Professor Champions League : Arsenal

Sturm und drang: A rough guide to coaching etiquette

Paul Simpson — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:21:00 GMT

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.

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

Paul Simpson — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:39:00 GMT

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.”

Megson, Blanchflower and Presley

Paul Simpson — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:33:00 GMT

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?

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Jugglers, copycats and Sepp's dodgy knee

Paul Simpson — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:35:00 GMT

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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Death, glory and Rocky Balboa

Paul Simpson — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:09:00 GMT

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?

Paul Simpson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:23:00 GMT

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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