The Monday Miscellany

This week’s friendlies have rumbled on in their ponderous, inconsequential way, so how pleasant it was to watch a meaningful game on Saturday between Aston Villa and Odense Boldklub, even if the Danish opposition in the Intertoto Cup ‘Final’ 2nd Leg (there are eleven ‘Finals’, which rather explains why the tournament is being ditched next season) didn’t exactly push Villa all the way. How relieving it was, too, to hear Gareth Barry cheered to the rafters after the rather silly way he was treated in a recent friendly at Walsall, where he was booed and the word ‘Judas’ – one of the rare literary metaphors employed on the terraces of the Bescot Stadium over the years – was chanted with tiresome aggression.

Only amongst football fans can Barry’s ten years’ loyal service to an underachieving club, for so long at the expense of his international career, constitute disloyalty. Barry stuck with Villa throughout the dark days of the early 2000s, the David O’Leary doldrums where the club continually failed to qualify even for the UEFA Cup, a tournament it now seems harder to avoid than qualify for. It is only now that his qualities have been fully appreciated by the England set-up that two of the ‘Big Four’ clubs are sniffing around.

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The football transfer system seems as clogged up as the housing market at the moment. However, whilst it is true that one notable transfer can set off a chain of purchases, in the manner that is spectacularly not happening in British real estate at the moment, in football it is also the case that one signing can stall a succession of player moves. Martin O’Neill probably does not know Danish central midfielder Christian Poulsen but if Gareth Barry stays at Villa Park it is the new Juventus signing he should thank.

When Juventus bought Poulsen from Sevilla earlier this month, it effectively ended their desire to acquire Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso. And with Alonso now looking like he is staying at Anfield, their desperation to sign Barry is greatly reduced.

Barry may also now have to stay as he is the only player at Aston Villa who can fill in at left back following the dreadful injury to Dutchman Wilfred Bouma suffered in the Odense match. Hopefully, Villa’s fans will not now sing so brazenly of Eduardo’s shocking leg-break the next time they meet Arsenal.

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I would agree with Kevin Keegan that Joey Barton ‘deserves a second chance’, if only the Newcastle manager’s arithmetic was not so poor. Barton has now made three court appearances and has been convicted of violent offences twice in recent months; once for the incident in a Liverpool shopping centre and once for the altercation with Manchester City’s otherwise forgettable Frenchman Ousmane Dabo.

Any notion that Barton’s tough background – there are estates in Britain of whose squalor the whole country should be ashamed – and his considerable ability as a footballer should afford him extra leniency are easily dispelled by the most fleeting glance at the appalling CCTV footage of the former incident, in which, in the words of the presiding magistrate who initially remanded him, he “lashed out indiscriminately” at an innocent bystander. Barton is a player football simply cannot afford to have in the limelight.

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Manchester Utd have what’s called a ‘feeder club’ – the Belgian side Royal Antwerp. The second division side has, in recent years, fielded many young United players like John O’Shea, Danny Higginbotham, Danny Simpson and Phil Bardsley; the idea is that young players can experience competitive first-team football elsewhere before being ‘risked’ in the first team.

Now consider Barcelona players past and present; Marc Overmars, Emmanuel Petit, Gio van Bronckhorst, Thierry Henry and Aliaksandr Hleb and conclude that the Catalan side, on that definition, appear also to have a feeder club.

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England finished third in their group at the European Under-19 Championship in the Czech Republic this month, which means they have qualified for the far more prestigious U-20 World Cup next summer in Egypt, having missed the 2005 tournament in the Netherlands and again in 2007 in Canada. But the most interesting aspect of the tournament – in which Germany won the final 3-1 against Italy – was the re-emergence of Hungary, who have been lost to major international tournaments since their unremarkable performance in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. 1-0 wins over Bulgaria and a Spanish side who have dominated European international youth tournaments in recent years took Hungary to the semi finals, where they lost 1-0 to Italy. Two of their three goalscorers, András Simon and Kirsztián Németh, can be found among Liverpool’s ranks and are both highly promising forwards.

Hungary will not qualify for the 2010 World Cup – they are in a group with Sweden, Portugal and Denmark, but they could start to do what Northern Ireland and Scotland have done in recent years, and work their way up the European qualifying rankings. Hungary are precisely the kind of side that might benefit from an expansion of the Euros from 2016 from 16 to 24 teams.

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The ridiculous fuss continues over the involvement of a Great Britain football team at the 2012 Olympics. The notion that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales’ independent status as international sides would be compromised by a one-off tournament not regarded, in western Europe at least, as being that important is absurd. There will certainly be a Great Britain side, the only question is whether it will be dominated by Englishmen as a result of politics or footballing merit.