Global, Monday Miscellany

It’s a bit of a UEFA convention special this week, after European football’s governing body’s annual pow-wow resulted in several Very Important Decisions being made.  Some were good, some bad, and one was downright ugly.

The decision to fine the Croatia FA a trifle less than £15,000 for the home fans’ racist abuse of Emile Heskey in the World Cup qualifier against England in Zagreb earlier this month once again demonstrates how UEFA’s oft-repeated intention to stamp out racism in football is not backed up by action.  Only the closing of stadia and the banning of supporters for life will stand any chance of changing what, sadly, remains a large social problem in too many European countries.

While it is true that the Croatia FA have only a fraction of the financial resources of their English counterparts and so it is pointless fining them millions of pounds which they don’t have, the paltry sum determined by UEFA is hardly likely to constitute a major stimulus for the Croatian FA and others to take vital, pre-emptive action against the Nazi element that fills so many dilapidated stadia in Central and Eastern Europe.

Which brings us nicely on to Poland, who have their own problems with hooliganism and racism at football matches.  UEFA have decided that they and Ukraine will, after all, host Euro 2012, but have issued as stern a warning as they are capable of about the poor infrastructure in those two nations.  The stadia will be there - four in each country, with the final played in Kiev’s giant Olimpiyskiy stadium - but the state of the countries’ roads, hotels, transport and - vitally - policing remains a huge worry.

We should be grateful, then, that Euro 2012 will still involve only 16 teams, unlike Euro 2016 and beyond, which UEFA finally revealed (although it was already widely reported as a given, including on this fair website) will involve 24 participating countries.  This seems to be a reasonable decision taken for the wrong reason (namely, more matches equalling more revenue) - the counter-argument that it will dilute the quality of the tournament struggles to stand up to scrutiny.

Were Euro 2008 a 24-team tournament, the extra eight teams, who finished third in their qualifying groups (plus the best fourth-placed team for good measure) would have been Serbia, Scotland, Norway, the Republic of Ireland, England, Northern Ireland, Bulgaria and Israel.  Most of these teams are better than Austria and would surely have given the finals’ poorer teams - Greece, Poland, Switzerland, France and Sweden - a good game.

There is another reason why expansion makes sense; it will re-inforce the status of the World Cup as the top international tournament in the game.  The European Championship has caught it up, if not overtaken it, in terms of competitiveness and quality.  In every other continent, it is considerably easier to qualify for the continental championship, be it the Africa Cup of Nations, the Asian Cup or the CONCACAF Gold Cup, than for the World Cup.  In South America, you only have to exist to qualify for the Copa América, which has to invite two North American teams in to make up the numbers.  Europe, though, has 13 berths for the 2010 World Cup, after having 14 qualification places available at Euro 2008, making it barely more difficult to reach the World Cup than the continental tournament.  The increase in size of the Euros will end that anomaly.

UEFA, though, still have work to do.  They must not take a risk with the hosting of the first larger Euros; give it to Germany, Spain, France or England, nations which could cope with large-scale tournaments.  They must also move heaven and Earth to avoid the ignominy of having four of the six third-placed teams in the group stage make the knock-out stage, instead employing the format of the 1982 World Cup.  Then, the top two in each of the six groups formed four groups of three, the winners of which contested the semi-finals.

Finally, the UEFA Cup will become the UEFA Europa League next season and will have twelve groups of four, each team meeting home and away, than the current madness of ten groups of five with sides meeting each other only once.  The UEFA Cup has its problems but this will be an improvement at least, although bringing back the Cup Winners’ Cup would relieve the UEFA Cup of fifty or so teams and make it a bit more cohesive and less of the sprawling mish-mash that it is at the moment.

Hull City did not beat Arsenal because they played with ’spirit’ or ‘grit’.  They beat them because they played better football; apart from the home side’s inevitable late siege of the goal of the brilliant Boaz Myhill (he used to play for Stockport, you know), Hull always looked the team more like scoring.  Arsenal’s solitary strike was a scrappy own-goal, albeit after a fine run from the ever-impressive Theo Walcott; Hull’s were both brilliant, though for different reasons.  The match, along with Newcastle’s point at Old Trafford on the opening weekend, should serve as a lesson to all other Premier League managers that the best way to achieve a result against the ‘Big Four’ is to field an attacking side and try to beat them.  If the opposition are not worried about conceding, they will rarely struggle to score themselves.

We return to our occasional series known as What Capello Should Do With The England Right-Side.  Now that Shaun Wright-Phillips is playing well and smiling back in a Manchester City shirt, is it not now time finally to end the involvement of the honourable but no-longer adequate David Beckham, who continues to ply his trade in the sub-standard Major League Soccer?  There is a common nonsensical notion that Beckham continues to be in the England squad simply because nobody has convincingly claimed to be his natural successor, a myth exposed by David Bentley’s superior set-piece taking in the friendly against the Czech Republic in August and exploded by Theo Walcott’s hat-trick in Zagreb.

And if Micah Richard’s playing style does not scream ‘wing-back’ at Capello then we are doomed to two years of Wes Brown labouring around on the right of the back four.  Having Richards at centre-back, where he continues to display fine footballing skills but a lack of top-drawer defensive nous, is becoming increasingly absurd.  Brazil would never have played Cafu at centre-back for exactly that reason.

There were some pretty distasteful chants at the Merseyside Derby on Saturday lunchtime, which I won’t bother reproducing here, but once terrace anthem that particularly disgusts me is one of West Ham’s favourites, concerning a former Boleyn Ground forward now employed by Fulham.  To the tune of That’s Amore, “If you’re sat in row Z and the ball hits your head, that’s Zamora”.  It should, of course, be ’sitting’.

It remains to be seen quite how much money, if any, West Ham United must cough up to Sheffield United over the Carlos Tévez saga; a monumentally dispiriting and tedious affair, the conclusion of which would arrive too late if it came yesterday.  But let’s explode West Ham’s apologist favourite argument, that Sheffield United only have themselves to blame for their relegation because they simply weren’t good enough.

This argument is flawed for two reasons.  First, it is inaccurate; Sheffield United were the seventeenth best law-abiding club in the Premier League in season 06/07, which should constitute being ‘good enough’.  But, more pertinently, it is irrelevant.  Supposing they had been ‘good enough’ and won their final match of the season in question - we would still be having exactly the same discussion, only with the words ‘Wigan Athletic’ replacing ‘Sheffield United’.  The central issue remains that the FA and the Premier League made a colossal collective cock-up in not dealing with West Ham properly at the time and relegating them.  It would have left a bad taste in the mouth but it would have been the right decision and spared us more than a year of legal hokey cokey.

When Liverpool play Atlético Madrid in the Champions League it will see Fernando Torres returning to his former club but the side from the Vicente Calderón have two of Liverpool’s old-boys on their books; Luis García deserves a decent reception at Anfield but it is Florent Sinama-Pongolle who is pulling up trees in the absence through injury of Diego Forlán, strike partner of the brilliant Sergio Aguero.  The Frenchman has five goals in La Primera so far and is only one behind Valencia’s David Villa, who is finally starting to look like one of the world’s best players.  It remains a great curiosity that, although Steven Gerrard’s spectacular late strike grabbed the headlines, it was the introduction of Sinama-Pongolle and Neil Mellor in the second half that helped Liverpool find the three goals they needed to overcome Olympiakos in the final group match of their successful 04/05 UEFA Champions League campaign.

Tags: Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Carlos Tevez, Croatia, Emile Heskey, England, Euro 2012, Florent Sinama-Pongolle, Hull City, Liverpool, Micah Richards, Poland, Sheffield United, Uefa, Uefa Europa League, Ukraine, West Ham United

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