Global, Monday Miscellany

Boris Johnson, the London Mayor who still appears to be putting his wig on back to front, is expected to raise once more in October the issue of what to do with London’s Olympic Stadium once the 2012 games are completed.

It really should be a no-brainer.  To go to such trouble and expense to build an 80,000-seater stadium only to demolish over 50,000 of them as soon as the Olympics are over seems a ridiculously injudicious use of funds.  The country does not need yet another 25-30,000 seater stadium; it is peppered with enough of them already.  And track and field already has a decent 25,000-capacity venue; the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield, currently the home of the Sheffield Eagles rugby league team and, temporarily, Rotherham Utd (shouldn’t they become Rotherham Wanderers?) but it is rarely full even for major athletics events.

Besides, if history tells us anything about Olympic stadia, it is that only football or, in a few cases, rugby can give them a lifetime of decent attendances.  The Athens stadium now houses AEK Athens and, until their new stadium is built, Panathinaikos.  Sydney’s Stadium Australia regularly holds high profile rugby and football matches, while Barcelona’s Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys is now the home of Espanyol.  Only football can attract big enough crowds to make the expense of constructing a huge Olympic stadium worthwhile in the long term.  This is one issue on which LOCOG and friends should not take a gamble.

A Champions League Uefa Cup?

The UEFA Cup is under way again, but to what end?  It is too bloated since the Cup Winners’ Cup was abolished and lacks a clear purpose, apart from being the poor relation of the UEFA Champions League.  One good idea UEFA do not look like having is to give the UEFA Cup winners automatic qualification for the following season’s Champions League group stage, thus giving a huge incentive for mid-ranking clubs to win it and at a stroke providing teams from outside the Big Four in the Premier League an alternative route into the Champions League.  It would make teams take domestic cups more seriously as they could be seen as the start of the long road to Champions League riches and, above all, it would re-invigorate the notion that winning silverware should be a higher aspiration than merely finishing fourth in the league.

At least the week’s matches in the UEFA Cup were worth watching, with Tottenham, Everton, Manchester City and Aston Villa all getting a real scare before eventually earning respectable results, although Tottenham and Everton still have it all to do in their away legs in Kraków and Liège. Only Portsmouth looked comfortable, winning their first ever European match at Fratton Park 2-0 against Vitória Guimaraes.

Only Lyon for Ligue 1

Unlike Tuesday night’s Champions League bore at Stamford Bridge, in which Chelsea thrashed Bordeaux 4-0.  Bordeaux were truly dreadful, lacking ambition and cohesion, yet, if last season’s league table is to be believed, they are the second best team in France.

Conclusion?  The French Ligue 1 is truly abysmal, as anybody who sat through last night’s awful goalless draw between Marseille and Monaco on Sultana Sports will tell you.  Only Lyon are remotely competitive at Champions League level; Marseille have decent players but are flat-track bullies - they will romp past a Lorient, Grenoble or Nancy but cannot cope with the quality of Europe’s best.

We complain that the Premier League is dominated by four teams (which may soon become five, with a nod to Manchester City, 6-0 conquerors of Portsmouth yesterday), but that is three more than Ligue 1, which has been won by Lyon in each of the last seven years.  There is little chance of anybody stopping them making it eight, particularly as Karim Benzema, the league’s best player by a light year, didn’t leave during the close season transfer window.

A troubled yet terrible Toon

Newcastle’s off-pitch problems are well documented but, judging by their performance against West Ham Utd on Saturday, too many players are using the boardroom chaos as an excuse for lamentable performances.  They were wretched at the Boleyn Ground, with Michael Owen’s goal the only moment of quality the team produced.  Even Fabrizio Coloccini, widely regarded as a good defender, has been infected; the way he turned his back to the ball as David di Michele drove home his second goal was truly amateurish.  There are too many lightweights at the club; I hear that Alan Smith has an injury and won’t play for a few months - as opposed to what?

The league winners were in Bolton

So, it was Chelsea 1 Manchester Utd 1.  Mike Riley was rubbish, Ronaldo dived and Chelsea have one of their best defenders injured, so what’s new?  The media still seem to regard the match as a contest between the two rivals for the Premier League title, conveniently ignoring the fact that Arsenal have gone top of the league and are playing great football.  Furthermore, playing great football away to Blackburn and Bolton, which haven’t been their favourite fixtures in recent years.  It is simply impossible to tell in September who will be battling for the title come May but it looks like the ‘Big Four’ will be a little tighter at the top this season.

Reading the game well?

There is a commonly held myth that Reading, being the ‘Royal’ club, do not have to have an away kit.  It is nonsense, of course, but here’s another, more plausible possibility; Reading, being the ‘Royal’ club, do not have to propel the ball into their opposition’s goal to score.  So you would believe having witnessed the bizarre goings on at Vicarage Road, Watford, on Saturday.  Stephen Hunt’s corner rebounded to his namesake Noel, who played the ball back across goal for André Bikey to head against the bar.  Stuart Atwell, the youngest referee in the league at just 25, whistled for a free-kick, only to be advised by his assistant Nigel Bannister that a goal had been scored.  On what grounds the Watford player John Eustace can be burdened with the letters ‘o.g’ by his name in the paper is anybody’s guess.

The real villains of the piece, though, are not the officials.  They made an error; an abysmal one, yes, but an honest error of interpretation.  Why, though, did Steve Coppell not instruct his players to allow Watford to equalize?  There is enough precedent in this matter; in the Carling Cup first round in 2004, Yeovil Town allowed Plymouth Argyle to score after they had inadvertently taken the lead when passing the ball to Argyle’s goalkeeper Luke McCormick after the ball had been put into touch to allow an injured player to receive attention.

Last season, in the second round of the same tournament, a Nottingham Forest v Leicester City tie had to be replayed after Leicester’s Clive Clarke suffered heart problems during half time.  Forest were leading 1-0 so, when the re-arranged match began, their goalkeeper Paul Smith was allowed to run through to score in the opening seconds.  Both sporting gestures were rewarded, with Yeovil and Leicester going on to win their respective tie.  For Reading not to make a similar arrangement was poor form.  Coppell, a manager known for instilling his teams with a respectful attitude towards referees, has said he ‘would not object if a replay were ordered’ but that won’t happen and, anyway, the horse has already bolted. 

If Stuart Atwell is reading this, he might be consoled by remembering that this was not the first ‘phantom goal’ in Football League history.  We are nearly 28 years to the day from Chelsea’s 2-1 win over Ipswich Town at Stamford Bridge, during which an Alan Hudson shot flew wide and struck the outside of the stanchion, only to be given as a goal by the befuddled referee.

Tags: Arsenal, Bordeaux, Chelsea, Lyon, Manchester United, Newcastle, Olympics, Reading, Uefa Cup, Watford

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