England, Global, Manchester City, Monday Miscellany, South America, World Cup 2010

The England fans were a bit nicer to the the England players in Barcelona this year. Even though the margin of victory over Andorra, one of Europe’s worst teams, was narrower than in 2007 under Steve McClaren’s tutelage, the performance was better and the crowd showed greater patience as England struggled to break down a team who, whatever it said in the Sunday papers, were playing with a 9-0-1 formation.

England’s fans travel in greater numbers than any other nation in Europe, especially to summer tournaments, but you do have to question the intelligence of those who boo their own team when it is widely accepted that the English side’s greatest problems are a lack of confidence and an inability to handle nerves.

Besides, most of the fans were too busy aiming their vitriol at the FA and Setanta Sports, the pay-TV network who have refused highlights rights to any terrestrial channel for the opening two away matches, claiming that they have not received a reasonable offer. ‘We hate Setanta’ and ‘BBC, BBC, BBC’ were the chants of the day. The real villains of the piece, though, are the Football Association and their chief executive (though, thankfully, not for much longer) Brian Barwick.

Setanta are not a charity and are not obliged to release a highlights package for free, though you have to question their logic in denying a large majority of British football fans the right to see highlights of their national sides. The inevitable result will be a decline in interest in the national teams; not something which Setanta, who make so much of their newly bloated international live rights portfolio, should be striving to create.

Why, though, was there any need for a change? The existing deal with the BBC and Sky, in which the Beeb showed all home matches and about half of the away friendlies live, with highlights packages for the other away matches, shown live by Sky. It is difficult to believe that the FA were being paid peanuts, but as usual they simply chased the biggest short-term financial feed while ignoring the long-term health of the game.

ITV are perfectly capable of broadcasting a football match and the switch of the home qualifiers is largely insignificant, but the total absence of home-nation highlights on terrestrial TV over the weekend cannot be good for the future of the game.

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Brazil are back, or so it seems, with their extraordinarily unpopular coach Dunga finally ditching his cautious approach after seeing it fail so spectacularly in the Olympics. Brazil beat Chile 3-0 in Santiago, with Luís Fabiano scoring twice either side of a superb strike from Manchester City’s Robinho (that still sounds odd). The match was seen as a crucial ‘watershed’ moment for the under-fire coach, who finally picked a team with attacking flair aplenty, although Ronaldinho again underwhelmed, missing a first-half penalty, while the real stars were the two goalscoring forwards and Diego, the outstanding Werder Bremen playmaker.

Brazil are now, amazingly, above Argentina in the table, who could only draw 1-1 with Paraguay in Buenos Aires, although the result was not the disaster it might appear. Paraguay are, currently, the most cohesive and complete international team in South America and now have a two-point lead over the two traditional giants of the continent. Carlos Tévez was sent off - not for the first time in the qualifying campaign - for a bad tackle and Paraguay’s goal was a calamitous own goal from Real Madrid defender Gabriel Heinze.

Argentina’s goal, meanwhile, was a touch of attacking genius - Riquelme feeding Messi, who ran the defence ragged before feeding Sergio Agüero, who produced a typical Argentine finish - a controlled, low shot placed past the goalkeeper. Agüero then missed a sitter, as did Fabrizio Coloccini, as Argentina’s second half performance, dominating the match despite being a man down, suggested that it is they who will end up finishing top of the South American table.

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Ninny Of The Week - this was never intended to be a regular feature but there are simply too many incidents of idiocy in world football each week to ignore - goes to whoever the assistant referee was that failed to spot that Azerbaijan’s goalkeeper Kamran Arhayev was two yards off his line when Jason Koumas struck his penalty for Wales at a disappointingly less-than-quarter-full Millennium Stadium.

The ‘Respect’ campaign is doomed to failure as long as match officials continue to exasperate attacking players and supporters by simply ignoring so many rules of the game; goalkeepers intruding at penalties being just one of many. We still see far too much illegal defending of corners and attacking free-kicks go unpunished; credit due to Howard Webb for his decision to award Austria’s penalty in stoppage time of their match with Poland for obvious shirt-pulling but still decisions like those are too rare.

Why, furthermore, do referees continue not to book players who wave invisible yellow cards at them after some perceived misadventure of an opponent? This is clear dissent and unsportsmanlike conduct yet players continue to do it regularly simply because they know they get away with it.

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I am delighted for Manchester City’s supporters, who have endured years (decades?) of misery and disappointment before finally acquiring some hope as their club gain some ridiculously rich and ambitious backers from Abu Dhabi. If supporters of Manchester Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea accuse them of trying to buy success it is only because they are worried that City will manage to break into the elite quadropoly at the top of the Premier League and one of the ‘Big Four’ will not be able to take Champions League qualification for granted. The Premier League’s biggest weakness is that it’s number of powerful clubs has for years been equal to its number of Champions League berths, which has simply perpetuated the imbalance. That, hopefully, is no longer the case.

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The Republic of Ireland had a stroke of luck in having their ‘away’ game against Georgia moved from the bear-pit of Tbilisi’s Boris Paichadze Stadium to a neutral venue in the German city of Mainz. Instead of 50,000 baying home fans Giovanni Tapattoni’s side were met with a largely benevolent band of travelling Irish with only a smattering of support for the Georgians, much of which came from ex-pats living in Germany. Their main rivals for second place in Group 8, Bulgaria, do not have to go to Georgia until next month, by which time Tbilisi might not be off-limits any more, and Italy do not go there until next season.

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If you think England are mediocre, simply take a look at the other results across Europe on Saturday and you’ll quickly discover that the supposed ‘big’ teams are not fairing much better. Italy needed a last minute winner from Antonio di Natale to win 2-1 in Cyprus while France capitulated 3-1 in Vienna to an Austrian side for whom Czech coach Karel Brückner has worked miracles in such a short space of time. The FFF, meanwhile, are probably already ruing their absurd decision to keep Raymond Domenech as national team coach despite France being Euro 2008’s second worst team. Lilian Thuram, Claude Makélélé, David Trezeguet and Patrick Vieira have all been replaced by the ‘next generation’ of French players who, despite their doubtless talent, continue to look every bit as impotent and befuddled as England. Plus ça change.

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England’s Spanish hosts over the weekend would not necessarily have been disappointed by Andy Murray’s US Open semi-final win over Rafael Nadal last night; in Catalunya, Murray is one of their own and is often seen in a Barcelona replica shirt, while Nadal supports Real Madrid. And, across Spain, that is what really matters.

Tags: Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, England, France, Italy, ITV, Karel Bruckner, Manchester City, Monday Miscellany, Raymond Domenech, Republic of Ireland, Setanta

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