (possibly)

Flowers of the week

Roses were laid in Turin this week to mark the 42nd anniversary of the death, in a car crash, of Gigi Meroni, the iconic genius known as La Farfalla Granata (The Purple Butterfly) and the Italian George Best. For flair, hairstyle, and the punishment he took from defenders, Meroni matched Bestie.

He would be much better known but his move to Juve fell through because Gianni Agnelli feared that Torino-supporting Fiat workers would go on strike. Meroni was only 24 when he died; if calcio had a James Dean, it would be Meroni, remembered online here and the object of many homages on YouTube.

Book of the week

Luiz Felipe Scolari: The Man, The Manager by Jose Carlos Freitas (Dewi Lewis Publishing) won't win any prizes for literary style, but I found bits of it illuminating. Freitas has known Scolari well and the most interesting revelations to me were as follows.

i) Roman Abramovich’s shortlist for the Chelsea job was very short indeed: the only names on it were Scolari and Marcello Lippi.  

ii) When the Portuguese FA rang to offer Scolari the coaching job, he initially pretended to be one of his kids because he was fed up of being pestered by PSG.

iii) As Portugal skipper, Fernando Couto was so scary, none of his teammates dared to leave the table without his permission.

Couto: "You. Sit. Now."

Metamorphosis of the week

From the man who gave us Rio’s World Cup Wind-Ups to elder statesman declaring the circus is over, Rio Ferdinand has been acquiring dignity at a frightening rate. Was it all this extra gravitas that slowed him down against Kazakhstan? He was casually strolling back toward the penalty area as Mr Cheryl Cole hoofed England into danger.

Plug of the week

Was at PSV yesterday interviewing Huub Stevens – who, among his other gifts, does a surprisingly good impersonation of Rafa Benitez on the touchline. For more on Huub, read the next Champions, due out on 19 November (providing our fancy new production systems work).

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Norwegian Blue: far from pushing up the daisies

2008-10-07T15:10:00Z

You may be relieved, or disappointed, to discover that Monty Python and the controversial parrot have no place in this blog. The Norwegian Blue in question are Stabaek, surprise leaders of the Norwegian Tippeligaen.

Once chiefly famous for being monopolised by Rosenborg, the Tippeligaen is now as wide open as Dodge City before the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Three different teams – Valerenga, Rosenborg and Brann – have won it in the last three seasons and, with three rounds left, Stabaek are six points clear, poised to win their first league title after 96 years of trying.

If titles were won by popular acclaim, Stabaek would already be champions. They have averaged more than two goals a game, have a goal difference of +30 and played the most entertaining football in Norway.

(It’s probably worth noting here that Egil Olsen’s notorious long ball game does not – and never has – typified the Norwegian club game, which has always been subtler, more technical and strong on the counter-attack.)

Guided by a quiz show host, advertising guru and motivational speaker called Ingebrigt Steen Jensen, Stabaek have risen from fifth-division mediocrity 20 or so years ago.

They first made the top flight in 1995 (and in 1998 won the Norwegian Cup, their first and so far only piece of silverware) but were relegated in 2004.

Under new Swedish coach Jan Jonsson, the Blue’s recovery was aided by the prowess of 34-year-old Swedish striker Daniel Nannskog, whose goals powered them to second in the league in 2007.

Nannskog: The old 'uns are the best 'uns

Nannskog has scored 78 goals in his first 101 games for Stabaek, feeding brilliantly off Icelandic striker Veigar Pall Gunnarson – who, aside from being his partner’s provider in chief, averages a goal every other game.

Nannskog and Gunnarson have had some stellar support from Alanzinho, the Brazilian whose mazy dribbling has perplexed defences, midfielder Johan Andersson and versatile, enterprising 25-year-old centre-back Morton Skjonsberg who will surely soon make his full Norway debut.

Stabaek are based in Baerum, Oslo’s poshest suburb. If they do win the title, the triumph will provide a fitting farewell to the council-owned Nadderud stadium. From 2009, the club will play its games nearby at the new multi-purpose Telenor Arena, which many say will be the most spectacular football stadium in Norway.

There are two ways Stabaek’s dream move could turn into a nightmare. This season is remarkable because Rosenborg, Viking Stavanger, Lyn and Valerenga have all had off years. How often is that likely to happen?

Rosenborg had lost four games out of nine before their new coach, Erik Hamren (who won the Danish title with Aalborg), took over. They have looked steadier since and should seriously challenge next year.

The other risk is that Gunnarson and Alanzinho move on; the Brazilian has just extended his contract, though that’s no guarantee. The Icelandic striker, now 28, is said to be ready for a move.

And Nannskog, at 34, may not have many free-scoring seasons left. Rivals wonder if Stabaek have the strength in depth to cope with the loss of a few of their aces.

Alanzinho: Crazy name, crazy guy

Supporters are looking on the bright side. As the Stabaek Support unofficial fansite says: “Football isn’t just about winning. The most important thing is partying, drinking, smoking, listening to rock and roll, f**king, fighting and watching football. We do this until we’re 90. And then we join the Aldermannsliga, the club for elderly supporters.”

They have no doubt their team will be champions. Even if they stumble, it won’t dent the fans’ belief. As they say on their website: “We could present tons of statistics proving that Stabaek are the best team in Norway in the 21st century, but we will not. Statistics attract nerds and we don’t want nerds around wasting our bandwidth.”

Fair enough. Besides, no matter what the future holds for Stabaek, it’s refreshing to see a team entertain its way to the brink of success.

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Obama’s a Hammer, yo-yo clubs and the best team name ever

2008-10-06T07:00:00Z

Obama’s Hammer blow for McCain...
“The beautiful game is democracy in action and reflects American ideals and values like teamwork and diversity.”

So says the campaign website Soccer Fans For Obama. There is a dearth of posts on the site. There aren’t even any comments from West Ham United fans. Obama was a 10,000-1 shot for the manager’s job at Upton Park and is an Irons fan – according to The Sun – in part because of the enthusiastic advocacy of the Hammers by relatives in Kent.

Obama may be to bowling what Simon Cowell is to modesty but journalists watching him kickabout before one of his daughter’s games reckon he’s got nifty feet. Mind you, in this picture he looks reluctant to give it some welly. Still, John McCain is probably a gridiron man and Sarah Palin’s a hockey mom so maybe, come election day, soccer fans will lump for Obama.

If the election’s tight, could exiled Hammers with a vote swing it?

"We lost 3-1?... at home to Bolton?!"

Italy won a European final this year – and nobody noticed...
It was the kind of result I’d love to hear James Alexander Gordon read out: “Croats in Serbia 0, South Tyrol 1.”

The South Tyrol football team may be full of players who speak German and Ladin (a minor Romance language) but the lads from this northern Italian province know how to keep a clean sheet. That 1-0 win secured Europaeda 2008 – the first ever “soccer tournament for the autochthonous, national minorities in Europe” held this June in Switzerland – for South Tyrol.

Spare a thought for Denmark’s North Frisians, who lost 46-1 to the ‘Roma in Hungary’ and blew their ethnic local derby, getting stomped 19-1 by ‘Germans in Denmark’. With score-lines like that, Setanta should buy the rights for the next Europaeda.

Now that’s what I call a yo-yo club...
Barry Town, Manchester City and Nurnberg share one dire, statistical niche: they have all been relegated the season after winning the title.

City trailblazed this extreme form of football yo-yoing by winning the league in 1931 and going down in 1932 but it is so popular in Scandinavia that the indispensable www.rsssf.com has dubbed this phenomenon Nordic nonsense. Four Swedish clubs, three apiece from Denmark and Norway have all done this. Few relinquished the aura of title-winners as quickly as UDIB in Guinea-Bissau. The reigning champs were relegated after failing to turn up for the first two matches of the 2004 season.

By far the greatest team name...
Five English teams have won the title in their first season after being promoted to the top flight. They are Liverpool (1906), Everton (1932), Spurs (1951), Ipswich (1962) and Nottingham Forest (1978). In Trinidad and Tobago, newly promoted Joe Public won the 2006 title. Joe Public, for me, is by far the best football team name in the world. Ever.

Lausanne-Sports is a more prosaic club name. But the Swiss side have one unique claim to fame: they have won promotion and the championship in the same season.

In 1931/32, the Swiss league system was almost as confusing as the Rubik’s cube. Instead of one top flight, Switzerland had Group A and Group B, both consisting of nine teams. The winners of A and B automatically qualified for a final round while the runners-up played each other to compete in that round. Bizarrely, Lausanne-Sports qualified for the final round as winners of the league below Group A and B. The four then played a traditional group. Lausanne and Zurich, level with four points, played off in a final which Lausanne won 5-2 to become champions.

This gloriously convoluted system didn’t last. By 1933/34, attempts to pioneer football rhomboids and hexagons had been replaced with the safe, dull, but simple pyramid.

Joe Public (Red) in action vs New England Revolution

And finally…
Lionel Messi has been voted the best player in the UEFA Champions League this season by readers of Marca and Gazzetta. The surprise inclusion on the list is Juve’s starlet Giovinco who came eighth. His teammate Alessandro Del Piero came fourth, some feat for a player who has been written off every season since his cruciate knee ligaments were ruined in 1998.

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Smells like team spirit at Bayern

2008-10-03T11:00:00Z

Mumsy Scottish troubadour Lena Martell’s philosophy was “one day at a time, sweet Jesus.”

Football managers officially take one game at a time. Yet after this week’s results, some coaches are privately spinning different scenarios.

Marseille’s Eric Gerets has already revised his team’s target: this season it’s the UEFA Cup. I would bet anyone a fiver that the words ‘squad rotation’ have flashed through Rafa Benitez’s mind. And Cluj manager Maurizio Trombetta wouldn’t be human if some part of him wasn’t fantasising about returning to the Stadio Olimpico next May.

Matchday two has already whittled down the 32 contenders. Aalborg, Bordeaux, Marseille, Panathinaikos and PSV need a miracle to progress. My thoughts on Group A-D are here. Here is how I see Groups E to H.

Group E
Scott McDonald struck the near miss of the season against Villarreal, a wondrous volley from a brilliant lay off from Aiden McGeady that just failed to dip under the bar and earn Celtic the away point their 55 minutes of good play deserved.

The Bhoys away record since 2003 – in the tournament proper – now reads Played 16, W0, D1, Lost 15.

Although Gordon Strachan tried to deny it, this record must weigh on players’ minds. On the road, they have lost to FC Copenhagen, Shakhtar, Benfica (twice) and Artmedia. And against Villarreal, their defensive wall seemed to have forgotten how to jump. The funny thing is I wouldn’t be surprised if they grabbed their next away point at Old Trafford.

Celtic's wall forgets to jump... Senna scores

Villarreal are, for me, the new Liverpool, the team nobody wants to meet in the knockout stages. It is now 11 years since Borussia Dortmund became the last team to win the UEFA Champions League for the first time. Villarreal and Chelsea look the teams most likely to rewrite history this season.

Deeply trivial bonus: the last team Celtic beat away from home in the UEFA Champions League or European Cup proper was Shamrock Rovers in 1986. The Bhoys beat the Irish champions 1-0 in Dublin.

Group F
Sometimes, deciding what’s really going on at a football club is a matter of reading signs. For those who like to notice such things, the joy with which Bayern’s players ran to the touchline to celebrate Ze Roberto’s equaliser with under fire coach Jurgen Klinsmann suggested that, whatever else is wrong with Bayern, it has nothing to do with team spirit.

It might have to do with strikers who can’t score goals. Although Miroslav Klose’s cross made the equaliser, he hasn’t scored from open play in the Bundesliga since March. (And the goal before that was last November!)

Pile on! Nirvana for Bayern as Ze Roberto levels vs Lyon

Luca Toni has scored consistently in the Bundesliga but against Lyon showed the kind of form that undermined Italy’s cause at Euro 2008. The commentators took the view that his desperate lunging, jumping and stretching meant he was destined at some point to score.

To me, it looked more like a striker who had lost the art of timing his runs. Ruud van Nistelrooy’s goal against Zenith was a masterpiece of anticipation. Against Lyon, Toni never looked like he was anticipating the play, or running into space where the ball might fall.

Bayern should have won 2-1 – Klose was denied a certain penalty in the first half – which would have been good for confidence. But Klinsmann, with four points from two games, is in a better place than Claude Puel, Lyon’s new coach, who has two points from two games and needs at least four points from the next two against Steaua who, as they proved against Fiorentina, are no mugs.

Cesare Prandelli’s analysis of his team’s performance was fair. As he admitted, the Viola were so frustrated by Steaua’s ability to keep possession, they often reverted to inaccurate long balls. Fiorentina looked tired and Prandelli will hope that, like most Italian teams, his side becomes sharper as the group stage progresses.

Group G
Lucky, lucky Arsenal. Could they have asked for an easier group?

Fenerbahce are still regrouping after Luis Aragones replaced Zico, Dinamo Kiev’s record on the road is almost as dismal as Celtic’s (in their last nine group games away from home they have drawn two, lost seven and shipped 18 goals) and Porto have defensive frailties which Theo Walcott ruthlessly exposed on Tuesday.

The Arsenal game inspired the best post-match interview of the week. Asked what the 4-0 win said about Arsenal’s ability to win the tournament, Robin van Persie’s reply was succinct, sweet and sensible: “Nothing.”

Walcott runs Porto ragged at the Emirates

Group H
With no points from two games, Zenit St Petersburg are down but not out. Only an Arsenal-style profligacy in front of goal deprived them of victory against Real Madrid.

That was Real’s first win on the road in the tournament since October 2006. But Zenith seem perfectly capable of winning in Madrid and Turin so, for me, this group is still wide open.

BATE look least likely to progress but could still have a huge influence, if they take points off Real or Zenit in Borisov.

Dubious statistical bonus: if BATE striker Gennadi Bliznyuk scores in any game, he will become Belarus’ record goalscorer in UEFA club competitions. He has already scored 10 – seven in Champions League qualifiers – to equal Georgi Kondratyev’s record.

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Minnows 2 Elitists 0

2008-10-02T16:00:00Z

This is where I suck up to Michel Platini, the UEFA president who, indirectly, keeps me in a job.

When he suggested opening up the UEFA Champions League to teams that the British press, with characteristic open mindedness, dubbed “minnows,” there was much dire prognosticating that this utter folly would lead to the kind of 10-0 thrashings not seen in Europe since English teams stopped facing clubs from Luxembourg.

The records of Cluj and BATE, from such unfashionable parts of the football world as Transylvania and Belarus, have exposed this as hollow, misconceived elitism.

Teeny, tiny little Cluj celebrate making light work of Roma

Cluj and BATE have now tested Chelsea, Juve and Roma. And, in Cluj’s case, given the media a welcome cue for a whole host of bite/vampire/teeth related headlines and intros.

To be honest, both sides look more competitive than such established regulars as PSV and Marseille.

You would expect me to say this, as editor of the official UEFA Champions League magazine, but that doesn’t make me wrong. After a fascinating week’s results, here is the first part of my view on the state of the tournament. (Groups E-H will follow Friday. Promise)

Group A
Against the Cheeky Girls’ hometown team, Chelsea had more of everything – possession, corners, shots on target – except goals. In truth, 0-0 wasn’t bad. It could have been worse. Petr Cech rescued Chelsea after the magnificent Alvaro Pereira took advantage late on as Jose Bosingwa fell asleep.

Cluj coach Maurizio Trombetta, appointed this summer, has done a magnificent job. But, even though Cluj are joint top with Chelsea, he insists, “our target is still to finish third.”

Chelsea huff and puff their way to goalless draw in Romania

Bordeaux, pointless after two games, may miss out on the last 16 after the Beast – Julio Baptista – inspired Roma to comeback and win 3-1 in France.

Totti hopes to be fit for the upcoming double header against Chelsea which, judging by the thickness of his knee brace, Drogba seems unlikely to be. The nightmare scenario for the two group favourites is that Cluj do the double over Bordeaux and have 10 points after four games.

Note for stattos: this was the first time Chelsea haven’t scored under Scolari.

Group B
It hasn’t taken long. This Tuesday, Gazzetta dello Sport was asking whether Mancini’s Inter were better than Mourinho’s. And as Inter drew 1-1 with Werder, the first angry whistles from home fans resounded around the half empty San Siro.

But Inter still look favourites in Group B. They can almost bank on three points at home to Panathinaikos and face Anorthosis at the San Siro next.

The bigger question is what shape Inter will be in as the knockout stage starts. As Roy Hodgson suggested on Sky Sports, it is possible that Mourinho still doesn’t know his best XI.

Decisions, decisions

The three strikers – Ibrahimovic, Adriano and Balotelli – looked less fluent against Werder, over 90 minutes, than the more traditional 4-3-3 (with the Swede as lone striker, supported from the flanks) deployed in Athens.

Still, it was good to see Adriano, in flashes, looking more like a genius and much less like the Mr Blobby who was so immobile at the 2006 World Cup.

Only Anorthosis and Werder can seriously hope to qualify alongside Inter. On matchday five, Bremen travel to Nicosia for a match that could decide the issue. Form and pedigree favour the Germans but Anorthosis have now drawn or beaten Anderlecht, Hertha Berlin, Olympiakos and Spurs at home.

Group C
Being outplayed by Shakhtar Donetsk for 88 minutes, yet snatching victory through the brilliance of Lionel Messi will not convince Pep Guardiola’s critics his Barcelona are improving. Still, six points from two matches puts Barca in pole position and it’s hard to see them failing to make the last 16.

Messi to the rescue as late brace buries Shakhtar

Who joins them could become clear after the Sporting-Shakhtar double header. These ties will be intriguing tactical contests. Paulo Bento’s men often make opponents struggle by dictating the pace and will look to slow the game to suffocate Shakhtar before going on the offensive.

Although Shakhtar coach Mircea Lucescu fumed about Barcelona’s gamesmanship, his real concern must be Shakhtar’s propensity to ship late goals.

This week’s disappointment reminded many fans of their exit to Sevilla in the 2006/07 UEFA Cup. Leading 2-1 in the fourth minute of added time, they heroically contrived to lose 3-2 in Donetsk.

Group D
Believe the hype. Sergio Aguero probably is the best striker in the world right now. His goal against Marseille showed speed of thought, technique, determination, focus, a low centre of gravity and predatory instincts.

Although Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez insists it’s still all to play for, this already looks like a two horse race between Fernando Torres’ old team and his current team.

Aguero on target again as Atletico steer past Marseille

After Aguero, the best player at the Calderon was Mamadou Niang. 29 this month, the Senegalese striker has scored goals in industrial quantities in the last year: 18 in 29 Ligue 1 games – and four in 10 European matches – in 2007/08.

He already has three in four European games in 2008/09. Niang paired well up front with Danijel Lluboja and Mickael Pagis at Strasbourg and, if the goals keep coming, could be worth £15m next summer.

At Anfield, the player I was most intrigued by was PSV’s Nordin Amrabat. Only 21, he normally plays on the wing but looked lively, cheeky and talented given the thankless task of playing alone up front in a transitional PSV side that, at times, played five at the back.

Note for stattos: Gerrard’s 100th goal for Liverpool was also the Reds’ 100th goal in the Champions League.

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Cowards, loony Toons and lucky Luciano

2008-09-26T10:00:00Z

I didn’t realise how bad Newcastle United’s crisis was until I read that the club had asked Keith Harris to smooth its sale.

Were billionaires in the Middle East/India/Nigeria going to be impressed by a man brandishing a green duckling wearing nothing but a nappy and a safety pin?

Reading on I soon realised this was another Keith Harris altogether but Newcastle couldn’t be in any greater disarray if a ventriloquist – or an excruciating little duck called Orville – was running the show.

"I think we'll go 3-1-6 this week with Nicky Butt in goal..."

In the media, every story produces an equal and opposite reaction. So the backlash against all the stories about how rubbish Mike Ashley is saw some papers blame the fans.

Apparently, their hysterical attitude, their absurdly inflated expectations and their delusion that Newcastle United are a “big club” is at the root of the present crisis.

For most Newcastle supporters, their absurdly inflated expectations boil down to this:
1) They’d like the team to play some decent football
2) They’d like to win a trophy occasionally.

If you’re paying £935 for a season ticket, it doesn’t sound too much to ask, does it?

Newcastle United hog so many column inches it seems spurious to comment further. But surely even Ashley and his advisors must realise that each passing week of relegation form shaves another few million off the asking price?

Lucky Luciano?

Roma coach Luciano Spalletti had to jump over the fence at the training ground the other day to escape irate fans, disgusted by defeat to Cluj.

The reaction may seem extreme, but the loss doesn’t leave Spalletti much margin for error in UEFA Champions League Group A. If they beat Chelsea home and away, they can win a maximum of 15 points.

But if they lose and draw or lose both, they could end up with 12 or 9. In other words, Roma need to do the double over Bordeaux and beat Cluj away to keep their fate in their own hands. If Chelsea hoover up all 18 points, nine could be enough for Spalletti’s stylish team.

"What! We have to beat Bordeaux twice?"

In Group C, Shakhtar have a different problem. Their away victory to Basel was far more convincing than the 2-1 scoreline suggests – coach Mircea Lucescu slammed his players afterwards for showboating – but they have won as many games in the Champions League as they have in their first eight games in the Ukrainian league.

Shakhtar’s five Brazilian stars are accused of only being motivated by Champions League games. There is even talk of Lucescu, who has won three titles in four years, losing his job.

Which would be ironic because, in a reasonably open group, they probably have their best chance of qualifying for the last 16 for the first time. To make certain, they need to beat Basel and Sporting at home and hope that Barcelona walk away with the group.

Punches and tea jugs

The death of Jimmy Sirrel, 86, the legendary Notts County manager, reminds me of my favourite football psychology anecdote.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, County relied on Newcastle-born striker Trevor Christie for goals. When Christie hit a barren streak, coach Howard Wilkinson insisted on using his subtle psychological wiles on the player. None worked and general manager Sirrel insisted, finally, he was going to sort this his way.

Curious to see how the legendary Scot would handle the issue, Wilkinson followed him into the dressing room. Sirrel walked up to Christie, punched him in the stomach and said: “Big man, you’re an effing coward.”

That afternoon Christie scored twice.

Jimmy Sirrel 1922-2008

His players regarded Sirrel with a mixture of fear, affection and awe. As Les Bradd, County’s record goalscorer told The Times, “We certainly feared him on matchdays, particularly when he was throwing jugs of tea at us.”

Sirrel’s glory days are fondly remembered here with an interview on Left Lion that proves what an entertaining, unpretentious bloke Sirrel was. I especially like his observation that Cloughie “could be a bit bombastic about his football.”

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Inter, Chelsea and the third incarnation of Jose Mourinho

2008-09-17T13:30:00Z

The rehabilitation of Jose Mourinho, the world’s most charismatic coach, took a giant step forward in Athens on Tuesday night.

Inter’s efficient 2-0 win over Panathinaikos was exactly the kind of result the Nerazzurri so seldom produced in Europe under Roberto Mancini. With only one game played – and their other rivals drawing in Bremen – Inter already look odds on to win the group.

Bookies have Inter as fourth favourites to win the Champions League. Those odds owe more to Mourinho’s reputation than Inter’s recent European form, which has varied from barely competent to terminally mediocre.

So why do I say rehabilitation? Because this season could define Mourinho’s career.

He is loved and loathed by the public, and adored by the media for his ability to give good soundbite, but the audience he really needs to impress is that small elite – there may be no more than 50 of them – of presidents, tycoons and billionaires who can afford to hire Mourinho and who run the clubs with a realistic shot at winning the trophies he craves.

"Who, little old me?"

His exit from Chelsea enraged and disappointed fans. But chairmen and presidents, while making allowances for the Byzantine intrigue at the court of Roman Abramovich, instinctively sympathised with the Chelsea owner.

If his Inter mission ends with similar fireworks, Mourinho will find his next job that much harder to come by. He's still only 45, too young to settle for a seven-figure salary coaching in the Middle East.

So the Mourinho we see at Inter is a third incarnation of the coach. At Porto, he was a miracle worker, conquering Europe through team spirit, tactical ingenuity, meticulous preparation and a touch of gamesmanship.

At Chelsea, that team spirit, ingenuity and meticulousness was backed by Abramovich’s millions as Mourinho proved, for a season or more, that he could build the same esprit de corps among a squad of superstars and focus ruthlessly on winning.

At Inter, with a squad that hasn’t changed much, he is trying to prove his coaching alone can make the difference and that he can win in style.

What hasn’t changed is the way Mourinho sets out his team. Against Panathinaikos, Zlatan Ibrahimovic excelled in the classic centre-forward role that made Didier Drogba famous at Chelsea.

"You the man!" "No, you the man!" "Yes, I am, actually"

Ibrahimovic is better and worse than Drogba. Better because he can, like Messi, destroy an opponent with the ball at his feet. Worse because he has yet to achieve the kind of consistency Drogba showed when he banged in 26 goals in 2006/07.

Ibra can be brilliant or awful. But brilliance is gaining the upper hand. Last season he scored 22 in 33 matches, including five in seven Champions League games, although he was inconspicuous as the Nerazzurri were outfought and outplayed by Liverpool.

The hug between the Swede and Mourinho after the star had made Adriano’s goal in Athens suggested that coach and Inter’s reigning enigma have already bonded. So maybe this season we will finally see the great Zlatan.

Supporting the Swede in Athens were Ricardo Quaresma and Mancini, switching flanks. Ibrahimovic made both goals: he created the first with Drogbaesque persistence and, with a selflessness Drogba has not always exhibited, passed perfectly for Mancini to finish first time.

His through pass for Adriano to seal the win was even better. The rejuvenated Brazilian was able to blast the ball into the net first time without even changing his stride.

In midfield, Javier Zanetti and Patrick Vieira had licence to roam while Esteban Cambiasso swept up efficiently in front of the back four. Much of the time, the centre-backs Ivan Cordoba and Marco Materazzi and left-back Maxwell were asked to defend Julio Cesar’s goal while right-back Maicon bombed forward.

Brazil nuts: Maicon (left) and Mancini make merry

Lawrie McMenemy once said that every great team contains four violinists and seven roadsweepers. Mourinho’s Inter roughly fits that mould, with Ibrahimovic, Mancini and Quaresma as violinists, the fiendishly versatile Cambiasso and Maicon able to sweep up and play the fiddle, and the other six firmly focused on roads and brushes.

Are they good enough to win the competition? Possibly. Inter should get better as injuries ease and players get to know Mourinho’s approach. They do not have the awesome efficiency of his Chelsea side, but they are genuinely entertaining – Quaresma, Mancini and Sulley Muntari have injected some much-needed pace into a team that could be too deliberate in attack.

And against Panathinaikos, they showed much of the stubborness that defines Mourinho’s teams, something which Nerazzurri fans have been desperately hoping to see in Europe.

So the special one is most definitely back. And if he wins Inter’s first European Cup in 44 years he will, as Bobby Robson once said of Neil Webb, be “special special”.

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Suburban euphoria greets England triumph

2008-09-12T09:00:00Z

When Wayne Rooney slotted home England’s third, even the cynics in the pub started to believe that England would earn at least a draw.

At half-time, with England 1-0 up courtesy of the Stanmore Pelé, someone had started up a chant of “We’re on the way with Fabio Capello’s army” but stopped after that line, mumbling: “It doesn’t quite scan does it?” When the Stanmore Pelé got his hat-trick, no one sang, they just roared with joy, relief and disbelief.

3-0. Phew, we'll get at least a draw out of this now...

The evening had started unpromisingly with The Times declaring “England captain John Terry fully alert before Croatia clash.” Obviously, it was nice to be assured that the skipper wasn’t comatose but somehow the revelation didn’t engender the kind of optimism I needed to watch the Three Lions.

Things went from bad to badder with the revelation that Virgin Media’s TV service was down in the Shepperton area so I would not, after all, be watching it from my worn brown leather sofa.

Against my better judgement, I was forced to watch it in a pub and drink Kronenbourg.

I know you’re thinking, he protests too much. But last time I watched an international in a pub, I was obliged to make conversation with a drunken Scotsman who kept calling me “John!” and the last time I watched England in a pub we drew with Switzerland 1-1 in the opening match of Euro 96 and the disappointment went straight to my liver.

It took a whole day of washing up to restore domestic harmony.

But I bought a pint and chose a table. Setanta was doing its level best to entertain us with insightful analysis.

“What do you think Fabio Capello said to them in the dressing room?” Chris Waddle was asked. “Stand up and be counted,” said Waddle. I briefly imagined the players being told to stand up so they could be counted, like troublesome pupils on a school awayday or like soldiers in the Falklands counted in and out by BBC reporter Brian Hanrahan.

The counting must have gone well because, to my relief, there were 11 England players on the pitch when they kicked off.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm England

Waddle was at his magnificent mumbling best and, in the crowded bar, I could only make out random words like “quality,” “problem,” “Heskey” and “temperament.”

When David James got his first touch, I was dismayed to see he had shorn his locks. I have no statistical or scientific evidence for this, but in my gut I am convinced that, if you’re a Croatian striker bursting through on goal, you are much more likely to be put off by the sight of a goalie sporting the most outrageous blaxploitation haircut since Richard Roundtree stopped playing Shaft.

It’s one thing to have a keeper who fills the goal, but a keeper whose hair fills the goal is surely even better.

Inspiring as the action was, the cameramen felt obliged to pan around the stadium to show us such treats as Fulham’s Jimmy ‘Bullardinho’ modelling a hairstyle that was thoroughly Macca (McManaman not McCartney) and Bernie Ecclestone, sitting next to his partner who looked like Cruella da Vil’s grandmother.

Bernie seemed immune to the general euphoria but then, as the man who owns Formula 1, he’s probably not used to registering excitement at sporting events.

At one point, England had 86% possession, a dominance which so frustrated the Croatians they eschewed their silky counter-attacking game and adopted tactical plan B: kicking lumps out of people.

This strategy hasn’t really worked for anyone but Andorra – who are secretly allowed a quota of bad fouls per game by officials on the grounds that they aren’t footballers but plumbers, postmen and physiotherapists – where the system is quasi-officially known as The Ruffle, after the intended effect on the opposition.

When Croatian defender Robert Kovac was sent off, there was a brief chorus of “Goodbye-ee, goodbye-ee!”. There’s something about England’s football team that seems to evoke world wars. When Croatia snatched a consolation to make it 3-1, one of the wags by the bar did a Corporal Jones and started shouting “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!”

Croatia's old guard take 'getting stuck in' too far

Then the Stanmore Pelé struck again, shortly before getting a congratulatory smile and handshake from David Beckham who came on for six minutes.

Of course, we mustn’t get carried away, we must take each game as it comes (the alternative – taking games in batches of six – would be confusing for fans, players and media) and it was only one night.

But, as Frankie Vialli said in that suspiciously high-pitched voice of his, oh what a night.

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Borges, Borring and Billy the Fish

2008-09-10T07:00:00Z

European football in 12 paragraphs...

Ironic slogan of the week

Newcastle United’s invitation on its homepage: “YOU could be Newcastle’s best signing of the season.” Although, wait zenaba minute, that’s not ironic, it’s true. Anyone of us could be… even Fulchester United’s keeper Billy The Fish.

World Cup shock of the week

Romania 0-3 Lithuania in Bucharest. Austria’s 3-1 triumph over a discontented, disorganised France, courtesy of a couple of Philippe Mexes errors, isn’t on the same Richter scale as Lithuania’s triumph.

Lithuania upset the odds in Romania

Jorge Luis Borges inspired headline of the week

“Toon battle with Spurs over Poyet”. This is the football equivalent of the Argentine fabulist’s famous characterisation of the Falklands War: “Two bald men fighting over a comb.” And, like so many of these headlines, it has since been denied by the interested.

Most predictable headline

Kaka: “I never want to leave Milan.” Can’t Manchester City, Chelsea, Doncaster Rovers et al just leave him alone? The poor lad has said this every day – or something similar – for the last year. Think of the wasted carbon footprint involved in just running a story in which the only significant change is the name of the spurned club.

Maxim of the week

“Under normal circumstances, anyone buying a football club will end up looking an idiot within a year.” Hats off to The Times' Simon Barnes for this one. You can read his deliciously entertaining rant here.

Green shoot of recovery

For the first time in 10 years Belgium have opened their qualifying campaign for a major tournament with a win. Okay, the Red Devils did only beat Estonia (ranked 121st by FIFA) 2-1 but it was enough to have coach Rene Vandereycken crowing: “This is the best squad I have worked with so far.” Damned with faint praise? Perhaps. But Belgium do, as uefa.com point out here have some decent young players emerging. So promising are these youngsters that a bunch of legends like Paul Van Himst and co have rallied behind them with a “We believe” campaign. Maybe Banks, Hurst and Charlton (Jack or Bobby) could do something similar for the Young Lions of 2008?

Borring but important

The thumb-sucking one’s arrival at Manchester City dominated Britain’s back pages but in Denmark a 23-year-old midfielder called Jonas Borring has just left OB to join Midtylland for what is said to be the largest ever fee paid by one Superliga club to another. It has been one hell of a summer for Borring who starred as his new club gave Manchester City a scare in the UEFA Cup and was called up to the Danish national team for the first time. Definitely one to watch.

Jonas Borring? Not in the slightest

Football legend in need of a new business card

Dennis Wise. Needs to hand in cards that read “director (football) Newcastle United” and order new ones that read: “director (shambles) Newcastle United”.

The sack race

So far, Stefano Colantuono (Palermo), Kevin Keegan (Newcastle), Alan Curbishley (West Ham United), Oleh Protsavov (Dnipro Dnipropetrosvk), Zdenek Zeman (Red Star Belgrade), Itzak Shum (Beitar Jerusalem), Michael Der Zakarian (Nantes) and Ioan Andone (the coach who led Cluj to their first ever UEFA Champions League campaign) have all lost their jobs, either being fired, replaced or leaving on principle.

Season’s greetings

From Albania, where after 45 minutes on the opening day of the season, the score in all six matches was 0-0. Luckily Shkumbini Peqin ran amok in the second half of their game and beat minnows Bylis Ballshi 4-1.

Manchester United crisis!

But only, alas, in Gibraltar where the Red Devils’ less illustrious namesakes finished fifth – and bottom – in the First Division.

Prophetic book title

Kevin Keegan Against The World, co-written by Mike Langley (published in 1979).

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Why are footballers so unfit?

2008-09-04T14:00:00Z

Or, if Roger Federer can stay in good shape for Wimbledon every year, why are so many top footballers missing crucial games because of torn adductor muscles, torn cruciate ligaments or mumps?

Or, to put it another way, why haven’t the hordes of sports scientists, nutritionists, fitness gurus, osteopaths and physiotherapists that advise the big clubs, dramatically reduced the level of injuries?

In 2002, a UEFA study suggests 29% of the players in Japan/Korea incurred injuries. Others, like Beckham, were struggling for match fitness before the finals started.

To take one extreme: a top flight English footballer in the 1980s was notorious for his 39-pint weekends, consumed in three major binges: Saturday night, Sunday lunchtime and Sunday night. As a result, he often missed Monday training and, making up for lost time on Tuesday, often pulled a muscle or three.

Today that footballer would simply not be able to function. Yet the revolution in diet and fitness that has swept across English football has not made his successors much more robust. They may, in fact, be the unfittest professional athletes on the planet.

If any club has come to epitomise the scientific approach to football in England, it is Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal.

We don’t read about the Wenger revolution quite as often as we used to but as this extract from Jasper Rees’s biography of The Professor shows the shift from egg and chips to pasta and steamed veg was just one of a host of initiatives which, for a while, transformed the fitness of the Arsenal squad.

Wenger even introduced something called plyometrics, a muscle strengthening process with a truly excruciating name. Yet last season the club suffered 60 injuries, five more than the average suffered by clubs in a UEFA study.

I’m not having a pop at Arsenal in particular. But just as the end of the Cold War was supposed to yield a peace dividend, I’m sure clubs investing in the regimes described above expected a dividend in terms of player fitness. So where is it?

A UEFA study suggests that a player will typically suffer two minor injuries every season and a major injury every three years. And it offers scant comfort for English clubs.

A Ligue 1 team suffers 16 injuries every 1,000 hours of play. A Premier League team will suffer 44 injuries per 1,000 hours. Which, even my dodgy Grade B GCSE Maths tells me, means that injuries at English clubs are very nearly three times as common among English teams as in France.

Some will argue that the crowded fixture list has cancelled out any gains from better diets and smarter fitness regimes. That might actually be true in Arsenal’s case: they had a young, small squad of 24 players in 2007/08 and, as Stefan Vasiliev has noted, five of those weren’t the finished article in terms of first-team football.

But most squads have grown and squad rotation is a fact of life, whereas, in 1965/66, Liverpool won the league using just 14 players.

The game is much faster than it was. That’s true. But does that really wipe out every benefit to be had from not drinking 39 pints a weekend, not eating steak and chips before a meal or, in the extreme case of Chelsea’s legendary keeper William ‘Fatty’ Foulkes, not eating all your team’s fried breakfasts?

I have read, 1000 times, that English football has experienced a scientific revolution. And, so far, the revolution hasn’t delivered. Indeed, I read the other day that drummers are now fitter than footballers.

So instead of buying books like Eat To Win, maybe coaches should be looking for that unlikeliest of volumes, Drugs, Cymbals And Booze: The Keith Moon Guide To Transforming Your Performance.

Zizou, Zenit and Zzzmiley faces

2008-09-02T07:00:00Z

I was at a party with Zinedine Zidane last week.

Granted, Zizou never knew I was in the same room as him – a brush past on the way out was the closest we came to actual contact – but I am still so sad that my pulse raced as he walked past.

Zidane was one of the guests at the party UEFA throws in Monaco to kick off the European club football season. He wasn’t the only star on hand.

"I think it was number five what did it..."

At one point, Eusebio, Michel Platini, Prince Albert and Eusebio were all in a huddle, with His Serene Highness locked in a lengthy conversation with UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh. Perhaps Albert, who plays at left-back for his own team, was getting a few tips on the art of defending.

The serious business – the draw for the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League group stages – had been done and dusted by then. My favourite part of the event isn’t the ceremony but the post-draw edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport. The Italian pink’ un has a charming tradition of summing up the fate of Serie A teams with an array of smiley faces.

So on Friday, its verdict was as follows: smiley faces for Inter and Roma, a face stuck in the kind of grim, neutral mode which was Blakey’s habitual expression in On The Buses for Fiorentina and a miserable frown for Juventus, trapped in a group with Real, Zenit and Belarus champions Bate Borisov.

Smiley faces for Inter & Roma, but not for Juve or Fiorentina

Gazzetta might have felt obliged to add a few teardrops if they had delivered their verdict after the Super Cup. Zenit were simply majestic against Manchester United, their passing, running off the ball, and mastery of angles suggesting that it would not be entirely daft to have a flutter on them to emulate Porto and win the UEFA Cup and UEFA Champions League in successive seasons.

The only weakness visible on the night was a certain uncertainty at the back when handling set-pieces. Their surprise Portuguese signing Danny looked a revelation, with a remarkable solo goal.

Inside the Stade Louis II, Zenit fans outnumbered United fans by upwards of five to one. To the supporters in blue and white, the result seemed as much of a triumph for their country as for their club.

Zenit: Worth a flutter to repeat Porto's 'UEFA Double'

Victory was greeted by loud, repetitive chants of “Ra-si-ya!” a powerful reminder of the rising tide of nationalistic confidence that is sweeping across Russia. It is hard to imagine United fans chanting ‘Ing-er-lund!' with as much passion if they had won.

Smiley faces in England – but not in France

In the spirit of Gazzetta, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United should all have had smiley faces.

Barring upsets or a sudden loss of form, all three look well set for the last 16. Liverpool might have had a Blakey neutral face. On paper, the Reds should – if they play better than they did against Standard Liege – beat PSV and Marseille but Atletico Madrid, with Aguero and Forlan upfront, are a wild card. Anyone who takes a point off them on their own turf will be doing well.

Atletico: Should prove a tough nut to crack on home soil

French football wore a miserable frown as Bordeaux have to overcome Chelsea and Roma to progress, Marseille don’t have it easy and Lyon have to slug it out with Bayern, Steaua and Fiorentina in a group that looks too even to call.

Lyon chairman Jean-Michel Aulas has signalled that this season will be ‘Operation Champions League.’ But Lyon’s campaign to reach the semi-finals (as a bare minimum) isn’t off to the best of starts.

The smiliest face must belong to Barcelona.

Pep Guardiola couldn’t have asked for a better draw with Shakhtar Donetsk and Sporting Lisbon the only real threats to their progress.

Every year, in the Champions preview of the tournament – out on September 12 at most good newsagents! – we tip Murcea Lucescu’s Shakhtar as an outside tip to win or reach the semis but somehow they never make it that far.

This year we’re not tipping them at all so, football predictions being a perverse business, they’ll probably do it this time.

La decima!

Real Madrid have been dreaming of a 10th European Cup – la decima – since they beat Bayer Leverkusen in 2002.

They haven’t really come close since 2003 but this year, as Iker Casillas says in the next issue of Champions, they are more determined than ever. The possible loss of Robinho and the failure to land Cristiano Ronaldo have not dampened their resolve.

They have a chance to wreak vengeance on Juve, who destroyed them in the 2003 semi-final, in a match Zidane referred to rather eloquently as “the derby of my heart.”

Real's last Champions League triumph, in 2002

Real won’t be many people’s favourites but it would be good for the tournament, European football and the Premier League if the game’s traditional empires – Real, Inter, Bayern – struck back. Although you shouldn’t read too much into the Super Cup, maybe Zenit showed them how it might be done.

The editor’s punt

Here’s my guess at the last 16: Chelsea, Roma, Inter, Werder Bremen, Barcelona, Sporting, Liverpool, Atletico, Manchester United, Villarreal, Bayern, Lyon, Arsenal, Fenerbahce, Real and Zenit.

And the winner will be… one of them. An Inter vs Chelsea final would have some intriguing sub-plots. In the hackdom of European football, Villarreal are tipped by many as a likely surprise package. But can they do a Porto in 2004?

Why did George Soros very nearly buy Roma?

2008-08-27T14:00:00Z

The legendary speculator, philanthropist and pontificator came close to buying the Serie A club this summer just before its president Franco Sensi died after a long illness.

Though he was briefly linked with the Washington Nationals baseball team, Soros has shown no great interest in sport in general or football in particular. He is not the only American tycoon to mull an investment in Serie A: another group, TAG Partners, bid for Bologna but the takeover collapsed after the buyers were refused more time.

Soros is a know it all, but no one – even right-wing Americans whose eyes pop with fury at the mention of his name – ever thought him stupid. So, what did he see in Roma?

The answer to that question – as far as we can construct one – isn’t terribly good news for the Premier League.

Smart investors have the gift of timing, knowing when to get in ahead of the game and, more importantly, when to get out.

Soros: Targeting Italy bad news for the Premier League

If Soros was tempted by football as an investment, the obvious target would have been England, home to the world’s most lucrative league which draws the greatest global TV audience.

But who would he buy? As Kevin Keegan has pointed out, to his owner’s chagrin, catching up with the big four might cost you £100million or so. Even within the big four, a divide is opening up with Liverpool seemingly unable, albeit partly because of internal politics, to match the spending power of Chelsea and Manchester United.

There is still profit to be made in the Premier League but how much scope is there for someone like Soros to come in and transform a club’s profitability?

The answer to that may depend on your opinion of the quality of the management of British football clubs. From personal experience, I would suggest the quality is variable.

At its very worst, I am reminded of a colleague who met the director of a once high flying club to talk about a publication to be given away to reward season ticket holders’ loyalty. The deal seemed done when the club rang up to announce that, while they were perfectly happy to pay the publisher a few grand to produce the publication, they would be invoicing him £50,000 for use of the club brand.

Struck by the absurdity of the club charging him £50,000 for the right to do something for the club which the club wanted to do anyway to impress its supporters, my friend let the deal die. I remember him saying: “The worst part wasn’t the hassle, or the waste of time, it was that the director sat through the whole of the crucial meeting with his flies wide open.”

In contrast, the big clubs – with certain exceptions – strike me as well run businesses. An investor with experience of sports elsewhere might suggest a tweak here or there but they are hardly likely to transform a club’s financial performance.

In a way, the Premier League’s 39th step is a desperate admission that new sources of income must be found. The rise in gate receipts is flattening out, merchandising is vulnerable to the credit crunch and the next TV deal, despite the war between Sky and Setanta, may not deliver lots and lots of extra dosh. And this season, more Premier League clubs will, a recent survey suggested, draw on more of their overdrafts, trim squads and introduce players to the delights of performance-related pay.

So Soros has a point. If I had a few billion to spare I’d give the Premier League the swerve and look at a country which has yet to realise the fortunes to be made from corporate boxes and the world’s apparently insatiable appetite for football-themed duvet covers.

Serie A yet to be engulfed by hospitality, unlike Wembley

A country which is passionate about its football but where innovative, professional management could quickly increase revenue. And given the legal difficulties in buying clubs in France and Germany, the logical choice would be Italy or Spain. Mainly Italy really.

To give you just one example: according to a report prepared by Brand Finance and published – free plug alert! – in the April/May issue of Champions, Schalke, Lyon and Spurs all make considerably more money out of merchandising than Milan, Inter or Juventus.

It wouldn’t take a genius to turn a top Serie A club into a financial powerhouse. They’d just need a knowledge of Italy’s intricate business landscape and the smarts to apply best practice.

So don’t be surprised if Soros – or someone like him – snaps up a Roma or Bologna in the next few years.

If that happens, remember where you read this. If it doesn’t happen, feel free to forget all about it.

The good, the bad and the Eredivisie

2008-08-21T13:00:00Z

How bad is the Dutch league?

It’s a question various punters and thinkers have been mooching over in cyberspace’s most cavernous recesses.

The evidence that the Eredivisie is as dire as Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol is so scanty that even James Woods’ superheroic prosecutor Shark would struggle to persuade a jury.

In essence, it rests on two premises:

1. Many Eredivisie teams are so rubbish Ajax and PSV can run up cricket scores against them.

2. Because of this, Ajax and PSV, accustomed to playing only a handful of truly competitive games a season, stumble in Europe. PSV’s glorious run to the 2005 UEFA Champions League semi-finals already seems to belong to a bygone era. That’s one problem with football today. The hype is so unremitting that time – especially remembered time – is being accelerated.

Last gasp Ambrosini header sends Milan, not PSV, into CL final

The first point is actually true and should be borne in mind by any scout inclined to recommend the expensive purchase of an Eredivisie striker. Okay, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Romario and Ronaldo all came good, but there is always the risk that you’re buying the new Mateja Kezman.

In 10 out of 17 league home games last season, Ajax scored four or more goals. In four of those matches in the Amsterdam Arena, they put five or six past their hapless opponents. They weren’t as consistently free-scoring on the road but they made up for that by humbling De Graafschap 8-1.

That wasn’t even the widest margin of victory: Heerenveen beat Heracles 9-0 last October with Afonso Alves scoring seven. Alves has since moved to Middlesbrough where he has proved especially prolific against teams from Manchester. If the Brazilian striker played United and City week in week out - on last season’s form - he’d average 95 goals a season.

The goalscoring madness didn’t even end there. Heerenveen also beat Vitesse 7-0. Utrecht scored seven (against Sparta Rotterdam), while Feyenoord, Sparta Rotterdam and Willem II bagged six in a game and Groningen, Heracles, NEC, PSV and Roda all ran up five goals in a match.

Alves spanks home another for Heerenveen

The second point is also true. Ajax didn’t even make it to the qualifying rounds of the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League (knocked out by FC Twente before Macca arrived with his imperfect Dutch accent) while PSV have, post-Hiddink, done well if they reach the last eight.

But you know what? I don’t care. Stuff the purists.

In my sadder days, the highlight of my weekend was the Sunday afternoon massacre when, live on Sky Sports (as it was then), Rangers or Celtic would thoroughly demolish a minnow from the SPL.

And this season I’ll be tuning in, whenever the conclusion of successful domestic diplomatic negotiations over TV access allows, to watch Marco van Basten’s Ajax in the fervent hope they play more like the brilliant Oranje of the Euro 2008 group stages than the dismal Oranje of the 2006 World Cup.

Van Basten: Hoping to bring the good times back to Ajax

Ajax averaged a mere 2.76 goals a game last season. At home, that average soared to 3.35.

Which, to me, is kind of the point. Every year, Richard Keys and his army of cohorts bill the Premier League as the best in the world. But wouldn’t life be more enjoyable if England had the most entertaining league in the world.

In Europe, it’s hard to beat the Eredivisie (although the Bundesliga runs it close) for sheer fun. Ligue 1, where often nothing happens in the first 20 minutes of a game (and by nothing I mean no shots, no corners, no discernible attempts to score a goal) should pay heed.

“Give the people something to enjoy” was Sir Matt Busby’s motto.

In a game increasingly vexed by stupid, megalomaniacal tycoons, hysterical tabloid exclusives and the economic imperative to win, Busby’s maxim may be the game’s best hope of avoiding death by hype.

The future of football... and how to stop it

2008-08-15T10:49:00Z

The blazers have done something right.

Oh frabjous day, quelle surprise and benissimo – the internet being an interactive medium feel free to add any foreign or indeed made up phrases that signify surprise, joy and relief – UEFA, along with the governing bodies of other major sports, has done something boring but crucial: filed a white paper with the European Commission which asks the European Union to recognise the “specificity” of sport.

Even though the subject may sound as tedious, long-winded and irrelevant as a Garth Crooks question, what UEFA did may shape the game’s future. (I have to declare an interest here as editor of Champions, the official magazine of the UEFA Champions League, though this column in no way represents any kind of UEFA view).

Specificity means asking the EU to recognise that sport, because of its social importance, is not just another industry, like widget-making, and, therefore, ergo and all those other words that lawyers use, should have specific exemptions under EU law.

Without an EU law defining sport’s status and a legal framework that gives sport some autonomy, a thousand Bosmans could decide football’s destiny on a case-by-case basis.

Bosman: Completely changed way footballers are employed

Indeed, it’s already happening. Belgian club Charleroi’s case against FIFA, demanding compensation for a player injured in an international, reached court before a deal was reached, averting judgement in a case which, if it had gone the club’s way, could have bankrupted many poorer football associations.

A slight digression here. Isn’t it strange the niches nations create in football? England are semi-officially installed as inventors of the game, France is responsible for dreaming international tournaments while Belgium specialises in legal cases that trouble the game’s great and good.

But back to the matter in hand. The serfdom of multi-millionaire Cristiano Ronaldo could easily have found its way to court on the grounds that the system which prevented him from talking to a potential employer, Real Madrid, breached his basic human right to better his working conditions. The departure from mainstream employment law is legally challengeable.

Ronaldo could have become the new Bosman. It’s easy to forget that Bosman wasn’t the villain. Belgian club RC Liege, which refused to release him after his contract expired, opened up that super-sized can of worms.

And that I suppose is the point. (You knew there’d be one eventually.) If sport’s governing bodies want to be granted specificity, it behoves them to convince Eurocrats that they are responsible, fair and rational.

But the game’s governing bodies were created in a very different legal, social and political era. And their decisions – and the way they’re made – are now exposed to merciless scrutiny.

Ronnie: Madrid move could have made him the new Bosman

Watching Eurocrats will have been puzzled by, for example, England’s football authorities punishment of clubs who break rules.

Luton Town, guilty of paying agents via a third party and of being unable to strike a Company Voluntary Agreement, were deducted 30 points. Rotherham and Bournemouth were both docked 17 points for financial misdemeanours while my beloved, debt-ridden Nuneaton Borough were given the legally dubious choice: keep your name and be relegated four divisions from the Conference North, change it and slip down two divisions.

I don’t recall Leeds United being offered that draconian option.

Meanwhile, West Ham, found guilty of “dishonesty and deceit” over the Tevez affair, were fined but deducted “nil points” even though it was in clear breach of Premier League rule U18 by striking an agreement (with Kia Joorabchian’s company) that gave a third party influence over the team.

The contrast with Luton’s punishment seems stark. Hatters fans have also complained that the Football League committee which set their points reduction contained the chairmen of a club in the same division as Luton and the chairman of a club which spent £600,000 buying a player from Luton.

A Football League spokesman said “There has been absolutely no conflict of interest… those board members who thought there may be a conflict of interest raised their concerns at the beginning of the meeting but these were not considered to present any difficulties.”

Luton fans: United in adversity

Justice doesn’t just have to be impartial, it must be seen to be so. If the chairmen of these clubs had voluntarily left the decision to their fellow committee members, there would not have been the faintest hint of a conflict of interest.

When the courts have scrutinised such punishments in the past, they have not always been impressed. Alan Sugar famously won his appeal against the FA over a six-point penalty and an FA Cup ban for Spurs. If Sugar owned Luton, the Hatters might have already gone to court.

And therein lies the rub. Well, two rubs actually. The shape of football – the relationship between players and clubs, clubs and leagues, the development of young players – is too important to be decided in the courts by the heirs of the judge who memorably asked: “Who is Gazza?”

But a disciplinary procedure which seems unpredictable, and is credibly accused of cronyism and favouritism, is not going to convince many Eurocrats that football can be trusted to use its autonomy wisely.

So maybe the first thing the game must do to protect itself against a thousand Bosmans is do something RC Liege didn’t: hire some better lawyers.

This week I have been mostly enjoying:

Martin Samuel’s funny, telling, bombastic take on football’s idiotic tycoons

Uli Hesse Lichtenberger’s delightful column on the myths that surround the German national team

And this YouTube celebration of Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas, fascinating archive footage with a gloriously OTT soundtrack

How to win the Champions League

2008-08-09T09:00:00Z

On August 4, Gerard Houllier did something he is very good at: he lectured people.

As technical director of the French Football Federation, he told French coaches, referees and players it was their duty to encourage attacking play. Such an address reflects the concern that Ligue 1 – where the most common result is 0-0 – is not providing a compelling enough spectacle to attract audiences.

Houllier’s point was specific to French club football yet applies, more broadly, to French, German, Italian and Spanish clubs determined to end England’s dominance of the UEFA Champions League.

Man United reign in Russia

To win the competition in 2008/09 a team needs to score, on average, 1.5 goals a game – as seven quarter-finalists did in 2007/08. Building from the back is all very well. But to prosper in Europe, something more is required.

Consider Manchester United’s record. They averaged 1.54 goals a game, conceded only one goal at home and, from the quarter-finals onwards, shipped only two goals away from Old Trafford (and that includes Chelsea’s equaliser in Moscow).

Away from home, especially against Barcelona in the semis, United played so cautiously that Stefano Cantalupi asked: “Catenaccio is an obsolete term but how else to define the tactics chosen by Sir Alex Ferguson for their trip to Catalonia?”

The catenaccio charge stung United fans. But Cantalupi was praising United for being adventurous and attacking at home and, where appropriate, much more cautiously away. For Cantalupi, such pragmatism suggested that United had come of age.

All out attack, in the style of Real Madrid and Werder Bremen last season, is not the answer. (Nor is the “anti-football” of Rangers.) But Cantalupi believes Italian clubs must learn from United and Chelsea. That is why Inter have turned to Jose Mourinho, who conquered Europe with Porto by outguessing opponents.

Even for the artist formerly known as The Special One, this is a big ask. Cast your mind back to the 2007/08 knockout round. Against Arsenal in the last 16, Milan were out-thought, out-fought and out-paced by a technically superior team.

Even Kaka admitted that, in the second leg at the San Siro, Arsenal dominated the game for the last 70 minutes. Against Liverpool in the same round, Inter were even more toothless, with the resolute defender Ivan Cordoba their only impressive performer at Anfield. Neither Milan team even got on the scoresheet.

Arsenal put AC Milan to the sword at the San Siro

Barcelona looked as insipid up-front against United over 180 minutes of the semi-final with only Messi – and in two cameos Thierry Henry – looking as if they knew where the goal was and what it was for.

If European’s traditional empires are to strike back, they must be bolder at home in the knockout stages. Italian teams have never been as hooked on the 1-0 scoreline as the Motsons of this world would have us believe – in three out of the last five seasons the goals per game tally has been higher in Serie A than in the Premier League – but, on their home soil, they need to show the kind of conviction and menace in attack that beat Germany in the 2006 World Cup semi-final.

Counter-attacks are such a rich source of goals that Marcello Lippi’s dictum about the importance of playing the most constructive ball into attack is more relevant than ever. The passing needs to be mixed up. Pretty short passes let opposing defences regroup. The accurate long ball that splits or circumvents a defence might prove more useful if Italian and Spanish sides are to impress.

Chelsea and United dominated last season’s tournament with pace, power and tactical acumen. Ferguson has shown the way. But it is not the only way.

Roma have become genuine contenders playing a more consistently entertaining style at home and away. If the Giallorossi can eliminate a few defensive lapses, keep Totti fit and not miss any penalties, they could go further still.

De Rossi balloons over at Old Trafford in 2008 quarter-final

Marshalled by Claude Puel, Lyon’s target is to reach the semi-finals with the tournament taking priority over Ligue 1. Given the style Puel prospered with at Lille, it’s not clear if Lyon will return to the free-flowing football of the Santini/Le Guen era but he is toying with 4-2-3-1 with Benzema up front, a radical shift for a club that rose to power with 4-3-3.

To succeed, these contenders will also need to control the pace of the game, not letting Premier League sides play at the frenetic speed that suits them.

As Jonathan Wilson points out in his book Inverting The Pyramid, it is hard to see where the next tactical innovation will come from. There is a fashion for 4-6-0 but it is unlikely to see it replacing 4-4-2. Puel’s 4-2-3-1 may be more popular.

The worst thing French, Italian and Spanish sides can do is fall back on the defeatist mantra about English’ clubs wealth. Or insist that their football, though it doesn’t deliver trophies, is still technically superior.

Every league has its day – Serie A reigned in the 1990s – and it is not clear how long the Premier League’s will last. It is hard, at this moment, to predict the next power shift, but there will be one.

The goal business

The top performers in the 2007/08 UEFA Champions League

Teapots, toilet doors and team play

2008-08-05T14:05:00Z

“I always considered Rodney Marsh a sugar-coated turd.”

You don’t expect footballers to write like Oscar Wilde but I had hoped for something more eloquent from Len Glover, whose thundering runs down the wing for Leicester in the 1970s left such an impression on me as a callow, spotty youth that I named my hard disk after him.

Glover’s memoir mines depths left unplumbed by Frank Worthington’s One Hump Or Two, a legendarily naff autobiography redeemed by the flicker-rama (which actually works), some amusing dressing room tales of Jimmy Bloomfield’s Leicester, and a hilarious scene where Omar Sharif, even more a legendary playboy than Worthington, declares himself “deeply moved” to meet a couple of Leicester players.

Glover: Not the biggest fan of Rodney Marsh

But, on the basis of the nine page extract I downloaded from www.lenglover.co.uk, Glover’s memoir makes Worthington’s book read like the effervescent prose of Martin Amis.

Len was a great player though. I can still hear the roar of anticipation that greeted him at Filbert Street whenever he got the ball on the left and bombed forward.

Glover was almost what Michael Parkinson called a “closet winger.” Parky coined the term after watching wingers in local leagues who would flick the ball off a toilet door and nip past the defender to collect the rebound. Glover didn’t actually use a toilet door - just beat the defender so often and swiftly you suspected trickery was involved.

Parkinson eulogises closet wingers in an amusing paperback called Football Crazy which suggested, only semi-seriously, that England manager Sir Alf Ramsey conceived his hatred of wingers after being left on the turf by one and told by a supporter: “Alf Ramsey, thou art about as much use as a chocolate teapot.”

Parky: Does love a good closet winger

It’s an intriguing theory and given that Alf, for all his genius, had a photographic – and phonographic – memory for slights, not entirely to be discounted. Terry Venables still believes he unwittingly sealed his fate as an international by going up to the stonefaced one at his first England training session and reminding Ramsey their parents had been neighbours.

The 1960s may, officially, have been the swinging start to a classless society but Ramsey tried to disguise his estuary English and, asked where his parents lived, gave the chillingly detached reply: “In Dagenham I believe.”

David Thomson’s 4-2, a heroic, brilliant and doomed attempt to narrate the history of the 1966 World Cup final kick by kick, captures Ramsey perfectly noting: “Alf had the haunted look of a disappointed father.”

Ramsey belonged to a different generation of British hero, taking the stiff upper lip to such extremes that even as Geoff Hurst put England 4-2 ahead at Wembley he sat, unmoved, on the bench, while everyone around him lost their heads.

Alf maintains a poker face as England seal World Cup success

Since 1966, an anti-myth has sprung up around that triumph. Ramsey has been pigeonholed as a professional killjoy whose success killed something noble and artistic in the English game. This myth has been fuelled by the cult of Rob Steen’s mavericks – the 1970s geniuses like Marsh, Bowles, Currie and Worthington – ignored by Ramsey, Revie and many other top coaches.

This cultural war is still being fought with the brilliant, rancorous Alan Hudson suggesting 1966 was all down to home advantage and that Ramsey, his nemesis, should be judged by his failure to qualify for the 1974 World Cup. Hudson even suggested that: “If Tony Waddington [his old Stoke manager] had been England manager we’d have won another World Cup.”

Ramsey and Revie were not the first coaches to wrestle with the question of how much allowance you make for genius. And, 30 years later, nobody has really resolved the issue, each coach making a case-by-case judgement call with every troublesome genius.

But after 12 years of talented England players who have mysteriously failed to function as a team, maybe it’s time to admit Ramsey was right. And in Capello, the FA have appointed the closest thing you can get to Ramsey without entering the resurrection business.

Glover never played for England. But he took it well. Unlike his Leicester teammate Alan Birchenall who, Worthington alleges, had to be restrained from hitting Bobby Charlton at an awards dinner because Charlton, Birch felt, “has been keeping me out the England team for years.”

Worthington in his early 1970s pomp

Every now and then Birchenall would hit a screamer, justifying his selection by Jimmy Bloomfield who was probably the Foxes’ last great manager – and he left 31 years ago.

Leicester City 5 Ipswich Town 0, under Bloomfield in 1973/74, was the most exciting game I ever saw although, such are the vagaries of memory, that I recall the crossbar twanging – from a shot by Worthington – better than I do any of the goals, even though Frankie scored a hat-trick.

Funny thing memory. Of all the games I’ve watched, it’s the incongruous images that stand out. Like the Highbury faithful singing “There’s only one Brian Talbot” after the midfield workhorse scored a hat-trick against West Brom in the early 1980s. If I hadn’t been there, I’d never have believed it possible.

I do though cherish the memory of Hristo Stoichkov’s wonder goal against Romania at Euro 96 – I can still picture the contemptuous ease with which he ran through the Romanian midfield. Stoichkov had it all: genius, arrogance, technique and monumental laziness.

His memoirs would be worth reading – sugar-coated expletives and all.

Stoichkov takes plaudits after wonder goal vs Romania

Shock of the week

2008-07-31T12:09:00Z

What is Chelsea? A simple question with many answers.

It is a posh part of London, the name of Bill Clinton’s daughter and a football club. But Chelsea is far more than that. According to the club’s chief executive Peter Kenyon, “Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, wants the club to be a force for good.”

This came as something of a revelation. I had naively assumed that dedicated Chelsea’s main business was winning trophies.

Though Chelsea’s community work is not to be sneered at, the club’s contribution to such wider humanitarian causes as world peace would seem, on the face of it, negligible though if anyone can show me proof that the club’s communications director Simon Greenberg has been working, secretly, to bring concord to the middle east I’d be happy to be corrected.

Kenyon and Abramovich set sights on global domination

Emboldened by the conviction that Chelsea has a moral mission, Kenyon even lectured the likes of Spurs and Aston Villa about how to put their house in order.

Which, as they don’t have the backing of a billionaire willing to spend £132m a year on wages, seemed a bit rich and, quite frankly, did more to bring the game into disrepute than a hundred post-match rants at referees by managers.

It’s hard to imagine this happening in any other industry. Does Tesco’s CEO Terry Leahy waste time telling Somerfields how to do their job? No, he gets on with his job and, as the deadline for Chelsea to be financially self-sufficient looms, perhaps Kenyon should do likewise.

Football directors should remember that when you have nothing to say it’s best to say nothing.

Surprises and misery

Guided by Ukrainian tactician Roman Grigorchuk, Latvian champions FK Ventspil held Norwegian title winners SK Brann until the 87th minute in Bergen before losing 1-0 in the second qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League.

A cracking performance for a footballing nation that has been suffering from a collective hangover since qualifying for the Euro 2004 finals.

Ventspils, who won the Latvian league in 2006 and 2007, have a half decent record against Norwegian sides. In 1999, they beat Valerenga 2-1 on aggregate in the Intertoto Cup after losing the away leg 1-0. So the second leg, in Latvia, will be no walkover for Brann.

Lithuanian champions Kaunas 0-0 draw at Ibrox would have been the result of the week in the second qualifying round if Belorussian champions BATE hadn’t beaten Anderlecht 2-1 in Brussels.

Rangers labour to bore draw with Lithuanian champions

Rangers have endured some truly miserable nights in Europe – the 1-0 defeat by AEK Athens in the 1994 European Cup, which prompted “Geeks 0 Greeks 1” headlines, being just one – but I expect Rangers, liberated from a style of play some have dubbed ‘Walternaccio” to triumph in Lithuania.

It’s harder to see Rapid Vienna, 3-0 losers to Cypriot champions Anorthosis Famagusta, staging a similar comeback. And Bruce Rioch’s Aab must surely be through to the third qualifying round after a 5-0 rout of Modrica.

Nice guys don’t always finish last

In Eric Gerets' case he finished third in Ligue 1, the position he steered Marseille to in 2007/08. Gerets might just be the most underrated coach in European football. There are many more high profile names but the Belgian, famed for his long throw-in as a midfielder, has done the business at almost every club he has managed.

He has won the Belgian title twice with different clubs (Lierse in 1996/97 and Club Brugge in 1998/99), the Eredivisie with PSV (in 1999/200 and 2000/01) and the Turkish league in 2005/06 with Galatasaray. Last season, he did a good enough salvage job at Marseille to earn another tilt at the Champions League in 2008/09.

Even more important, Geret is gracious in victory and defeat. It’s a pleasant change to hear a coach who doesn’t hog the glory for every triumph and blame every loss on the referee/fixture list/the football authorities/a conspiracy against them by plotters or persons unspecified and unknown.

Gerets celebrates Champions League qualification

Labels, losers and laughter

2008-07-26T10:00:00Z

It’s a bit early to label Pedro Morales the Chilean Beckham but if the 23-year-old keeps scoring goals like this against the Ivory Coast, the label will start to stick.

Morales has just signed for Dinamo Zagreb, one of the most productive finishing schools in European football right now. Some stars, like Luka Modric, Niko Kranjcar, midfielder Ognjen Vukojevic, and defender Vedran Corluka, are home grown and sold on.

Others, like Eduardo, are imported from South America. polished and then sold on. The academy – named after two club legends Ico Jitrec and Tatko Kacijan – is now run by Romeo Jozak, who was assistant coach at Osijek.

Modric & Kranjcar: Two of many off Dinamo's production line

Jozak inherits an academy with an impressive track record – eight of Croatia’s Euro 2008 squad came from Dinamo – and the responsibility of making sure the production line doesn’t grind to a halt.

Every good club academy hits a purple patch and Dinamo has probably produced more top class prospects than either Manchester United or Liverpool in the last couple of seasons.

In England, the early excitement about the potential of such academies has cooled – though Manchester City’s continues to prosper – probably because too many have got stuck in a rut at the same time.

How good is Morales? He has been bought to fill Modric’s boots and Dinamo chairman Mrko Barisic says “Morales is the most talented player we have bought to the club,” He got off to a decent start with a goal from a free-kick against Linfield as the Croatians eased through to the UEFA Champions League second qualifying round where they will face Slovenian champions Domzale.

Closely observed coaches

In the 1960s Czech New Wave movie directors achieved global fame with a series of endearing, self-critical comedies. The most famous was probably Closely Observed Trains. The saga of the appointment of Karel Bruckner’s deputy Petr Rada as national coach was almost as funny as any of these comedies.

First, Bruckner announced his intention to retire this spring – but the Czech FA waited to find a successor, perhaps hoping he would change his mind. They then got turned down by three candidates (including Klaus Toppmoller who said he didn’t want to live in the Czech Republic).

Karel pitches up in Austria

They then started talking with a Brazilian they thought was Carlos Alberto Parreira, only to find that they were actually talking to Carlos Alberto, Brazil’s 1970 World Cup skipper who hadn’t impressed at Azerbaijan, and finally fell for a hoax email that said Gerard Houllier was interested.

And then, irony of ironies, the Austrian FA announces that its new national coach is…. yep, Karel Bruckner!

The Polish mystery

It seems absurd now but only two months ago, Poland was awash with the hope that their boys might win Euro 2008. After another failure, the nation must now look to Wisla Krakow, which has won five Polish titles this century, for some kind of redemption.

Unfortunately, much like the national side, Wisla’s international career peaked in the 1970s. In 1978/79, they beat Club Brugge on their way to the European Cup quarter- finals before being crushed by Malmo.

In 2005/06, Wisla broke their supporters’ hearts by winning 3-1 at home in the Champions League third qualifying round only to lose 4-1 to Panathinaikos in extra time after having a player sent off. This season they face Beitar Jerusalem in the second qualifying round.

Wisla bow out to Beitar in 2005 Champions League qualifying

There is a theory that, in the long term, performance on the football pitch can be influenced by economic growth. Certainly Russia’s new golden age – two UEFA Cup wins in four years – has coincided with a remarkable economic boom.

Poland has the passion, the population and, now, the economic clout to compete internationally. But it is yet to produce a team – or a generation of players – that comes close to matching Lato, Lubianski, Boniek and Deyna.

And Wislaw don’t sound too optimistic. Defender Marcin Baszczysnki noted that it would be difficult to beat Beitar because they are well prepared physically, play a technical game and run a lot. Hardly what John Wayne would call fighting talk.

I predict a Rioch

Denmark’s surprise champions AaB enter the UEFA Champions League in the second qualifying round against Bosnian title winners Modrica. Swedish coach Erik Hamrén, probably the club’s greatest ever manager, has joined Rosenborg to be replaced by Bruce Rioch who has his first serious shot at a Champions League campaign since he left Highbury in 1995.

In his last job, Rioch steered Odense to third in the Danish league before quitting. Rioch was John The Baptist to Wenger’s Messiah at Arsenal, signing Dennis Bergkamp, getting the team playing decent football and deciding, as his successor would eventually would, that Ian Wright’s game was cramping the team’s style.

As the UEFA Champions League fixture computer has a wicked sense of humour – again this year it paired the Faroe Islands against Georgia in the first qualifying round, probably the most logistically exhausting tie it could select – it would be no surprise if AaB beat Modrica to be drawn against the exponents of Wengerball.

Bruce bags Bergkamp in 1995

The worst training session ever

Don’t know why this story sprang to mind but it did. When Alan Hansen was at Patrick Thistle, manager Bertie Auld decided the best way to end the team’s losing streak was to reorganise the Saturday morning training session.

Auld told his squad: “I’m going to announce today’s team now, then we’re going to have a practice game without any opposition. We’ll knock the ball about a bit, score a few goals, and get our confidence back.”

After 15 minutes, the score was 0-0. After 30 minutes, when it was still 0-0, Auld blew his top and changed the team. But then, as Hansen said, “It’s actually quite difficult playing against nobody.”

War games

2008-07-22T10:30:00Z

A divided island, Cyprus is united in one thing: its passion for football. Especially English football.

Last week, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, at a café beside St Heraklion Castle, allegedly the inspiration for the Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs castle, a lanky teenager wearing a Steven Gerrard shirt sold me a beer.

Two days later on the other side of the UN-patrolled green line, which has divided the island since 1974, in Agios Giorgios a dusty, timeless village in the Troodos mountains, one boy braved the stifling heat – it was around 31C in the shade – to kick a ball around in his Chelsea shirt.

On the motorway, I spotted a car sticker that read: “Everton The People’s Club.” The car had local plates. I assume the driver was a British expat. Around 75,000 Britons – out of a total population of nearly 800,000 – spend much of or all the year in Cyprus. As most Cypriots have an English second team, it’s just possible the Moyesiah is winning new converts for the Toffeemen.

In an empty taverna in Agros, a mountain village famed for its breeziness where I sought haven as the temperature reached 45C, I watched the highlights of Anothorsis Famagusta’s UEFA Champions League qualifier against Armenian champs Pyunik Yerevan.

Coached by the legendary Temuri Ketsbaia, the Cypriots hit the woodwork three times, shot with the profligacy of Arsenal at their most wasteful, but won 1-0 with a penalty. I don’t know if Ketsbaia kicked the hoardings afterwards because the channel changed to a sobtastic soap.

Ketsbaia getting all emotional for Newcastle

Cypriot football is better than it was, but its drive to become truly competitive is hampered by the island’s complex recent history. In 1974, responding to a coup staged to unite Cyprus with Greece, Turkey invaded, occupying 37% of the island.

The conflict was brief, bloody and stupid. Some 6000 died, both sides credibly accuse the other of atrocities and the subsequent truce has almost frozen their grievances in time.

The conflict uprooted four clubs – Anorthosis Famagusta, Doxa Katokopias, Nea Salamis and PAEEK – who all moved south (temporarily they hoped) because their old grounds belonged to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, an entity only recognised by Turkey.

Sotiris Kaiafas, the greatest Greek Cypriot footballer who is such a legend at Omonia Nicosia he has a fan club named in his honour, lived in a northern village called Mia Milla. Like 200,000 other Greek Cypriots, Kaiafas fled the Turkish advance. After a year in South Africa he returned to Omonia, becoming the only Cypriot to win the Golden Boot in 1976.

In Brazil, skills are legendarily honed on beaches and in favelas. In Cyprus, Kaiafas’s generation learned their art on gravel. Kaiafas’s legend – and Omonia’s reputation as a left-wing people’s club – partly explain why roughly one in three Greek Cypriots support the club.

But it is Anorthosis, founded in Famagusta by Greek Cypriots in 1911 (and now playing in Larnaka), who have most impressed in Europe, reaching the third qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League on four occasions.

If they are more ruthless upfront this week in Yerevan, they will earn a derby against Panathinaikos in the next qualifying round. And if that should come to pass, whatever the form book says, anything could happen.***

Ketsbaia, who rejoined Anorthosis as player/coach in 2002, led them to a historic 3-2 aggregate victory in a politically charged Champions League qualifier against the Turkish side Trabzonspor in 2005, the first time a Greek Cypriot team had played a Turkish club in a UEFA competition since 1974.

Famagusta pit their wits against Spurs at White Hart Lane

The second leg of that tie in Nicosia attracted some of Omonia’s old Turkish-Cypriot fans. Osman Cakan, a Turkish-Cypriot in his fifties, said: “Before 1974, I often used to watch Anorthosis in Famagusta. For the Trabzonspor game, I took my two sons with me.”

It’s easy to understand why Cakan was so keen. Northern Cyprus is banned by FIFA from all international competition. Turkish-Cypriot players have had to content themselves with winning the Wild Cup, for nations that aren’t affiliated to FIFA. In 2006, a few stripped off for a Full Monty-style “Balls to embargoes!” campaign (you can see the poster here).

One in 50 Turkish Cypriots is a registered player and the region supports three leagues and 48 clubs. But the national team, lacking meaningful opposition, attracts meagre crowds and most Turkish Cypriots watch Turkish teams on TV and support Turkey.

Tensions in Cyprus have eased so that some 4,000 Turkish Cypriots cross the green line daily to work in the Greek part of the island. But only a few footballers have done the same.

The first, Sabri Selden – aka the Cypriot David Beckham – was branded a traitor for joining AEK Larnaka in April 2002 and returned to the north after just three months because – the following explanations are not mutually exclusive – he was homesick, let down by authorities in the Greek part of Cyprus or pressurised by the government in the north.

Even if Anorthosis do impress in the Champions League, the legacy of 1974 will still loom over Cypriot football. And it will still be easier for young Cypriots on both sides of the divide, to idolise the likes of Gerrard and Ballack than to be enthralled by the heirs of Kaiafas.

***Apologies for the mix up – I must still have been suffering from second degree heat burns when I checked the fixture schedule – but Anorthosis will, if they beat Pyunik, face Rapid Wien which isn’t a derby at all but it is still a game where anything can happen.

Sweden’s Brazilian entertainers

2008-07-18T09:00:00Z

The Poles like to think of themselves as the Brazilians of European football. At times, they have been known to chant impatiently during games: “We are Polish and we want a goal.”

But Sweden, for a Scandinavian nation famed for social democracy, the charismatic miserablism of Ingmar Bergman’s movies and pornography would seem to have as good a claim. If you find this risible, you just watch this goal against Uruguay from the 1974 World Cup.

The player who flicks the ball up and smashes it into the net is Ralf Edström, one of my favourite foreign strikers of the 1970s, a preference – I was an impressionable child – based almost entirely on that one goal.

Ralf Edström, or is it Mick Channon?

They also played in yellow, like Brazil, but didn’t win anywhere near as much, so it was easier for me – supporting a trio of teams (Nuneaton Borough, Leicester City and England) who were accustomed to the absence of silverware – to identify with them.

If you scroll down, there is a great picture of Edstrom here looking a bit like Mike Channon, but less like a racehorse and more like a rock star.

Edström was no fluke. In the 1950s, Sweden produced the technically brilliant Gre-No-Li forward line (Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedlohlm) that won the 1948 Olympics. And then there was Kurt Hamrin, the Little Bird who dazzled on the wing in Serie A and, in the 1958 World Cup, ran through the Russian defence “like an inspired mole,” as Brian Glanville put it. But they were before my time, so I adopted Edström.

When he smashed that goal against Uruguay, Edström was playing for PSV where, scoring 55 goals in 112 games between 1973 and 1977, he became a firm, fan favourite. He wasn’t that prolific for Sweden, 15 goals in 40 games, but he scored twice against Uruguay in 1974 and his goal against West Germany briefly gave the Swedes hope of a place in the third place play-off.

He was a bit of an idol in Sweden where he officially endorsed a football game called Ralf Edström Cup Football whose memory has been lovingly preserved on www.boardgamegeek.com.

Conditioned by Edström to expect flair from the Swedes, I rejoiced at USA '94 in the subtlety of Tomas Brolin, Jonas Thern and Stefan Schwarz. Indeed, I spent a year when Stefan Schwartz was at Arsenal, trying to decide what exactly was so cultured about his sweet left foot.

I never quite got to the bottom of it. He was one of those players who looks classy, even if they’re not really in the game, and I wasn’t surprised when he moved on. Anders Limpar was a bit of a cult hero at Highbury for similar reasons: he exuded class but probably showed that to greatest effect with a 50-yard reverse pass as Everton won the FA Cup in 1995.

Brolin’s demise from golden boy to joke was more surprising. The first blow was the foot injury he suffered after the 1994 World Cup. The second may have come when, after helping Leeds destroy a Manchester United side that contained Beckham, Keane and Cantona, he was dropped by Howard Wilkinson against Derby because he wasn’t suited to the “heated atmosphere” of an FA Cup tie.

It had obviously never occurred to the parochial Wilkinson that World Cup semi-finals can get a bit heated. After that it was all “Brolin, Brolin, Brolin,” more jokes about his weight than Elvis had to endure and a final appearance, as a goalkeeper, for a Swedish side in the summer of 1998.

Brolin nets against Bulgaria at USA '94

Still, Brolin has at least enjoyed his retirement. The marvellously nicknamed Lennart ‘Nacka’ Skoglund, who won the Serie A title twice with Inter in the 1950s, and regarded himself as an entertainer, used to tour Sweden’s amusement parks in the summer doing the old ‘two crown’ trick where he would drop a coin and kick it into his shirt pocket.

There’s a statue outside his home in Katarina Bangata where every 24 December, on the anniversary of his birthday, people gather to celebrate Christmas and honour his memory. A playboy and an entertainer, he was almost as mythologised as George Best over here. He died in 1975 when he was just 46 but, as one fan noted, the real death had come earlier: “Nacka lived for applause, when the applause ended, Nacka died.”

As Zlatan Ibrahimovic can testify, being the golden boy of Swedish football, with a technique to die for, isn’t easy. The Swedes have had plenty of players of whom a commentator could say: “If he was playing for Brazil….” But, in a thoroughly Swedish way, they haven’t had as much fun as the Brazilians.

Which brings us back to Ingmar Bergman really.

The criminally underrated Faas Wilkes

2008-07-08T09:00:00Z

Faas Wilkes (1923-2006) was Johan Cruyff’s favourite footballer. And yet outside the Netherlands – and Valencia – few people have ever heard of him.

The football encyclopaedia on my desk describes him, in its best Wolstenholmian prose, as “tall, lean, splendidly gifted inside-forward with dazzling close control and a strong shot”. He was, if the evidence of this clip was anything to go by, a mean dribbler although he does look a bit gormless facing the camera.

Like Cruyff in the early 1970s, Wilkes was not content to be the best in Dutch club football. He was one of the first Dutch players to become an idol overseas, dazzling for Valencia from 1953 to 1956 even though he was already 30 when he joined them. His path to the top has since been well trodden by the likes of Cruyff, Neeskens, Kluivert and Sneijder.

Wilkes in action for Valencia

Wilkes paid a price for his determination: at that time, the KNVB refused to select players for the national team who played professionally abroad. If it hadn’t been for that policy, he would surely have won far more than 38 caps. He scored 35 goals in those games, including four on his debut against Luxembourg and was the all-time top scorer for Holland until Dennis Bergkamp surpassed him in 1998.

Wilkes, his international team-mate and inside forward Kees Rijvers, and striker Bertus de Harder who looks uncannily like Arjen Robben’s granddad all left Holland to progress. Rijvers and Harder went to France, a career move that is almost unimaginable today. Rijvers later won the UEFA Cup as PSV coach in 1978.

Wilkes’ decision to play overseas didn’t stop him becoming a legend in his home city Rotterdam. The ultimate accolade for a successful sportsman from the home of Feyenoord (and Xerxes, the club he played for) is to be given the Faas Wilkes award.

Wilkes’ Wikipedia page suggests that he, along with his peers Kick Smit and Abe Lenstra, inspired the Dutch cartoon character Kick Wilstra, a “wonder centre forward” as he is billed on his official site. With Lenstra and Rijvers, Wilkes formed the Golden Inside Trio, a pack of three inside forwards who, in the 1940s and 1950s, gave Dutch youngsters like Cruyff hope that their footballer wouldn’t always be mediocre. You can find their stats here and Wilkes’s own game-by-game record here.

On the treatment table at Inter Milan

Inside forwards don’t exist anymore, not in the old sense of attackers who would slot in on either side of the centre forward, between the main striker and the wingers. Their days were numbered as soon as European football began its gradual, irreversible shift away from 2-3-5 – now there’s an obsolete formation I’d love to see Otto Rehhagel reintroduce with Greece – and from its successor WM where the inside-forwards played behind the wingers and the number-nine.

But Wilkes’ fame has outlived his old position. In a recent fans all-time Dutch XI he was in the squad, alongside Lenstra, and one fan suggested he ‘looks like Ossie Ardiles’ twin brother”. Actually, to me he looks more like the long lost brother of Andy Roxburgh.

If he’d played a decade or so later, he might be as famous as Cruyff. But when he died, two years ago, at the age of 82, one Dutch fan broke into a gaming forum to announce that” “Faas Wilkes, our first great footballer, died today.”

Which, coming from an Amsterdammer, was some compliment.

How to fix a World Cup

2008-07-04T12:53:00Z

Everybody loves a good conspiracy.

Dan Brown is so sure of this is he tells us twice in The Da Vinci Code, the biggest selling ‘book’ since the Bible. But it’s hard to know what to make of recent suggestions by Joao Havelange, the former FIFA president, that the 1966 and 1974 World Cups were fixed.

Havelange’s reflections can be found, almost in full on Earth Times. But in a nutshell they are as follows.

Havelange: Conspiracy theorist

1966

Stanley Rous, president of FIFA in 1966, was English. The World Cup was hosted by England. English and German referees were deliberately assigned games involving Brazil and Argentina so they could ensure opponents had free rein to kick both these Latin American giants out of the tournament.

Pelé was crippled. Ergo: England and West Germany were bound to meet in the final with the hosts winning. Funnily enough, Havelange doesn’t point the finger at the Azerbaijani linesman who flagged Hurst’s goal over the line.

I have heard similar gripes before. Eusebio still fulminates about how Portugal’s semi-final against England wasn’t supposed to be played at Wembley but at Goodison Park where his team had played their quarter-final.

But I’d always taken the implication that his team were disrupted by the shlep from Liverpool to London as a desperate attempt by the legend to obscure the fact that, against England, he was marked out of the match, mostly legally, by Nobby Stiles.

In case you didn’t find that pile of evidence convincing, Havelange added the clinching proof: “I ask you, did England ever become a champion again.”

How about 1974?

Henri Kissinger, oil and a German referee are all vaguely implicated in this fix. Here, it is probably fairest to quote the man verbatim:

“The Netherlands had problems with oil, they had no oil because (the price) had risen a lot and they were riding bicycles. It was (then US secretary of state Henry) Kissinger who had gone there to settle that. He arrived at the stadium to watch Brazil-Netherlands, and (FIFA president) Stanley Rous designated (referee Kurt) Tschenscher, from Germany, who was 50 at the time.”

Confused? The Netherlands did have problems with oil – though that doesn’t entirely explain the popularity of cycling there – but then so did the USA so I’m slightly baffled as to what Kissinger, who is bizarrely a fan of the beautiful game, had to offer the Dutch. Nor have I seen any evidence of Dutch citizens using their bikes less after the final when the ‘fix’ went in.

Tschenscher: A German unpopular in Holland. How odd...

The implied attack on Tschenscher seems a bit grubby. There is a simpler explanation for Brazil’s failure to win the 1974 World Cup. They were rubbish. They qualified for the second round after two 0-0 draws against Yugoslavia and Scotland and a 3-0 victory over Zaire. And their referees in those games, for the record, were Swiss, Dutch and Romanian. They picked up in the second round but lost 2-0 to the brilliant Oranje to miss out on the final.

Tschenscher did have an awful game, quickly losing control, but you would need to suffer from false memory syndrome to believe he favoured Brazil. There was much ugly play from both sides but Brazilian defender Marinho Peres should not have been on the pitch by the end of the first half. One brutal shoulder to take out Wim Jansen and an elbow smashed into Johan Neeskens’ face should have earned him at least a yellow and a straight red.

The Dutch were no innocents just slightly more disciplined than their opponents. And crucially, scored two more goals – good ones – while the selecao struck a blank.

Havelange seemed to take this personally, saying: “Tschenscher harmed me. I lost 2-0. They suspended my centre-back for the game against Poland for third place.” Luis Pareira was indeed suspended after what this report called a “an alehouse challenge on Neeskens, waist high, studs first.”

So the case for the 1974 fix is hardly established beyond a reasonable doubt either.

Funnily enough, the one tournament everyone has long regarded as fixed - Argentina 78 - was, Havelange insists, not orchestrated at all.

Peru, who conveniently lost 6-0 to Argentina so the hosts could reach the final (they had to win by at least four clear goals to pip Brazil) were tired. The crucial difference between 1978, as opposed to 1966 and 1974, is that by the time the finals kicked off in Argentina Havelange was running FIFA.

Argentina - needing four to qualify - beat Peru 6-0 in 1978

I don’t want to discourage Joao from embellishing his case. After reading William Shawcross’s book Sideshow, about how American policy destroyed Cambodia, I am quite prepared to believe that Kissinger would fix anything. (He did play a large part in Pele joining the New York Cosmos.) It’s just that I’d like some more compelling proof or, failing that, a theory I can understand.

And the former FIFA boss should feel free to widen his conspiratorial net. If he wants some inspiration, he could check out Conspiracy 58, a Swedish film that suggests the entire 1958 World Cup didn’t really take place but was staged as a propaganda coup by the CIA, FIFA and Swedish broadcasters.

Unlike Havelange, the filmmakers are joking.

Fleas, Freud and football on the box

2008-07-01T11:39:00Z

“The Brazilians do it, the Argentinians do it, the Danes do it…”

“Even educated fleas do it.”

That famous exchange between Mike ‘should have been a racehorse’ Channon and Brian Clough, recalled by Harry Pearson in The Guardian is a reminder of just how lacklustre football punditry has become.

As Martin Kelner, picking up the point in Monday’s Grauniad, noted, for Alan Shearer to suggest that the Germans “always seem to make it through to the finals even when they’re not playing well” doesn’t seem fantastic value for our ever expanding licence fee.

What we’d like from Magic Al is some clue as to how Joachim Low, in Kelner’s fine words, “managed to manoeuvre his ordinary players into the final while geniuses like Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole are on their hols.”

Such insight – indeed, virtually any insight – was lacking. As was any explanation for Motty’s increasingly bizarre pronunciations: Xavi became Sharvey, Aragones ended in a sh and Low’s surname sounded like “lurrve” in Mottyspeak as if the German coach was a womanising soul legend.

The only memorable bit of punditry from this tournament endures for all the wrong reasons. I’m referring to Andy Townsend’s observation that “Servette was literally right up his backside there.” (That might not be word for word as I was being shouted at by a Scottish drunk when he said it and various permutations of this quote have bloomed, like Mao’s hundred flowers, in cyberspace.)

The only other decent bit of punditry came from the aforementioned drunk who, as Portugal laboured and fell over against Germany, shouted: “Portuguese men of war my ***!”

It was refreshing, a few Euros ago, when the BBC made token acknowledgement of the fact that they were screening a European football tournament and invited folks like Ruud Gullit and Johan Cruyff on their panel, so they could briefly disturb the humdrum consensus that passes for discussion on BBC and ITV.

Cruyff could be perspicacious or incomprehensible, sometimes a bit of both, but he was fascinating to watch. As Martin O’Neill, who played for Clough, can be when he gets going.

What really grinds my gears, as the sleazy dad said in Family Guy last week, is that the BBC and ITV seem a bit embarrassed about football. Sky Sports’ relentless cheerleading can get oppressive but surely there’s a middle way? At least Andy Gray sometimes tells you stuff you wouldn’t have spotted. BBC and ITV could do with some of his passion.

Instead, they mosey on down the middle of the road, as if they fear that if they don’t spoon feed us, or get too tactical or confrontational they’ll alienate the apathetic masses awaiting their weekly dose of Last Of The Summer Wine or Heartbeat or the channel hoppers, flicking over in the ad break, to check the score.

The importance of these casual viewers explains why, just before the cameras return to the stadium for the second half, Gary Lineker was contractually obliged to persuade a cohort to confirm that “there are more goals in this game, aren’t there?”

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is a great motto.

It’s not working spectacularly well but we can’t be bothered – or don’t have a clue how – to fix it isn’t so snappy.

Football broadcasting, at least on British terrestrial TV, has become an innovation free zone. The bottom of the barrel labelled “Alan Hansen looks appalled as yet another defence fails to live up to his exalted standards” has now been thoroughly scraped.

The only upside is we don’t get too many horrors like Townsend’s tactics truck, a wonderfully superfluous vehicle that left us wondering if he’d been so confined because of some personal hygiene problem or because his colleagues detested him. Which would have been harsh because, having interviewed him, he’s a very nice bloke. (He even apologised for being boring, bless him.)

In Euro 2008, Vienna was the excuse for the BBC to spend much of one half-time in Vienna extolling the virtues of Carol Reed’s great movie The Third Man. All utterly irrelevant – apart from the geographical coincidence – but a relief from interchangeable reports from the man in the fanzone, so pointless they made Gazza’s ‘meet the people’ outside broadcasts during France 98 look BAFTA worthy.

I suppose we were lucky no wag at the Beeb sought to draw comparisons between Euro 2008 and Vienna’s role as the birthplace of psychoanalysis. Mind you, I’d have paid good money to watch a half-time clip with a working title like: Observations on the tension between the id and the superego in Roberto Donadoni.

Motty was innovative in his way. Very much so in fact. Those pronunciations. The way he never said “Indeed” without emphasising the invisible exclamation mark. The way he fawned over Iniesta’s “guile on the left” just seconds after the Barcelona midfielder had shown as much guile as a lentil.

But with Motty going, Barry Davies gone and Clive Tyldesley irrelevant, some rejuvenation is in order. Or maybe they could stage a regeneration. It’s done wonders for Dr Who.

Random Eurovisions

2008-06-29T10:50:00Z

You can count on the thumb of one hand the number of central defenders who have seriously impressed at Euro 2008. Against Spain, Giorgio Chiellini gave a master class in the art, snuffing out trouble time after time.

The number of holding midfielders who have impressed in this competition is almost as low: Marcos Senna has stood out for Spain and Torsten Frings, when fit, has been reliable for Germany. They have reached the final without having a fully functioning central defender on the pitch in any of their games, an astonishing feat that may explain why Euro 2008 has been so entertaining.

Senna: Best of a bad bunch?

Most of the defences have been iffy most of the time. The best defensive performance – Italy’s against Spain – produced the dullest game although, in Italy, it was savoured by many who think that comparing a football match to a game of chess is actually a compliment.

As Guillem Balague points out in the next issue of Champions (out July 4 folks!), such chaos and frailty at the back wouldn’t be tolerated at Europe’s UEFA Champions League clubs. More’s the pity.

Some Russians do travel well

In a Vienna so hot that just sitting in the open air felt like you had been locked in a sauna, the Russians wilted, reverting to the traditional pre-Hiddink passivity that mystified fans and earned so many of Guus’s predecessors the sack.

The cliché before the tournament was that the Russians don’t travel well. Whoever said that hasn’t seen their fans in action. When I returned to the Hotel Ananas at 1.15am after the game, there was a raucous chorus of Russian voices from the bar.

The scene reminded me of a football conference I attended years ago, where two Russian officials – one of them positively Brezhnevian in age and stature – announced that we didn’t need to worry about them checking out and getting the bus to the airport the next morning because they were going out in 20minutes – this was about 7pm – and, they implied, would go straight to the airport from whichever bar they could persuade to stay open for the duration.

And in the Hotel Ananas in Vienna, at breakfast the next morning, two Russian fans were still debating defeat at a table littered with white wine glasses, discarded cigarette packets and an almost empty bottle of some nasty exotic spirit. By the time I got to the airport at 11.30am, a gaggle of Russian fans were singing their hearts out in the first bar I stumbled across. If only their team had shown such commitment and energy.

The Dutch complex

The abrupt, shocking departure of the brilliant Oranje continues to perplex. I offer this analysis, from a Dutchman in the football business: “When a Dutch player looks at an opponent before kick-off, they think ‘I’m better than you’. And when they look around the pitch, they’ll think all their team-mates are better too. So they feel they don’t have to try too hard.

Against Italy, world champions, and France, runners-up in 2006, they’ll feel they have to play their best. But against Russia? In the Netherlands now, they’ll be saying results don’t matter, we played the best football, we were the champions of the first round…” Did the Dutch superiority complex prevent them from winning what would, for all their technical brilliance and artistry, have been only their second major trophy?

There’s only one Oleg Salenko

Some players, as Michel Platini observed before he became UEFA president, make a career out of one game. And some players make a career out of a tournament. Yet clubs continue to shell out millions for stars who look the business at international championships. Those queuing to spend a fortune on Andrei Arshavin – David Moyes was among those interested before Euro 2008 kicked off – or other stellar performers might end up buying the new Stephane Guiv’arch, Oleg Salenko (five goals in one World Cup game against Cameroon and seven in one season for Rangers) or Tomas Brolin.

Brolin: Liked cakes

Buying strikers after such tournaments is especially perilous: it’s hard now to watch Milan Baros and believe he won the golden boot at Euro 2004. And Davor Suker, golden boot winner at France 98, never really hit top form again. One of the best post-Euro buys, Juventus’s purchase of Zinedine Zidane, came after the player – and the French team – had flopped at Euro 96.

So maybe the shrewdest deal would be Klaas-Jan Huntelaar who didn’t feature at Euro 2008 but, only two years ago, was so good he kept out Van Nistelrooy for Holland. Huntelaar hasn’t progressed as expected, but he’s still scoring, has some obvious weaknesses – aerial prowess and physical strength – that a good coach can work on to improve his game, is technically brilliant and he’s still only 24. But will Ajax coach Marco van Basten, the player Huntelaar is most often likened to, want to let him go?

And finally…

We all knew Fatih Terim is good – though till Euro 2008 many wondered why Wenger had cited him as one of the best coaches in Europe – but read this panegyric in the Turkish daily Hurriyet and be truly awestruck.

Actually this really is the end…

Biggest disappointment of Euro 2008: that someone had removed the “Vienna waits for you” carpets from Vienna airport. I hope Billy Joel didn’t cause a fuss about copyright.

Tomatoes, garbage and the Azzurri

2008-06-24T11:23:00Z

There’ll be a national inquest, but no tomatoes will be thrown. The Azzurri’s Euro 2008 campaign ended in disappointment but not disgrace. That distinction may not, though, be enough to save Roberto Donadoni.

Italy’s quarter-final exit can be boiled down to a few random, misleading numbers, but no matter how you crunch them one thing is clear: Italy’s record in this tournament stinks almost as much as that abandoned garbage in Naples.

"Taxi..."

They didn’t even qualify in 1984 and 1992 and they have won it just once, on home soil, back in 1968 winning the semi-final with the toss of a coin and needing a replay to beat Yugoslavia in the final.

Anyway, for those who like nothing better than a bit of schadenfreude and for masochistic calcio fans, here are the vital statistics.

0 Number of goals scored by Italy from open play. Also the number of goals scored by front man Luca Toni. And, judging from Roberto Donadoni’s team selection against Spain, the number of Italian midfielders who can provide a creative spark in the absence of Andrea Pirlo.

1 - Italian midfielder who was unlucky to be booked. Andrea Pirlo was yellow carded for committing a foul so an injured teammate could get attention. Minutes later, with sublime inconsistency, Slovakian referee Lubos Michel stopped play when a French player was down. This sidelined Pirlo against Spain but I am in no way suggesting there was a conspiracy or that, with him, Italy would have won. His set pieces – that penalty against France apart – were a bit dodgy this tournament.

2 - The most shots any Italian player had on target during Euro 2008, penalties missed by the Azzurri in the shoot-out against Spain and goals scored by Roma’s ‘attacking midfielder’ Simone Perrotta in 44 appearances for Italy.

3 - Strikers Donadoni usually fielded before the tournament in an unusual – for an Italian coach – 4-3-3 formation. After the debacle against Holland, he switched to 4-3-1-2 although, against Spain, that probably deteriorated into something much duller.

4 - Central midfielders Donadoni deployed to stifle Spain. It worked until the shoot-out. But it had Alberto Costa from Corriere della Sera lambasting Donadoni for Italy’s “demoralising scarcity” and for “resurrecting elements of the old catenaccio”.

With Spain’s central defensive partnership – Puyol and Marchena – looking creaky, it seemed a shame not to test their mobility in some more imaginative way than simply lobbing up high balls for Toni to get on the end of. Mind you, visitors to the BBC’s Euro 2008 website gave Puyol an average rating of 6.91 which just shows you can fool some of the people a lot of the time if you look grimly determined.

Four was also the number worn by Juve defender Giorgio Chellini, one of the few Azzurri players to enhance their reputation in this tournament. If Andrea Barzagli is the new Cannavaro, Chellini is the new Materazzi – and yes that is intended to be a compliment.

Chiellini: Crippled Cannavaro but was one of better performers

7 - Italian strikers who failed to score at Euro 2008. It is easy to blame it all on Toni but hardly fair. Still, Pippo Inzaghi might expect a call from Donadoni or his successor.

10 - Shirt number of Daniele De Rossi who looked pretty good in his three games and didn’t use his elbow inappropriately once.

14 - The number of Toni’s shots that missed the target during Euro 2008. Maybe Genoa’s Marco Borriello might have been worth a try. He looked sharp in training.

17 - An unlucky number in Italy, although Spain’s number 17, Guiza, missed his spot-kick in the shoot-out.

29.15 - The average age of Italy’s Euro 2008 squad – almost four years older than Spain’s average age – which might explain why Donadoni said his players were “shattered” by the time the shoot-out started.

38 - Years since Italy last lost by a three-goal margin in a major tournament – they were stuffed 4-1 by the Brazil of Pele, Jairzinho, Rivelino, Carlos Alberto et al in the 1970 World Cup final.

Brazil outclass the Azzurri 4-1 in 1970 World Cup final

42 - Per cent chance that Italy won’t make it through the group stages of a European Championships. In 1980, 1996 and 2004, they didn’t even make the last eight.

100 - Per cent of Azzurri fans who think that Donadoni is crostini – toast.

535 - Minutes since Toni last scored for Italy.

The pity of it is that Italian football has spent years trying to escape from the clichés about catenaccio, dour defence and football matches as chess games. And in one drab Sunday night, they have just reinforced almost every negative stereotype about calcio. That, ultimately, may be the real blow from this campaign.

Czech follies, French snails and long balls

2008-06-16T15:00:00Z

Oh Karel. A place in the last eight was just 15 minutes away for the Czech Republic and their respected coach Karel Bruckner before Turkey staged the mother of all comebacks.

There was nothing remarkable about the way the Czechs wilted and retreated under pressure, it is a trait that can be found in every team from the lowest rung of the non-league ladder to the highest level of international football. Eriksson’s England hankered after the security of their own penalty area, refining this form of professional suicide against France and Portugal at Euro 2004.

The last 15 minutes of the Turkey game were an object lesson in how difficult it can be, once you’ve lost control – or even parity – of possession, to regain the initiative. It was also a reminder of what stupid organisms teams can be.

Nihat curls home the winner as the Czechs self-destruct

Turkey have twice shown their own blind spots, wilfully ignoring Arda’s threat on the flanks for much of the game against Switzerland and, against the Czechs, playing the first half as if the flanks didn’t exist. Luckily Fatih Terim had half-time to change that. Bruckner could only look on as the Czechs, as he put it, “wilted” and, for the first time ever, lost a competitive match in which Jan Koller had scored.

It’s easy to blame Petr Cech but I don’t understand why Bruckner - shrewd enough to pore over the ruins of the Czech 2006 World Cup campaign and recognise a fading, ageing side - didn’t replenish it with more youth, especially by making use of Martin Fenin, the 21-year-old striker who was a sensation in the Bundesliga and scored three goals in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup last summer in Canada.

Five of the 11 that started against Turkey were over 30. Libor Sionko, the most energetic of the thirtysomethings, was the one Bruckner took off. And the Czechs looked so tired as the pressure mounted, their fatigue must have spurred the Turkish on.

Ultimately, Bruckner did the safe, professional thing – tried to tighten things up with a substitution when his side had their noses in front – but he might have been better to emulate Van Basten against France and choose to twist rather than stick.

French snails vindicate Wenger

The travails of France and Italy do suggest that Arsene Wenger’s emphasis on pace is not a ridiculous obsession.

The counter-attack has long been one of the most prolific sources of goals but what has changed, in this tournament, is the speed of those counter-attacks. The archetypal goal of Euro 2008 has come from a precise long ball struck over a defence for a striker to run onto.

The Dutch have this down to a fine art, recognising that this offers their best hope of threatening before their opponents can block the way with two walls of four, or even a wall of four behind a screen of five.

Counter-attacking football reigns supreme at Euro 2008

The Italians and the French have attacked with a more measured, intricate passing style that hasn’t paid off. The Azzurri may not have much choice: they don’t have much pace in the squad. France do but, against Holland, Raymond Domenech kept much of it on the bench. Maybe the stars weren’t propitious for Benzema, a Sagittarian who did - to be fair - look a bit off the pace in his first game.

The hopeless hoof

One of the more irritating aspects of David Beckham’s legacy is the tendency for players with far less class on the ball to emulate Goldenballs’ knack for hitting crosses in front of the penalty area.

Struck with Beckhamesque precision, these crosses can catch defences out. But too many players - finding themselves the right yardage in front of the penalty area - stop, look around and hit an aimless cross which, though it may look vaguely constructive, is just a poorly disguised way of giving the ball away.

And the winner is…

José Mourinho, whose preference for Khalid Boulahrouz over Alex (as recommended by Frank Arnesen) becomes more understandable with every Dutch game. It’s hard to believe this is the same player who was baffled by Aaron Lennon although, to be fair, the Dutchman - briefed on the quality of Lennon’s end product - may just have fancied taking a breather.

There is no clear favourite to win the tournament. The Dutch are the closest to it. Portugal, Spain, Germany all have glaring defensive deficiencies. Italy and France are on the ropes. Croatia won’t fancy Turkey in the quarter-finals. This is the most wide open Euros since…. Ah, that’ll be the last one. When Greece won. A result which, after their lacklustre showing in 2008, seems more than ever like a mass hallucination.

Boulahrouz: A shadow of his former (average) Chelsea self

Multi-tasking full-backs, or The Meaning Of Gio

2008-06-11T09:06:00Z

The Netherlands’ astonishing dismantling of Italy highlighted one fundamental, underappreciated truth about football: the full-back may just be the most important person on the pitch.

Replay that game without Giovanni van Bronckhorst and the Dutch have an edgy, if deserved, 1-0 victory. But his running, passing and heading accounted for two of the goals. The contribution he made – compared to Gianluca Zambrotta’s more marginal influence on events – was one of the crucial differences between the two teams and may explain why Chelsea have just upped their spending on full-backs to nearly £45m with the arrival of Jose Bosingwa. (And they still have Michael Essien and Tal Ben Haim who can stand in as full-backs if necessary.)

Gio: an epitome, a paradigm, an archetype

Traditionally, the full-back’s job was to stop a winger by any means necessary – which, in England in the good old days, included kicking them in the shins and hoofing the ball into the legendary Row Z. But in the 1958 World Cup, Brazil’s full-backs, both called Santos, pushed up to deny opposing wingers space, a ploy which helped them conquer the world.

Attacking full-backs have been with us since the 1960s, when Helenio Herrera deployed Giacinto Facchetti to such devastating effect. As a left-back, he scored 60 goals in Serie A in the 1960s and 1970s, the most defensive, tactically sterile era in the history of the Italian top flight. Where Facchetti led, the likes of Terry Cooper, Paul Breitner, Hans-Peter Briegel, Roberto Carlos and Cafu have all followed.

Briegel, a converted striker, was legendary at Kaiserslautern and impressed for Germany in the 1980 European Championships, his athleticism, power and endurance making him seem like the first, as Richard Williams noted in The Guardian, of a new breed of super player.

Briegel (right): those legs were full of running

In the last few years, the attacking full-back has ceased to be an option and become a necessity. Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s technical director, has a simple explanation for this: “As tactics become more sophisticated and defensive blocks become more organised, the full-back may be the only player who has enough space to start the play.”

The search for space is changing the nature of football and almost every role on the team-sheet. The popularity of the flat back four protected by one or two deep-lying midfielders has persuaded many coaches to stop playing two up front. Some midfield playmakers have retreated – look at where Pirlo plays compared to Maradona or Zidane – and almost every midfield now contains one or two screeners in the Makelele mould. With many teams falling into two walls of four when they don’t have the ball, attacking through the middle – as Arsenal so often try to do – can be a dodgy, camel/needle business.

The flanks are the most promising routes of attack. Roughly one in four goals scored in open play comes from a cross. The full-backs, working in tandem with clever, disciplined wide attacking players like Dirk Kuyt, can decide a game – as Manchester United discovered in 2007 when Milan tore them apart at the San Siro thanks in large part to the marauding Marek Jankulovski.

Jankulovski (foreground) celebrates another job well done

This shift may explain why, as the old bloke next to me at Combined Counties League games grumbles into his hot chocolate, “full-backs can’t defend any more”. He puts it more colourfully than that but, as my son occasionally reads this, I’ll spare you the Anglo-Saxon.

Maybe kicking a winger in the shins – or the contemporary equivalent thereof – isn’t the main quality coaches look for in a full-back anymore. Ashley Cole has, the odd lapse of concentration notwithstanding, been much more defensively disciplined at Stamford Bridge. But he seemed far more impressive flying down the flanks for Arsenal. (And have the Gunners ever really recovered from his departure?)

Obviously, full-backs can’t ignore their defensive chores – that way lies the puzzle that is Emmanuel Eboue – but they have to be genuinely multi-tasking, which, as women never tire of pointing out, can be difficult for us blokes.

But you can track the full-back’s growing importance in the rising prices they attract. And it’s not just Chelsea who are splashing out. The most expensive Chilean footballer ever is Arturo Vidal, a 21-year-old attacking full-back who joined Bayer Leverkusen for just under £6m after impressing in the Under-20 World Cup. Such prices will, if the transfer market holds, keep climbing. And after the Dutch triumph, Roberto Donadoni must surely play Fabio Grosso against Romania.

Cristiano and the lions

2008-06-08T13:58:00Z

Sometimes, it would be nice if footballers could emulate the brevity of rock stars.

It took the Clash just three minutes and six seconds to satisfactorily explore the conundrum of whether they should stay or go. Cristiano Ronaldo’s will-he won’t-he saga could run as long as Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. But the denouement is a matter of when and not if. Even before Moscow, Man United fans I know were admitting that their favourite Portugeezer would not be at Old Trafford for life.

I blame Alfredo di Stefano. If he hadn’t scored in five successive European Cup finals – a feat it’s inconceivable to think will ever be matched – the legend of Real Madrid would not have such lustre that, 50 years on, the myth’s allure is so great that the world’s greatest player – despite having won back to back league titles and the UEFA Champions League with one of the world’s most famous clubs – seems to feel that he won’t completely have succeeded in football unless he shines at the Bernabeu, a stage graced by Di Stefano, Puskas, Gento, Zidane, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Raul, Beckham et al.

Will he stay or will he go (add guitar riff)

It’s a cruel calculation but you can see Ronaldo’s point. The Premier League may be dominating the Champions League – and United may be the most romanticised club in England – but Real has more resonance and more European Cups (nine to United’s three). The economic might of the Premier League should not blind us to the fact that its clubs still can’t quite compete for aura and mystique with, most especially, Real and perhaps even Barcelona, Milan or Juve.

If you want to become a legend – or think you’re on the brink of becoming one – you want to play for a club that can boast the most legends, past and present. If Ronaldo can emulate or somehow surpass Di Stefano he will have proved himself the greatest club footballer who ever lived. So you can see why, from his point of view, he must be sorely tempted to move.

No lions on the shirt

It is a nonsense that England aren’t at Euro 2008. A nonsense and a relief. The other day I surveyed my memories of previous tournaments as an England fan and, in a nutshell, they were:

1970: Incredulous despair.

1974: (well the winter of 1973 actually): Nausea, disbelief, shrinking admiration for the Poles.

1978: Boredom. Failure wasn’t so memorable second time around.

1982: “We’re on our way, we’re the wrong 22” – er, sorry that was “Ron’s 22”. “Brooking!”

1986: Incredulity (especially as Ray Wilkins threw the ball at the referee and my mate Kevin put a fist through a wardrobe), relief (at the 3-0 win over Poland) and outrage (as Diego put his hand up).

1990: Sheer unadulterated joy like I’d never known before when Lineker equalised in the semi, followed by the dread you get in a Hitchcock movie as you sense something bad is about to happen but you can’t specify just how bad.

1994: Fear (I was in Rotterdam), depression and then mirth over Do I Not Like That.

1996: Qualified optimism, grim certainty (that Shearer had scored too early, it would only wind up the Germans) and that Hitchcock feeling all over again.

1998: More Hitchcockian queasiness.

2000: Ennui, amazement that finally beating Germany could feel so joyless.

2002: Unqualified optimism (after Becks’ penalty against Argentina and the thrashing of Denmark), frustration, disappointment, disillusionment.

2004: Just like 1996 but without the qualified optimism.

2006: Just like 2002 but without the unqualified optimism and twice as much disillusionment.

2008: Okay, November 2007, back to 1970: another 3-2 five-goal chiller, more incredulous despair.

94: England, Holland, Platt, Koeman... do I not like that

So am I going to miss that emotional wringer this month?

Err no.

Not qualifying does mean that none of our internationals will be forced to live down a penalty miss in a post-modern ironic way with a few cheap gags on a Pizza Hut advert.

Nor will they have to pose with a St George’s Flag and try to look mean, moody and magnificent when, all too often, we have struggled to be mean, moody and mediocre.

And, replenished after a major tournament’s respite from heartbreak, I fully expect to be cheering on the Three Lions again on the long and winding road to 2010.

The Oranje boom

2008-06-04T18:00:00Z

Some things in life don’t change.

Eric Morecambe will always be funny. Arsene Wenger is never going to wear a kipper tie. And Dutch coaches will always be in fashion. Not the height of fashion. Not the new black. But always in demand, while the market in French, Spanish or Brazilian coaches ebbs and flows.

Rupert Lowe, the bloke who – media caricatures suggest – has done for Southampton football club roughly what Saddam Hussein did for Kuwait might have been very shrewd, hiring Jan Poortvliet – 1978 World Cup finalist with Holland – to coach the Saints.

In 2006, four World Cup finalists were coached by Dutchmen. Guus Hiddink, Leo Beenhakker and Marco van Basten will soon start their campaigns to win Euro 2008 and Dick Advocaat has just steered Zenit St Petersburg to their first European triumph, the UEFA Cup.

As Hiddink steered Russia to the Euro 2008 finals, some Russian fans began celebrating not with shots of vodka but Italian cappuccino, Hiddink’s favourite tipple.

Rinus Michels started the trend. After The General revolutionised Dutch football in the 1970s, he sought a new challenge in Barcelona. Cruyff followed, starting one of the strangest multinational love affairs in football – between the Catalan socios and the Dutch – a romance that has cooled since Rijkaard’s exit but, with Cruyff still Barça’s football conscience, not ended.

Many Dutch coaches have followed Michels and Cruyff abroad. Advocaat, who assisted Michels as Dutch national coach (a stint which, along with his Napoleonic physical stature, earned him the nickname Little General), has prospered at PSV, Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg though not at South Korea, the United Arab Emirates or Borussia Mönchengladbach.

His old friend Hiddink has succeeded consistently at PSV (twice), Real Madrid, South Korea, Australia, back at PSV and now in Russia.

Louis Van Gaal endured heaven and hell in two spells at Camp Nou.

Leo Beenhakker, aka The White Tulip, won three titles at Real Madrid, steered Trinidad and Tobago to the 2006 World Cup finals and has Poland more optimistic about its football than at any time since the 1970s.

Even though he beat Celtic in the 1970 European Cup final with Feyenoord, Wim Jansen is still recalled fondly in the green and white half of Glasgow for winning the 1998 Scottish title, stopping Rangers clinching 10 in a row.

Huub Stevens has just returned to PSV after 12 years in the Bundesliga where he won the UEFA Cup with Schalke in 1997. And Schalke’s new coach Fred Rutten has steered Twente into the Champions League qualifiers for the first time ever.

These are just the most famous ones. There are now around 100 Dutch managers plying their trade abroad. What makes them so employable?

Character. Dutch footballers, as books Brilliant Orange, Football Against The Enemy and Jaap Stam’s autobiography testify, are even more opinionated than they are talented. The cliché about Dutch footballers – that when they socialise they actually talk about football – has more than a grain of truth.

This experience shapes coaches even if – as it did at Italia 90 when Gullit, Rijkaard and van Basten bickered – it makes their life harder. The upside is that if you can handle a Dutch dressing room, you fear no dressing room.

Ambition. Dutch football’s three peaks are Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV. If a talented Dutch coach sees no prospect of managing any of those soon, why shouldn’t they go abroad? Co Adriaanse did, after Beenhakker replaced him at Ajax, and it almost worked at Porto. As the chances of a Dutch side winning a serious European trophy have receded since the mid-1990s, an ambitious Dutch coach is likely to gaze longingly at Germany or Spain.

Roughly 80% of the Dutch population speaks English, more than any other country in mainland Europe. If you’re going to be a ‘have UEFA coaching badge, will travel’ kind of coach, it pays to be a cunning linguist.

Outlook. Michels, Cruyff, Advocaat, Hiddink and Beenhakker have trotted the globe, as English managers did until the 1950s. Until the 1960s, more Englishmen had coached the Dutch national team than Dutchmen. But since the 1980s – when Terry Venables and Bobby Robson led a mini-invasion of mainland Europe, establishing a beachhead at Barcelona – English coaches have largely stayed home, only venturing abroad, like Roy Hodgson, in extremis. Joe Royle suggests that English managers are too insular. If Steve McClaren succeeds at Twente maybe that will change.

Success. Four Englishmen and three Scots have won the European Cup as coaches. Five Dutchmen have: Michels, Cruyff, Hiddink, Van Gaal and Rijkaard. Advocaat, Wiel Corver, Kees Rijvers, Stevens, Van Gaal and Bert Van Marwijk have all won the UEFA Cup (which only four English coaches have done). Only in the Cup-Winners Cup – six English wins to four Dutch – does England have the edge. Which considering there are only 16 million Dutch is remarkable.

Tactics. Although everytime a Dutch coach changes formation journalists reach for that part of their dictionary of football clichés devoted to Total Football, managers like Hiddink, Advocaat and Beenhakker are tactically much more diverse. They have favourite formations and shapes but happily switch. Hiddink is one of the best touchline thinkers in football.

His knack for the right substitution or a switch makes Jose Mourinho’s antics look terminally average. There is a common thread as Jan Reker, director of the Dutch coaches federation says here which is all about position, the importance of the team and players being able to do more than one task.

Training. Philip Cocu and Dennis Bergkamp are both studying to coach. Even the Dutch find their culture of rules and diplomas wearisome but, from their track record in trophies and nurturing young stars, this structured, laborious approach works.

Southampton’s experiment is partly motivated by money. Poortvliet and his countryman Mark Wotte, who heads the academy, are cheaper than an English coach might have been. But if the board has the nerve to back them, they might do the club – and English football – a power of good.

A season through the looking glass

2008-05-30T06:00:00Z

Every year, usually about this time, football goes barking mad.

This summer it has gone so berserk that Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, would feel deeply proud. So proud I felt inspired – hopefully that’s the word – to review the season through his characters.

Off to the Mad Hatters

Among the hordes behaving like people seeking a season ticket to the maverick hat maker’s endless round of tea and riddles are Carlos Queiroz - memorably comparing Real’s pursuit of Cristiano Ronaldo to Spain’s adoption of Christopher Columbus - the chairman of PSV, Ajax and NAC who, despite finishing first, second and third in the Eredivisie have sacked their managers (a paradox amusingly explored here by Leander Schaerlackens) and, of course, that nice Roman Abramovich.

An article in the Sun sheds some intriguing light on the American Idol style panel the next Chelsea manager will have to impress. The eight men include:

Two billionaires called Eugene (Tenenbaum and Shvidler), associates of Abramovich’s from his Russian oil days.

Bobby Campbell, Chelsea stalwart who took agin José and briefly managed the Blues when they lost to Scarborough in the League Cup.

Danish midfielder and agent Søren Lerby whose CV includes a spell at PSV and whose managerial career ended at Bayern in 1992 after they lost 6-3 to his old club B 1903 in the UEFA Cup.

Bruce Buck, Chelsea chairman, an American lawyer who specialises in acquisitions and admitted in the Independent that his three sons are Liverpool fans and he might have been a Red but he couldn’t face “traipsing up” to Anfield.

Peter Kenyon, the club’s chief executive who made his name at Umbro. His arrival from Manchester United is the clearest sign of Abramovich’s desire to emulate the Red Devils. At Stamford Bridge, Kenyon has the stature, sartorial nous and mysterious urgency of Carroll’s white rabbit.

Something else he has in common with the white rabbit: it’s hard for outsiders to tell exactly what he does.

Circling around is Piet de Visser, a mysterious character (as you can tell from his wikipedia page) who is less than six degrees of separation away from the likes of Frank Arnesen, Chelsea’s sporting director, and Guus Hiddink and acts as a kind of roving scout.

Even the Mad Hatter might find this assortment of courtiers odd. The circle is longer on finance than it is on knowledge of football. And, the crucial question: if this is an American Idol style panel, which one is Paula Abdul?

Now, their most urgent task – apart from choosing a manager – is to avoid a Neverkusen-style meltdown. The last few teams to reach the UEFA Champions League final for the first time and lose have all imploded – think Monaco in 2003, Valencia after 2000 and 2001 and most spectacularly Bayer Leverkusen in 2002, whose treble whammy of missed trophies traumatised the club, coach and players.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Massimo Moratti and Abramovich may seem very different to Mourinho as he returns to the limelight but they are both oil men who do not believe the dressing room is the coach’s domain and like to back their own judgement in the transfer market.

Humpty Dumpty

“The question is, which is to be master that’s all,” says the fragile eggy bloke with a knack for sitting on – and falling off – walls and arguing about semantics. His bulky, nitpicking self-confidence recalls Louis Van Gaal, a coach who - despite guiding AZ Alkmaar to the giddy depths of 11th in the Eredivisie - felt obliged to sound off about Rangers’ style of football being bad for the game.

Ally McCoist’s rejoinder was that he and Walter Smith were making the best of what they had. That’s fine as far as it goes but if they don’t dip into the transfer market to inject some flair into the midfield we might conclude they want to play that way.

Rangers were brave in the UEFA Cup final – and inspirational at times on their way to Eastlands – but they were battered by Zenit St Petersburg. The Gers midfield might as well have been kidnapped by aliens before kick off having their oral cavities probed by little green men for two hours for all the impact they had on the game. Walter Smith will want to fix that.

Mock turtle

One of Carroll’s most melancholy characters, saddened by the fact that he used to be a real turtle and the prospect that he is destined to become soup.

His contemporary football equivalent has to be professionally unimpressed Mark Lawrenson, a pundit whose voice is laden with ennui, approaching some semblance of enthusiasm only when a Liverpool player (usually Steven Gerrard) does something of note.

The Red Queen

Should Fergie quit while he’s ahead? The Times wants to know. The United manager has shown the cold, calm fury of the Red Queen in the Looking Glass (not to be confused with the capricious off-with-their-heads Queen of Hearts in Wonderland).

He will have shrewdly appraised the competitive state of European football and deduced that with Chelsea and Liverpool suffering from self-inflicted wounds, Real Madrid and Barcelona rebuilding and AC Milan not even in the competition, 2008/09 is a golden opportunity for Man United to win back to back Champions Leagues.

For Ferguson to retire now would be like Napoleon retreating to St Helena after he had crushed the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz.

Jubilation and despair on mission to Moscow

2008-05-23T11:26:00Z

Two weeks before the final, the word was that the fix was in. Chelsea were going to win 1-0. Ferguson would not be too upset to lose. The process by which this king of games was to be fixed wasn’t clear – “nothing as crude as a bribe,” one journalist hinted to a colleague over a gin in a Kensington hotel.

By the morning of the final, the rumours had reached such a pitch that Rob Hughes, the doyen of the international football hack pack, even mentioned them in the Herald Tribune, correctly noting that there was “not a single shred of evidence” behind them.

By Wednesday night, as United cavorted in delight in a sodden Luzhniki to the strains of the egg-chasers' anthem World in Union, the story of the fix was as dead as Chelsea’s hopes of lifting the UEFA Champions League trophy in Moscow.

The cynical assumption was presumably that in Russia, a country where all kinds of things are for sale, even a game of this magnitude could be bought if you were rich enough – and Roman Abramovich is certainly rich enough. But the conspiracy theory was swiftly and gloriously refuted by the hunger, endeavour and talent both sides displayed.

My abiding memory from the night itself was the odd juxtaposition of jubilation and despair. Even a United fan felt a brief twinge of compassion at the sight of John Terry sobbing into Avram Grant’s comforting shoulder.

But that’s one of the great things about football: it can deliver such unexpected emotions. And, as Grant wandered in the rain in a zombified state, I was actually moved to feel sorry for the richest club in the world.

Grant consoles Terry, and Chelsea evoke sympathy

I mention the fix rumour only to give you a flavour of how surreal Moscow was on the day of the final. There was a Tsar Nicholas II lookalike in Red Square who was charging fans a small fee to have their picture taken. Sadly, he’d gone by the time I got there. Andrei Lugovoi, the man wanted by British authorities in questioning with the murder by polonium of Alexander Litvinenko, had bought a ticket for the match.

At the Ritz Carlton, the Chelsea squad hotel, in the early afternoon on the day of the final, the players and coaches were virtually on public display in the lobby. Henk Ten Cate, sitting with his arms folded, looked gloriously grumpy until he decided his spell as a prize exhibit was over. Avram Grant was sitting quietly talking to a mate while Sheva strolled out and gave bear-hugs to three locals.

And then the rest of the team were ushered through, signing a few autographs as they went, Claude Makelele looking as diminutive as Paul Daniels and somebody shouting to Terry: “John, John, John! Good luck” and patting him on the shoulder. Maybe his fate was sealed at that moment.

For both teams, it was a long day’s journey to the final, which kicked off at 11.45pm local time. In 2005, Liverpool wanted to go bowling to avoid cabin fever but settled for a squad viewing of Meet the Fockers. United like to kill time with fiercely competitive pub quizzes set by the club photographer and, I presume, Chelsea’s little foray into the lobby was intended as a diversion for players who must have been dying for a kick-off which was still nine hours away.

Across the road, in the Grand Marriott Hotel, a group of champagne-quaffing English fans of uncertain allegiance had decided, for no obvious reason, to kill time by shouting out the names of football clubs, teams and players at random: "Stockport County! Western Samoa! Wigan Athletic! Joey Jones!”

World in Union: passing time in Red Square

After all that surreal madness, the game itself could have been an anti-climax. Obviously it wasn’t and to my utter relief it certainly wasn’t the kind of game that Jorge Valdano could have dismissed as “sh*t on a stick”. For me, Chelsea just shaded it on quality of play, being slightly more dominant in the second half than United were in the first.

Florent Malouda, whose selection dismayed and mystified many Blues fans, showed the class and the menace that justified his price tag. Neither Michael Ballack or Cristiano Ronaldo imposed themselves as they would have liked. For me, the best midfielder on the pitch, for industry, persistence and making very few errors, was Carlos Tevez.

In extra time, melodrama and nerves took over and then the penalties in which Petr Cech, despite glowing so luminously I wondered if he’d been sponsored by Stabilo highlighter pens, didn’t really distract any of the United penalty takers. His double save in the first half, though, was amazing.

As Anelka walked up to the spot, two European journalists behind me shook their heads, and gestured to suggest it would go high or wide. They were almost right.

Anelka marches toward destiny

Afterwards, I asked Franz Beckenbauer – shameless name dropping but it’s not often you get to talk to the only skipper to have lifted the European Cup three times in triumph – to sign my copy of Champions.

As he elegantly autographed the magazine, I asked him what he thought of the final. He pursed his thumb and finger together using an internationally recognised gesture meaning narrow margins, saying more in one movement than most of the pundits have done all season.

I know there’s a slip/cup/lip gag in this story somewhere but I can’t make it work – feel free to suggest one – but Chelsea were one slip away from the European Cup. Or a bar and a post away. That is some feat.

How the club reacts to that will be a true test of its character. The worst that can happen is if the recriminations continue to leak all over the tabloids and civil war breaks out.

Because, as they proved especially in that second half, Chelsea are – and it’s easy to forget this amid all the hype about Abramovich’s wealth – a proper football team. And on Wednesday they pushed Manchester United all the way. It’s not a bad foundation to build on – if the club has the wisdom to do so.

Where the final will be won and lost

2008-05-21T09:00:00Z

Michael Ballack has been talking a lot about pain recently.

Not about the agony of injury but the pain of defeat, in a UEFA Champions League final, with Bayer Leverkusen in 2001. There’s a lot of pain about at Chelsea at the moment: emotional for Frank Lampard and physical, elbow-popping related torment for John Terry.

And then there’s Petr Cech, a goalkeeper with a silent comedian’s propensity for physical disaster. Moscow will be a chance, as the whispering voice very nearly said in Field Of Dreams, to ease their pain.

There are two things I’ll be looking out for early on. How involved is Michael Ballack? And what’s Man United’s movement of the ball like? In the second half of this season, Ballack has been quietly spectacular. It’s not just the goals. When he is quiet, as he was for long stretches of the semi-final against Liverpool, Chelsea tend to stutter, Drogba looks isolated and the team seems disjointed.

But when he’s on his game – as he was screaming for the ball late on an at Anfield, as Chelsea’s late rally got the better of John Arne Riise’s nerves – his team perform.

Ballack: Strong end to season makes him Chelsea's key man

His role for Chelsea is less showy than the one he plays for Germany – he doesn’t get to show off his disguised passing as often – and even Chelsea fans struggle a bit to explain just why he’s so essential. But they insist he is. So if Man United are to win their third European Cup, neutralising or marginalising Ballack would ease that task.

The other litmus test for Chelsea will be Joe Cole’s form. England’s most creative midfielder has looked off his game, possibly just knackered, of late. He has been so good for so long – for club and country – some kind of dip was inevitable, it’s just a shame it’s happened now. That stuff he said about the final being “war” sounds unlike him – either he was mis-reported or he’s trying too hard to psyche himself up.

Joe Cole: Off form... or just knackered?

Man United have proved they can be as canny as any Italian team. But it’s not their natural game. And they won’t want to get trapped as they did in Camp Nou. Possession is a mysterious, often misunderstood factor in a game.

Once teams start to lose control of the ball, it often gets worse before it gets better. Players, desperate to make something happen, try stuff that is never going to come off instead of playing the sensible ball. They change the timing of their runs. And, in a schoolboy error which even great teams make, they retreat towards their goal.

A psychologist could probably write a thesis about the inner meaning of this universal tendency to fall back like a wounded army. Teams can snap out of it but while playing like this they often concede goals as anyone who has watched England over the last six years can testify.

An interesting early sign of Man United’s ambition will be how often Patrice Evra bombs forward. At Old Trafford against Barcelona, he was almost an extra attacker. He won’t be that aggressive against Chelsea – unless circumstances dictate – but he could help pin down Ashley Cole or exploit Cole’s occasional lack of focus.

After an inconsistent season, Cole was utterly reliable against Liverpool, though still lacking the attacking menace which made him so valuable at Arsenal. Man United’s goalscoring riches mean that opponents never know quite where the threat will come from – Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, Nani, Anderson, Scholes? Even Park or Evra? Ferguson will want his side to attack down the flanks, testing and preoccupying Essien at right-back, or running in from wide to test Makelele’s legs.

Spoilt for choice: Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez

The only downside of Man United’s strength upfront is that they can attack too quickly. Sounds a daft thing to say when 30% of goals from open play are scored by counter-attacks but sometimes, in big games it’s the methodical, continuous application of pressure that creates the breakthrough.

So Man United will want – and need – to keep the ball, which means winning, or at least drawing, the battle in midfield. The running of Tevez and Rooney should test bionic skipper John Terry’s sense of position – that, and a certain lack of pace, are, for me, his only weaknesses as a central defender.

Carvalho’s reading of the game could prove invaluable there. At the other end, Drogba vs Vidic and Ferdinand could be an epic, hopefully not too theatrical, contest. Drogba is probably the best lone striker in the world, can create a chance from a Cech clearance and, when motivated, defends tirelessly from the front.

Didier Drogba: The best lone striker in the world?

Two things strike me about this final that haven’t been dissected elsewhere. The first is the many and varied paths the individual players have taken to reach this final.

Lining up on Wednesday night will be a young basketball fan from Calgary, a former goat herder from the Ivory Coast, a midfielder from the former Communist state of East Germany who made his name at a club that was originally called Karl Marx Stadt FC and a tireless Korean from a city of a million people (Suwon) that most of the world has never heard of.

The second is how close eight out of the last 10 finals have been. Apart from two 3-0 victories – for Real Madrid in 2000 and Porto in 2004 – the other eight finals have been decided by a single goal or, on three occasions, a penalty shoot-out. I don’t expect it to be very different tomorrow.

Both teams will have their spells in control and, as was the case in the FA Cup final, victory may just be decided by which side makes their period of supremacy count.

Off on Aeroflot now. Back online on Thursday.

Ignore the pundits... nobody knows anything!

2008-05-19T14:07:00Z

Nobody knows anything. That was screenwriter William Goldman’s maxim.

That is why Irving Thalberg, the great Hollywood producer, turned down the chance to make Gone With The Wind because “no Civil War picture ever made a nickel”. It is also why, as the UEFA Champions League final nears, you can hear and read pundits scratching around for precedents, omens, rationales to justify every possible outcome.

Ruud Gullit, who kick started the Chelsea revolution as player and coach, thinks Chelsea will win because they lost the Premier League and “they will be out for revenge.” Thanks for the devastating technical insight, Ruud.

Marcello Lippi, interviewed here thinks his old friend Sir Alex Ferguson has the edge with his leadership, array of attacking talent and United’s team spirit but doesn’t stick his neck out too far, concluding only that “Chelsea are in good condition but Manchester have a slight advantage.”

Far be it from me to challenge the only coach to win the World Cup and the Champions League but United’s defence might prove critical. They have not conceded a goal for 486 minutes in this tournament – my Reuters fact box tells me – and have kept eight clean sheets in 12 games. They have also, the same factbox tells me, never scored in the first half of a European final.

Last night I dreamt Chelsea won 3-2, a most unlikely scoreline (unless it goes to extra time), but the dream was over so fast I couldn’t, even under hypnosis, swear on my heart of hearts that it was a premonition of the Champions League final.

A Chelsea victory will rank Avram Grant alongside such other coaching greats as Tony Barton and Dettmar Cramer. They both won “big ears” despite taking over as coach mid-season. Barton replaced Ron Saunders at Aston Villa only three months before that unlikely triumph against Bayern in 1982 and Cramer triumphed with Bayern against Leeds in 1975.

The 1975 final is a perfect illustration of how such an important fixture can be remembered in completely opposing ways. In England, it will always be the final in which an inept referee deprived plucky Leeds of victory by ignoring two penalty claims and disallowing a Peter Lorimer goal.

In Germany, Bayern’s 2-0 win was regarded as a moral victory against a team of thugs whose crippling tackles could have ended careers. Uli Hoeness injured his knee in the final and had to stop playing when he was just 27.

Lorimer's goal that wasn't vs Bayern in 1975

In search of other precedents, I scoured assorted background stories buried in various dark and red blue recesses in cyberspace. Chelsea have never lost in Moscow – they beat CSKA 1-0 in the 2004/05 Champions League group stage – and United have never won there: they went out on penalties to Torpedo Moscow in the 1992/93 UEFA Cup first round after drawing 0-0 in the Luzhniki. Only Ryan Giggs, of the players likely to feature on Wednesday, will remember that.

Neither side have ever lost a European final – so something’s got to give – and …. I’m getting fed up now. Let’s just agree with Goldman. Nobody knows anything. All we can do is speculate.

Chelsea win in Moscow - something Man United have yet to do

I have been wondering whether Winston Churchill ever copyrighted his famous remark about a riddle wrapped inside an enigma because, if he did, his heirs would be worth millions – even if they just accrued royalties from the number of times that cliché was applied to Avram Grant.

Despite what Richard Williams says here, Wednesday’s final will not tell us whether Grant is a great manager or a mediocrity.

If Chelsea win 1-0, there will be celebrations and hosannahs. But next season, when Chelsea hit a sticky patch, someone very much like Richard Williams will write a column which asks: “Avram Grant: great manager or lucky mediocrity?”

So finally, here are my thoughts about things I’d like to happen on Wednesday – but probably won’t.

1. United and Chelsea produce an 11-goal thriller that beats the previous record of 10 goals scored in the 1960 final which Real Madrid won 7-3.

2. Vladimir Putin impresses neutral observers with his keepy uppy skills. We interviewed Wagner Love in Champions and he said, at the civic reception where CSKA celebrated their 2005 UEFA Cup win, Putin did a spot of keepy uppy. The best Love could say was: “Football is not his thing.”

Putin is, of course, a Zenit St Petersburg fan – like his successor Dmitri Medvedev – and should be in a good mood this week.

3. Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack sign a pre-match contract, countersigned by Roman Abramovich, John Terry and Kofi Annan, outlining the precise conditions under which each of them will have the right to take free-kicks within shooting distance of the United goal.

4. ITV’s Peter Drury doesn’t mention 1999 and all that whenever Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs get the ball.

5. Nobody blames the referee after the game.

6. If Chelsea win, Roman Abramovich talks to the press and admits that some of the glory is due to a certain Mr Mourinho.

7. The word “special” or “special-special” never passes any pundit’s lips in the studios at Sky and ITV.

8. One of the goalkeepers scores. From open play.

9. Didier Drogba doesn’t pout. Not even once.

10. In a pre-match press conference, Cristiano Ronaldo admits that his uncanny resemblance to the young Cliff Richard is no fluke. “I’ve always been a huge fan of Cliff’s,” United’s stellar Portugeezer admits, “My mum used to play all his hits. Did you know Bachelor Boy was No1 in Madeira for twelve weeks?”

Off to Moscow now, if the bus to Heathrow works, and my connection at Amsterdam doesn’t fall through. Back online on Thursday.

The spy who loved Russian football

2008-05-15T13:38:00Z

Could football have prevented the Russian revolution? The Scottish spy, journalist, diplomat, assassin and footballer R.H. Bruce Lockhart certainly thought so.

In chapter two of his memoirs, Lockhart recalls how two Lancastrian mill owners, Clement and Harry Charnock, introduced the sport to the Russian capital “as an antidote to vodka drinking and political unrest” among their staff.

The works team became known as OKS and dominated the Moscow league before the First World War. Lockhart recalled: “I have always counted my football experiences with the Russian proletariat as a most valuable part of my Russian education… when I came to know these Northcountrymen better, I realised what splendid fellows they were.

“I fear the experience was more profitable to me than to my club. I was, in fact, hardly worth my place. Nevertheless, these league matches excited immense enthusiasm. At Oriechovo we played before a crowd of 10-15000. Certainly, Charnock's experiment was a complete success. If it had been adopted in other mills, the effect on the character of the Russian working-men might have been far-reaching.”

Lockhart’s rationale is typically Victorian, suggesting that sport in general – and football in particular – could cure all kinds of ills. Karl Marx might have called it an opiate for the masses but he had died in 1883 and his only close brush with the game came in Monty Python’s football sketches.

The Charnocks had started small. They had imported a football which, eyewitness accounts suggest, they had inflated in front of their workers, kicked it high into the air and watched, in dismay, as the Russians fled fearing it was some kind of life-threatening incendiary device.

Not many mill owners did follow the Charnocks’ lead. CSKA – or the Amateur Society Of Skiing Sports as it was originally known – was founded in 1911. And the Russians played an English XI known as The Wanderers in a friendly in 1911, losing 11-0. Defeat – and the fear of incendiary attack – didn’t deter them for long. The Russians lost 16-0 to Germany and joined FIFA a year later.

There were, though, enough teams to form a Moscow league. OKS won the league in 1912 with a team containing six Brits – including Lockhart and an Army officer who, as General Wavell, commanded the Allies in the Middle East in World War Two – and five Russians.

Lockhart was a reasonably consistent performer although in a friendly against a German team he was reprimanded by the referee for asking God to condemn opponents who “used their weight with unnecessary vigour” to “the nethermost depths of Hell”.

As Russia became embroiled in revolution, Lockhart had a hellish time of it. As head of the British secret service in Moscow he and Sidney Reilly - the legendary ace of spies played by Sam Neill on TV - concocted a bizarre plan to accost Lenin and Trotsky at the Bolshoi ballet.

It’s not clear whether the spies intended to shoot the Bolshevik leaders or arrest them but the plot, daft as it was, never amounted to anything.

When a Socialist Revolutionary called Fanya Kaplan did shoot Lenin – not fatally – in 1918, Lockhart was banged up by the Russian secret police and, eventually, released in a swap for a Soviet spy called Maxim Litvinov. By then, at 31, his playing days were almost over, though he had a senior post in British intelligence in World War Two and didn’t die until 1970. But the legacy of Lockhart and the Charnocks endures.

Ironically, OKS, home to a British secret agent, metamorphosed into Dinamo Moscow, the KGB team nicknamed “garbage” – Russian slang for cops – by rival fans.

And when the Soviet Union beat England for the first time at Wembley in 1984 (2-0 with a goal by the prolific Oleg Protasov) it was regarded back in the USSR as if their game had finally come of age.

The Premier League: perfect for morons

2008-05-06T08:31:00Z

In England, the first all-Premiership Champions League final has been a cause of national rejoicing, self-satisfied chortling and the frequent airing – in inns and taverns across Britain – of the opinion that the Premiership is the best in the world.

Alas, this conviction is not shared by the rest of Europe.

Nobody’s quite come out yet and compared English football to faeces on a stick as Jorge Valdano, World Cup winner, author and man about town, did last year. But Arrigo Sacchi, who dubbed all three English semi-finalists as dull and uncreative, has come close. And Frank Rijkaard, the eloquent, but vulnerable coach at Barcelona, has said while Premiership teams deserve their success it would be nice if they played some football in the Champions League.

It’s easy to dismiss this all as sour grapes but foreign players have been saying similar things for a while. Christian Ziegler memorably observed that the Premiership is the only major league where giving the ball away is not regarded as a mistake – because you’re certain to get it back.

And Hernan Crespo, talking to Champions a couple of years ago, was at a loss to find the words to describe the lunatic speed at which the Premiership was played. The only benefit, he suggested, of playing football at that speed was that it made it impossible for players to think. In other words, though he was too polite to say as much, this was a great way to play the game – if you were a moron.

Crespo at Chelsea: "Perhaps if we all lie down for a while..."

In fact, none of the three English semi-finalists play football the Premiership way. Not even Manchester United. But, as Jose Mourinho has pointed out, if most young English footballers are trained to play in one particular style it can’t be good for the long-term health of the English game.

Good as it is to have two English teams in the final, it would boost the vitality of the Premiership if we couldn’t, before the season started, name the top four teams. You can’t do that in any other major league in Europe.

Professional sourpusses won’t be impressed by whatever Chelsea and Manchester United do in Moscow. A seven-goal thriller and they’ll mock the quality of defending. A repeat of the 2007 FA Cup final and they’ll gleefully dismiss the Premiership as dull. But games like this are a golden opportunity for both teams to challenge the unflattering stereotype that still bedevils English clubs.

The strange case of Didier Drogba

There are many things I wonder about Chelsea’s striker. Insignificantly, I wonder how to pronounce his surname. A worrying number of people I know pronounce the second syllable ‘bah!” as in “Bah! Humbug!” But I prefer a flat northern/Midlands “ba”.

The second – and most important – thing that puzzles me about Drogba is that I have never seen a creature so strangely fragile yet resilient? One moment, he’s leading the line with the gladiatorial passion of Russell Crowe in Gladiator. The next, he’s doing a pratfall with the distressed panache of Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. And sometimes, when he’s not enjoying a match, he has the best pout since Kate Moss.

None of this qualifies my admiration for an immensely talented player who must be, when he’s on his game, the best lone striker in the world today. Which, seeing as strikers are increasingly condemned to mount a lonely vigil upfront, is almost like saying Drogba the best striker in the world.

Against Liverpool last week, he gave a truly fascinating performance. In the first half, he terrorised their defence. In the second, he was virtually absent. He seemed, from his absorbed expression, to be contemplating some ancient slight afresh. And then, reinvigorated in extra-time, up he popped to score what, I believe, were his first goals in the knock-out stages of the Champions League.

I know during many games he’s played part of the time as if he had his mind on other things – his next club perhaps – but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on fire in Moscow.

I don’t know what it means but there is, in the Russian capital, a growing conviction that Chelsea will prevail.

The Hughes doctrine

Goals, said Mark Hughes on ITV two weeks ago, come from consecutive errors. And the Champions League semi-finals proved him right.

First, there was Lamps caught in possession, than Makelele’s jump over the ball as Liverpool went 1-0 up at Anfield. Then there was Mascherano, taking charge of Kalou on the flanks but failing to stop the cross that panicked Riise.

In the United-Barcelona second leg, there was Zambrotta’s blind pass into the grass just in front of his penalty area to give Scholes a clear shot.

At Stamford Bridge, there was Hyypia’s foul to concede the penalty, Drogba’s stuck-out leg that impeded Hyypia and should have conceded another penalty, Riise (again) waving for offside and out of position as Drogba scored Chelsea’s first and, finally, Petr Cech’s lapse of concentration when Babel shot.

You can see why coaches become obsessed by eliminating mistakes.

And finally

Something remarkable happened at the weekend. Porto, runaway champions in Portugal, lost 3-0 at home to Nacional. What was remarkable – apart from the fact it was the Dragons’ first home defeat all season in the league – was that the Dragons had, previously, conceded just a single goal at home.

Foreskins and Total Football

2008-04-24T10:09:00Z

Blogs aren’t supposed to be confessions of ignorance. But this time, instead of trying to answer a question, I’m asking one in the hope that someone can enlighten me.

The question is this: is there a Jewish style of football?

The question arose when I was researching Bela Guttman for the next Champions. As a coach, Guttman won the European Cup twice with Benfica and invented/perfected the 4-2-4 formation with which Brazil dominated football from the late 1950s to 1970. As a player, Guttman shone for Hakoah Vienna, a Jewish sporting club which famously beat West Ham 5-0 in 1923.

Bela Guttman: Architect of the gung-ho 4-2-4 formation

Hakoah means 'the strength' and the club was founded, in 1909, because Jews were banned from other sporting clubs in Austria and because the founders - the librettist Fritz Löhmer and dentist Ignaz Herman Körner - were influenced by a doctrine called Muscular Judaism devised by a chap called Max Nordau.

In a speech in 1898, Nordau called for the creation of a “new Jew” and a renewed emphasis on Jewish physical culture. Jewish sports clubs quickly sprang up across Europe serving as a focal point for political aspirations and, in some cases, a defence against anti-Semitic attacks.

Nordau’s ideas had something in common with the English Victorian emphasis on sport as a morally improving force that would, in adolescence, protect boys against the sin of Onan. In football, the greatest manifestation of Nordau’s beliefs was the Hakoah Vienna team of the 1920s which won the Austrian league in 1924/25 and toured the world like a Jewish footballing Harlem Globetrotters.

Hakoah Vienna had a particularly profound impact in America where, on a 10 game tour in 1926, they were watched by 200,000 fans and, in one game in New York, by a crowd of 46,000 - a record attendance for a US club ‘soccer’ match which stood until 1977.

Guttman, like many of his teammates, stayed in America after the tour, starring at half-back for the New York Giants and, then, for the expat team Hakoah All-Stars. Other Hakoah players, emigrating to what was then Palestine, founded Hakoah Tel Aviv in 1938.

That very year, as Hitler annexed Austria, the *** closed the original Hakoah Vienna. Hakoah star József Eisenhoffer, an outside-left who later managed Marseille, is believed to have died in a concentration camp in 1945. His more fortunate teammate, Egon Pollack, moved to Palestine in 1938 and managed the Israeli football team when they lost 3-1 to the United States in 1948.

Guttman survived to become a tactical innovator, almost as influential as another Austrian Jew Hugo Meisl, a talented inside forward who coached the great Austrian wunderteam of the 1930s.

This team played a free-flowing system, designed to (as Hugo’s brother Willy put it) “free our soccer youth from the shackles of playing to order” which was later dubbed The Whirl and anticipated the Total Football of Rinus Michel’s Ajax.

So the question I started with has one possible answer, which is that if there is a Jewish style of football, some of that – thanks to such pioneers as Meisl and Guttman – has been assimilated into the way the game is played from here to Brazil.

But that isn’t the whole answer. Many clubs – from Spurs to Ajax – are still regarded as Jewish clubs. Spurs’ Jewish identity was once, partly, a matter of geography. Ajax’s is more mysterious. Simon Kuper, author of Ajax, The Dutch, The War, believes that Ajax’s hard-core fans started carrying Jewish symbols in the 1980s after a visit from Spurs.

The issue of whether Ajax is or isn’t a Jewish club took a sinister turn in 2005 when the supporters club’s home was set ablaze in – Ajax fans are convinced – an anti-Semitic attack.

Ajax fans: Jewish identity remains mysterious

Spurs’ Jewish allegiance puzzled Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains The World, who describes this as a form of “commodified tribalism” as the fans are “not Jewish and none of the players are Jewish”. Foer’s book is a good read, but he didn’t quite get the Jewish club thing.

He even recounts a tale of Manchester City fans exposing themselves and taunting Spurs fans with the chant “We’ve got foreskins, we’ve got foreskins”. I know many Spurs season ticket holders, none of whom remember this. If anyone does recall the foreskin-waving, do let me know.

But what about the players? Different countries do have different football cultures and players who symbolise how a nation plays the game – or likes to think it does. For Scotland, it might be Jinkin’ Jimmy Johnstone, for Argentina, Maradona and, for Italy - in the modern era - Paolo Maldini.

Researching Guttman I discovered the soccer section of a Jewish sports hall of fame and began, serendipitously, to click on the ‘next’ button and read the profiles.

Certain themes recur: spats with managers (Eyal Berkovic v Avram Grant and Harry Redknapp; Mickael Madar v Walter Smith), players who feel compelled to coach to pass on their wisdom (Guttman, Meisl and Giora Shpigel, who steered Maccabi Haifa to the last eight of the Cup-Winners’ Cup in the early 1990s) and, above all, technique.

The words “incredible skills” and “technical ability” recur in the profiles of, to name just a few: Yossi Benayoun (Liverpool), Joszef Braun (outside-right for Hungary, 1918-1926), Uri Mamilian (a midfielder in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s whose technique was so good an Israeli grocer today, assuring a customer his wares are perfect, might say: “Every apple is a Mamilian”) Haum Revivo (attacking midfielder, Celta Vigo 1996-2000) and Mordechai Spiegler, Israeli’s greatest player and scorer of one of the most beautiful goals in World Cup history against Sweden in 1970.

Benayoun: “incredible skills” and “technical ability”

This doesn’t mean that Jewish/Israeli football hasn’t produced its share of defensive man-mountains, or bustling centre-forwards. But technique – from the mini-profiles posted on this site – is the most obvious recurring theme.

And yet in the Euro 2008 qualifiers, the most conspicuous feature of Israel’s play was their defensive mindset. And, if you watch the highlights of the Israel v Sweden game in 1970 you see, apart from Spiegler’s goal, a very muscular brand of football indeed.

I close this blog, as I started it, better informed but not much the wiser, hoping that someone reading this can enlighten me.

Binges, monsters and Hammers. Where are they now?

2008-04-18T18:50:00Z

Where are they now? is one of the most pointlessly fascinating questions in football.

Yet after a trip to a second hand bookshop I embarked on a where are they now binge fully cognisant of the risk that, as a binging Brit, I might end up condemned on the front page of the Daily Mail.

In the bookshop my heart leapt as I spotted a rare gem: International Football Book No13 (1970), the definitive football annual of my childhood, mislaid in a semi-nomadic progress across London in the 1980s.

And it was in reasonable nick even though one previous owner had thoughtfully scribbled an apparently random series of fractions – 6/15ths, 5/7ths, 8/10ths – across the statistics section.

If you’re 30-something or older you probably owned similar annuals filled with articles by stars all – I presume – ghosted with punchy headlines like “Luigi Riva Goal-hungry but a monster!”, the inevitable article by Brian Glanville and a light-hearted story for comic relief. In International Football Book No13, this niche was filled by a shot of Ken Dodd, with Diddymen, demonstrating tactics in the goalmouth at Runcorn FC.

I know what Riva is doing now, he’s still at the Italian FA, fishes a lot and does his best to avoid saying anything that will provoke headlines in the voracious Italian sports dailies. He was the first bloke to console Baggio at USA '94 after that penalty. But what, I wondered, about the rest of them?

Luigi Riva: "Goal-hungry but a monster!"

A shocking number are no longer with us. Ian Hutchinson, George Best, Alan Ball, Belgian centre-back Leon Jeck, East German footballer of the year Roland Ducke, and Romanian striker Florea Dumitrache had all died as had Julio Baylón, the Peruvian winger who wasn’t fully fit for the 1970 World Cup but, in his prime, could run the 100 metres in 11 seconds.

Baylón died in 2004 at the age of 53 but his 19-year-old son – the illustriously named Jair ‘Jairzinho’ Julio Baylón Iglesias – is on Braga’s books although he is on loan to Alianza Lima where the great Teofilo Cubillas made his name.

Georgi Asparuhov, the gifted Levski Sofia striker reductively known as the “Bulgarian George Best” was killed within a year of the annual’s publication. Just 28, he died in a car crash. There’s a semi-apocryphal story about him turning down Milan with this cracking speech: “There is a country named Bulgaria and in that country there is a team called Levski. You haven’t heard of them, but that’s where I was born and where I shall die.”

When Asparuhov met his untimely end, somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people packed Sofia to watch his funeral. He scored a cracking goal against England at Wembley and was, Levski fans insist, better than Stoichkov.

George Best may no longer be with us but Clyde, the black striker who started at Bermuda’s Somerset Cricket Club before signing for West Ham, certainly is. In 2006, he was given an MBE and spent £500 on a top hat to wear at the ceremony only to have it temporarily confiscated by a Buckingham Palace guard on security grounds.

The International Football Book No13 being a book for kids, Clyde’s article talks about tackling, climate and results but gives racism in football the swerve. Known as something of a gentle giant, Best was often the scapegoat for the team’s failures but persevered and later had a reasonably successful career in north America with the Portland Timbers and Toronto Blizzard.

Gentle giant Clyde Best gets up above Leeds' Gordon McQueen

Best endured longer than Ade Coker, a slight, nifty black striker who, after nine games for the Hammers between 1971 and 1974, flew to North America and joined the Boston Minutemen. Today, he’s a successful youth coach.

Coker’s party piece, according to Hammers fan Jim Munro was to stop the ball, spin 180 degrees and take it with him. And no, Munro says, he’s not related to Nigel Reo-Coker.

International Football Book No13 carried a piece enticingly headlined “Mordecai Spiegler talks of his travels and offers,” by another bit part player at West Ham. Spiegler, who scored Israel’s only goal in a World Cup finals in 1970, was a gifted midfielder, probably the best Israeli footballer ever, who so impressed Ron Greenwood in a friendly that he tried to sign him for West Ham.

But the move was blocked. David Lacey blames the Football League but Spiegler, in his article, says the Israeli FA had nixed any moves abroad. Aston Villa, Birmingham City and Nantes had all been spurned. He did, eventually, join PSG when he was 28 but the move never paid off. Spiegler obviously hasn’t held this against the IFA as he serves on one of their committees.

Anatoly Byshovets, the Ukrainian star who impressed for Dinamo Kyiv and the USSR in the late 1960s and early 1970s, isn’t dead – nor does he have any discernible connections to the Boleyn Ground – but he is in disgrace. He has managed various clubs – including the fantastically named Tom Tomsk – but left Lokomotiv Moscow last year after they came seventh in the league and allegations of bribery were flung around.

Hector Chumpitaz, the great Peruvian defender famous for his storming excursions upfield, had a more serious brush with the law in 2005 after accepting $30,000 to take part in a mayoral campaign, but the sentence was quashed. Chumpitaz inspired Peru – famous for the red diagonal stripe that Crystal Palace imitated when they were branded as ‘the team of the eighties’ – to a historic triumph in the 1975 Copa America.

Hector Chumpitaz models the latest line from Crystal Palace

His Peruvian team-mate Cubillas is quoted in the annual telling the world to watch out for Peru in 1974. He was only 20 in 1970 but his – to quote Glanville – “electric dribbling and cool effective finishing” made him an outstanding player.

Though he came back, with Peru in 1978, Cubillas never quite made the impact his form in Mexico had suggested and never flirted with joining West Ham either. He did well at Porto between 1974 and 1976 but was later equally prolific for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers.

No player who inspired his team to two World Cup quarter-finals and victory in Copa America can be called a failure but Cubillas looked, in that hazy summer in 1970, as if he would be as big as Best (George) or Pelé.

But it never happened. And that is where all this 'where are they now' stuff comes up short. You can plot a player’s career through sites like Wikipedia and various books but you can never really answer the game’s eternal mystery: why do some players fulfil their promise and others don’t?

White hankies, Elvis and Zico

2008-04-10T13:37:00Z

It’s not often you see fans celebrating a place in the last four of the UEFA Champions League by calling for their coach to be sacked.

But that’s what happened at Camp Nou where a frustrated minority of Barcelona fans waved their white handkerchiefs at Frank Rijkaard as he did what coaches are wont to do: took his best player – in this case Bojan Krkic – off with a few minutes to go to save his legs for big games to come.

Waving white hankies in Barcelona is, like Everton fans shouting “Taxi”, often a sign that a coach’s days are numbered.

The fury was understandable. Barcelona may have reached the semi-finals but, against unfancied Schalke, they were so lacklustre it must count as the biggest misuse of talent since contractual obligations forced Elvis Presley to sing Old Macdonald, complete with farmyard animal noises on the back of a truck in one of his movies.

Barca fans dish out the dreaded white hanky treatment

Only four players gave a display worthy of the rich football tradition epitomised by the Barcelona shirt. And two of those were playing for Schalke: defensive colossus Marcelo Bordon and sparky midfielder Jermaine Jones.

Only Xavi and Bojan did the business for the home side though Yaya Toure scored the lucky winner that Schalke, much the better side in the first half, didn’t deserve to concede.

There’s talk of Barca buying Schalke keeper Manuel Neuer, who made one astonishing save to deny Xavi. On the evidence of this game they’d be better off buying Bordon and sticking him in the centre of defence.

To do the unthinkable, Schalke needed to maintain a certain tempo but with Italian referee Roberto Rossetti blowing for a foul everytime Thierry Henry lost his balance that was never going to happen. The one virtue of such pedantic refereeing is that the officials don’t normally miss much but Rossetti and his assistants completely failed to notice Abidal wrestling Schalke striker Soren Larsen to the ground in the penalty area.

Ultimately, I don’t think it changed the result. As the game became increasingly sporadic and fragmented, Schalke ran out of ideas. But they deserved at least a draw for the ease, intelligence and sharpness with which they opened up Barcelona’s defence in the first 20 minutes. The one consolation for Rijkaard is that, surely, Barcelona cannot play that badly again.

If Schalke ran out steam, Fenerbahce failed against Chelsea because they ran out of faith.

Zico obviously believed the Turkish champions could do it. They had the technique, the tactics (a high ball into the box where Ashley Cole ought to have been standing always seemed to cause consternation) but not, from the way they played, the conviction.

Perhaps they missed the galvanising experience and personality of the injured Roberto Carlos. With no obvious leader, no ‘coach on the pitch’ if you will, Fenerbahce looked good as the game wore on, created the game’s best passing sequence (a lovely cross-field move that started with a back heeled pass out of trouble), but never really troubled the Chelsea goal.

The joy of watching the game on ITV4 was becoming reacquainted with Peter Drury’s stentorian, sub-Churchillian style. “It is not a given,” he announced in his best “fight them on the beaches” manner just before kick-off.

But Drury, like any commentator trying to reconcile patriotism and objectivity, was soon caught in a moral maze. A Fenerbahce striker whose natural momentum seemed to doom him to fall in the penalty area was lucky, Drury announced, not to be booked for simulation whereas the irrepressible (and, judging from his gestures, seriously unhappy) Didier Drogba “did very well to earn Chelsea that free-kick” on the edge of the area.

Chelsea won not because they were brilliant – though they were on top in the first 20 minutes and Ballack’s headed goal was beautifully done – but because Fenerbahce ran out of belief. As the Blues retreated, stopped attacking down the flanks and allowed Fenerbahce to pass the ball around, the Stamford Bridge faithful were reduced to singing “We’re supposed to be at home”.

Early Ballack header sets Chelsea on their way to semis

It wasn’t pretty but it was enough. On form, Liverpool and Manchester United should meet in the final. But the knock-out stages of the Champions League seem to have evolved a sophisticated system of checks and balances where the team that does best in one round goes out in the next.

And Chelsea have, like Milan last year, developed a useful knack of winning without dazzling anyone with their football. All season long, I have had a strange feeling – last experienced somewhere around my left shoulder – that Roman Abramovich may yet get his dream final.

If not, it’ll be white hankies for Avram.

Coaches become a victim of their own success

2008-04-08T11:53:00Z

I scored twice for England last night. In my dream.

We were winning 3-2 at half-time. I was talking to a blank faced coach whose impressive dearth of the usual facial features – hair, nose, eyes, etc – made him look like a half-finished Dr Who monster. Then a beeping car horn woke me.

That started me thinking about coaches. An alibi for blame shifting chairmen, a scapegoat for furious fans, the typical football coach is becoming almost as isolated as the referee.

In part, coaches are a victim of their own success. The footballing alchemy of a gifted few has led fans, journalists and directors to expect them all to be superheroes. But are they as important as we all like to believe?

A quick reconnoitre of the big clubs in Europe reveals one thing: most of them haven’t changed in 30 years. For every Chelsea or Lyon, there are five or six Barcelonas, Bayern Munichs, Celtics, Inters, Manchester Uniteds and Real Madrids.

This does suggest that a deeper long term influence on a club’s fortunes may be the stuff we don’t see: the quality of the infrastructure, the excellence of the youth academies, the calibre of the ground staff or – even – the marketing department’s ability to shift themed duvet covers and generate funds which can be reinvested in players or facilities.

Although many of the game’s business managers can’t even spell strategy let alone understand the need for one, it is clear that there is a core of directors and chairmen that do know what they’re doing.

Their leadership, in the long term, may make the difference. Sir Alex Ferguson is a great coach but would he – and United – be where they are today if chairman Martin Edwards hadn’t stuck by him between November 1986 and May 1990 when he won his first trophy, the FA Cup?

Where would United be had Edwards not stuck with Fergie?

And then there is the small matter of the players. Often caricatured in the press as sex-crazed mercenaries, they can often define a coach’s record.

In Bayern’s heyday, Gerd Muller twice won the Bundesliga almost single-handed, much as Luigi Riva did for Cagliari back in 1969, Diego Maradona for Napoli in the 1980s, the Dutch masters (Gullit and van Basten) did for Milan in 1988/89 and – if United do retain the Premiership – as Cristiano Ronaldo will have done this year.

If a good goalkeeper is said to be worth 10 points a season, how much is a good coach worth? At Chelsea, the changeover of Ranieri and Mourinho delivered 16 extra Premiership points in 2004/05 over 2003/04.

But by 2005/06, the Mourinho dividend had fallen to 12 points and, in 2006/07, it was just four. The Blues won as many games as in 2003/04, scored three less goals, finished in the same position – second – and reached the same stage of the UEFA Champions League. The difference, in the Premiership, was that they were defensively slightly tighter and drew four more games than in Ranieri’s last season.

The Mourinho dividend is, like the man himself, unusually immodest. More typical is the transformation Fabio Capello performed at Real Madrid last season. He won la Liga with 76 points, but in 2005/06, despite firing managers almost as fast as Alan Sugar sacks wannabe apprentices, Real amassed 70 points, scored four more goals than in 2006/07 and conceded exactly as many as they did under the Italian defensive maestro.

The title-winning difference between the two seasons, in hard statistical terms, came down to three games which the madrilenos had drawn in 2005/06 and won in 2006/07. If Barcelona hadn’t dropped six points from their 2005/06 tally, Real would have endured another season without silverware.

The Mourinhos, the Capellos, the Wengers, the Hiddinks and the Fergusons are a successful elite who have proved they can to it at different clubs and in different countries.

But the vast majority of coaches like Luigi Del Neri, who steered Chievo’s Flying Donkeys briefly into Europe, have one successful spell which they struggle to recreate wherever else they go. Even Marcello Lippi, a genius at Juve and with the Azzurri, looked to have developed clay feet in a brief, dire spell at Inter.

I’m not saying coaches are irrelevant. But the case that what they do is an easily transferable skill that can cross borders and club cultures remains unproven. Only Ernst Happel and Ottmar Hitzfeld have won the European Cup with different clubs. Only five coaches have won the Italian league with two different clubs. Only three coaches have steered different clubs to the title in England: Brian Clough, Kenny Dalglish and Herbert Chapman.

Jose and Arsene have enjoyed success in more than one country

In business management, it is a cliché that managers can only affect 10% of the factors that determine their success and the cult of the star CEO – often bought in from outside and, just as often, misfiring spectacularly – is now on the wane.

Football needs to rethink the way it hires coaches. Too many clubs plump for inappropriate star coaches who often don’t fit – possibly because they come in insisting on revolutionary change when a fix here and there might do. Others are content to recycle experienced failures.

The personality appointment – picking a charismatic player with no hands-on coaching experience – went out of favour when Bryan Robson’s coaching career nosedived. This approach may come back into favour if Klinsmann is deemed to ‘turn around’ Bayern although, given that they are currently on track to win the Bundesliga with 72 points (two more than Stuttgart, last season’s winners) it is hard to see Klinsi delivering a Mourinho-sized dividend.

The simple answer might be to learn from business and grow your own.

Not in the Sammy Lee buggins turn way. But in the kind of structured way Milan groomed Carlo Ancelotti. And remember, as Lord Melbourne once said, that “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary to change”.

It is easy to fire coaches. That doesn’t make it right. I saw the proof at Fulham last Saturday. In football, overnight success, despite what the media will tell you, very rarely happens overnight.

What Lenny Kravitz can teach Man United

2008-04-02T13:09:00Z

As that vastly underrated football pundit Lenny Kravitz used to say, it ain’t over till it’s over. But, after the first legs of last night’s UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, it is very nearly over for two teams and Barcelona and Manchester United seem destined to clash in the semi-finals.

The key word is still seem. Teams have come back from greater deficits than Roma. In 1986, Barcelona reached the final on penalties after losing the first leg of their semi-final against IFK Gothenburg 3- 0. (You can read about this – and 10 other great knock-out ties in the latest issue of Champions, available now at all good newsagents and quite possibly a few dodgy ones.) But Manchester United have now won 10 home games in a row in the Champions League, a feat only equalled by Juventus.

The Red Devils have only been beaten on their own turf five times in the entire history of the tournament: by Borussia Dortmund, Fenerbahce and Juventus (all in 1996/97), Deportivo la Coruna (in 2000/01) and Milan (in 2004/05). None of these teams conquered United by the two-goal margin Luciano Spalletti’s men need to earn a penalty shoot-out. In other words, the giallorossi will need a result even more remarkable result than their 7-1 defeat at Old Trafford to book a place in the last four.

Crespo nets for AC Milan in 2005 - United's last home defeat

Cometh the hour, cometh Francesco Totti? Roma fans would like to think so and the great Mario Kempes did once say: “Two-nil is the most dangerous score in football. One goal can change everything.” But it is a big ask.

Roma’s stylish possession football has not been well served by the draw. Facing Real Madrid and United in consecutive knockout rounds is spectacularly unlucky, especially when you consider that Barcelona have almost reached the last four after facing two out-of-sorts teams (Stuttgart and Lyon) two Scottish clubs (Rangers and Celtic) and a Schalke side whose main striker, the gifted yet unpredictable Kevin Kuranyi is in such poor form it’s hard to believe he was the same player who drove England’s defence to distraction in the recent friendly.

The home team’s late flurry – in which, as Frank Rijkaard said, the Catalans got sucked into the Bundesliga side’s aerial game – might offer United more encouragement than it does Schalke.

For all the discontent, speculation and rumour mongering emanating from Camp Nou this season, Barcelona have won all four home games in the Champions League and their recent record in the tournament is: Played 29, W19, D6, L3. Only Chelsea and Liverpool have knocked them out of the Champions League since 2003. So Schalke’s need of a miracle is probably even greater than Roma’s.

Any United fan watching some of Barcelona’s antics in La Liga this season may be already dreaming of Moscow. But in Europe, without ever looking as convincing as when they won the trophy in 2006, Barça have usually gone about their business with a determined focus sometimes lacking in La Liga where their defence has been as porous as Real Madrid’s. A semi-final against Manchester United might be the perfect tonic for some of Barça’s wayward, sulky stars. Sometimes, big game players need big games to motivate themselves.

Sir Alex Ferguson knows his team are now favourites. But he will remember that they were tipped in 1997 and 2001 before bowing out to Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen in the semis. And they had one foot in the final last year before being demolished in the San Siro by Milan.

Blown away at San Siro after winning first-leg 3-2

Winning the Champions League again would, for Ferguson, place the modern United among the game’s all-time greats. He has been surprised and disappointed by his club’s strange inability to repeat the feat of 1999 and may never get a better chance to reconquer Europe. But he won’t take victory against Rijkaard’s team for granted. And nor should the fans.

Why Belgian football's gone rubbish

2008-03-27T10:02:00Z

“In sport,” said Belgium’s greatest footballer Paul van Himst, “you have to be able to handle losing.”

The Red Devils, beaten 4-1 by Morocco in their latest friendly, now handle defeat so well that they find it hard to do anything else. Even Van Himst’s old club Anderlecht are failing with style, losing 5-1 to Bayern Munich in the last 16 of the UEFA Cup, their heaviest ever home defeat in Europe.

Van Himst is one of my idols, a perennial star in the football annuals I devoured as a kid. Technically, he wasn’t as accomplished, I now realise, as Henri Coppens, the iconoclastic Belgian star of the 1950s who regarded the football pitch purely as a stage on which to perfect his performance. (Beerschot fans would often turn up just to see him, so he had a point.)

But Van Himst empowered his teams. With his immaculate side-parted hair, he looked, as Harry Pearson noted, “like he might have driven one of the Minis in The Italian Job while wearing string-backed gloves”. He did star in the memorably bad cult movie Escape To Victory (see fan site here), although he disappointed in the 4-4 draw between the Allies and Germany. Mind you, he was also accused of disappearing in Belgium’s 1970 World Cup games.

Paul van Himst (in red, at right) hides at Mexico 70

No matter. Van Himst inspired Anderlecht to the final of the 1970 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup; they lost to Arsenal 4-3 on aggregate but should have been five or six up after the first leg. Van Himst scored 10 goals in 10 Fairs Cup games that season but, bizarrely, fired blanks in the last three rounds of the tournament.

After he retired, Anderlecht won the Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1976 and 1978 and, with Van Himst in charge as coach, the UEFA Cup in 1982. Belgian football wasn’t exactly cool then but it was famous for something nobler than perfecting the offside trap – which the national team had, under French coach Rene Sinibaldi, used to great effect in the 1960s.

If Belgian football has a golden age, it would start in 1976 and end in 1986, when Maradona’s genius deprived the Red Devils of a place in the World Cup final. The most famous photograph from this tournament, showing the Argentine with the ball at his feet and six Belgians looking worried, doesn’t do that Belgium side justice or explain why, when they returned home, hundreds of thousands lined the streets of Brussels to welcome them.

The 1986 World Cup quarter-final, in which Belgium beat the Soviet Union 4-3 after extra-time, is the Belgian equivalent of the 1966 final: central to the nation’s football mythology. One of the most dramatic games in World Cup history (see the match report), this triumph inspired prime minister Wilfried Martens to declare “We can move mountains”.

That Belgium side was chock-full of talent. The famous names on the teamsheet were Jan Ceulemans, Eric Gerets, Jean-Marie Pfaff and Enzo Scifo. But it has been downhill – for Belgium and its football – pretty much ever since.

The golden age was tarnished by revelations that Anderlecht had bribed a referee before the second leg of their 1984 UEFA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. When the scandal came to light in 1997, UEFA banned Anderlecht from European competition for a year.

Van Himst coached the national side to the last 16 at USA 94, where they lost 3-2 to Germany after being denied an obvious penalty. It was unjust but, as Anderlecht had been awarded a contrived penalty against Forest in 1984, it was as if the gods had insisted on payback.

Belgium co-hosted Euro 2000 and succeeded in becoming the first host nation not to reach the quarter-finals. Two years later, they gave Brazil much more of a scare than England did.

Since then, they haven't qualified for a major tournament and Belgian clubs have become a marginal presence in European competition. Some blame the Bosman ruling. Others point to the disparity in TV money that clubs like Anderlecht and Club Brugge earn compared to clubs like Arsenal and Liverpool, with whom they once competed on reasonably equitable terms.

When English or Spanish clubs snap up talent from PSV or Ajax, as they are wont to do, the Dutch clubs spend some of their loot buying Belgian talent. 11 Belgian internationals currently play in the Eredivisie and they are starting to cross the border before they have reached their prime.

Maarten Martens, AZ Alkmaar’s goalscoring midfielder, left Anderlecht when he was just 20. This pattern has almost been officially recognised, with Beveren and Royal Antwerp effectively becoming feeder clubs for Arsenal and Manchester United respectively.

So is there any hope? Some. The Belgian FA is trying to pep up the Jupiler League, reducing the number of top-flight clubs from 18 to 16 and introducing play-offs in 2009-10. Live games on TV cannot, now, be played at the same time as other Jupiler matches. And the Jupiler is competitive: Standard Liege look set to win it while Anderlecht, traditionally the dominant force, are stuck in fourth.

Despite the dismal showing against Morocco, Belgium still nurtures some fine players. Vincent Kompany, the great hope of Belgian football, is still only 21 and if he can shrug off his latest injury may yet come good. 19-year-old midfielder Steven Defour is a precocious, egotistical and brilliant playmaker whose repertoire of passes and shimmies have already sparked interest from Ajax.

In Hungary, the media have coined the term “Hungarian disease” to describe the curious process by which promising, technically gifted youngsters somehow fail to fulfil the expectations raised by their prodigious talents. A similar blight has struck many Belgian stars, from Giles de Bilde to Walter Baseggio and, so far, Kompany. If young stars like Defour can buck that trend, Belgium may soon discover that, in football, you have to be able to handle winning too.

Flonaldo finally calls it a day

2008-03-20T10:55:00Z

I was going to write about the magic of the FA Cup – specifically about how the magic of the FA Cup will, if it keeps producing semi-finals containing the likes of Barnsley, Cardiff, Portsmouth and West Brom, destroy the magic of the FA Cup – but this seemed a bit churlish.

Then I was going to suggest that Gary Megson should be locked in a bedsit, forced to sit on the floor, with a single dingy lightbulb swinging above his head and told he will not be released until he has read the whole of Hunter Davies’ The Glory Game, can recite the Danny Blanchflower remark that football is about doing something with style and has admitted that, even as Bolton manager, he should aspire to higher things than 17th in the Premiership.

But it’s always rash to encourage hostage taking, even in jest; Megson does have a face like a potato, has already been chastised in the Daily Mail and, besides, the second leg of Bolton v Sporting Lisbon in the UEFA Cup did wonders for my insomnia.

No, the big news is that Flonaldo has finally hung up his boots. Tore Andre Flo is still only 34 but after enough injuries to keep Holby’s A&E department busy for an entire episode, the lanky, nomadic striker has had enough.

It’s a sad moment for a quite remarkable football family – the Flos are Norway’s most astonishing football dynasty – and for the Norwegian game, still concussed after narrowly missing out on Euro 2008.

Tore – nicknamed Ronaldo because he outshone the Brazilian legend in Norway’s 2-1 win over the seleção at France 1998 – is the best known football Flo. But there was Tore’s big brother Jostein who, as the central midfielder and/or striker in Egil Olsen’s long ball 4-5-1 formation, had the mobility of a lighthouse.

If I had a kroner for every time I saw a Norwegian international pick the ball up just before the halfway line and hit a long diagonal pass in Jostein’s general direction in the 1990s, I’d be able to afford a round of drinks in Oslo. Almost.

Jarle, six years younger than Jostein and four older than Tore, was a tall central defender while their cousin Havard Flo, another striker, scored at France 98 against Scotland. Havard’s nephew Per Egil has just emerged from the Sogndal youth team.

Olsen’s long bore game has shaped our perceptions of Norwegian football but the dominant style of play in the Tippeligaen owes more to the fluent, possession-minded counter-attacking football Rosenborg played in their golden era (1988 to 2002) under coach Nils Arne Eggen.

Unfortunately, under Norwich City old boy Age Hareide (one of the 11 who humbled England in the “Maggie Thatcher hell of a beating” game), Norway have not really excelled at either the Eggen or the Olsen style.

And the general malaise has begun to effect Rosenborg who, despite their excellent form against Valencia in the UEFA Champions League, were mired in mid-table domestically and have asked Swedish manager Erik Hamren, who has impressed at Aalborg in Denmark, to lead them next season.

Rosenborg’s pain has been SK Brann’s gain. The boys from Bergen won their first title for 44 years last November. Brann are cherished by trivia fans because they were relegated or promoted for eight seasons in a row between 1979 and 1986 and can this claim to be the yo-yoingest football club in the world.

The fact that the Tippeligaen has actually been competitive since 2003 has sent attendances soaring – up to 1,899,834 in 2007, 700,000 higher than in 2003 – and made the TV deal more lucrative. But Hareide is having trouble finding talent, especially upfront where strikers John Carew and Steffen Iversen are getting a bit long in the tooth and Morton Gamst Pedersen is averaging less than a goal every four games.

The valiant John Arne Riise isn’t even 28 but, of late, his positional sense has left him looking distinctly rusty. The great hope, the talented youngster Daniel Braaten, has proved more useful in the Championship Manager game than he has for Bolton Wanderers this season.

Hareide – who bears a curious resemblance to Ken Barlow in Coronation Street – slammed Carew’s agent Per A Flod when he declared, last summer, that Norwegian football was on the rocks and foreign clubs didn’t want to buy Norwegian players anymore.

But the muted reaction to Norway’s failure to reach Euro 2008 – after defeat against Turkey in Oslo – suggests that Flod may have a point.

The world’s most insignificant derby game?

2008-03-18T10:13:00Z

If the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges had ever dropped into the pub next to Nuneaton Borough’s old Manor Park ground on matchday and I had attempted to regale him over a pint of Pedigree with a potted history of our rivalry with Bedworth United, he would probably have likened this longstanding derby in an obscure, moist part of the West Midlands to “two bald men fighting over a comb”.

He would have been right. But that’s the beauty of Boro vs the Greenbacks. It is easy to generate the passion and heat of local rivalry when serious silverware is at stake, as is often the case between, say, Real and Barça. But when there’s not much at issue – except a temporary berth atop the old Southern Premier League – and 5,172 fans turn up (as they did to watch this fixture on February 23 1982), then you can truly say, with the kind of gruff conviction John Wayne brought to his roles: “This is more than a game”. For the record, through gritted teeth, Bedworth – derisively pronounced by Nuneatonians as “Bed-uff” – won 1-0 to go top. Briefly.

Football rivalries are driven by petty slights – our derby became more furiously contested when Bedworth, once a separate town, was forcibly incorporated into the borough of “Nuneaton and Bedworth” back in the 1970s – and by schadenfreude, a long German word to describe the joy we experience watching someone else suffer. At secondary school, it amused me to discover that Bedworth Town, the forerunner of United, played at a ground that was officially known as The Knob. Killjoys have since had it renamed The Oval.

As a supporter of a non-league side that has reached the third round of the FA Cup three times (the last time, in 2005-06, we forced a replay and gave notice about Steve McClaren’s managerial ‘prowess’), I found it hilarious that Bedworth’s idea of a cup run was a place in the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup. Mind you, when they did get that far – in 1951-52 – they had the nerve to beat us on the way.

Now they languish in the prosaically named British Gas Business Football League Division Midlands, while we toil a few rungs up the ladder in the upper echelons of the Blue Square North. Every football rivalry is also driven by the knowledge that, as with the famous John Cleese-Ronnie Barker-Ronnie Corbett TV sketch about the British class system, we look down on them in full knowledge that someone else – in our case, Coventry City’s Sky Blue Army – looks down on us. (I don’t know who looks down on Real Madrid but then, if you read John Carlin’s seminal White Angels on the arrogant heyday of the Florentino Perez era, that might explain a lot of their problems.)

But, as with the class system, we like to exaggerate the differences. The similarities can be just as striking. Both Boro and United have sprung from a predecessor called Town, both have been mismanaged into serious debt and both were big in the 1980s. OK, bigger. And both of us, when talking trophy cabinets, quickly end up extolling our heroic performances in the Birmingham Senior Cup which, for the record, Boro have won eight times, and United have won thrice.

It’s not a lot with which to whip up a crowd on derby day is it? As a boy in the 1960s and 1970s, it didn’t seem to matter, although I remember the ambience of the derbies – the day me and my mate staged a half-time pitch invasion to get a rare autograph and were laughingly reprimanded by the announcer – better than the goals, results or players (though a nippy winger called Ken Goodwin, small enough to fit on my Nan’s mantelpiece, sticks inexplicably in the mind).

Ironically, the derby I remember best was against another local rival, Atherstone Town, in 1972. And that had nothing to do with the football. The Duke of Gloucester’s eldest son had just died in a helicopter crash and the announcer called for a minute’s silence. After 20 seconds, some smart aleck in the Atherstone end began yelling “Up the Boro!” and I was nearly exploding with the strain of smothering embarrassed laughter.

So the next time Real vs Barça or Milan vs Inter are billed as el clasicos, I’ll silently cheer all those "bald men fighting over a comb" derbies which are so inconsequential they deserve to be celebrated in song by Half Man Half Biscuit. Maybe: “God gave us life, but he also gave us Bedworth United...”

Ajax and Newcastle seek solace from legends

2008-02-26T10:23:00Z

Last week, Ajax effectively checked into rehab. Newcastle United, by contrast, are still in the early Amy Winehouse "no-no-no" denial stage. The surprise of the Geordie Messiah’s return to Tyneside pales beside the astonishing twist that sees the saviour of Ajax returning to rebuild the club he inspired to three European Cups in a row between 1971 and 1973. Most Ajax fans were further cheered to hear that another Ajax icon Marco van Basten will coach them from next season.

Keegan’s appointment was an intriguing, back to the future, move by a board that needed to make peace with its fans. But the strain is showing. On Match of the Day last weekend, Keegan looked like a man painfully discovering, like Jay Gatsby before him, that you cannot repeat the past. His trademark serene optimism was gone. He looked slightly manic, pop-eyed and, when noting that losing games could affect your confidence, seemed to be referring to himself as much as the players. Football eats people - even legends - and Keegan already seems sadly diminished after only a few weeks in the job.

The differences between Keegan at Newcastle and Cruyff at Ajax are instructive. Mind you, so are the similarities. Cruyff has ensured that his role as Ajax’s returning saviour is cloaked in ambiguity. He will be a technical adviser but will not be employed by the club, which could prove handy if it all goes wrong. Keegan, with typical bravery, has put his neck on the line.

The ground for Cruyff’s return was prepared by the Coronel report, an independent study of Ajax’s policy over the last 10 years , which was so damning that Ernst Bouwes, the brilliant Dutch journalist, headlined his story "Total Football? Total shambles".

Many of the Coronel committee’s criticisms of Ajax apply to Newcastle. The board’s failure to provide inspirational leadership, the lack of clear communication between club and fans, the distraction of a pointless stock market flotation, the firing and hiring of too many managers, the signing of too many ordinary players - all sound tragically familiar to any member of the Toon Army.

Indeed, the report warns against the kind of confusion generated by the arrival on Tyneside of Dennis Wise as director of football with a role - and a relationship with Keegan - that is almost as opaque as one of Cruyff’s maxims. (My favourite Cruyffism: "Before I make that mistake, I do not make that mistake"; see here for a riff on his way with words.)

Coronel recommends that either Ajax appoint a Louis Van Gaal-style figure who is effectively the coach and technical director or hires a powerful technical director who chooses a coach who shares his vision. Trying to harness, say, Louis Van Gaal and Ronald Koeman as director and coach when they resolutely refused to see eye to eye, proved disastrous.

For the Geordie faithful still hankering for Alan Shearer’s appointment as coach, two words seem appropriate: Danny Blind. He is one of several coaches Ajax appointed in their last decade of decline primarily because they were Ajax old boys and, the theory went, understood the club. Sadly, most of them didn’t understand coaching.

Ironically, a minority of fans on the main Ajax forum have suggested Van Basten might prove a new Blind alley. Though the Dutch qualified with relative ease for Euro 2008, the highlight of Van Basten’s reign as national coach so far has been the last 16 tie against Portugal in 2006 which produced four red cards and 16 yellows. Only a reassuringly thrilling Euro 2008 campaign can assuage these doubts. But Van Basten does have Cruyff - who has tipped him to coach his beloved Barça one day - on his side.

The good news for Ajax is that the board has faced reality and acted. Newcastle United are still looking for a quick managerial fix when huge structural reforms are needed. And that alone - plus the fact that Ajax’s youth system is still functioning pretty well - means Cruyff may have more luck competing with his own ghost than Keegan.

It is easy to be cynical about both men’s motives. But football would be much more monotonous without the likes of Cruyff and Keegan, legends who dare to try to achieve something which those with - as David Bowie said in Sons Of The Silent Age - "one-inch thoughts" have decided cannot be done.

Off the pitch, the football business has been revolutionised since their heyday. Their returns may go disastrously wrong. They may, a year from now, look like heroes out of time. But in my book, they’ll still be heroes.

PS: In my last blog, I misspelled the brand of beer Uli and I were drinking in Gelsenkirchen. It is Veltins. I obviously drank too much of it.

How the Bundesliga can make England cool again

2008-02-22T14:23:00Z

“Ten Euros!” said Uli-Hesse Lichtenberger, after he had stopped coughing long enough to light another cigarette and resume our conversation.

We were standing in the corner of a smoky bar in Gelsenkirchen, two islands in a sea of blue and white Schalke fans. Uli, who could pass for Keith Richards’ fairer, younger brother, is the author of Tor!, a seminal, entertaining history of German football.

Uli is a Borussia Dortmund fan and €10 was, he said, how much it cost you to stand on the terraces at the Westfalenstadion (now renamed to raise money from a local insurance company). “And for teenagers, paying ten Euros to stand and watch Dortmund is considered a cool thing to do,” he added.

Why were we talking about this? Not to complain about Premiership ticket prices – though they are absurd – but because Uli had recently been discussing, with a Norwegian writer who is writing write a book on the world’s great football derbies, the idea that the way we watch football, especially in England, had been revolutionised and nobody had noticed. And, as Uli told me, “We weren’t even sure that it mattered”.

Watching a few Premiership games, the Norwegian writer noticed how old the crowds were and pondered whether England raising a whole generation of fans who would never – or very seldom – see their teams in action.

My son is an Arsenal fan. He even slept, disconsolately, in his Arsenal kit the night they lost the UEFA Champions League final to Barcelona. But he has seen the Gunners in the flesh just once – against PSG, in one of those sponsor-tastic pre-season tournaments last summer. (We’ve actually seen Fulham – thanks to a friendly season ticket holder – more often.)

To watch that game, I had to join the Arsenal members club, which grades its members according to various metals. We weren’t platinum or gold, but one of the minor metals. Something like nickel. Which gives us the right to buy tickets for next summer’s sponsor-tastic friendlies and receive a weekly email from Arsene Wenger (sample entry: “We don’t concede goals often but when we do we concede well”).

There’s nothing unusual about the way football has disenfranchised Jack. Cost and unavailability have made it nearly impossible for many kids across England to see their heroes in action. The bonding process – which started with me when, aged seven, I watched Nuneaton Borough’s adrenaline-fuelled local derby with Bedworth United; a contest that is not, alas, likely to feature in the Norwegian writer’s book – isn’t working for these kids.

In partial consequence, their allegiances are looser. It’s easy to sneer at kids who support successful teams, but who can blame them? English football is grooming a generation to be glory hunters, exacerbating the financial polarisation that may yet destroy the game.

Stripped of the social and emotional ritual of watching a match live, football becomes mere entertainment. Once that happens – in a world where our attention spans are shrinking in direct proportion to the time we spend on the internet – we are on the primrose path to games being divided into quarters and other grotesque contortions as football remakes itself to become whatever broadcasters want it to be.

In 1989, Michael Ignatieff coined the term “three minute culture”, after discovering that the average household changes TV channels every three minutes. Thanks to the wonders of multi-channel television – and the interminable ad breaks which always feature that mum from the northeast who is thrilled to be told that her monthly loan repayments will be small yet lifelong – we have become even more frenzied in our channel hopping.

In such a context, the idea of an event like a football match which lasts 90 minutes seems a bizarre anachronism. Football – to people who have never had the chance to ‘learn’ how to watch a match live – may increasingly be consumed as highlights packages or snippets of transcendent action posted online. How often have you heard a player described as the ‘perfect YouTube footballer’ recently?

Much of this – especially YouTube’s treasure trove of clips – is good. But the football industry’s financial model is based on the idea that someone – usually Rupert Murdoch – will pay billions to screen these games. If these matches stop pulling in punters, the model collapses and armageddon beckons.

Silvio Berlusconi famously suggested that in the future, fans would watch matches for free. Everybody laughed. He may have been mistaken, but he wasn’t wrong. Selling a match ticket for nothing – or £7 as they do in Dortmund – may make better long-term financial sense for the game than selling a one-off ticket for a Premiership match for £40-50.

In the bar at Gelsenkirchen, Uli managed to look only slightly pained as he said something nice about Bayern Munich. “They limit the number of season tickets to make sure fans across the country can buy seats”. This approach isn’t entirely altruistic: “They figure it’s more valuable if they have a lot of fans who only come to two or three games a season because they’ll spend more on merchandise”.

Such acts of enlightened self-interest may explain why, since 2003, Bundesliga attendances have consistently topped the Premiership’s – so far this season, the average top flight game in Germany attracts 37,644 fans, compared to 34,400 for the Premiership. While alert to the reward of corporate money, German football has not excluded a generation of fans from its grounds. And that may be one reason why, as Uli said over his last glass of Velktsin beer as we departed for the match, football is cool in Germany again. And football hasn’t been cool in England since 1996.

Celtic vs Barcelona: over to Tarby...

2008-02-19T10:10:00Z

Hallelujah, the Champions League is back!

The greatest football show on earth has reached the knockout stage, pitting contenders against pretenders, the best against the slightly above average and promising to humiliate at least one European giant.

When the French revolution was at its bloodiest, Paris was teeming with cackling old crones and bloodthirsty oafs who liked nothing more than to watch the guillotine do its dirty work. Their spiritual heirs in the media will gather tonight at Anfield for a match which is being anticipated, with grim relish, by a monstrous regiment of hacks.

The only light relief for Reds is the hope that Avram Grant may be courting headlines that contain the words “Greek” and “tragedy” by sidelining Lampard and Terry in Athens against Olympiacos.

Moving swiftly on, there are four other ties of particular interest, previewed here with the aid of a joke that is almost as old as Jimmy Tarbuck, lite numerology and a rustle around for any omens which the superstitious – or desperate – might latch on to.

Celtic v Barcelona

On paper, the most one-sided tie. But – to quote Tarby – games aren’t played on paper but on grass. Boom boom! On grass, Celtic’s record against Barça is respectable: Played 4, Won 1, Drawn 2, Lost 1, For 3, Against 4.

Like his mentor Rinus Michels, who flirted with the long ball when coaching Cologne, Frank Rijkaard is conducting a difficult experiment: trying to persuade Barca to play the ball forward quickly to exploit Thierry Henry’s natural game.

So far, this has had mixed results – the blaugranas are catching Real in la Liga but in 10 league games they have only twice scored more than one goal in a match. And Lionel Messi hasn’t scored for so long he’s forgotten what his celebration is.

The returning Samuel Eto’o is hoping his goals can silence speculation about Rijkaard’s future. But even if Rijkaard moves on this summer, it will take a major blow – like being knocked out by Celtic and coming a distant third in la Liga – to persuade president Joan Laporta to contemplate Jose Mourinho’s winning ugly brand of football.

By contrast, Celtic are on a roll. Aiden McGeady is fulfilling his immense promise and his trickery could unnerve Barcelona while Shunsuke Nakamura will hope to float in a free-kick. This is probably going to curse Gordon Strachan’s team but this tie could be much more fiercely contested than many anticipated.

Lyon v Manchester United

Years ending in eight often prove historic for Manchester United. The club was founded in 1878, won the FA Cup in 1948, lost their greatest team at Munich in 1958, won the European Cup in 1968 and, in 1998, came second to Arsenal, a finish that set up the treble in 1999.

For all of Cristiano Ronaldo’s goals and Carlos Tevez’s brilliance, as Jonathan Wilson has pointed out, Wayne Rooney is the key to United’s performances. Like Joe Cole, Rooney is a natural No.10 who has the misfortune to play in a country that doesn’t know how to use them.

Lyon have been consistently inconsistent all season but the pace and technique of Karim Benzema, aka the umpteenth “new Zidane”, will test Rio Ferdinand’s powers of concentration.

Sir Alex Ferguson, who watched Lyon destroy Sochaux 4-1 recently, approaches this tie in a sunnier mood than Lyon coach Alain Perrin. Damned with faint praise by his chairman after the last 1-0 loss to Le Mans – Jean-Michel Aulas said the club had “excellent players and competent staff” – Perrin may find that these games define his future.

Roma v Real Madrid

A fascinating clash between two charismatic teams who can be a bit rubbish away from home. Roma haven’t won away in three in Serie A. Real Madrid have lost seven away from home in all competitions this season, haven’t won away in 2007/08 Champions League and, as they have kept only one clean sheet in the tournament, probably need a goal in the Stadio Olimpico.

Luciano Spalletti’s Roma are good to watch, tactically innovative with a fluid midfield and may fancy their chances here. Real’s defending this season has occasionally exhibited a comic absurdity worthy of Norman Wisdom.

Much may depend on which team can manipulate the other into playing against type. Real and Roma both like to counter-attack so the team that presses – in Rome and Madrid – may get hurt by a sucker punch.

Real have not had a German manager since 1988 when, under Jupp Heynckes, they won the UEFA Champions League after a 32-year-old drought, so could Bernd Schuster yet prove Real’s lucky talisman?

Schalke v Porto

You might think this isn’t a glamour but I’m flying to Gelsenkirchen in confident expectation of goals. In Schalke’s 25 Champions League matches, the goal-per-game ratio is 2.96. Mind you, the Royal Blues’ only 0-0 draws this season both came in the Champions League.

Porto did look like they had the Portuguese league sewn up but Benfica are now starting to making a fight of it. The Dragons like to defend by playing keep ball and the tactic has worked well – except for 30 minutes at Anfield – but Schalke like to dominate possession too. It’s been part of the club’s DNA since they perfected the Schalke Kreiser ‘whirligig’ style of play – based on short, quick, man-to-man passing –in the 1920s.

The papers will be full of key battles this week – Ferdinand v Benzema, Kaka v Toure, Scudamore v Blatter – but this may come down to which of the tie’s reigning enigmas – Kevin Kuranyi or Ricardo Quaresma – is on song.

Random thoughts on European football

2008-02-14T12:44:00Z

1. If Kevin Keegan is the Geordie Messiah, who’s the Geordie John the Baptist? Jim Smith?

2. If Ireland’s ambition is to reach the finals of major tournaments again, why have they hired Giovanni Trapattoni who, for all his vast experience and trophy winning ways, has failed to achieve that very goal at his last three clubs: Red Bull Salzburg, VFB Stuttgart and Benfica?

3. The Trapattoni appointment begs one question: wouldn’t it be helpful if all coaches had a ‘best by’ date stamped somewhere on their personage? That way Newcastle United would have been spared Kenny Dalglish, QPR would have avoided John Gregory and Parma, Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid would have shunned Arrigo Sacchi. I don’t know why or how but if you look at the careers of many coaches there is a moment, usually only noticeable in hindsight, after which, although seem outwardly the same as ever, their career peters out into a succession of might have beens and near misses. F. Scott Fitzgerald would call it *** Diver syndrome.

4. As a Nuneaton Borough fan, I will watch any kind of football anywhere at anytime. But even I find it hard to sit through a whole 90 minutes of the live Eredivisie match on Setanta Sports on Sundays. Some games are so dull I look forward to the ad break.

5. Not every Dutch footballer can change the world but, in the last decade, no Oranjeman has had the impact of Cruyff, Gullit, Rijkaard or Van Basten. And the Dutch record in the last few major tournaments is almost as bad as England’s:
2000: out on penalties in semi-final on home soil
2002: did not qualify
2004: losing semi-finalists
2006: out in round of 16.
Is this the worst generation of Dutch footballers since the 1960s?

6. When will the FA realise that charging managers who criticise referees’ blindingly obvious errors with “bringing the game into disrepute” is, er, bringing the game into disrepute?

7. Is Ray Wilkins on a nice little earner when, pontificating on UEFA Champions League games on SkySports, he looks solemnly at the camera and intones: “The Italians do know how to defend”? Surely, someone – merry japester Richard Keys perchance? – pays him each time he manages to slip this ‘wisdom’ into his commentary.

8. Joe McGinniss, author of the sublime The Miracle Of Castel Di Sangro once tried to do this but here goes: an entire Swedish team made up of Anderssons. In goal, Bengt Andersson (IFK Gothenburg 1998-). Protecting Benny are Patrik Andersson (now at Malmo), his dad Roy (Swedish player of the year in 1977), Bjorn Andersson (at Bayern in the 1970s) and Cristofer Andersson (Lillestrom). The defensive screener in midfield is Christoffer Andersson (now back at Helsingborgs). Alongside him are Petter Andersson (Hammarby), Anders Andersson (formerly at Blackburn) and Anders’ Malmo team-mate Daniel Andersson. Up front, Gunnar Andersson (Marseille, 1950-1958) is paired with Kennet Andersson. Like the current Swedish national team, this team – call it The Magnificent Anderssons – would play 4-4-2.

9. If you ever think your team's league is tight, check out the tightest ever league table – with two points separating the runner-up from the team that came second from bottom.

10. I’ve always had a soft spot for SSC Venezia because they are crap, have twice given away the core of a decent side (to Torino in the 1940s and Palermo in 2002) and used to play in a strange green brown and orange shirt that made them look like a load of mints. My son had a Venezia Maurizio Ganz T-shirt once. Their fans also devised one of the most effective anti-racist tactics in football. Angered by some racist booing, they reduced the whole business to absurdity by booing every time a white player got the ball. They’re now down on their luck, in Serie C1/A, so to give them moral support I’d encourage you to go to Google Maps and contemplate the beauty that is their ground, as seen from above.

Scudamore's cunning plan to chop his own head off

2008-02-11T10:22:00Z

Richard Scudamore doesn’t look like Baldrick. But his vision of a new globalised Premiership has all the cunning, merit and intellectual rigour of the most uncunning plan ever devised by Black Adder’s half-witted aide.

Unlike Baldrick, whose sole ambition was the acquisition of turnips, Scudamore is an innovator. And his pioneering plan is innovative, albeit in the way that Baldrick’s solution for low ceilings – chopping his mother’s head off – was innovative.

I apologise for returning to a familiar theme, which Martin Samuel has so eloquently rubbished and FourFourTwo dissed here, but some ideas are so grandiosely grotesque it takes a while for every nuance of their utter crapness to fully sink in.

In broad outline, Scudamore’s plan suggests that the Premier League should play one extra round of games in five overseas cities, redesign its league tables (a team’s results will be categorised as home, away and neutral), give up – in perpetuity – the right to complain if FIFA clogs up the fixture calendar with friendlies or pointless mini-tournaments, ensure that only truly rich fans can watch their team’s every match and destroy the intrinsic fairness of a system in which every team, big or small, plays every other side the same number of times.

He has since hinted that other Premiership rounds might be played overseas, suggesting he is inspired by memories of the Harlem Globetrotters. As uncunning plans go, it has a certain Baldrickian grandeur.

Scudamore will do all this for an estimated reward of £100m a year – though it’s not clear if this is pure profit after roughly £50m has been spent on costs or gross revenue.

If I were Rupert Murdoch, Setanta and the BBC, I’d be calling Scudamore to demand a refund on the not unreasonable grounds that if 20 club chairmen value their competition so cheaply they are happy to undermine its very foundations for £5m apiece, why should they pay £340m a season to televise it?

Military historians would call this scheme a classic example of ‘victory disease’, a syndrome in which a power becomes so besotted with success its leaders think they can do anything, ignore strategic realities (by taking on too many opponents or invading too much territory) and sow the seeds of their destruction.

In World War II, victory disease helped do for the ***. Distracted and dizzied by its financial success, besotted by the lure of easy money, Premiership chairmen are behaving like international mercenaries, seeking loot wherever they can find it, untroubled by ethical constraints.

Scudamore has defended the indefensible saying “if we don’t do it others will”. If the goal is to protect football’s turf in the global sports market against the NBA or the NFL, why not work with UEFA or FIFA, especially as FIFA statutes state that any competitive fixture played on foreign soil needs their approval?

Probably because, however you dress it up, this boils down to naked greed. And greed which will, initially, eat into marketing budgets that could be spent, not on the NBA or NFL, but on local football teams. Which is why the Japanese FA has indicated it wouldn’t welcome such fixtures.

And how will this greed be rewarded? In 2011, there’ll be a flurry of interest with games in places like Hong Kong, Dubai and, possibly, New York (although, last summer, two top Premiership club bosses were overheard at Heathrow discussing what a waste of time American pre-season tours were).

In 2012, there’ll be a shorter queue of cities as bidders vie for the right to stage Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal and agree, under duress, to host Watford v Bolton too.

By 2013, the law of diminishing returns will kick in and, as the grinding grimness of some Premiership encounters sinks in, many fixtures may have as much TV ratings appeal and revenue-generating clout as the Watneys Cup.

Scudamore says he is motivated by fear of a big club breakaway. The big four or five clubs already make fortunes from friendlies. Far from helping the league to insure against what he calls “more radical nonsense” this proposal – especially his refusal to limit how many rounds might be played overseas – legitimises the American franchise system where teams are based wherever they may raise most revenue and may pit the Premiership against FIFA in the kind of ruinous legal battle football has just been avoided with the deal to kill G14.

This proposal won’t embellish the Premiership brand, it will destroy it. Unless other leagues are daft enough to follow suit – Milan v Juventus or Real v Barca at Wembley anyone? – the Premiership will become a freak competition decided on an unlevel playing field, a statistical anomaly (in which fans could boast “We did the treble over Wigan last season”) and a Mickey Mouse league, though even the most moronic mousketeer would not imagineer such a scheme without sensing its fatal contradictions. Those executives who talk longingly of the Premiership’s “Hollywoodisation” might want to mull on that.

You don’t need to be as cunning a fox who has been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University to see that Scudamore has got this wrong.

Rival leagues are amused, FIFA are furious, most players and coaches (not important enough, apparently, to be consulted in advance) are bemused or livid, fans are outraged and UEFA boss Michel Platini finds the whole thing strange and comic.

Strip the verbiage away, and what you have here is a cash raising scheme by one of the richest leagues in the world which, in essence, is about as sophisticated as a bank robbery.

The struggle for sanity: football, depression, OCD

2008-02-04T10:44:00Z

How many footballers, like Van Gogh in Don McLean’s sloppy, stirring ballad Vincent, struggle for their sanity? And does football make their struggle harder?

Football is, as Portsmouth keeper David James noted, an obsessive business. “How normal is kicking a ball 1,000 times a day? Elitism, by its very definition, is nor normal.” The professional mythology that “you are only as good as your last game” can, James says, mess with your head. Coming off the pitch knowing that – thanks to ProZone and the like – every run, pass, shot, miskick, tackle you made or shirked has been recorded somewhere and can be used in evidence against you can only encourage obsessive behaviour.

So we should not be surprised when Victoria Beckham reveals that David has a textbook case of obsessive compulsive disorder: “We’ve got three fridges – food in one, salad in another, and drinks in the third. In the drinks one, everyone is symmetrical. If there’s three cans of Diet Coke, he’d throw one away rather than have three – it has to be an even number.”

In his fine book Gazza Agonistes, Ian Hamilton noted that Gazza suffered many of the symptoms of Tourettes syndrome: “an excess of nervous energy, a great production of strange motions and notions: tics, jerks, mannerisms, grimaces, noises, curses involuntary imitations and compulsions of all sorts”. Gazza was also so fixated aboout keeping towels level on the rack that he’d run back to the house to straighten a ‘messy’ towel.

There are so many things a professional footballer cannot control – injuries, form, the pitch, the opposition, a teammate’s runs, luck – it’s easy to see how they might obsessively control things – fridges and towels – that are in their power. Jari Litmanen has a different way of coping: he’s made himself Europe’s king of football trivia and pub quizzes.

Obsessive compulsive rituals are part and parcel of football. They’re called superstitions. I know of one world class central defender in the 1980s – from the outside, the epitome of a steady model professional – whose pre-match ritual involved leaving the house at the same time, in the same car, playing the same tape in the car stereo, and picking the same teammate up on the same corner.

This is classic OCD behaviour, though not as elaborate as the preparations by 1970s Newcastle striker John Tudor, in which a bottle of Mackeson, baked beans, rice pudding, chewing gum, whisky, Elastoplast, water and Malcolm Macdonald’s false teeth were all implicated.

Scientists don’t quite know what causes OCD. It probably has something to do with the way the neurotransmitter serotonin works in our brains. Some surveys suggest it is more frequent among people who leave school at 16, as most footballers do. Probably 1-3% of us suffer from OCD. So, on average, between four and 12 Premiership players might. If you use the same math – remembering that 7-12% of British men suffer from depression – 28-48 Premiership players may be plagued by the condition Winston Churchill referred to as his “black dog”.

Owning up to OCD is bad enough, admitting you suffer from depression – as Sebastian Deisler did at Bayern Munich – is even harder. Deisler and Bayern were brave to open up. They might, says Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger , have been influenced by the abuse that greeted Hannover’s Czech playmaker Jan Simak, pilloried as a diva before being diagnosed with “something between complete mental exhaustion and a milder form of depression”.

In his piece, James intriguingly refers to flair players – like Deisler and Simak – as “bipolar”. These cases prompted many old pros to swear it never happened in their day. They probably wouldn’t say that to Neil Lennon. The Northern Irish international said that when his depression was blackest: “I didn’t want to wake up, let alone go out on the park.”

The history of addiction in football suggests that such despair has often been masked with booze, gambling, sex and drugs. Fame and £120,000 a week salaries are no barrier to depression. Indeed, psychologist Oliver James believes that the psychological forces that drive over-achievers – often a reaction to childhood trauma, especially bereavement or separation from a parent – can undo them. Yet many clubs encourage this very trauma: in Cristiano Ronaldo’s surprisingly frank memoir Moments he recalls his misery when, at the tender age of 11, he left his family in Madeira to join Sporting Lisbon’s soccer school.

We are happy to accept that poets, rock stars and scientists can be mentally troubled. It seems to the worst kind of cultural snobbishness not to give footballers the same largesse. In football, as in poetry and science, genius/madness may be two halves of the same thing. Would Maradona, Best, or Cruyff have been as great if they’d all been utterly rational?

Not every footballer can disguise themselves as “one of the lads” and they shouldn’t be obliged to try. The media’s current psychotic intolerance for failure or human error doesn’t help either. We’re just as guilty. As the game’s economic polarisation continues, we increasingly assume that any player who isn’t doing the business is lazy, mercenary or rubbish. The strain of meeting such unrealistic expectations can only push more Deislers and Simaks over the edge.

Paul Simpson is the editor of Champions, the official magazine of the UEFA Champions League

If Jose's the new Revie, who's the new Jose?

2008-01-29T14:34:00Z

Mourinho was the new Cloughie. Old Big Ead even said as much in Champions magazine. But with his meticulously prepared dossiers on opponents, the professionalism with which his teams exploit every law and loophole to win and preference for efficient, rather than stylish football, the special one is really the new Don Revie.

A supporting villain in David Peace’s brilliant novel about Clough at Leeds The Damned Utd, Revie is long overdue a reappraisal as a flawed, great manager with some prophetic ideas.

Revie’s Damned Utd were hard, masters of gamesmanship, so ruthlessly cynical they were accused of crimes against humanity, but they could pass the ball, knew how to control games and – apart from an odd knack for blowing it in some big matches – were a complete football team. Just like Chelsea, after a century of flashy underachievement, became under Mourinho.

Revie’s dossiers were not the fruit of an obsessive, anal retentive mind but evidence that someone in English football had realised the old ways – demanding a bulldog spirit, running around a lot and invoking Winston Churchill in the pre-match team talk – wouldn’t cut it. The scorn shown for these dossiers by stars like Kevin Keegan typifies a distrust of professionalism – the quaint notion that being quite so methodical is a bad show – which has contributed to the English game’s present nadir.

To digress briefly, the existence of a corps of oppressed, potentially world class English footballers deprived of first-team football by Johnny Foreigners is as debatable as the existence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. As a weapon of mass distraction, handy in a crisis, English football and the media have always sought a scapegoat – a bottle of dodgy beer in 1970, a crap referee in 1993, the heat, when we lost away to Spain in 1929 and against Brazil in 2002 – rather than confront the harsh truth – we’re not good enough – and progress to the difficult, interesting bit: how do we become good enough?

Anyway, a third of a century later, up pops Mourinho, with the self-confidence of Genghis Khan and the obsessive attention to detail of a trainspotter to triumph with dossiers. Revie, in his final years, fiercely regretted not letting his Damned Utd turn on the style, perhaps fearing he had undermined his legacy. Mourinho should remember that when he takes over at Barcelona, Milan or Nuneaton Borough this summer.

If Jose’s the new Revie, who’s the new Mourinho? The Guardian is divided on this. Nicky Campbell reckons Frank Rijkaard is “Jose with a Dutch accent and Jose is Frank with stubble. No wonder they loathe each other.” Match reporter Sachin Nakrani thinks QPR boss Luigi Di Canio “has a José Mourinho-like quality about him” (read his report here) while Barney Ronay, (in his blog) reckons Juande Ramos is the new Mourinho, because a) he’s from the Iberian peninsula, b) he’s good looking and c) he’s endearingly loopy. Avram Grant, who is literally the new Mourinho – as his successor at Chelsea – is really the chemical antidote to the special one even if his team, confusingly, are winning with Mourinhoesque efficiency.

I thought I’d exhausted the new Mourinhos until, in the Newcastle Chronicle, I found the Mourinho of Latvia (just google “Mourinho of Latvia”). Oddly enough, the Mourinho of Latvia isn’t Latvian at all, he’s a former Canary called Paul Ashworth who coaches Skonto Riga, who won 14 titles in a row and are quasi-officially known as “the Manchester United of Latvia”.

All of this new Mourinho rubbish does prove one thing: like Jacobites pining away in the Scottish moors for the return of bonnie prince Charlie, we’d like the old Mourinho back asap.

Paul Simpson is the editor of Champions, the official magazine of the UEFA Champions League