Professor Champions League

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.

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.”

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.

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).

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