The Monday Miscellany

We return for another episode of our occasional series ‘If You Think Football’s Crazy…’, in which we compare the encouraging performances of South Africa in the FIFA Confederations Cup with the cowardly assaults made by the nation’s rugby union side against the British & Irish Lions on Saturday.

It has been said before in this column that rugby, of both codes, lags some way behind football when it comes to dealing with on-field thuggery. For those who refer to rugby as ‘egg-chasing’ let me fill you in on the details: Schalk Burger, a South African forward with form when it comes to violent conduct, gouged the eyes of Lions winger Luke Fitzgerald in the first minute of Saturday’s second Test in Pretoria.

Eye gouging, along with stamping and spear-tackling, is the scourge of rugby, a universally cowardly act which can very easily leave an opponent blinded for life. That the inept French referee Christophe Berdos, despite being clearly informed by touch-judge Bryce Lawrence that a gouge had taken place, only showed Burger a yellow card, offends logic.

Then there was that great oaf Peter de Villiers, coach of the Springboks, affecting disbelief that Burger was even sin-binned, claiming that gouging was ‘part of the game’. “It’s sport, man. This is what it’s all about.” De Villiers, you may infer, is a moron. South Africa, who should have played the whole match with 14 men – and some of it with 13; hello Bakkies Botha – won by three points. Rugby’s message to the world, as reported by Simon Barnes: Violent cheats prosper.

Bafana Bafana, meanwhile, endeared themselves to world football with their heroics in the knockout phase of the Confederations Cup. With a modest line-up, they held Brazil scoreless for 87 minutes, not by playing Catenaccio spoiling tactics but by dominating the match for long periods, before drawing 2-2 in normal time with the European champions and believe me, Spain were the side flattered by the scoreline.

Compare too the efficiency of officialdom in each sport. There isn’t enough space on this site – indeed, on the whole web – to list the various shortcomings of football’s various tiers of law-enforcement but compare Berdos’s cop-out of a decision – he simply didn’t want to reduce a team to 14 for 79 minutes – with Mike Dean’s immediate sending off of Martin Taylor, the Birmingham City defender who broke Eduardo’s leg two season’s ago. Taylor committed a horrendous tackle and was rightly sent off without hesitation. That only three minutes had elapsed was irrelevant.

Rugby union still has the amateurish public school old-boys in the disciplinary process. The old line that what happens on the pitch should stay on the pitch is as ludicrous now as it was before the dawn of professionalism in 1995. In football you can get sent off for celebrating a goal with your own fans (Arjen Robben, Sunderland v Chelsea 2006). In rugby, you can drive a Lions centre into the ground head-first and get away without censure. Keep up, chaps.

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The footballing equivalent of Peter de Villiers is probably ‘Phil’ Scolari, the old bruiser who turned Chelsea from Champions League finalists into a basket case in half a season. Previously, Scolari, as coach of Portugal, attracted scorn when he punched Ivica Dragutinovic, the Sevilla left-back, during a Euro 2008 qualifying match with Serbia.

Scolari now has the cheek to blame Petr Cech, Michael Ballack and Didier Drogba for ‘ousting’ him from the Chelsea hot-seat. “Drogba, Ballack and Cech did not accept my training methods or my demands.” What training?

Chelsea were unfit, poorly organized and under-motivated under Scolari. That the arrival of Guus Hiddink immediately solved all these problems does not encourage sympathy for the Brazilian coach. If Scolari wants to know why he was sacked, he should simply get on YouTube and find highlights of Chelsea’s last match of his tenure. They were held at home 0-0 by Hull City, who outplayed them. And Hull were the Premier League’s worst team in 2009.

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Tonight we will see whether Theo Walcott can play as a striker, as he deputizes up front for the England Under-21s in their European Championship Final against Germany, with both Fraizer Campbell and Gabriel Agbonlahor suspended.

Certainly, Walcott has the pace to be a serious threat to any defense but what of his positional play? Does he have the same instinct to be in the right place at the right time as the Michael Owen (of old) or even Jermain Defoe? And will his finishing finally come up to the standard he set in that fine performance in Croatia?

Walcott often seems most comfortable playing on the left. He is not an orthodox winger, more a Thierry Henry type; lightning pace, good dribbling skills and directness of running. In terms of the Under-21 side, his magnum opus was the second leg of the Euro 2007 play-off in Germany, when he scored twice, the second of which could have been scored by Henry in his pomp at Arsenal. These qualities were on show in the group match against Spain, when he sped down the left to set up the second England goal scored by James Milner.

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It would appear Michael Owen is on a highway to Hull, with Phil Brown one of few managers prepared to gamble on the former England striker’s fitness. But what curious logic employed by Sam Allardyce, who claims not to be interested in bringing a striker he describes as ‘injury prone’ to Blackburn Rovers yet seems to be flirting with one of Real Madrid’s many Dutchmen, Ruud van Nistelrooy, who is hardly a stranger to the treatment table.

Still, he has offloaded another part-time footballer, Roque Santa Cruz, to Manchester City, where it would appear he will be warming the bench watching Carlos Tévez and Samuel Eto’o lead the line for the world’s richest football team.

All of which has driven Daniel Sturridge, a talented young English forward, into the arms of Chelsea in a transfer which, unusually for the Stamford Bridge side in recent years, shows foresight and a faith in young English players. Here’s hoping he gets plenty of game time, he is surely a better prospect than the returning Andriy Shevchenko, who Chelsea will probably have to entertain for a final season.

Sturridge’s appearances for Manchester City were sporadic but he made such an impact last season at Blackburn Rovers. With City two goals behind with just a couple of minutes remaining, Sturridge scored a fine goal before his mazy run and clever pass set up Robinho for an equalizer which stunned the Ewood Park crowd, not least because it involved the Brazil international hitting the target in an away match.

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Jack Rodwell, barely 18, is so young he can play not just in the 2011 U-21 European Championship in Denmark, but the one after that in 2013. But has there been another player in the tournament in Sweden who has shown such class, composure and resourcefulness with the football? There is every chance that, by 2013, the Everton player will have bigger fish to fry.

Composure was what England lacked in the second half of their semi-final with Rodwell back on the bench, ripped apart as they were by the tournament’s best player, Sweden striker Marcus Berg, though it was he whose penalty Joe Hart saved early in the penalty competition.

Rodwell could be a key player for England in the U-20 World Cup in Egypt in September; that is, if Everton permit him to play. When England last qualified for this tournament in 2003, their scratch squad was full of misfits, with the country’s best teenagers such as Wayne Rooney busy with their club sides. All players born in 1989 or later are eligible but will players like Theo Walcott, Danny Welbeck, Dan Gosling, Jack Wilshere, Daniel Sturridge, James Tomkins, Kieran Gibbs, Junior Stanislas and Fabian Delph be able to get away from their club duties? For the future, the tournament surely needs moving to July.

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They’ve been talking about ‘dangerous floaters’ at Wimbledon; meaning, presumably, a decent player who is unseeded and could upset a few of the big names in the earlier rounds, as opposed to something sharp they’re putting in the Pimms pitchers.

We have them in football too; it is appetizing to know that neither Real Madrid nor Juventus will be among the top seeds (Barcelona, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester Utd, Milan, Sevilla, Bayern Munich and Internazionale). Should Arsenal qualify, Inter will become another unseeded menace, meaning we could have some rare big-time group stage matches in this season’s competition. What price Real Madrid, with Cristiano Ronaldo in tow, returning to Old Trafford in the early months of the season?