Global, Monday Miscellany

There was a shower at Wembley on Wednesday evening. It rained a bit, as well. England continued to play exactly the same predictable style of one-dimensional football as their worst displays under Steve McClaren. Fabio Capello picked a ridiculous starting midfield quartet in which the best player, Steven Gerrard, was hopelessly out of position and there was a chronic lack of pace on the flanks. If Capello is insisting on picking the England team on form and not reputation, where was Gabriel Agbonlahor, who scored a ‘perfect’ hat-trick in seven minutes on the opening weekend of the season against Manchester City?

Why pick three and a half central midfielders instead of the exciting Ashley Young wide left? Scarcely have I ever been as relieved to see Stewart Downing enter an England game - it took ninety minutes for somebody to beat Czech right-back Zdenek Grygera and put in a decent cross and it led, indirectly to the corner from which England scored their late equalizer.

Why was Joe Cole, England’s most talented creative midfielder, kept on the bench for more than an hour? Why are so many England managers so scared to unleash their creative players instead of hiding them away on the bench until it is almost too late? It is not enough just to have Wayne Rooney, playing in his ubiquitous ‘free rôle’, a decent international side needs to be packed with players with pace, imagination, intelligence and flair. Can you imagine Spain winning Euro 2008 with a midfield of Alonso, Albelda, de la Red and Guti? It was the Iniestas, the Silvas, the Fàbregases and the Villas that made the difference, yet England’s equivalents are starved of international opportunity.

Why, furthermore, is Jermain Defoe given chance after chance at international level? His first half performance was appalling; three good chances, three easy saves for Petr Cech. Heskey might not score any more frequently, but at least he presented the Czechs with a physical threat and his knockdowns usually found an England team-mate.

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David Beckham was at the Olympic Closing Ceremony on Sunday, where his job was to kick a ball from the roof of a modified Routemaster bus. Presumably, his kick cannoned into the knee of the first available Czech athlete before bouncing out of harm’s way. Beckham’s set pieces are no longer good enough to merit his place in the side; he only took one decent corner against the Czech Republic, whereas David Bentley, on for barely ten minutes, took only two and both were significantly better.

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There is barely a person in the world, whatever their job, who deserves £150,000 per week. Certainly no footballer; certainly not Frank Lampard. But consider Dimitar Berbatov, a sulking, brooding, self-obsessed twerp who can no longer be bothered even to turn up for his club to earn his weekly wage of around £50,000.

Wouldn’t it be great if Tottenham had the balls to withdraw his pay in response to the player withdrawing his services? That would be the fate awaiting most of us if we suddenly decided we couldn’t be bothered to turn up to work any more.

There is a received wisdom that Berbatov is a world-class player. Certainly, he is supremely talented, but for ever four-goal haul against Reading last season there was at least one other match in which he barely turned up. Watching a (borrowed) copy of last year’s Tottenham season review DVD, it is clear that Robbie Keane is the player who Spurs fans will miss this year, and with good cause.

Compare Berbatov’s bare-faced cheek with Lampard who, whatever his limitations as a player, has performed consistently for Chelsea throughout - and indeed before - the Abramovich era. He has scored 15 goals in five UEFA Champions League campaigns, and not just against the Anderlechts and Olympiakoses of the tournament. Three against Barcelona (two in Camp Nou), three against Bayern Munich, two against Lazio, one against Liverpool, one in a final against Manchester Utd.

He scored a crucial extra-time penalty in a Champions League semi-final against the best penalty saver in the world, Pepe Reina, just days after burying his mother. When Chelsea needed to break the deadlock against Olympiakos having failed to score an away goal in the first leg, whose cross was it that set up Ballack for the first goal, and then scored the second? Who, when Chelsea were unconvincingly hanging on for dear life in the quarter final second leg against Fenerbahçe, scored the late goal that eased their passage? Who was it, in earlier seasons, who single handedly beat Bayern Munich 4-2 and got the away goal that killed off any hope of a German fight-back in the second leg?

Who, furthermore, is the highest scoring midfielder in his club’s history? Setting aside his poor England form - which we can, at least when discussing his wages, as it is Chelsea who pay him - Lampard may not be worth nearly £150,000 per week but, as a Chelsea fan, I can assure you he is worth at least three Berbatovs.

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Yet more transfers are going through for ‘undisclosed fees’. Do not the supporters who fund these new signings, either by attending matches or paying for subscription TV channels, deserve to know just how much money each player is worth? Chelsea fans do not even know whether Shevchenko has been sold to Milan or merely loaned.

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Garry Cook - he’s the executive chairman of Manchester City, before you ask - did an interview with Britain’s finest newspaper (you know the one) this week. In it, he had as many bad ideas in one double-page spread as Sepp Blatter can manage in a good year. One ridiculous notion was to end promotion and relegation to the Premier League and shrink it to ten clubs. Cook has not thought this one through. Manchester City’s average final Premier League place over the last four seasons: 11th.

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The Olympic men’s football tournament was won by the Borrowers. Or Argentina, as you may know them. Their troop of midget attacking players - Lionel Messi (5’6”), Ezequiel Lavezzi (5’8”), Ángel di María (5’10”), Sergio Agüero (5’7”), Diego Buonanotte (5’3”, would you believe?) - is representative of Argentina’s ability to create skilful, quick-witted attackers who use their low centre of gravity to their advantage. Maradona was the first and since then Argentina have made it their business to create generation after generation of ‘Next Maradonas’. Absent from the Olympics, for reasons of age and selection, were Javier Saviola (5’6”), Carlos Tévez (5’8”), Lisandro López (5’8”) and Rodrigo Palacio (5’9”). Only Diego Milito fits the description of a ‘powerful’ target man, and he is only 5’10”. Hernán Crespo, Argentina’s only six-footer since Gabriel Batistuta, is no longer a fixture in Alfio Basile’s squads.

Argentina have played most of their World Cup qualifiers Messi, Agüero and Tévez playing in a fluid, flexible front three fed by playmaker Juan Román Riquelme - a giant at 5’11”. And Argentina are doing rather well. They are, in all probability, the best international team in the world. The best team in Europe, Spain, are not much bigger. All of which goes to prove you don’t need a ‘big man up front’ to succeed in international football. You merely need talent and intelligence.

Tags: Monday Miscellany

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