Global, Monday Miscellany, World Cup 2010

Let me see if I’ve got this right. Kazakhstan is a huge nation with a population more than triple that of Croatia and yet we expected them to play football like San Marino - population barely 30,000. In the Euro 2008 qualifiers, they beat Serbia 2-1 in Almaty and nearly got a draw in Belgrade but for a late own goal. They drew home and away with Belgium and held Portugal scoreless for 83 minutes. They finished the qualification tournament with ten points - a respectable tally given it was their first European campaign.

Their FIFA World Ranking of 131st is misleading because until recently they were only playing poor Asian sides whose ranking multipliers are barely more than one and attracting top European sides for friendlies is almost impossible due to their national stadium in Almaty being slightly further from western Europe than Lahore. They are already out of the bottom pot of seeds in Europe so forgive me for not regarding them as a ‘pub team’. If England are only 2-1 up against Andorra after 75 minutes in June, then I’ll worry.

Also in Pot 5 in the qualifying draw last December were Austria, Latvia and Slovenia, all of whom have competed in the European Championship this decade and if England had beaten Austria 5-1 at Wembley, the nation would be celebrating.

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There is a moment in an old episode of “A Touch Of Frost” called “No Refuge” when David Jason has just interviewed a hairdresser and a colleague offers him a moderate compliment on his resulting new hairdo. He replies, “For sixteen quid, it ought to be ruddy irresistible.” And that is the problem with England - or, more pertinently, with Wembley. Such was the enormous cost of constructing the stadium that fans are having to pay through the nose to see England play; such is the cost of attending they feel they have a right to see wonderful football.

So if somebody like Ashley Cole, hardly the most popular footballer in the country (a fellow Chelsea fan calls him the Anti-Zola), makes a silly error resulting in the opposition scoring, perhaps we shouldn’t be overly surprised if some people among the crowd choose to show their frustration by booing, however counterproductive and undignified it may be.

That said, how could any England spectator - ‘supporter’ is hardly the right word - believe the cause of World Cup qualification would be advanced one iota by booing one of their own players during the match? It is one thing to boo a bad result after the final whistle, or to boo somebody for bad behaviour or downright cheating, but to further undermine the confidence of a fragile side is just plain silly.

There is a widespread belief that this is a problem particular to Wembley but this is inaccurate. While it may be true that too many fans bring their petty club squabbles into the international arena, this is not the sole preserve of Londoners. When England played Ukraine in a friendly in August 2004 at Newcastle, local fans booed substitute Kieron Dyer after he had reportedly argued with local hero and then manager Sir Bobby Robson about his deployment in central midfield.

When England were in their ‘Old Trafford’ period in the mid 00s, both Peter Crouch and Owen Hargreaves were booed by England fans who simply didn’t believe they deserved to wear the shirt - although most will have changed their minds since. Booing your own is the new English disease and anyway, the Kazakhstan game attracted 89,100 fans, an extraordinary show of support that it is hard to imagine any other country in the world attracting for a match against such unheralded opposition. And in a crowd of that size, there bound to be a few dimwits who view football as a pantomime.

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Bordeaux’s bright young thing Yoann Gourcuff’s 69th minute equalizer rescued France in Constanta as Les Bleus came back from two goals down to rescue a 2-2 draw with Romania. France have already lost in Austria and qualification looks like being far from easily achieved. Their argumentative and often befuddled coach Raymond Domenech is safe for now but should tomorrow night’s friendly against Tunisia go badly there may be more than a few French supporters not too downhearted if it results in the FFF finally seeing sense and offloading their almost universally unpopular coach.

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Apart from England, there are two other teams with nine points in the European qualifiers and they are the last two European champions. Spain you would expect - they are without question the best international side in the world this year - but Greece are continuing to find qualifying tournaments a doddle. Don’t be fooled though; they are flat-track bullies; fine against Luxembourg, Latvia and Moldova but don’t expect them to pull up any trees if they reach the World Cup finals.

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Never say we don’t furnish you with lashings of useful information here at footballingworld.com: here are the provisional seedings for the final 20-strong group stage of the African qualifiers, which double as the preliminaries for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations.

Pot 1 - Cameroon, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire
Pot 2 - Tunisia, Morocco, Guinea, Mali, Zambia
Pot 3 - Burkina Faso, Algeria, Gabon, Kenya, Rwanda
Pot 4 - Benin, Togo, Mozambique, Sudan, Malawi

You will notice three major absentees from this list. 2002 World Cup quarter-finalists Senegal crashed and burned against Gambia in Dakar, conceding a late equalizer to draw 1-1, a result which did neither side any good as the visitors missed out on one of the eight runners-up berths on goal difference. Angola and South Africa were both out even before they played over the weekend, despite both rare wins; Angola beating Niger 3-1 at home while Bafana Bafana got a morale-boosting 1-0 win in Equatorial Guinea.

For Angola, it means no reprise of their miraculous qualification for the 2006 World Cup, although as hosts they do not have to qualify for the 2010 Cup of Nations, while South Africa miss out on the continental championship, meaning the FIFA Confederations Cup next year will provide their only competitive football before the opening match of the World Cup on 11 June 2010. And, if they play like they have been recently, they will only have three matches next summer.

The provision of competitive football for the World Cup hosts is one of the main plus-points of the often-pilloried Confederations Cup, along with a chance to give tournament organizers a ‘dry-run’ with a year’s grace of the main event.

Preparations for the staging of the World Cup in South Africa are progressing nicely, except for the football team, who remain poor and will struggle to graduate from Group A despite home advantage. Received wisdom is that a tournament needs the home team to do well to keep the atmosphere alive but, in hindsight, does anybody think Euro 2008 would have been improved if Switzerland and Austria had reached the quarter finals at the expense of Turkey and Germany? What matters most in the group stage is that there are good teams playing good football. Where they come from is a secondary consideration.

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Yet another damning indictment of the state of the game came this week when an altercation between two Premiership players ended with one felling the other with a punch. Who do these overpaid, loutish prima donnas think they are and shouldn’t they be setting a better example to the children who idolize… hang on… (Off: Oh fellow columnist, you do know it was two rugby players, don’t you?) Ahem… There was a rollicking good show of sporting passion this week when Wasps’ Josh Lewsey felled England fly-half Danny Cipriani with a right corker to the hooter after a slight contretemps on the rugger field. That’s how real sportsmen settle these issues, man to man, no harm done. Happens all the time, jolly good show, what?

Tags: Ashley Cole, England, Monday Miscellany, Raymond Domenech, World Cup 2010, Yoann Gourcuff

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