Professor Champions League : Chelsea

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.

What is the purpose of Chelsea Football Club?

Paul Simpson — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:48:00 GMT

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

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

Flashy underachievement, love and a Roman goddess

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Moscow to Barcelona (via Nuneaton)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perceptions, perches and strategies

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Carroll, Watergate and England’s national emergency

Paul Simpson — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:22:00 GMT

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

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

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

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

U-turns and turnips

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

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

Capello would presumably struggle on University Challenge

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

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

Loving and loathing the Blues

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

The grounds for loving Chelsea were basically as follows:

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

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

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

How handy is Andy?

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

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

Carroll has most pundits singing off the same hymn sheet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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