Professor Champions League : Auxerre

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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