GolGolGolGolGol

TRANSFERS & TAKEOVERS

2011-08-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

SOME NON-PREMIER LEAGUE POINTS OF INTEREST FOR THE COMING SEASON

Aside from the usual questions, such as Who can stop Barcelona in Europe, and How long before Arsenals form utterly collapses, and Can Ibrahmovic win another League title this Season, many of the most intriguing stories in European football in the 2011-12 Season appear connected to big clubs recently given cash injections by big-money foreign purchasers. Then there are the risky transfers of young South American talent and the new Managerial appointments. Some clubs combine a few or all of these elements...

1. ROMA
New money means a new project, new players and most startlingly, a new Coach. Spanish legend Luis Enrique, a fine player for both Real Madrid and Barcelona in his time, has been brought in to introduce some Barcelona-style magic to the Roman giants. He guided Barcelona B to third place in the Spanish Second Division in a role last occupied by one Pep Guardiola, playing football of similar style and tactical basis as that played by the European Champions.
The aim, then, will be to play beautiful possession football, and finish as high up as possible in a Serie A which looks wide open this Season. Champions Milan will start as favourites, but their weaknesses were exposed by Tottenham Hotspur in the Champions League last Season, and late wobbles hurt Napoli and Udinese, who both could have increased the pressure on an awkwardly broken-backed, if talented, Milan side. This year Inter are in transition, Napoli and Udinese will have Champions League distractions, Lazio have strengthened and Juventus have a host of new signings to bed in.
Roma face the new Season with their established performers - the likes of Totti, Pizarro and DeRossi - ageing but still classy, a few high-maintenance, high-earners transferred out (Vucinic, Riise, Mexes) and some exciting young talent to debut in Serie A. Most obvious is the undoubted talent of Bojan Kirkjic, taken from Barca with much still to prove. Then there is Erik Lamela. The young Argentine prodigy was awesome for a struggling River Plate last Season, and he may find the rhythms of Serie A much to his liking, once he's settled in. More experience was added in the shape of the wily, cynical old Gabriel Heinze, from Marseille, and goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenberg, from Ajax. How Luis Enrique persuades such a group to trust his Catalan brand of passing football in such a radically different League should be fascinating...

2. MALAGA
Legendary Holland centre forward Ruud van Nistelrooy, who has scored goals at every club he has played for, on a free transfer, but with presumably huge wages. Diminutive wunderkind attacking midfielder Diego Buonanotte, from River Plate for €4.5M. Exciting Spanish International playmaker Santiago Cazorla, attacking lynchpin for the stylish Villarreal side of the last few years, for €21M. Wily, experienced French International holding midfielder Jeremy Toulalan from Lyon, for €11M. Joaquin, Spanish International winger, from Valencia for €4.2M. Isco, a 19 year old winger of dazzling ability and potential, from Valencia for €6M. Big centre half Sergio Sanchez, from Sevilla, for €2M. Spanish International left back Nacho Monreal, from Osasuna, for €6M. Cultured, vastly experienced Dutch centre-half Joris Mathijsen from Hamburg for €2.5M.
And with a single summer of purchases, Malaga have made themselves players in La Liga. Funded by their Qatari Owner Sheikh Abdullah Al Thani, and coached by the sage Manuel Pellegrini, who did so well with modest means at Villarreal before being mistreated at Real Madrid for the crime of not being able to dislodge Barcelona from the top of the table, their new signings address every department of the team. Already possessed of a couple of exciting attackers - Julio Baptista, whose late- season form in 2010/11 basically guaranteed them a mid-table finish and young Uruguayan Seba Fernandez and Venezuelan Rondon - the additions of Buonanotte, Isco and Cazorla in particular suggest that Malaga may be one of the venues in Spain this Season for exciting attacking football. The experience of Van Nistelrooy, Toulalan, Mathijsen and Joaquin should help everybody settle in and pre-Season form has been dazzling. If it doesn't work out, well, they can just go and buy ten more players...

3. PARIS SAINT GERMAIN
Very much the sleeping giants of French, if not European football, PSG have been waking up and stretching their limbs over the last couple of Seasons after years of underachievement, serious crowd trouble and flirtation with relegation. More Middle Eastern investment has meant the return of hero Leonardo as a sort of smoother-than-smooth project director, and he has overseen the acquisition of lots of exciting new players, with young French talent like striker Kevin Gamiero (€11M from Lorient), winger Jeremy Menez (€8M from Roma) and defensive midfielder Blaise Matuidi (€10M from Saint Etienne) joined by, most notably the brilliant young Argentine playmaker Javier Pastore, who cost €43M from Palermo. Pastore is worthy of the hype surrounding him, and once he finds his feet and gels with his teammates, PSG will present a serious threat in France to the likes of Lille and Marseille. Whether the solid coach Antoine Kombouare will still be there when success comes is another matter. Once a teammate of Leonardo, and making slow but steady progress at the club before it was bought out, he is tactically rigid, and falls out with players. PSG want success, and the want it now. Slow and steady likely will not do.

4. BIELSA AT BILBAO
Marcelo "El Loco" Bielsa makes a long-awaited return to European Club Football after his brief stay at Espanyol in 1998, when he left to take over the Argentina National team after just three games. This time he's at Athletic Bilbao, a club with it's own philosophy and an academy to rival that of Barcelona, and indeed, Bielsa has one of the most exciting young squads in Spain at his disposal, containing the likes of the classy holding player Javier Martinez and towering centre-forward Fernando Llorente (both part of the World Cup winning squad), tricky, aggressive little forward/winger Iker Muniain, and new signing Ander Herrera, an imaginative, technical playmaker with vision and a work ethic. As he showed with Chile, Bielsa works well with young, flexible players, who are open to his methods and have the stamina for the hard work required, and he is already drilling Athletic in his attacking play, using Martinez as a centre back and attacking midfielder DeMarcos as a wing-back of sorts. Bilbao face Mourinho's Real Madrd in their first game, a fascinating clash of football thinkers which should be great to watch. But then, I would expect to say that of all Bielsa's Athletic Bilbao games this season. It's good to have him back in Europe. Let's hope it lasts.

5. VILLAS-BOAS AT CHELSEA
Another exciting Football Thinker, Andre Villa-Boas doesn't duck any challenges. Having led Porto through an incredible Season where they went unbeaten in their domestic League, won both it and the Portugeuse Cup, then added the Europa League for good measure, he might have been tempted to stay put and see how his exciting team would do in the Champions League. But instead he accepted the poison chalice of trying to please Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, where only a League Title and/or Champions League triumph will be deemed acceptable. All that and he has to deal with the abhorrent personality of John "I quite fancy being Chelsea manager some day" Terry and the ageing legs and huge egos of Lampard, Drogba, Cole and Malouda, while trying to retrieve Fernando Torres from the depths of himself and give youthful prospects like Josh McEachran and exciting signings like Lukaku a chance to settle and play. And he only has to see off the might of the two Manchester clubs, a resurgent Liverpool and a still-dangerous Tottenham and Arsenal.
But he is the real deal. A great talker, an expert motivator, his Porto team blew teams away all last Season, and he seemed to know exactly when to tweak personnel and or formation. If anybody can do all of the above, AVB, as the Englsh Press already appear to have named him, he can.

6. PACIENCIA AT SPORTING LISBON
Sporting have had a difficult last ten years. After winning the Portugeuse Championship in 2000, they have had to watch in the years since as the other two members of the "Big Three", Porto and Benfica, have swallowed up all of the titles. In the last few years, little Braga have overtaken them with a second place finish and a Europa League Final appearance. They have to console themselves with the manner in which graduates of the Sporting academy and youth systems dominate the National team (Ronaldo, Nani and Moutinho, most notably) while hoping for the return of good times. Well, this Summer there were big changes in the hope of making those changes happen. Domingos Paciência, the Coach who brought Braga to second place and that Europa League final, has been hired, and virtually an entire team of new players purchased. Some of those many signings are extremely exciting: Fabián Rinaudo, a tough, savvy defensive midfielder from Gimnasia in Argentina, Ricky van Wolfswinkel, the lanky, prolific young Dutch centre forward from FC Utrecht, Diego Capel, the unpredictable Spanish winger, from Sevilla, Diego Rubio, the exciting Chilean wunderkind striker, from Colo Colo and Jeffren, the young forward/ winger, from Barcelona.
Paciência is plainly a capable Coach, but it will take a monumental effort to overtake both the Porto team still in place and Benfica, strengthened with some astute summer signings.

SOME TRANSFERS

Maxi Moralez to Atalanta
Arguably the best player in Argentina over the last two years or so, the little playmaker has played in Europe before. A 2008 move from Racing Club to FC Moscow lasted 6 months and 8 games and possibly came too early. His return to Argentina led to Velez Sarsfield and a crucial role in two title triumphs. How good is Moralez? So good that he was perhaps the best player in the 2007 U-20 World Cup winning side that also starred the likes of Aguero, DiMaria, Banega, DiSanto and Zarate. Small but pacy, blessed with vision and the technical ability to exploit it, a skilled dribbler with the ability to score from distance, he can dictate games but also decide them, and if he performs to his potential at Atalanta, then it won't be long before a bigger club comes in for him.

Steven Defour to Porto
The Belgian midfielder moved from Standard Liege alongside his club mate, the young French centre-half Eliaquim Mangala, after years of persistent links to Manchester United. An all-round midfielder, he has a great engine, good range of passing, tackles well and seems to think tactically. He has left his homeland at a good stage in his development, and this Season will be crucial if he is to fulfil his potential. First up, making himself a fixture in a talented Porto midfield, where he will compete with Moutinho, Belluschi,and Guarin for a place..

Gokhan Inler to Napoli
This transfer had been mooted for the last two Seasons. The one thing Napoli's impressive team lacked last Season was a truly commanding midfielder, and Inler is just that. He might be the final piece in the puzzle, and the key to a title Season by the Neapolitan giants.

Arturo Vidal to Juventus
Juve got Vidal - a versatile, industrious, dominant midfielder or defender - from Bayern Leverkusen right out from under the noses of Bayern Munich who had been linked to him for much of last Season. He is one of the transfers of the summer and Serie A should be a doodle for him.

Djibril Cisse/ Miroslav Klose to Lazio
Voila, Lazio buy themselves a new, prolific, incredibly experienced strike force in Just a few weeks. Already scoring in pre-Season and the Europa League Qualifiers, they will play in front of the awesome Brazilian playmaker Hernanes, who sometimes seemed to single-handedly keep Lazio in last seasons title race. He will notch up lots and lots of assists, and they will score lots and lots of goals, I fancy...

Sergio Canales to Valencia
A casualty of Real Madrid's stockpiling of talent - he competed with Kaka, Ozil and Granero for a single place in Mourinho's team - Valencia have bought Canales to be the player they have lacked since David Silva left for Manchester City: the schemer between the lines, the supplier of through-balls, the king of assists. They also nabbed the penetrators little Argentine winger Pablo Piatti from Almeria, and thus their attacking line-up looks rejuvenated and exciting again this year.

Latin Wonderkids 2

2011-04-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

When I did my first "Latin Wonderkids" post a few years ago, all of the players I chose were playing in South America. In the months since, all of them bar one moved to Europe. The one who didn't had already been and returned before I wrote the piece. Young South American talent doesn't stay long in South America, and you can probably expect to see every one of the players listed below in European football over the next year or two.

Juan Manuel Iturbe of Cerro Poteno (Argentina)

Born in Argentina to Paraguayan parents, this tricky little forward has been dubbed the "Paraguayan Messi". An unfair comparison for any player, that, and yet from his appearances for Argentina in the South American U20 Championship and for Cerro Porteno in this years Copa Libertadores, it's almost understandable. Short and stocky yet with a brilliant ability to surge past players with a burst of sudden, unmatchable acceleration, the Messi comparisons stem from his habit of drifting in from the wing and combining clever one-twos with dribbles and feints. He can also finish off those moves, and his play is as reminiscent of Carlos Tevez as it is of Messi. The circumstances of his birth meant that he was eligible to play for either Argentina or Paraguay, and he opted for Argentina after appearing for different youth teams for each Country through his teens. European clubs have been sniffing around him for a couple of years, and he has already signed a pre-contract agreement with Porto, which means he officially becomes their player when he turns 18 in June. Any knowledge of Porto's transfer dealings with South America suggests that they know their business, and if that's not enough, here's some Iturbe in action:

Erik Lamela of River Plate (Argentina)

That the current River Plate first team is thriving and playing some sparkling, fluid attacking football is down mainly to the brilliance of the generation of players recently produced by the Clubs academy. Playmaker Manuel Lanzini, centre forward Gabriel Funes Mori and winger Roberto Pereyra all look to be potentially fantastic talents, but the undoubted star at the centre of this constellation is 19 year old Erik Lamela. He gained some noteriety when Barcelona tried to buy him as a 12 year old, forcing River's Chairman to offer his family financial incentives to remain in Buenos Aires. His emergence into the Senior squad has suggested Barcelona were wise to try to grab him early, as his value will only grow from now on. Possessed of an elegance and sweetness of movement which belies his lanky frame, Lamela can play on the left, but his most effective role appears to be as an enganche or playmaker. His long legs give him terrific pace, enabling him to drift effortlessly past tackles, and his left foot is a magic wand; he is already taking most of River's set-pieces and is the hub around which some lovely passing moves revolve, prompting and moving with intelligence and subtlety. River have already given him the Number 10 shirt formerly worn by such legends as Enzo Francescoli, Pablo Aimar and Ariel Ortega, which isn't bad company. But with a host of European clubs circling it seems unlikely he'll get to wear it for too long...

Lucas of Sao Paolo (Brazil)

His full name is Lucas Rodrigues Moura da Silva, so, ensuring maximum confusion when he shares a pitch with fellow Brazilian Lucas Leiva, of course he's called Lucas. He's an entirely different player, however, a stocky, quick little attacking midfielder who began his career at Corinthians before moving to Sao Paolo, where he has been compared to Kaka. That's more due to position than style, but he is as explosive as that Brazilian playmaker. He dazzled at the South American Under 20s, scoring a hat-trick in a dazzling 6-0 destruction of eventual Runners-Up Uruguay. He combines aggressive eruptions of dribbling with slide-rule passes, making him terrifying in the final third. Brazil's problem over the next decade may well be how to accomodate both him and the more widely known and equally gifted Ganso. Not a bad problem to have, admittedly.

Gio Moreno of Racing Club de Avellaneda (Colombia)

Colombian playmaker Moreno is a fantasy player, the sort who does unbelievable things, a luxury player who never bothers defending- never bothers with any of the "negative" aspects of the game - but the sort who can turn a Match in an instant. He's the kind of player who makes you remember why you love football. Elegant, technically perfect, athletic and gifted with superb imagination and vision, Colombia's National team ought to be built around him for the next ten years. His first Season with Racing Club in Argentina instantly confirmed his promise - here was a player seemingly worthy of comparison to the Leagues MVP, Juan Roman Riquelme, and bearing some similarities as a player - and he has been consistently linked with Porto among several big European clubs. A serious injury early in the Season has ruled him out for the remainder, severely damaging Racing's hopes but probably ensuring he stays in Argentina for another Season at least.

Diego Rubio of Colo Colo (Chile)

This 17 year old Chilean striker has goals in his blood. Son of former Colo-Colo forward Hugo Rubio, his brothers both play professionally in Chile and legendary striker Ivan Zamorano (ex-Real Madrid and Inter Milan) is his Godfather. So it's perhaps no surprise that he has scored five goals in his first three appearances for Colo Colo, and that there have already been calls for his selection for the Chilean squad. I've only seen highlights so can't really comment on his style as a player, but you can't argue with this impact or the finishing in this clip:

Ruben Botta of Tigre (Argentina)

This 21 year old attacking midfielder has risen to prominence this year back in Argentina at Tigre, after a baffling spell on-loan at FK Ventspils in Latvia. He came through the youth system at Boca Juniors, and can play both as playmaker and on the left side of midfield. He is exciting and inventive on the ball, with an eye for the spectacular and he seems to be growing into his talent, a good sign in a creative player:

Ivan Pillud of Racing Club de Avellaneda (Argentina)

Pressure? Try the Coach of your National Team invoking comparisons to a living legend and claiming that you can replace him. Thats what Argentina Coach Sergio Batista did when he discussed 24 year old Right Back Pillud in the same breath with Javier Zanetti. But watching Pillud for Racing Club this Season, the comparisons make sense. In a 3-4-3 formation which demands most from its wing-backs, he is a force of nature up and down the flank, displaying attacking threat, defensive sense and quite awesome stamina. He debuted at Tiro Federal in the Argentine Second Division, moved briefly to Newells Old Boys before a big transfer to Europe and Espanyol. There he barely played, and went back to Racing on loan last year. After early injury problems he has been a revelation, and is a contender for a spot in the Argentina Squad for the Copa America this Summer.

Raul Ruidiaz of Universitario (Peru)

Universitario Desportes are one of Lima's, and by extension Peru's big two alongside Allianza Lima, and their big homegrown success over the last few seasons has been 20 year old Ruidiaz, a forward heavily linked with Udinese, who probably see him as a replacement for bound-for-a-bigger-club Alexis Sanchez. The similarity there would be Ruidiaz's penetrative dribbling ability and recent nose for goal. Far from the finished article, he shows undoubted talent and promise, and a move to the right European club in a year or two might be just the thing for his development.

Bryan Carrasco of Audax Italiano (Chile)

Almost a Brazilian-style full-back in that he can play purely in defence, as a winger or as a marauding Wing-back, Chilean Carrasco has gained some notoriety of late due to a ridiculous simulation during a Chile-Ecuador U-20 Qualifying fixture a few months ago where he slapped himself in the face with an opponents hand then dived to the ground clutching himself. Vile as that behaviour may be, Carrasco is an exciting, enterprising defender, strong and fast, confident on the ball and hard in the tackle. Tottenham Hotspur have been consistently linked with him, but at 20, he's only been in the Audax Italiano Senior team since the start of this Season and perhaps needs a little more experience before he makes such a move.

Santiago Garcia of Nacional (Uruguay)

Stocky, explosive 20 year old Uruguayan striker Garcia has scored 39 goals in 69 games for Nacional of Montevideo as well as 5 in 9 for the Uruguayan U20 team. It's a matter of time before he is fighting for a place in the senior squad alongside Forlan, Suarez and Cavani, and probably only a matter of time before he's playing in Europe, too.

Magico Magico

2011-01-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

Dept of Great Players You've Never Heard Of

Pity the ludicrously talented footballer not born in a traditional football power.

A short but telling list:
George Best (Northern Ireland), Ryan Giggs (Wales), Dejan Savicevic (Montenegro), Michael Laudrup (Denmark), Enzo Scifo (Belgium), Hugo Sanchez (Mexico), George Weah (Liberia), Gheorgi Hagi (Romania), Kenny Dalglish (Scotland), Teofilo Cubilas (Peru). I could go on and on.

But if those Gentlemen were somewhat unlucky to be denied the chance to ever earn the rank of undisputedly Great - I'm assuming Greatness comes through a combination of talent and achievement - by originating from Nations unlikely to ever contest a World Cup Final, at least most of them played at World Cups or for major Clubs, winning major honours, playing in Cup Finals, scoring legendary goals in famous games.

Fans of Cadiz, a smallish club from a lovely City in Andalucia in Southern Spain, still claim that the greatest player they ever saw came from an even smaller Football Nation, and never won a single major title in his career. His name was Jorge Alberto González Barillas. They shortened that to "Magico" Gonzalez. He came from El Salvador.

He would spend his peak years as a Footballer at Cadiz, playing there for almost a decade between 1982 and 1991, with only a brief and Ill-fated spell at Valladolid in 85/86 interrupting his time there. His problem, aside from his Salvadorean Nationality, was his love of nightlife, clubs and drinking, which meant he was sometimes in no condition to play in games. When he did play, he was a dazzling, Maradona-esque talent, his exquisite touch and dribbling combining with surging acceleration. Cadiz fans worshipped him, and he was similarly adored in Salvador, having led the National Team to their first World Cup a finals appearance in 1982. Don't believe the hype? Just take a look at him in action:

Another player revered by fans at his club but largely unknown to the rest of the world is Vassilis Hatzipanagis. Born to Greek Political Immigrants in Uzbekistan in the USSR in 1954, he played first for Pakhtakor of Tashkent before returning to his parents homeland to spend the next sixteen years of his career representing Iraklis of Salonica, for whom he played 281 times, scoring 62 goals. His long, curly hair and spectacular dribbling ability earned him Maradona comparisons, and such was his popularity with Iraklis supporters that the club were afraid to sell him despite interest from numerous sides from Europe's more glamorous leagues. He had represented the USSR at Under-21 level, and after choosing Greece as his senior International side and dazzling Athens in a solitary appearance in the white shirt in a friendly against Poland in 1976, FIFA informed him that he could no longer play for Greece.

Despite this, Greeks still regard him as their greatest player of all time, and he was part of a World XI which played the New York Cosmos in 1984 alongside the likes of Keegan, Beckenbauer and Kempes, which gives some idea of the respect those in the know had for him. So, the "Greek Maradona"? Perhaps:

The player Chileans regard as their greatest of all time is a Central defender, Elias Figueroa. He was Captain of Chile for almost sixteen years, played in three World Cups (1966, 1974 and 1982), won numerous individual awards (South American Player of the Year Three years in a row from 1974 to 1976) and dozens of titles and cups with the likes of Penarol, Internacional of Porto Allegre and Palestino.

Most often compared to Franz Beckenbauer, he was a supremely modern defender: he read the game expertly, was hard in the tackle, dominant in the air, and superbly composed and skillful on the ball. Many South Americans rate him as perhaps the greatest South American Defender of All Time.
Defenders are harder to make montages for, but heres one anyway:

Football in sun and shadow 7

2010-11-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

- Department of great Argentine Players you've never heard of Number 1: Dario Conca
Somewhat predictably, Conca is a playmaker and classically Argentinean in his range of skills; short and pacy, he is a sublimely gifted dribbler on the ball, can pick virtually any type of pass due to his excellent technique, and has the vision to see things on the pitch before they've even happened. At the moment he is spearheading Fluminense's charge for the Brazilian title - he was named the best player in Brazil by much of that country's football media last season, no mean feat for an Argentine - and if anything, he has improved this year. He'll probably never play for his country, such is the range of talent in the queue ahead of his for his position, but he has impressed during spells at Chile's Universidad Catolica and Vasco Da Gama before Fluminense signed him in 2009 after a Season-long loan. He had initially emerged at River Plate, not the first brilliant little enganche that club has produced. He's also not alone as a foreign playmaker in the Brazilian League; it seems to be a position that Brazil has trouble filling these days. Promising Brazilians in the position are generally whisked off to Europe - Ederson and Diego are good examples - or are utilized in slightly different roles, like Hernanes or even Kaka. That leaves Big Brazilian clubs employing the likes of the Chilean Valdivia (Palmeiras), Serbian Petkovic (Flamengo) and Argentines D'allessandro (Internacionale) and Montillo (Cruzeiro) in the position linking midfield and the strikers. Conca is one of the best in the business:

- Speaking of attacking midfielders who emerged at River Plate, Fernando Belluschi has finally started living up to some of that potential at FC Porto this season, playing a crucial part in their dazzling attack, alongside Hulk, Moutinho, Varela and Falcao.
He's also done things like this piece of magic:

- One of the big mysteries of South American Football is Colombia's consistent underachievement. Aside from the great team of the mid-90s (Valderama, Rincon, Asprilla etc) which played some dazzling football on the way to a couple of World Cups before choking for various reasons (including death threats in one case), the Colombian National Team has never performed as well as you feel it should have done. Colombia is, after all, a football-mad Nation with the second biggest population in South America, some massive clubs and a steady stream of young talent emerging, if the Country's appearances at Youth tournaments are anything to go on. It should be the third Football Nation in South America. Yet in recent years, that position has been held by Colombia's neighbours and arch-rivals Ecuador, lowly Paraguay or the more traditionally powerful Uruguay, a country with a population one tenth the size of Colombia. At the moment Chile are also ranked above Colombia, leaving them above only Peru, Bolivia and Venezuala in the Continental stakes.
Aside from the obvious socio-political factors (Colombia remains a troubled Country in many different areas) it seems Colombia doesn't produce footballers with the same artistry and creative talent of a generation or so ago. Indeed, the only Colombians currently playing at the highest level in European Leagues are Luis Perea of Athletico Madrid, Mario Yepes of AC Milan, Juan Zuniga of Napoli and Ivan Cordoba of Inter Milan, all defenders, alongside Faryd Mondragón of FC Koln, a goalkeeper. There are also a couple of strikers: the exceptional Radamel Falcao of FC Porto and Hugo Rodalega of Wigan, and Freddy Guarin, Porto's defensive midfielder. Colombian players do generally tend to stay in South America, and many play in the big Leagues across the continent, in Argentina, Brazil and also in Mexico.
One young Colombian has been making waves in Argentina this Season, and he displays the kind of technique and imagination that recalls Valderama and Asprilla. 24 year old Giovanni Moreno, who plays either as an attacking midfielder or support striker, has put in a few breathtaking performances in a struggling side at Racing Club, and he has the potential to be a massive star.
This is him embarrassing some hapless Boca Juniors defenders a few weeks ago:

And scoring a lovely chip for Nacional in Colombia:

- Javier Pastore: I've written about him before, but the hype around his immense talent keeps growing, and he more than lives up to it. The idea that Argentina will be able to construct an attack around the talents of Pastore, Messi, Banega and DiMaria over the next decade is frankly mind-boggling. Recently, Pastore has performed wonders for Palermo. Firstly, this splendid hat-trick against Sicilian rivals Catania :

And this stunner against Bologna:

- El Superclasico: Having just sat through a pretty disappointing River Plate vs Boca Juniors match, time to revisit a Classic from that fixture. In 1981, Argentina were still World Champions, and young genius Diego Armando Maradona was still playing for his beloved Boca. Facing him for River was Mario Kempes, el Matador, hero of the 1978 World Cup. Except Maradona was at his unplayable best that night as Boca ran out 3-0 Winners:

Heres a map of the movement of the players from that game, fascinating if you're a tactics geek and from this Portuguese site.

And, from the same year, a victory for Kempes and River in what looks like a cracking game:

Tiki-Taka & 4-2-3-1

2010-07-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

Some Thoughts on the 2010 World Cup

1. Viva Espana
"Spain are boring". People I know, friends, actually said that to me with a straight face during the World Cup. It was briefly a big Twitter talking point, too. The argument runs something like "Oh yes, their passing is very pretty, but they don't create enough chances, there are too many sideways passes, nobody taking a chance or trying a moment of individual magic, not enough goals, not enough incident." To me, this is simply idiotic. If you're bored by Spain, then your conception of what football can and should be is fundamentally different from mine.
It should be entertainment. We probably agree on that much. And I find the beauty and perfect technique, the bravery and precision of the Spanish passing game inexhaustably entertaining. Exhilarating, even. Give me a 0-0 with Spain playing a decent counter-attacking side over a 4-3 between two limited teams who cannot defend and cannot keep the ball anyday.
Is this where this "boring" tag comes from? The generation who has grown up with Sky Sports and has been conditioned to expect drama from every game, who expects red cards and controversy and lots and lots of goals? This is part of football, of course, this manufactured spectacle, this natural drama. But it does not define it.
For me, Sport is about that search for perfection, and Spain are close to that at times. They play their game so well, nobody can really touch them, which is why their games may seem "boring" to some. Because everybody knows they will be outplayed if they try to play a possession game against the Spanish, and so nobody does. Everybody plays with bodies behind the ball and tries to counter quickly. But they seldom see much of the ball, and so they retreat and Spain painstakingly try to pick holes in tightly drilled defences. Usually, it works. Usually they wear down the opposition with the consistency of their possession and ball movement. But nobody really opens up and goes at them, Chile aside. Germany - outclassed and overwhelmed. Holland - reduced to the role of bully-boy. Portugal - playing a long-ball game. Spain make decent teams look bad.
This Spanish team against the Pekarman/Basile Argentina of 2005-2007, with Riquelme orchestrating a possession-based short passing Argentine game, that would be a match I would like to see, that would be "one for the Purist". Something which I have been very much surprised to find out I am.
An interview with the magnificent Xavi, from El Pais, summed up some of the difficulties inherent in the Spanish "tiki taka" style: "What did people think? That we were going to win every game 3-0? I can't believe what I am hearing sometimes. Do you not realize how hard it is? Teams aren't stupid; we're European champions. They all pressure us like wolves. There isn't a single meter, not a second on the pitch. We are passing faster and faster and faster. We're playing bloody brilliantly. Then there's the pitch and the ball -- I have spent the World Cup thinking, 'That's a good pass,' only to see the ball disappear off in a different direction."
So, who do people posit as an "exciting" team, if Spain are not one? Germany. More on that later.
As for Spain, they stand as the best National team in the World, and one of the best ever. The best team rarely wins the World Cup. This time they have.

2. On the Counter
This was the first World Cup since Italia 90 which saw negative tactics clearly hold sway. So many teams played not to lose, packing midfield and maintaining eight to ten men behind the ball at all times, only attacking on long, pacy counters. It worked on occasion - Switzerland memorably defeated Spain, albeit with a great deal of luck, and the likes of New Zealand and North Korea performed better than many had expected merely by holding off superior teams. Of the four Semi-finalists, all bar Spain played counter-attacking football.
That the prevalent formation of this tournament was 4-2-3-1 speaks volumes for the tactical approach of many of the coaches, favoring this set-up mainly for the defensive security it affords with two holding players in midfield. But then not every 4-2-3-1 is the same. Spain's "double-pivot" in defensive midfield was made up of the gifted, creative Xabi Alonso and Sergio Busquets, whereas Holland made do with the purely destructive, disruptive duo of Mark Van Bommel and Nigel De Jong. Not every team employing the formation had fullbacks as dynamic as the Brazilian Maicon or Spain's Sergio Ramos. And not every striker can play at the tip of such a spear.
Germany played this system as well as anyone throughout the World Cup. But all of the plaudits they have received have baffled me. They played a reactive game of counter-attacking and they got lucky in that the two giants of the International game they ran into both entered the ties with shambolic defenses. They undoubtedly have some gifted young players - Ozil and Muller, Schweinsteiger finally performing to his potential - and they stuck to their coaches game plan with skill and dedication, but I rarely saw any great football from them. Both England and Argentina dominated long spells of their respective games and had more efforts on goal. When the Germans broke forward, they were deadly. But they had been exposed earlier in the tournament by the energy and pressing of an equally young, hungry Ghana side who were unlucky to lose. They never had to carry the game to the opposition, which suited them. It will be interesting to see how they fare when teams enter games prepared for their style. Only Ozil and Kroos look capable of opening a tight defence, and I am sure that now their talent is out in the open, the Germans will find themselves facing many of those.
Meanwhile, Spain made them look pedestrian in their semi-final, denying them time, space and most crucially of all, possession. The 1-0 should have been 3-0 and Germany showed that when they cannot break, they cannot really attack, a problem common to many sides at this tournament.

3. Marcelo Bielsa is a Genius

Chile, on the other hand, always attack. Argentine Coach Marcelo Bielsa is obsessed with attacking football, and his side set out with a radical formation: 4-3-3, meaning that when they were in possession they attacked with at least 6 players. Their youth, energy, intricate one touch passing and willingness to take on a man made them the most entertaining, exciting team at the tournament and always a joy to watch, just as they had been in South American qualifying. This commitment to attack also benefited them in defence, since they tackled and hustled high up the pitch, always keen to win the ball back early, and only suffered when they played Spain (who they troubled more than any other team in the tournament managed to) and Brazil. Ironically, for such a ceaselessly attacking team, they scored too few goals in the group stage, meaning that they lost top spot to the Spanish and as a result played Brazil in the Second Round. The reason for this goal shortage mainly came down to the pre-Tournament injury to striker David Suazo, top scorer in that (incredibly competitive) South American Qualifying Group and the fulcrum around whom much of the team's attacking play usually revolves.
In his absence, Bielsa played both of his playmakers, Matias Fernandez (as the trequarista) and Jorge Valdivia (as the centre forward), which worked, but never with the fluidity of the first choice line-up.
What may have cost Chile against Brazil and Spain was their individual quality. For all that Fernandez, Valdivia, the often dazzling Alexis Sanchez, Gary Medel and Carlos Carmona appear World Class, one or two of the back up squad are not of the same calibre, and once suspensions (an unfortunate and common consequence of Chile's high-energy pressing game) and injuries took their toll, their performance level dropped. But Bielsa remained true to his philosophy throughout. When he had a man sent off against Spain, he made attacking substitution, and his team terrified the European Champions all game. When 3-0 down against Brazil, Chile kept right on attacking. There is something so admirable in his kamikaze commitment to offence.
Bielsa's last World Cup was as Coach of Argentina for their disastrous 2002 campaign, where he was undone by an aging Squad and some woeful luck. Its hard not to imagine that with the current pool of ridiculously talented Argentine Players and Bielsa as Coach, Argentina would have walked this World Cup.

4. AWOL
Rooney, Ronaldo, Kaka, Torres, Gourcuff, Cannavaro, Drogba, etc etc etc.
Of the World's elite players, only Lionel Messi, Wesley Sneidjer, Arjen Robben and Messi's Spanish Barcelona colleagues really enjoyed good World Cups. But even Messi was finally overwhelmed by the demands placed upon him by Diego Maradona's tactics, after his early performances had clearly demonstrated why he is the best in the World. The reasons for the failures of the others are many and varied, and tired. Rooney, Drogba, Torres and Kaka all looked unfit. Ronaldo and Gourcuff were undermined by tactics and squad politics respectively. Cannavaro, like a few too many of his Italian teammates, looked as if this was one Tournament too far for him.
For me, Xavi was the player of the tournament, even as he fell slightly below the standards he regularly sets with Barcelona. Close behind him was Diego Forlan, confirming his quality and class on the biggest stage.
A World Cup needs its stars, and this one had many. But for the most part, the World's Greatest Players were not amongst them, which contributed to the undeniable sense of disappointment left by the tournament in general.

5. XI
In a 4-2-3-1, of course:

-------- Eduardo----------

Ramos-Lugano-Carvalho-Contreao

---Schweinsteiger----Carmona---

----Xavi---Ozil---Sneijder---

---------Forlan------------

6. Goals

A top three:

1. Quagliarella vs Slovakia

2. Suarez vs South Korea

3. Maicon vs North Korea

7. "Expert Analysis"

If you live in the UK, then you probably watched the games on the BBC or ITV. In which case you were treated to some shockingly bad punditry. ITV is always bad. Its main pundit is Andy Townsend, who talks a lot at a fair old clip without ever saying anything that is not a cliche and not blindingly obvious. He has mastered a sort of rueful delivery, as if he hates to be cruel to the players, but somebody has to be, and it might as well be him. For this World Cup, ITV put him alongside Adrian Chiles as the presenter. His matey jokiness, so natural and suited to his old job on the BBC's "Match of the Day 2" proved insufficient on the grander stage. Instead of the gravitas that the big occasion deserves, Chiles proved himself capable of only gags. Mostly unfunny ones, at that. His cheerleading for Ghana once England had been eliminated was frankly embarrassing, reducing the coverage of the Ghana-Uruguay tie to a strangely old-fashioned example of anti-South American bias, The rest of the ITV team was at a similar level: Gareth Southgate did best, speaking the odd bit of charisma-free common sense. But Edgar Davids, Marcel Desailly, Patrick Vieira and Lucas Radebe all offered little insight. In the commentary box, Clive Tyldsley was as awful as ever, while Jim Beglin, who can read a game well, seems inhibited in his analysis, as if he has been told to tone down the "high-brow" tactical stuff.
It is the lack of any analysis - or seemingly even awareness - of tactics which really disturbs me when I watch this coverage. Formations are often called wrongly, players roles misunderstood, and movements in play not read. But then some of these men - all ex-Pros, of course - seem proud of their ignorance. On the BBC, the contempt and condescension shown to the "little" Nations was appalling. Colin Murray - whose smug smarminess is a poor replacement for Chiles as the comic relief on the BBC Sports Team - giggled his way through a preview of New Zealand versus Slovakia, the entire conceit being "who would want to watch that"? Alan Hansen mocked Lee Dixon (the best of the BBC's lot, for me) and Gary Lineker for having the temerity to mention Marek Hamsik by name, as if preparation for a game that didn't involve England was a silly or unlikely thing to do. Which just shows how unprepared he was, cruising through games on autopilot, as if being run by a random generator. These days, Hansen generally just spews adjectives: "Pace, power, precision" "Technique, skill, awareness." He doesn't bother with a conceptual or even linguistic framework. Why should he? Hes Alan Hansen.
He did roll back the years with a few nice deconstructions of error-strewn defences. Which is more than could be said for Alan Shearer, even more partial to a blindingly obvious cliche than Andy Townsend. Backing them up were Roy Hodgson (not bad), Harry Redknapp (ignorant & jingoistic), Clarence Seedorf (cheerful & relaxed), Jurgen Klinsmann (fantastic, but on too rarely) and Emmanuel Adebayor (his mobile phone rang mid-broadcast and he was famously unintelligable). When Danny Baker was brought on for the last five minutes of one show, his wit and energy put the entire panel to shame. And his love for the game and the tournament shone through, whereas the others often seemed bored by it all.
The BBC's commentary team is better than ITVs, at least, even if it is often marred by the presence of Mark Lawrenson, whose jokes get more tired by the year. Mick McCarthy's comedy Yorkshireman isn't much better, to be fair.
As it was, the best World Cup coverage I found was on Twitter, a rolling collection of observations, breaking news and jokes which massively enhanced my experience of what was otherwise a rather disappointing World Cup.

8. Diego

Maradona was the great character of the early weeks of the Tournament, but his team was an accident waiting to happen throughout, and it saddens me that he will stay on as Coach despite his seeming total disregard for coherent selection and tactical decisions. It saddens me a little too that he's become such a comedic figure, always good for a hilarious quote or an amusing training routine. The greatest player I have ever seen deserves better. I can't see him remaining Coach as long as the next World Cup, despite the seemingly inevitable new contract, but I can't feel unhappy about that, because the incredible generation of Argentine players who will be at their peak at that tournament - I mean Messi, Aguero, Tevez, Banega, Higuain, Pastore etc - themselves deserve the best possible chance to win it. And that means no Diego.

9. The new Hand of God
And so to the treatment of Luis Suarez after he handled the ball and denied Ghana a "certain" goal in the quarter final, which would have put them through and made them the first African side in the last four at a World Cup. Seemingly everybody wanted Ghana to win that game. They were the neutrals choice, and "An African World Cup needs and African team to do well" and they played such bright, positive football and....
I was supporting Uruguay. Because I love South American football. And Diego Forlan and Edison Cavani and Nicolas Lodiero and a dozen other players who have worn the Uruguayan shirt over the years.
Uruguay had the better of the match, for me, and were denied a certain penalty, while Ghana dominated extra time. But the tone of the coverage was entirely pro-Ghana. Uruguay still enjoy some of their old reputation for violent play, though it was little in evidence in this tournament, and it is easy for British commentators to trot out old cliches about South American football when they feel they need to justify some xenophobia.
Such as - "typical South American cheating" to sum up Suarez handling the ball on the line. It was undeniably cheating and too much has already been written about the morality and lawfulness of the act and its consequences. But yes, most other players would have done the same. No, that doesn't make it right. No, the rules should not be changed to allow for a "penalty goal".
One thing that went almost entirely without remark in the press coverage of the game was the fact that the goalmouth incident in which Suarez thwarted Ghana came from a freekick which should never have been given. And that from that freekick, a Ghana player headed the ball towards goal and two Ghana players were offside.

All of the ensuing scramble, shots and blocks should never have happened. It should have been a Uruguayan freekick, and the controversial incident would never have happened.
But the media - unsurprisingly starting with the host South African broadcasters - were far more interested in Suarez's celebrations at Gyan's missed penalty, and the story became the story of a single piece of cheating.
Far more interesting to me was the nerveless panenka-penalty taken by Sebastian Abreau to win the shootout which settled the tie, but you know, Ghana were busy crying all over the pitch after that, so again the media weren't really interested.
But in this game, a country with a Population of 3.3 Million had beaten a country with a Population of 23.3 Million to reach the last four. And I, for one, saw that as something worth celebrating.

10."Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
The best single piece of journalism I read on the World Cup was by Tom Humphries, a great Irish Times Sports Writer. It is absolutely worth your time to read it. Please do so here.

Argentina B

2010-05-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

Tonight Diego Maradona announced his Provisional Squad of 30 players for the 2010 World Cup. And its mildly shocking reading.
Earlier today, Dunga announced his Brazilian squad, leaving out both Ronaldinho and Adriano. But that fits with the systems Dunga has always played by, as depressing as they are. Maradona's list, in contrast, doesn't fit into any tactical pattern, excludes players in vital positions, includes a couple of bizarrely whimsical choices, and seems to indulge the coaches desire to select as many Argentina-based players as possible to the detriment of the talent available in the squad in South Africa.

Instead of listing the squad - which you can easily find out by googling it - I'm just going to list some of the players Maradona has ignored. This is without even considering the case of Juan Roman Riquelme, who declared himself unavailable for selection more or less as soon as Maradona took over.

Juan Pablo Aimar

Probably the leading contender for the role of playmaker, or Enganche, as Argentines call it, Aimar has just won the Portuguese title with Benfica, where he played a vital role in a thrillingly attractive and versatile side, contributing goals and assists. He played for Maradona's team in the vital final sequence of Qualifiers, made a goal for Higuain, and has been ignored despite fine form. Obviously, he's a beautiful little player - contributing quick-thinking, excellent passing, dribbling ability and an eye for goal. In his position, Maradona has instead selected Javier Pastore, probably the future holder of the position, and Sebastian Blanco, a real surprise for the young player from Lanus. Aimar would have been the better option.

Luis "Lucho" Gonzalez

Porto fans called him "El Comandante" due to his leadership on the field, and he was a great favourite of Argentina's Coach at the last World Cup, Pekarman. He was injured for much of the first half of his first Season with Marseille (after winning the League title for each of the last four Seasons in Portugal) but when he regained fitness and found form, he was an awesome sight; an almost faultless passing machine who made a big difference in both attack and defense, became the teams de facto leader and dictated the tempo of every game. Result: Marseille won the French league. Maradona picked him and he scored a goal against Bolivia in last years shock 6-1 hammering. The coach seemed to blame him, to some extent, for that result, as he hasn't been picked since. His versatility means that he could have played more or less anywhere across Argentina's midfield. But he'll be watching on TV instead.

Esteban Cambiasso

Anyone who watched Inter Milan's heroically defiant, tactically brilliant performance against Barcelina at Camp Nou a few weeks ago will be able to tell you why Cambiasso would probably walk into most teams at the World Cup, never mind squads. More than just a defensive midfielder, hes simply a great footballer, amazingly hardworking, intelligent in his movement and passing, committed and possessed of deceptive skills. Maradona presumably decided that Javier Mascherano is better, which may be true. But Mario Bolatti, the alternative selection in that position, is not yet at the level of Cambiasso or Mascherano.

Lisandro Lopez

49 goals in 106 games for Porto. 14 in 26 this Season for his new club, Lyon, where he was also voted Player of the Year in France. He scores headers, long-distance drives, neat close range finishes, from dribbles, volleys - hes a goalscorer, the type who can tie up an opposition defence on his own. Of course, Argentina have arguably teh greatest line-up of strikers in teh World in their squad - Messi, Tevez, Higuain, Aguero, Milito. But surely Lisandro is a better bet than Martin Palermo, a 37 year old who has never really shown he can cut it at International level?

Ever Banega

The real star of a Valencia team who will finish third in Spain this Season - "first" behind the financial muscle of Real Madrid and Barcelona, the player with the second most assists in Spain this Season (after Lionel Messi), part-playmaker, part holding player, he should be the future of the Argentina midfield. And it looks like Maradona wants it to stay that way.

Fernando Gago

He was one of Maradona's untouchables. But he fell out of favour at Madrid - favour he has since regained, forming a formidable central midfield partnership with Xabi Alonso over the last two months - and, allegedly, his terrible relationship with clubmate Gonzalo Higuain may have cost him a place in the National Squad. But here is a player who once formed a great duo with Mascherano, who maintains the Argentine ideal of short passing from deep midfield at every moment in every game, who works tirelessly and has grown up playing alongside Messi, Aguero et al. Maradona is fickle...

Javier Zanetti

Unequivocally, undoubtedly, truly one of the greatest Argentine players of all time. Hes 36, hes got 136 caps, hes won lots of trophies. And yet hes still the best option Maradona has at right-back. He prowls the flank for Inter - where he is Captain - like an 20 year old, driving up and down, pushing forward yet never relinquishing his defensive duties.
Instead, he has chosen two journeymen to fill in at right back if and when his patented "Four Central Defenders" system malfunctions. Clemente Rodriguez and ariel Garce are both dependable players. Neither is even worthy of comparison with Javier Zanetti.

Javier Saviola

Like Aimar, Saviola has enjoyed a great Season with Benfica, scoring 11 goals in 24 games and setting up Oscar Cardozo, his strike partner, for many others. Hes got undoubted classand perhaps offers something slightly different to the others upfront. Maradona has never picked him, however.

Gabriel Milito

A defender of undoubted style and class, Milito had been out for a year with a serious injury, but his recent return for Barcelona has shown that, while rusty, he has lost none of his pace, ability on the ball, or footballing intelligence. He would have been a good insurance policy for the Coach to have in case of injury to one of his first choice defenders.

Andrés D'Alessandro

He has wandered across clubs and continents and never really, you feel, fulfilled his enormous talent. But what a player. Currently wowing fans of Internacional in Porto Allegre, Brazil, he can play as the enganche or on the left wing. He has issues with temperament and discipline, but he is a constant threat to the opposition. He hasn't played for Argentina since before the last World Cup, and Maradona was never likely to change that.

YugoBosniMaceSerbiCroaSlovenegro

2010-04-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

Yugoslavia may well have won the 1992 European Championship. They had qualified, they were dark horses, before the War in the country intervened, and they were excluded from the tournament. Their replacements, Denmark, came and won in their absence. That was a tournament without an outstanding team, remember, and that unremarkable Denmark side were far from the best team in Europe at the time. Yugoslavia, back then, before the country had divided into its original form - the nations of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzogovnia, Macedonia and Slovenia - had a magnificent squad full of the talent that would eventually enable Croatia to thrive on the international stage.
At that tournament, Yugoslavia could have chosen from a squad containing Robert Prosinecki, Zvonimir Boban, Dejan Savićević, Predrag Mijatović, Darko Pancev, Robert Jarni, Siniša Mihajlović, Dragan Stojković, Alen Bokšić, Davor Šuker, Zlatko Zahovič and Savo Milošević, among others. That midfield, in particular, sounds fearsome, combining some of the greatest attacking talents in world football at the time (Prosinecki, Savicevic) with a wily toughness typical of football in the Balkans.

But it wasn't to be. Yugoslavia will be remembered for some lovely football (another country in a long line called "the Brazil of Europe"), and for never winning anything. They came fourth in the World Cups of 1930 and 1962, and were runners up in the European Championships of 1960 and 68. Their youth teams were famously formidable.

Nowadays, each of the Nations listed above has its own National side. Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia have enjoyed notable success since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. I can't help thinking, though, of what a team Yugoslavia would maintain if the country still existed.

From Serbia, noted for their defensive solidity, Nemana Vidic would be a certainty, as would the experienced, tough Ivica Dragutinović, who plays for Sevilla, and Chelsea's Branislav Ivanović. Serbia produces defenders of breathtaking calibre, enjoyng outstanding defensive records in their last two qualification campaigns, and even the young Neven Subotić of Borussia Dortmund would be in with a good chance of making this squad. In midfield, the class and experience of Inter Milan's Dejan Stanković - creative but combative, a midfield all-rounder - would be supported by Miloš Krasić and Liverpool-bound Milan Jovanović on the wings, while Ajax's Marko Pantelić poaches upfront.

From Croatia, only Hoffenheim's Josep "three yellow cards" Simunic would challenge for a place in such a strong defence. But Croatia produces creative players of great skill and vision, as Tottenham's Luka Modric and Shaktar Donetsk's Darijo Srna attest. Both hard-working midfielders, both capable of defence-splitting passing, both technically brilliant, they would be an asset to most national Teams. As would Tottenham's Niko Krancjar, a more direct, "luxury" player than the other two, but one capable of turning a game with a moment of magic. Croatia would supply the back-up forwards for this team: Ivica Olić (Bayern Munich) and Mladen Petrić (Hamburg). Talented players with great work ethics, but, like Serbia and Valencia's Nikola Žigić, men lacking the magic associated with the strikers who would undoubtedly be first choice in this squad.

They would both come from tiny Montenegro: Stevan Jovetić of Fiorentina and Mirko Vučinić of Roma. Vučinić is a talismanic player - Montenegro's Captain, a versatile attacker capable of playing as centre-forward, support striker or winger, blessed with lovely dribbling abilities and explosive shooting. Jovetić is something of a golden boy; a prodigiously gifted 20 year old whose range of talents resemble his older countryman in both depth and dimension.

There is the spine: Serbian defense, Croatian midfield, Montenegran attack. Some wild cards come from the other Nations. Bosnia and Herzegovina supply perhaps the key creative midfielder for the team: Wolfsburg's old-fashioned playmaker, Zvjezdan Misimović, who, with his exquisite technique, controls tempo, creates chances and rarely gives the ball away. His heir, Lyon's Miralem Pjanić, would also feature in the squad, alongside Misimović's Wolfsburg teammate Edin Džeko, a commanding, prolific goalscorer.
Macedonia would be represented by Internazionale's Goran Pandev, another attacker able to switch between the centre and the wings, while Slovenia donate goalkeeper Samir Handanovič of Udinese.

So here is a possible XI, in a 3-5-2:

Handanovic

Ivanovic-Vidić-Dragutinović

Srna-Stanković-Misimovic-Modric-Krasić

Jovetić- Vučinić

Subs: Dzeko/Simunic/Jovanovic/Pantelic/Pjanic/Pandev

A team capable of winning the World Cup? Maybe not, but certainly as talented a group of players as will be at the tournament, worthy of comparison with the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Portugal and Holland. As good as that Yugoslavia team that never quite was, with Boban, Suker, Savicevic and Pancev? Well, maybe not. But not all that many teams would be...

Its Not You, Its Me Part 1

2010-04-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

Club signs player. It looks a great fit. And it doesn't work out.
Happens all the time.
Sometimes its understandable, often baffling.
Here are some that remain, well, regrettable:

Juan Roman Riquelme - Barcelona
You look at Barcelona, look at the way they play football, the ceaseless economy and beauty of that passing carousel, and its difficult to imagine any player could improve such a team. But Riquelme, the most talented Argentine footballer between Maradona and Messi, is perhaps the best passer of the ball of his generation from anywhere in the world, an unerring magician with vision and wonderful technique and an understanding of tempo and space even Xavi, for all his undoubted gifts, cannot replicate. Riquelme also scores goals and takes set pieces. He was signed in a blaze of publicity, another "new Maradona", the heartbeat of an all-conquering Boca Juniors side who had beaten Real Madrid to be crowned Club World Cup Champions inspired by an impeccable Riquelme performance which had made Zinedine Zidane look positively ordinary. But it never worked out for him. Bought in 2002 for €11 million, his transfer was overshadowed by the kidnapping of his brother just before he left Boca, where his departure had been controversial due to his refusal to sign a new contract over a long few months. Coach Louis Van Gaal didn't want him, wasn't shy about saying so (he famously called him a"a political signing"), and kept his new Number 10 mainly on the bench, playing him on the wing when he played him at all, and then in Cup matches and dead rubber European ties. That didn't work and Barcelona struggled. Another post-Van Gaal season with multiple coaches, a squad made up of many talents but no real identity, and big failures in the League and Europe made Riquelme something of a scapegoat among Barca fans, who had expected him to turn around their club. He was loaned to Villarreal when Ronaldinho was signed. The Brazilian, alongside Messi, would spark the Barcelona revival that continues to this day. As Riquelme could have, given the chance. As it was, he was instrumental in guiding Villarreal to unprecedented League success and a Champions League Semi-Final, and won Boca Juniors the Copa Libertadores upon his return to his beloved hometown club. But I can still see him, picking out Messi runs with those casually perfect passes. In reality, he scored 3 goals in 30 games for Barcelona, mainly as a substitute. He wouldn't quite fit with the ethos of the modern Barca - his talent is restricted to a single role and is best expressed when he is the fulcrum of a teams entire attacking dimension, but he had the talent to succeed when he did play there. Its just a shame that he was never really given the chance.

Diego Forlan - Manchester United
If, in August 2004, when Man Utd sold Forlan to Villarreal, you had told a Man Utd fan that he would twice win the European Golden Boot over the next five seasons, they would have laughed at you. The Uruguayan striker had been bought from Argentina's Independiente for £6.9 million in 2002, and it took him 27 games to score his first goal, making him another in a rich heritage of failed strikers at United - precedents include Garry Birtles, Nigel Davenport, Dion Dublin and Alan Brazil. He had averaged nearly a goal every two games for Independiente as they twice won the league but he took a while to settle and adjust to the pace of the game in England. One of his problems was playing alongside Ruud Van Nistelrooy - an awesome poacher and goalscorer, but also a player who needs an entire team's play to revolve around his game (which is one reason Sir Alex Ferguson sold him once it became clear Rooney and Ronaldo were the players he should build a team around). Forlan then was more of an old-fashioned inside right; with the ability to take the ball off the midfield and run at defences, able to shoot with either foot and slip passes to other attackers. He worked hard to make himself more of a European striker and improved his movement in the box. In the Championship winning year of 2002-03 he scored some crucial goals and earned himself a lifelong place in United cult fandom by scoring two against Liverpool at Anfield. But United's purchase of Rooney made him surplus to requirements, having scored only 10 goals in 63 games. For Villarreal, he would notch 54 in 106, and for Atletico Madrid, 64 in 97, suggesting that we never quite saw the best of him in England, though United fans could always see that he was a class act; just not the right class act at that time.

Jari Litmanen - Liverpool
It often seemed during the Evans and Houllier eras that Liverpool really needed a Cantona figure. Somebody to tie it all together, a genius to make the difference in the tightest games, that spark, something out of the ordinary. Preferably a foreigner, an unknown quantity in Britain. Litmanen was meant to be that player.
He had been one of the hottest players in World football after a magical spell at Ajax, where he wore the totemic Number 10 in Louis Van Gaal's European Cup winning team. He was a playmaker but a great goalscorer too, topping the Dutch scoring charts in the 93-94 season. He began moves with visionary passes and then arrived in the box to finish them off. Had he not been unfashionably Finnish, he would possibly have been voted World Player of the Year at that time. He was that devastating. He followed Van Gaal to Barcelona in 1999 but played little over two seasons as he was frequently injured, setting a pattern that would continue for much of his playing career. It certainly continued at Liverpool after he was signed by Houllier on a free transfer in 2001. He only lasted a season, playing 21 times, and it quickly seemed that even when he was fit Houllier didn't quite trust him or use him enough. He scored 5 goals and donated a few match-changing performances, but it wasn't quite enough, and having missed out (through injury, of course) on all three of the Finals Liverpool won at the climax of the 2000-2001 Season, he returned to Ajax in August 2002.

Andriy Shevchenko - Chelsea
In his pomp at Milan Shevchenko was unequivocally the greatest striker in European football. But at Chelsea, after Roman Abramovich had pursued him for years and spent a large amount of money to prise him away from Silvio Berlusconi, he looked a shadow of that player. He scored 127 goals in 208 games for AC Milan. He won a scudetto or two, a European Cup, and European Player of the Year. He was awesome and feared across the continent. He scored tap-ins and headers, thunderbolts from distance, placed finishes. Chelsea paid £30.8 for him in May 2006, and altough the goals never quite dried up, he was never the same. Overshadowed by Didier Drogba, seemingly not trusted by Jose Mourinho, and most crucially, lacking that burst of pace which had allowed him to arrive in the right pace at the right time more often that most strikers, he never seemed to settle at Chelsea. He scored here and there, even some significant goals, but he never shone the way the player from Milan had, was never the talisman his price-tag demanded he be. His second season was blighted by injury and after a third, he was loaned back to Milan and eventually sold back to Dynamo Kiev, the club where he had originally broken through.

Nelson Vivas - Arsenal
Arsene Wenger has never really had much of an eye for a defender. Attacking football is obviously never a problem. But defense? Consider that he arrived at Arsenal to find that legendary back four already in place and that over the next decade he attempted to replace them with the likes of Stepanovs, Luzhny, Cygan and Grimandi. His best defensive purchases have been lured from clubs right under his nose - Sol Campbell from Spurs and William Gallas from Chelsea. Then there is Nelson Vivas. He had a solid early career in Argentina - seven years with first Quilmes and then Boca Juniors, followed by a 1997 loan to Switzerland's AC Lugano. Arsenal bought him after only a Season there with a view to replacing Lee Dixon at right back. He played games that first Season, but was never quite a regular as Wenger juggled him between fullback positions and his struggle to cope with the Premier League's pace meant that he made a lot of late tackles and received sundry yellow cards. His willingness to attack also proved something of a weakness, given his inability to match the pace of the games around him.
His second season was affected by his injury problems and, altough he had a small cult among Arsenal fans for his strength and bravery, his fate was already sealed by the club's purchase of Luzhny. Here is a player who should have been to Arsenal what Gabriel Heinze would be to Manchester United - an Argentine Warrior-defender, committed, driving, courageous and technically adroit. Instead his career in England drifted away from him and he was sold to Inernazionale in 2001 after a Season's loan at Celta Vigo. He played 39 times for his country.

Forever and Ever

2009-12-21T15:16:00.000-08:00

Its always uniquely satisfying to see a young player whose talent you have admired from early in his career blossom and start to fulfil some of his potential. That strange sense of ownership a fan can have with a player is unavoidable and only sharpens the pleasure of seeing him do well.

Tomorrow night Argentina play the Johan Cruyff managed-Catalonia National team (which counts such stars as Carlos Puyol, Victor Valdes, Bojan, Xavi, Cesc Fabregas and Gerard Pique amongst its ranks) in a friendly in Barcelona. Argentine Coach Diego Maradona is currently suspended from any public football-related activities by FIFA due to his foul-mouthed tirade at the press in the immediate aftermath of his sides win over Uruguay and qualification for the World Cup, but he did pick the squad for the game, and as is now-habitual, he named a couple of players he hasn't used before (one of the startling features of Maradona's reign so far has been the sheer quantity of players selected and used, if only briefly). Wonderboy playmaker Javier Pastore has been a firm favourite of the Argentine press for the last year due to his elegant, incisive performances for Huracan, but Maradona had previously ignored him. His summer transfer to Palermo and recent good form seem to have altered this and he has received his first call-up. But the player whose selection is most satisfying to me is Ever Banega.

Banega came up through the youth teams at Boca Juniors and made his senior debut in February 2007 at just 18. Replacing a Real Madrid-bound Fernando Gago in the traditional Number 5 position in defensive midfield he distinguished himself to such an extent that some Boca fans were upset that the return of former Boca legend Juan Roman Riquelme to the club might harm Banega's development. Instead, Banega and Riquelme dovetailed beautifully as Boca won the Copa Libertadores - South America's equivalent to the Champions League - in 2007. After less than a year as a regular in Boca's first team, Banega was transferred to Valencia for €18 million. But he arrived at a club on the brink of disaster, riven with financial difficulties and internal politics. He didn't help himself with a widely circulated internet chatroom sex video and his early performances weren't good enough to help him break into a team with a lot of competition for places in midfield. After only half a Season, he went on loan to Atletico Madrid, where again he was unable to establish himself in the first team, generally making appearances from the bench and contributing little.

A return to Valencia in the summer meant that he was at the centre of much transfer speculation. He was linked to a host of British clubs - Everton were seemingly closest - but new Valencia coach Unai Emery seems to rate Banega more highly than his predecessors did, and he has arguably been the side's midfield lynchpin so far this Season, finally recapturing his Boca form in Europe and earning his International recall. He has previously played twice for the Senior National team after winning caps at every single youth level, playing in the Olympic Gold Medal-winning team and captaining the Under 21 team in the tournament at that level in Toulon in May. The prospect of him linking up in central midfield with Pastore, or indeed with Angel Di Maria or Mario Bolatti, could prove an exciting glimpse into the future for Argentine football fans.

Banega's most obvious quality is his passing ability, evident from his Boca debut. He is admirably two-footed, though he favours his right, possesses great touch and control, and is adept at mixing up his game with a variety of long and short balls. He never seemed a classical Number 5 at Boca, surging from deep with the ball (he is deceptively pacy) more than a Mascherano or Redondo would and obviously fond of the playmaker role behind the forwards, from where he can inflict real damage with his vision and precise, incisive through-balls. Currently he alternates at Valencia, carrying much of the creative threat from midfield (especially in the recent absence of David Silva) but also doing his share of defensive work. His positional sense is perhaps a weakness, but he compensates with his pace and a nice ability to time a clean tackle. He formed such an effective duo with Riquelme because he knew when to time his runs forward, and when to hold and because he could always deliver the ball accurately to the Playmaker, often first time. Like Riquelme, he is capable of utterly dictating the pace of a game, and when he is playing well, everything goes through him. Another slight weakness may be a slightly immature need to always attempt the perfect defence-splitting pass, but then who can blame him when he is so evidently capable of doing just that?
But he is the best sort of Argentine midfielder - always open and hungry for possession, generally aware of what he wants to do with the ball before he receives it, blessed with the technical ability to execute his intent, and driven by a fierce competitive spirit which means that he is usually in the thick of the battle.

His recent rejuvenation at Valencia doesn't really surprise me. He was always plainly a great talent, and it was just a question of when he would prove that. Hopefully Maradona will let him start tomorrow night and he will prove it in the National shirt too.

A few YouTube highlights:

A general compilation of flicks and tricks:

Banega showing his class, and range of passing, for Boca against Milan in the World Club championship final:

Nothing quite as lovely as a nicely done nutmeg, and there is one at 1:46 in this video, which is otherwise a selection of some perfect through-balls and nice short pass and move play:

Danish Dynamite

2009-10-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

The Denmark National team of the mid-80s was one of the teams that defined the way I see football. I was 11 during the 1986 World Cup, when they played some of the best football I had ever seen and were easily the best team of the tournaments opening phase. I was aware of how good they were - they had pulverized Ireland 4-1 at Lansdowne Road in a group game and been a mite unlucky to go out of Euro 84 in the semis to a decent Spanish side (who would again prove their undoing in Mexico in 86).
But watching them destroy Uruguay (6-1!) and West Germany in the so-called 'Group of Death' was a different experience entirely. They had some amazing players - Laudrup, Elkjaer, Olsen, Olsen, Lerby, Arnesen, Molby - and they played a sort of 'total football' of a type I'd never seen before. They also had a magnificent kit, which was no small thing to an 11 year old football fan. And my club, Manchester United, soon had two Danish internationals on its books - Jesper Olsen and John Sivebaek. i wished it was Laudrup - my favourite player in the world after Maradona - but they weren't bad substitutes.
The legacy that team has had in my view of football is probably evident in the fact that I've written two profiles of players from its ranks on this blog - Laudrup and Molby.

I'm not alone in my fondness for this particular team. As this exceptional Guardian piece reports at some length, they came surprisingly high in World Soccer's list of the Greatest Ever Team, and if you grew up in that era and had any interest in International football, i guarantee you will remember them well too. So; please read the piece, follow every link (there are some awesome youtube clips at the end of many, especially the Elkjaer footage) and enjoy, then go here for access to streaming prints of all the official FIFA films up until 1986, and HERO, which features that Danish side quite prominently.

Stitch this

2009-10-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

Martin Palermo, Boca legend, infamous taker of three missed penalties in a single game, ludicrously consistent goalscorer, nicknamed "el Loco", currently not speaking to fellow Boca teammate/legend Juan Roman Riquelme and expected to lead the line for Argentina in this weekend's crucial World Cup qualifier against Peru despite never having really made it at International level, scored the winning goal for Boca against champons Velez Sarsfeld at la Bombonera last night. With a header. Pelermo is good with his head, so that isn't a surprise, perhaps. But this was from 40 yards, literally:

More Than A Club

2009-09-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is the video Pep Guardiola had a friend of his at a Spanish TV station cut to be played for the Barcelona players in the dressing room before the Champions League Final against Man United in Rome. A bit obvious, maybe, but the Gladiator score is stirring, and who could fail to be inspired by footage of themselves excelling?

The players watched it in total darkness just before they stepped into the tunnel then out onto the pitch to destroy United. So, whatever its merits, it worked.

The Magic Dragao

2009-07-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

In perhaps the craziest Summer ever on the European transfer market, with Real Madrid buying everybody but Barack Obama, Manchester City front-loading a squad in a manner that recalls nothing so much as Ossie Ardiles' Tottenham Hotspur team; and just about everybody else (even the usually mighty likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, Juventus and AC Milan) wondering what exactly the suddenly tiny sum of £20 Million buys you nowadays, one club seems to me to have done great business in the transfer market. That club would be FC Porto.

How can that be? you say. Haven't they just sold their most influential player, their heartbeat, playmaker, captain and midfield general, Luis "Lucho" Gonzalez? Why, yes they have, to Marseille for €18 Million. And, and - haven't they also sold their buccaneering, ultra-prolific centre forward, Lisandro Lopez? Why, yes. To Lyon, for €24 Million. How then, you ask, can this be mistaken for 'great' business?

Well. This is the Porto model. They identify South American talent, (and not in the way Barcelona or Man Utd do, recruiting youth team players before they make their full debuts), they monitor its development, then they buy it. Not too cheaply, either, but never at an exorbitant price. They seem to have a great knack of picking players who will make the grade in Europe, where a lot of clubs recruit unknown quantities who don't have what it takes and go home after a Season or two, having discovered their actual level. Or perhaps they just handle those players well, shepherding them through a difficult cultural change and allowing them to find their form and way without rushing anything.
Then they make that talent work for them. Since the Mourinho era, Porto have won the League in six out of seven Seasons (the single unsuccessful year was the immediate post-Mourinho wobble) and established an iron-fisted dominance over the two big Lisbon clubs. They also regularly make the latter stages of the Champions League.
Then they sell these players, generally at a significant profit. And back they go to South america, to buy the next player...

Examples: Deco, who was playing for tiny Salgueiros in Portugal when Porto bought him, the unknown Brazilian had been brought to Portugal by Benfica but never given a start, instead being farmed out on loan. Porto bought him for a pittance, Mourinho made him the focal point of the team and he was one of the best players in the World for a few seasons after that; able to pass long and short, tackle, dribble and with a great tactical brain. They won the Portuguese League, the UEFA cup, then the Champions League, and then sold him to Barcelona for €12 Million and Ricardo Quaresma.
Quaresma himself - a dazzling talent for Sporting Lisbon, he had flopped horribly after a big-money (€6 Million) transfer to Barcelona. Porto rehabilitated him and he would be a key member of the squad that won two consecutive League titles before being sold to Internazionale for €18 Million.
Porto replaced Quaresma with Cristian Rodriguez, the young Uruguayan who had done well in a struggling Paris Saint Germain before being loaned to Benfica, where he thrived. Porto nipped him from under Benfica's noses, paying €7 Million for him, giving him the Number 10 shirt and playing him as a roaming left winger in a potent three-man attack.
One of the other members of that attack, Hulk, had been a revelation this season. Bought from Tokyo Verdy in Japan and accordingly absolutely off the radar for most of Europe's clubs, the young Brazilian cost only €6 Million and scored eight goals in his debut Season in Portugal.

Of course there have been players who didn't do quite so well. But Porto generally made a profit on them, too. Diego is a rare exception, joining for €7 Million from Santos and leaving for Werder Bremen, his reputation damaged by two seasons of underachievement, for €6 Million. Anderson is more representative - bought from Gremio for around €10 Million, a horrific broken leg (the result of a tackle) meant he played little for Porto, but Manchester United paid €18 Million for him anyway. As is Carlos Alberto, who played little but scored the crucial first goal in the Champions League final and was sold to Werder Bremen for €7.8 Million.

Bringing me back to this summer, Lucho and Lopez. Porto obviously have been eyeing their replacements for some time. Lucho has been linked with various Spanish clubs for the last two summers (Valencia and Atletico Madrid, most prominently) and within a week of his transfer, Porto had begun negotiations to bring Fernando Belluschi in to replace him. Belluschi is another former River Plate creative midfielder, perhaps more imaginitive than Lucho, if less commanding, and after a solid (and occasionally inspired) first Season with Olympiakos he may be ready for a bigger League. This is business - Porto paid €11 Million for Lucho, sold him for €18 Million, and have bought Belluschi for €5 Million. They are also persistently linked with Lanus' Diego Valeri, an oustanding young playmaker, and their history with recruits from Argentina suggests he too could be a success.
As for Lisandro Lopez, he was bought from Racing Club in Argentina for €2.5 Million, giving Porto a €20 Million profit on his sale to Lyon. In his time at the club he doubled his goals-per-game tally and was a lethal spearpoint to their attack. They have acted quickly to replace him, paying River Plate €3.9 Million for the 23 year-old Columbian striker Falcao, a hot property over the last few Seasons, and as good a striker as there is in South America at the moment.

Man City, prepared to pay €40 Million for Emmanuel Adebayor, and Real Madrid, with the same fee for Xabi Alonso, could do worse than take a few notes. Though they would probably rather wait a Season or two, then offer €50 Million for Falcao...

Latin Wonderkids

2009-07-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

South America has long exported its football talent to Europe.
In recent years, however, the talent drain has been beginning earlier as young players flee Economic and social uncertainty at home in Brazil or Argentina in order to live more comfortably, funded by their new European owners. Lionel Messi and his entire family left Rosario in Argentina because his boyhood club, Newells Old Boys, could not afford to pay for the hormonal treatments needed to stimulate his growth if "the flea" was ever to develop enough to give him a shot at a career as a professional. Barcelona could afford it, and afford to employ his father and put up the family in town. The Da Silva twins left Brazil before ever featuring for the first team at Fluminense. Manchester United had spotted them at an International Youth Tournament and moved quickly to sign them up.

This is increasingly common. And South America continues to produce great players, with new wonderkids appearing on the conveyer belt every season. They shuffle off to a mid-ranked European club, struggle with just about everything, go on loan, and finally return home, older and wiser, career more or less wasted. The odd exceptional talent - a Messi or a Kaka - thrives on or ahead of schedule. Many others take a few years to adapt to the weather, the rigours of the training ground, the physicality of the European game and the expectations upon their shoulders. Life must feel different once you're worth millions of dollars. Still, European Club football is full of South Americans. The latter stages of the Champions League positively teem with Brazilians and Argentines, alongside the occasional Uruguayan. And they keep coming. There will be more this summer, and in the January transfer window, and after the 2010 World Cup, when a few new talents have been unearthed.

I watch a lot of Argentinian football, and as much of the Copa Libertadores as I can. So I know a little about Uruguayan and Brazilian and Chilean football too. Enough to have spotted a few up and coming stars. It helps, too, that the media in those countries carefully monitors young talent in order to predict the next big thing as early as possible - many of these kids (none older than 22) have been persistently linked with the usual suspects (Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barca, Milan, Inter etc) for years, and its as if the local media wants them to leave and further weaken domestic leagues. Go figure. Anyway, a short primer of some names to watch out for over the next few years:

Nicolas Lodeiro of Nacional (Uruguay)

Lodeiro, 20, is always being compared with Lionel Messi, which suggests how highly he is rated in South America. There are similarities - he is short (5ft7in) and plays on the wing yet with a licence to drift inside and link up attacks. But his game is very different to Messi's. He is more old-fashioned in that his playmaking comes more through passing than through the penetrative dribbles which Messi favours. He reads the game well and has an eye for a killer ball, which he appears to have an eerie knack of seeing before it actually materialises. He scores fewer goals than Messi, altough this part of his game looks to be improving. He is also a hard worker, tracking back and ferreting for the ball and displaying some trademark Uruguayan grit when contesting possession. He really emerged at the South American U21 Championship in January, where he scored three goals in six games and ran the show for Uruguay, who qualified for the U21 World Cup as a result. Since then he has played a key role in Nacional's successful run to the semi-finals of the Libertadores for the first time in over a decade. Uruguayan football never holds onto its brightest stars for very long, and the odds are that he will be in Europe soon, and the loudest talk has been of a move to either Barcelona or Liverpool...

Javier Pastore of Huracan (Argentina)

The Argentine League has been quite topsy turvy of late. The traditional "Big Five" (Boca Juniors, River Plate, Independiente, Racing Club and San Lorenzo) have suffered through sales of young stars to Europe and financial crises brought on by mismanagement and concerted attempts at Libertadores success. River won the Clausura last year, then came bottom in the Apertura, and Boca are not too far off repeating that feat in this Season. Which means that the dominant sides at the moment are a lowlier trio of Buenos Aires clubs - Lanus, Velez Sarsfeld and Huracan. Huracan have a historical reputation for attractive, attacking football (which in a country as devoted to attacking football as Argentina is no small claim) and under current coach Angel Cappa, they more than live up to that reputation. they also feature a duo of young stars who are stealing headlines in Argentina and attracting attention in Europe. Matias De Federico is another half-pint dribbler, blessed with explosive acceleration and feet seemingly magnetic to the ball. Inevitably, he is continually compared with Messi. Javier Pastore, on the other hand, is a playmaker for whom the term "elegant" might have been coined. Graceful of movement and with a fine range of creative passing, Pastore is also a deceptively strong runner, covering lots of ground with his rangy 6ft1in frame. This allows him to arrive late in the box on a regular basis and has meant he has scored 8 goals this Season for Huracan, including two in a 4-0 hammering of River Plate (he provided an assist for another). He seems always calm and composed, and his use of the ball, given any space at all, is often sublime. His agent reported that Man Utd bid £8 Million for him a month or so ago, but at 19, he may need another Season or two in Argentina before a move really appeals. He also needs to impress his National Team Coach, who snubbed him when picking an entire squad of domestically based players for a recent friendly against Panama. De Federico was selected (and scored) and the suspicion stands that Pastore was excluded because Huracan would not release him for the U21 Championship. In the past, Maradona has similarly punished Gonzalo Higuain, so at least Pastore is in good company...

Juan Forlin of Boca Juniors (Argentina)

The Argentine National team, struggling somewhat under the guidance of Diego Maradona, have a few problem positions if they do reach the World Cup in South Africa. Chief amongst them is Centre Back. Since the retirement of Roberto Ayala and the long term injury to Gabriel Milito, nobody has satisfactorily made either of the central defensive positions definitively his own. Maradona has experimented with various different players and combinations there, with mixed results. Which explains why Juan Forlin was fast-tracked into the squad during his first full Season as a first team player at Boca. If he continues at his current rate of development, then he could well be first choice for his country by the time the World Cup rolls around. He is certainly good enough. At 5ft11in, he is short for a centre half, but he makes up for it with incredible anticipation, smooth, apparently effortless pace and clean, precise tackling. He makes many sliding challenges, yet rarely concedes a free kick, instead often emerging with the ball at his feet, his opponent baffled by this lightning ghost. His spring is good in partial compensation for his stature. And, in the Boca tradition, he is adept at passing the ball out from the heart of defence. Barecelona have been sniffing around...

Sebastian Blanco of Lanus (Argentina)

Over the last two or three years, Lanus have easily and consistently played the best football in Argentina. They won their first ever League title two years ago (Apertura 2007), a triumph for their inimitably Argentinean short passing style. They possess a surfeit of creative, positive midfielders. Diego Valeri, the most classical, old-fashioned playmaker to emerge from Argentina since Juan Roman Riquelme (but with pace and a better work ethic, even if he does lack Riquelme's genius), was their lynchpin when they won that League title. Since then both Eduardo Salvio and Sebastian Blanco have become fixtures in the team. Blanco has often been preferred to the out-of-form Valeri this season. A truly two-footed attacker, he can play either wing, as a support striker, or in the Playmaker role at the tip of midfield, which is where he seems best used. Beautifully balanced and with a quick turn, it is that ability to use either foot to deliver his passes which marks him out, and the way he has started to shape Lanus' attacks with changes of play and sudden slide rule balls which suggest he could have a very bright future indeed. Lanus have done a good job holding onto all of their their young talent so far, Blanco included, for fear of selling off all of their success, but sooner or later the money on offer will prove too good to resist...

Maxi Moralez of Velez Sarsfield (Argentina)

Maxi Moralez stands out on this list for having done it all already. Aged 22, he has already moved to Europe for a lot of money, already failed and returned with his tail between his legs. And somehow it seems to have improved him as a player. He built a great reputation for himself at Racing Club in his teens, his technique, link up play, quick passing and incisive runs all impressing observers. At the 2007 U-20 World Cup in Canada, he was the outstanding performer in the victorious Argentina side which also included Sergio Aguero, Angel Di Maria and Franco Di Santo. Moralez, clearly at home in the traditional Number 10 position in the hole behind Di Santo and Aguero, made his strikers look good with his clever prompting and numerous fine assists. FC Moscow promptly bought him for $5 Million. He didn't adapt well to Moscow, barely played, and was loaned back to Racing after 6 months, out of shape and in poor form. It took him around another 6 months to recover form, fitness and confidence, and by then it was unclear whether Racing actually wanted to keep him. So Moralez joined Velez Sarsfield instead, was given the Number 10 shirt and the responsibility to make things happen, and has driven the club to within one game of title success. He is the definition of a livewire - quick on his feet and with them, always looking for options, always a threat. at some point a return to Europe seems inevitable, perhaps in a more hospitable league than Russia's.

Douglas Costa of Gremio (Brazil)

A left-winger with a penchant for lots of step-overs and stunning swerves above the ball, Costa has already been compared to Ronaldinho, Robinho, and Cristiano Ronaldo in his native Brazil. One thing he definitely has in common with these players is an uncommon cockiness - he swaggers with belief in his own ability. Which does seem partly warranted by his undoubted potential. He has vision, astonishing pace and is a magnificent dribbler. His dead-ball ability also belies his youth (he is 19). But he is far from the finished article and above Brazilian ball wizards of his ilk always must loom the shadow of Denilson, who never came close to living up to the huge transfer fee which took him to Europe (he went to Real Betis for £21.5 Million in 1998). Douglas could do with at least one more Season in Brazil before his inevitable move materialises. He has been, unsurprisingly, most prominently linked with Man Utd as a Ronaldo replacement...

Gary Medel of Universidad Catolica (Chile)

His nickname: "El Pitbull" probably tells you all you need to know. A defensive midfielder in the Gattuso/Mascherano mould, Medel is a gritty competitor with fine footballing ability and a fantastic engine. Universidad Catolica are one of Chile's "Big Three", and for them he patrols the midfield, but Chilean National Coach Marcelo Bielsa usually uses him on the right side of a three-man defence, while encouraging him to forage forward, employing that amazing energy to burn his way through a match. In the recent 2-0 victory over Argentina in Santiago, Medel was probably Man of the Match, his drive and hunger for the ball and awesome sight. He will undoubtedly impress many at next year's World Cup, where Chile, who play a lovely high tempo passing game which is the most exciting, attractive sight in current South American football, could well be a surprise package. Independiente of Argentina seemed to have a move for him tied up a few months back, but that appears to have dissolved at the contractual stage. He will undoubtedly be anchoring the midfield of a major European club very soon, however...

Andy Reid & Stephen Ireland

2009-04-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

"Football is a beautiful game, and it should be played beautifully" - Brian Clough, The Damned United

If you love football, it can be really depressing coming from a small country.
You don't qualify for most tournaments. When you do, you don't go very far. Because of this you get horrible seeding, which means you get awful draws in qualification groups, so ensuring that, yet again, you don't qualify. Each generation has a maximum of two top-class players, if you're lucky, and none if you aren't. This lack of quality encourages coaches to opt for percentage football - style is sacrificed. Results are paramount. The football is dire. Your club sides are terrible, the play unexciting, the best players swept off to bigger, more lucrative markets at a young age. You, like most lovers of football in this small country, look abroad for entertainment, for a team to care about. But you still love your national team. How could you not? Even though its an ugly beast. Its your ugly beast, dammit.

Ireland haven't qualified for a major tournament since the 2002 World Cup. Under Manager Brian Kerr we came very close. In a tough group with France and Israel, the team played nice, attractive football, but choked in the big games and narrowly missed out on qualification. Under his successor Steve Staunton Ireland hit a nadir - the worst results since the Charlton era, bad football, a lack of any tactical nous, and awful results. So Giovanni Trappatoni, legendary and incredibly experienced septegenarian Italian coach, was given a Big Money contract. Results immediately improved. Trappatoni knew exactly what he wanted and he knew how to get it. He placed two holding midfielders at the centre of his team, leaving the flair to the wingers and the forwards, knowing that his two midfielders provided security to the defence above all else.

In theory this is not an entirely bad idea. But it depends on the calibre of the playing staff for its success. A key player for Ireland in this system would be Blackburn midfielder Steven Reid. He is a good example of the modern central midfielder; strong, fast and incredibly fit, he has the stamina to run all game, to cover the entire pitch, to go ceaselessly from box to box. He is good at almost everything - he can tackle, run the ball, shoot from distance, his awareness is good, his passing varied, and he is fine in the air - but exceptional at nothing. He would work beside a journeyman destroyer in such a midfield, because his energy and pace would allow him to join the attack when required, and he can be a danger in the opposition half, but he would also so his share of defensive work. The destroyer could hold back all game, making Trappatoni happy.

But Reid is injury-prone, and he is suffering from a long-term injury at present. So Trappatoni has been forced to use lesser players in the midfield roles. Players like journeymen Glenn Whelan and Keith Andrews. Or Darren Gibson, a Youth team player on the fringes of Manchester United's first team, who had played for Ireland at senior level before he ever played in a serious competitive match for his club. Or Liam Miller, who has consistently had to drop down a level to the Championship to find first-team football. None of these men is really fit to play in a midfield that has, over the years, been filled with the likes of Johnny Giles, Liam Brady, Ronnie Whelan and Roy Keane. Meanwhile, Ireland's two most creative Midfielders are absent from Trappatoni's Squads. Andy Reid and Stephen Ireland.

Lets start with Reid. Arguably the most creative Irish player of his generation, he is perhaps better known for suffering from recurrent weight problems than for having one of the best left feet in the Premier League. Not only that, but Reid knows how to use it, deploying a range of passing that seems more Latin in its variety than Northern European. Indeed, when he signed for Charlton Athletic a few years ago, a profile in a club match programme claimed that early in his career he was called the "Irish Maradona". I don't remember anybody ever being called anything so silly, but Reid's sheer talent has never really been questioned (and during his stint as Irish Assistant coach/Advisor, Bobby Robson echoed the sentiment by claiming that if Reid was Argentine, the media would rave about the purity of his technique). His first coach at Charlton, Les Reed, compared him to Ferenc Puskas. On a good day he has the kind of gift that inspires these sort of comparisons. He can pass accurately over distance or can play a rapid short game as well as anybody from these islands since Paul Scholes. He also takes a mean free kick, his control and touch is lovely, he has a few close control tricks in his arsenal, and his shooting is ferocious. That all makes him sound like a luxury player, a lightweight technician of the type the modern pragmatic Coach has little time for. But no, Irish football culture prizes effort as much as (if not more than) skill, and so Reid closes down, clatters into tackles and generally runs himself into the ground for his team.

The problem is his build. He is typically Irish - short and squat, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered. He would need to be super-fit to even look like he was moderately fit, and Reid generally looks a little out of shape. Paunchy. Carrying a half stone too much weight. Sometimes he obviously is out of shape, but the point is with his sort of build, he always looks tubby, no matter how hard he works or how much ground he covers. For Nottingham Forest and Spurs he usually played on the left-wing, and people expect wingers to look a certain way: whippet-thin, rangy, all angles and bones. They also expect wingers to operate using pace above all else. Reid was never about pace. As a winger his game resembled (to a certain extent) David Beckham's - he could send in a brilliant delivery with the minimum space. He could lose a full back with a trick and shoot from outside the box. The main comparison he endured was to Forest legend John Robertson. At Spurs, the crowd got on his back early, he struggled with his fitness, and despite securing a regular place in a team with far too many midfielders in its squad he never seemed to settle, and he was moved along relatively quickly. Charlton embraced his talent more enthusiastically, and he thrived once more in the Championship. Partly this was he was given more freedom in his role. He drifted infield in possession, his passing able to damage teams, his confidence increased by the trust placed in his creative ability. His form earned him a move to Sunderland, where he was a key player in keeping the club in the Premiership, as manager Roy Keane acknowledged. Reid had the ability to put his foot on the ball and use it intelligently, something missing in all too many struggling teams, who descend into panicked kick-and-rush. Take this Daryl Murphy goal against Wigan. Reid had just come on as substitute, and this is effectively his first touch:

Steve Staunton, for all of the horror and ineptitude of his stint as Ireland coach, placed similar faith in Reid's ability. He played Reid as playmaker - surely the position he was born to play - in a European championship Qualifier against Germany at Croke Park. Reid virtually ran the game, pinging first-time passes across the pitch throughout, fighting a strong German midfield for possession and holding his own, and setting up numerous chances for the strikers with his astute through-balls. But his development in the position was not enough and Staunton's replacement by Trappatoni sealed Reid's fate. Included in the first few squads selected by Trappatoni (presumably at the behest of Assistant coach Liam Brady, a confirmed fan of Reid) he went unused and had a screaming match with the Coach after a late-night singalong went on past curfew. He has not been selected since, altough Trappatoni says that this is because Reid does not fit in with the system he uses. He doesn't work hard enough, in other words, he is too creative, too much of a passenger. Setting aside the fact that this is not the case, games like the recent 1-1 draw with a 10-man Italy in Bari were crying out for a bit of creativity, for somebody - anybody - to put their foot on the ball, look up, and find the right pass. Instead, Ireland's 80th minute equalizer came from a long ball lumped upfield. without the injured Damien Duff, all of the other creative players were either stifled (Robbie Keane) or not creative enough (Stephen Hunt). Where was Reid?
At home, thats where.

As was Stephen Ireland. His case is more complex. Primarily, he is obviously a young man with some issues. In brief - he fell out with Irish Youth team Coach Brian Kerr over an incident with the Under-18 team after being dropped from two successive games. Kerr told him he would never again play for Ireland while Kerr was Coach. Kerr then became Coach of the Senior National team, and Ireland has claimed that at that point he considered declaring for England or Italy, for both of whom he has eligibility. However, Steve Staunton's appointment brought Ireland into the team, and he scored a couple of important goals and delivered some impressive performances in his first few games in an Irish shirt. Then, on an away trip to play the Czech Republic in a crucial european Championship Qualifier, Ireland spun a ridiculous web of lies in order to leave the team camp on compassionate leave. His girlfriend rang and informed the squad officials that Ireland's Grandmother had died. Ireland backed this claim and a private jet was chartered for him. However the Irish media soon discovered that this story was untrue. Confronted, Ireland claimed it was his other Grandmother. Again, the media disproved this story. Ireland now claimed it was a Step-Grandmother by Marriage before finally admitting that his girlfriend had suffered a miscarriage, and that he had hastily lied out of a stress-induced panic, believing that the Grandmother story would more easily provide the compassionate leave he sought. The Irish public and the rest of the squad was baffled, the team lost the game, Staunton was sacked, and Ireland has not played for his country since.

There have been rumours of bullying in the camp - Ireland is plainly a highly sensitive individual, and mockery of his hair (or lack of it) are alleged to have disturbed him enough that he is reluctant to return. But he is desperately needed. For, despite his stupidity in the Granny-Gate affair and his silly goal celebrations, he is an outstanding young footballer, an outside candidate for player of the season this year, and he seems already twice as effective as he was when last he played for Ireland. In my dream Irish line-up, he plays in a three-man midfield alongside the two Reids, with a front three of Keane in the centre with Duff and McGeady on the wings. Ireland is talented enough to make such a formation work. He is almost as gifted as Andy Reid in his passing, has a pleasing directness in possession, and is increasingly adept at nicking the ball from opposing players with quick challenges and hard running. His football brain is excellent, and the way he has linked up with the likes of Robinho and Elano at Manchester City in the last two seasons displays his true level.

Added to that is his habit for scoring insanely spectacular goals. Last minute volleys of balls crossing his body? No problem. He has a cavalier flair to his game that is balanced by his work ethic. Trappatoni has admitted he would love to have Ireland back in the team. He and Liam Brady have met the player, and were informed that he would come to them at such a time as he was ready. That has not happened yet, despite the comments from his fellow Irishmen in the Man CIty team.

To an Irish football fan, none of this is news. The absence of these two players has been the biggest story of the early portion of Trappatoni's stint as Ireland Manager. Irish football journalists want to see both of them in the team. Reid is highly rated at home, and Ireland's form is impossible to ignore. Pressed on the issue at a recent Press Conference, Liam Brady lost his temper and said "Have some pride in your country" in apparent reference to Stephen Ireland. Trappatoni, meanwhile, is unrepentant about the exclusion of Reid, and justifies his tactics with his results. He also claims that he doesn't believe Ireland will soon return to the national team, based on the players body language and attitude when they met.

Which means we will continue to play a plodding sort of low-risk football without any real beauty or imagination. We may qualify for the World Cup - we are big on fighting spirit, and sometimes that is enough, if a team is properly organised. But if we do get there, we will go out at the group stage. Or maybe in the first knockout round. We won't score many goals. We won't concede too many either. Ho hum.
If you love football, it can be really depressing coming from a small country.

The two gentlemen in question:

Cambiasso vs Serbia & Montenegro

2009-02-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

There are great goals, and then there are immortal goals.
When Esteban Cambiasso connected with a Hernan Crespo backheel to drive the ball hard into the roof of the net in a world Cup Group Game between Argentina and Serbia & Montenegro on June 16th 2006 to put the Argentines 2-0 up, an instant classic was recognisable. An immortal goal. It came at the end of a sequence of 24 passes, involving eight players, in a classic move redolent of the purest aesthetic of Argentinean football - moving the ball on the ground quickly in a sweeping sequence of short passes, back and forth, dragging the opposition team all over the pitch until their defence leaves a gap which is then ruthlessly exploited. It was a breathtaking thing of beauty and a pleasure to behold. What was so beautiful? There are few instances of breathtaking skill, nothing really spectacular beyond a couple of truly superb touches. The beauty lies in the communal effort of a team, the combination of solid technique and hard work to create and exploit an opportunity. Pure football.

We'll begin almost halfway through the passage of play. Serbia had been attacking, an urgency evident in their need for an equalizer to Maxi Rodriguez's opening goal, just minutes before. Maxi had begun the match on the right wing, his usual position with Atletico Madrid and the National team, but Lucho Gonzalez had left the game early with an injury, replaced by Cambiasso. Maxi switched to the left with a licence to roam infield to support playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme. This World Cup would be the making of Maxi. He scored two fine goals in this game and probably the second best goal of the tournament in the first knockout round against Mexico with his chest-and-volley from distance into the top corner. He ended the tournament badly, however, banned for his part in the fighting at the end of Argentina's quarter-final with Germany. If he is best remembered for the sublime technique of that volley against Mexico, it is worth noting that Maxi is as much a grafter as he is a technician, and tracking back, he nipped in and won the ball deep in his own half with a sliding toe. It rolled to Gabriel Heinze, playing at Centre Back alongside the legendary veteran Roberto Ayala in a formidably cynical pairing. Heinze, with a directness borne either of his time in England playing for Manchester United or his relative lack of sparkling technique, passed it forward instantly and it was received by Javier Mascherano.

Having Mascherano and Cambiasso on the pitch together may seem a little redundant - both holding midfield "destroyers" who like to shield a defence. But Cambiasso is an intelligent and underrated player, clever enough to realize that his position as first-choice holding player had been usurped by the emergence of Mascherano as possibly the World's best in that role (Fernando Gago would push him back to third choice in the following year or two). So he showed he could be versatile. Lucho, the player he replaced, is a midfield all-rounder, good at everything, and for Argentina he played as the third point of a triangle with Riquelme and Mascherano. He tracked back, he supported the forwards, he kept chalk on his boots and he ferreted infield for possession. Cambiasso aped his teammate, his formidable engine driving him all game.

For the moment he loitered in right midfield. Perhaps loitered is the wrong term, for rewatching this goal is a lesson in good movement. All of the Argentines move constantly, running towards one another, away from each other in angled lines, slowing down and twisting away, a ballet of perpetual motion from all of the front six. Riquelme, in particular, is a master of slyly evading his markers and finding an empty patch of pitch in which to receive possession. In this passage of play, he, Mascherano, Captain Sorin and Maxi exchange a series of short passes in tightly congested areas, the ball zipping around between them in simple straight lines, Serbs turning and tracking them all the while. What is fascinating is their eagerness to play the simple ball. Riquelme, the most technically gifted player on the pitch, is never afraid of playing the ball first-time back the way it came. He knows that maintaining possession is more important than always seeking the killer ball, that even such a simple ball has meant an adjustment has been made by an opposition defender. And for Riquelme, such adjustments are opportunities. He is patient. He waits for an opportunity, confident that he will spot it when it comes.

Ayala plays an easy ball forward to Cambiasso, who has pushed infield to join the ceaselessly evolving passing triangles being worked by the others. Mascherano pushes forward into the Serbian half while Riquelme and Maxi make runs between Serbian players. Mascherano doesn't push forward often in a game. His tactical discipline is part of his brilliance. But he will surge upfield in an attempt to present a teammate with a better passing option, to drag opposition midfielders after him. His pace and fitness allow him to get back to cover any breakaways. No other player in modern top level football displays the same hunger to be first to the ball, the same shattering power in his tackling. But his distribution is excellent, too, his passing varied and accurate with either foot, his brain unhurried and calm.

Cambiasso sees him and plays an easy square ball. Easy passes are a funny thing. Part of the criticism of British football abroad - one of the reasons it gets branded overly simple and tactically naive - is the British instinct to attack. Players look to play the forward ball at every opportunity, the crowd demands it, the opposition has to press to prevent it, and so we have the helter-skelter pace of the average Premiership game, which is what makes the league so attractive to viewers worldwide. But possession is not quite the precious currency it is in some football cultures, because in the English game, a team always knows it will soon get the ball back. This leads to various players, from Ray Wilkins to Jamie Redknapp to Deco; getting nicknames like "the Crab" from ignorant fans because they only ever move sideways. But the aim is continual motion, the aim is misdirection. Every pass sideways or even backwards is a step towards a pass forwards. This Argentina team knew that very well. This move is full of simple, "easy" balls. But they add up, every one of them adding to the subtle shifts in the Serbian lines. Including Cambiasso's low, crisp ball over the ground to Mascherano.

When he receives it, Mascherano, as usual, does things calmly, simply. He moves the ball along to Maxi, who has already been involved in this move three times, inbetween those touches roaming with intelligence and great awareness. Here he takes the ball and plays a high, bouncing ball out towards Sorin, on the left wing. It is the first pass of this move to leave the ground, and as such it seems almost decadent in its flight, too risky. Sorin is a most Brazilian of Argentine fullbacks, spending the entire game driving forward into the opposition half, joining the attack, then relentlessly tracking back down that line when the opposition gains possession. His drive and competitive spirit saw him made Captain for this tournament, and he seemed to thrive on the responsibility. He chests the ball up to trap it, takes a touch in the face of an onrushing defender, then moves the ball back to Maxi, who again has run around the ball's passage after he played it.

The Serbs are assiduous in their closing-down. They were, before this match at least, famed for a defensive meanness unparalleled elsewhere in the competition - in qualifying, they had conceded the fewest goals of any European side. But here they are missing the injured Nemanja Vidic, colossal centre half, and their defence is shakier than usual. Still they press whoever was on the ball. Maxi takes it and has to turn away from a Serb, then play a longish square ball to Cambiasso who has crossed the field from the right to help out.

It is around this point that the rhythm of the move changes. Cambiasso lays the ball off into the path of Riquelme, who, his back to goal and two defenders approaching, plays it first time sharply back to Mascherano, another easy ball. But the pace has been injected with Riquelme's instant touch, and it will only gather momentum over the next five passes. Riquelme's greatest gift is perhaps an ability to dictate the pace of a game, and here he has just done it. A great team moves as one to some extent, changing gears together, instantly, and in the next fifteen seconds or so this team moves up a gear and will have scored before their opponents have even noticed.

Mascherano picks up on the new pace instantly and hits a quick ball out to Sorin, still lingering on the wing. With three Serbs in close attendance, his options seemed limited. Javier Saviola gives him another. Saviola is the most baffling and frustrating of players. Anyone who saw anything of him as a youngster with River Plate in Argentina will remember the purity of his talent. He had pace, trickery, guile and imagination. He scored wonderful goals (44 in 86 games) and yet his game had more than just goalscoring to set him apart, in his ability to drop into the hole and create opportunities for others. He was Messi, Tevez and Aguero five years before they emerged, the seeming future of Argentinean football. But somewhere along the way it all went a bit wrong. He moved to Barcelona for £15 Million in 2001 and had a decent first season there under Louis Van Gaal, but his second Season was less thrilling and when Van Gaal was replaced by Radomir Antic and then Frank Rijkaard, he slipped down the pecking order and went out on loan to Monaco in 2004. That was followed by another loan, this time to Sevilla, in 2005. Finally, his reputation having taken something of a battering, he joined Real Madrid in 2007, where he remains, perhaps fifth in line for a start in a striking role and constantly linked with moves away. He has scored goals - albeit never as many as at River Plate - everywhere he has played, but has inarguably failed to live up to his massive potential. So it was something of a surprise to see that he was central to Pekarman's plans for this World Cup. Reportedly it was his understanding with Riquelme that convinced the coach, and this move would demonstrate that understanding at its best.

Saviola drifts out towards the wing, takes Sorin's pacy pass on one foot, spins around and moves infield, picking up speed. With Serb playmaker Djordevic advancing to tackle him, he prods the ball sideways to Riquelme, who has another Serb charging at him and Djordevic turning to cut off another avenue.

So again Riquelme ups the pace, flicking the ball first time off his outstep, perfectly over the raised leg of the onrushing defender and into Saviola's path. And there it is: two Serbian players eliminated from the game, their defence suddenly teetering with one single flick of the boot.

Here Saviola's technical ability comes into play, as he cushions the ball with his left on the move, then plays a volleyed pass towards Cambiasso, who is making a late run into the box from midfield. He plays the bouncing ball first time towards Hernan Crespo, darting around the penalty area in classic centre forward style.

Crespo is all about goals. He scores lots of tap ins and little dinks over despairing goalkeepers because his movement and anticipation are so good. So when he receives the ball on the edge of the six yard box, most educated observers would probably expect him to swivel and shoot. He's technically skilled enough that a goal will be the likely outcome. But it is as if the symmetry and team-play of the move up to that point have gotten to him, and Crespo instead pulls up and moves the ball back into Cambiasso's path with a curt little back-heel.

Cambiasso has no option but to hit it first time. There is a Serbian defender a fraction of a second away from smashing the ball into the stands and so he launches himself at it and, sliding almost as soon as he hits it, crashes it into the roof of the net.

Delirium from the Argentinian supporters, superlatives from the pundits. The team go a bit mental too, and will go on to score six goals in all, Riquelme running everything, the mercurial Saviola scoring one before substitutes Tevez and Messi will come on to snatch a goal each. Late on Kezman is sent off for Serbia and Montenegro for a wild lunge at Mascherano.

Argentina would go out to Germany in the knockout phase of the competition and yet, apart from Zidane's insane head butt on Marco Materazzi in the final, in this match they had created the most memorable moment of the tournament. And a sort of mission statement for how the game ought to be played. Two years later Spain would win the European Championship playing a similarly aesthetically pleasing brand of possession football, with Xavi Hernandez in the Riquelme role and David Villa as a sort of even better Saviola. The unlikely possibility of a final to the 2010 World Cup featuring Spain vs Argentina literally makes my mouth water.

So, the goal itself, with Martin Tyler commentary:

And a Mobile Phone film from the stand behind, which is interesting for the view it affords of the cluster of Serbs drawn towards the Riquelme-Sorin-Saviola triangle out on the left, leaving a hole in the centre, and also for the people all getting very happy after the ball goes in:

Jan Molby

2008-11-14T18:08:00.001-08:00

Understand: for a Manchester United fan, Liverpool are the enemy. More than City, more than Arsenal, more than Leeds, more than Chelsea. The two greatest clubs in English football come from two cities less than an hour apart with a bitter historical rivalry. They are the most successful clubs in the Country with the biggest support, the most glorious histories and the biggest auras. Arsenal and Chelsea have new weight, glamour, wealth and meaning in the age of Premier League games being followed worldwide, but it is not the same as the Legendary qualities of the two big clubs from the North-West. So its difficult for me to write about any Liverpool player with affection. Their enduring and incredible success in the 1980s was hard for a young United fan to deal with. They won everything. We won nothing, existing on reputation and occasionally glorious football, not unlike the modern-day Tottenham Hotspur.

My brother - less than two years younger than me - is a devoted Liverpool fan. He lives it in a way I never have. Losses wound him, depress him, effect his daily wellbeing. He hates United more than I hate Liverpool, I imagine. Our triumphant dominance of the 1990s has been hard for Liverpool fans to swallow and increased the keenness of the rivalry. But it was different when we were younger. Then I could watch Liverpool matches - as long as they were not playing United - with some neutrality. The years of crowing and nose-rubbing hadn't really taken their emotional toll yet. I didn't have quite so much invested. I watched the 1984 European Cup Final with my brother, rooting for Liverpool against Roma. And, oddly enough, the 1986 FA Cup Final, when Liverpool played Everton. Back then, the FA Cup Final felt like as big a deal as the World Cup Final, somehow. We got up early and watched the entire build-up, cameras on team buses, interviews with fans etc. Wembley always seemed to lie under a blanket of sunshine. Its different now. I just had to rack my brain to recall who won this year's FA Cup Final. The Premier League, the Champions League - they really have changed football.

In 1986, Liverpool were on for a Double, having beaten Everton to the League title by 2 points. Everton, who had been League Champions in 1985 and would be again in 1987, were possibly the best team in the Country at the time, capable of scintillating football. But Liverpool were frighteningly experienced and efficient, their game a passing-and-moving machine with Ian Rush the best centre-forward of the 1980s scoring an unhealthy amount of goals. It was a mouthwatering prospect of a Final - the two best teams in England, their passionate fans moving on London en masse. And among an array of the biggest stars of English football - with the likes of Lineker, Dalglish, Rush, Sharp, Steven and Reid all on show - Jan Molby was man of the match by a mile.

Molby fits into that category of great players with weight problems. Like Puskas and Ronaldo his sometime tubbiness hardly seemed to matter. Throughout his Liverpool career his weight fluctuated, but after his first season or so he never ever looked slim, or even anywhere near fit. His qualities were of a different nature. He allowed his partners in Central midfield - usually combative Englishman Steve McMahon but often Scot Kevin McDonald - to do the running and harrying, and he got on with shaping and directing play as only he could. In a team of great passers - Ronnie Whelan, Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson, Dalglish - Molby's ability to spot an opening and to put the ball exactly into that space were unsurpassed. This video of the goals in that FA Cup final gets the order all wrong (Everton scored first, before halftime, and the first two Liverpool goals are in the wrong sequence) but what remains undimmed is the excellence of Molby's vision and technique. Wearing the Number 10, as is only proper, he provides killer passes for each of the three Liverpool goals, one a skidding cross with pace, one a deft flick into acres of space and the other a simple short ball for Ronnie Whelan to chip into the only unmarked part of a crowded penalty area. He did the same thing for the entire second half of the game, spreading the play all over the pitch with beautiful passes, exhausting a stretched Everton:

If his technical ability was ever to be called into question, one look at his CV would serve as an eloquent answer. Bought by Ajax from his hometown club, Kolding, in 1982, he spent two years in the first team there, winning a Dutch Championship in 1983. Ajax - home to Crujiff, Van Basten, Huillet, Bergkamp etc - is a club where technical excellence is mandatory. Molby combined a delicacy of touch and fantastic range of passing with a thunderous shot and his physical stature; he could operate as either playmaker or as holding midfielder, forming such a formidable physical barrier as he did. When Liverpool Manager Joe Fagan paid £200,000 for him in 1984, he arrived in a team undergoing a subtle transition. That was the Liverpool way. Big name, big money transfers were rare. Players were replaced from within. After the League and European Cup double of 1984, Graeme Souness, the teams midfield general and leader, left for Sampdoria in Italy. Phil Neal was in his last season at the club and Dalglish was nearing is own retirement. Molby had to find his way in a team of big egos and huge talents and in his first Season, when he was never a first team regular, Liverpool missed out on the League title and lost the European Cup Final to Juventus on the night of the Heysel Stadium disaster. With Fagan's retirement the next Season, Dalglish became player-manager and Molby became a regular fixture in the side. His versatility meant that he often played as a deep-lying midfielder, somewhere between an old-fashioned sweeper and the modern Pirlo role, where he could break up play and begin attacking moves from deep within his own half. However, he was better suited to playing as an attacking midfielder, and in that Double-winning Season he scored 21 goals for the club.

That was a good year for Molby. After that triumphant FA Cup appearance he flew out to Mexico with the Danish squad which would play perhaps the best football at the 1986 World Cup. Molby was a fixture in a stellar squad alongside the likes of Laudrup, Elkjaer, Lerby, Arnesen and Olsen. with Laudrup already an incredibly accomplished playmaker, he played in a more defined central midfield role, but that Danish team was built to attack ceaselessly, meaning that he got forward as much as anybody. His typical pass spreads the break out wide for the second Danish goal in this match against West Germany:

Denmark made a nonsense of the "Group of Death" they had been drawn in, defeating Uruguay (6-1!), Scotland and the Germans on their way to a confrontation with Spain where their fearlessly attacking approach was undone by the clever counters of a fine Spanish side.

1986 was probably the best year of Molby's career. Liverpool won nothing in the 86-87 Season and he began to struggle with persistent injuries in 1987, which only added to his weight problems. From then on, until his eventual departure in 1996, he was in and out of the team, playing at Centre-half and in central midfield but rarely as a first choice. He was still often an impressive performer, illuminating games with his touch and awareness. He was persistently linked with transfers to big Continental clubs, but the feeling persists that he had gone native, with his strong Scouse accent, his love of a flutter and a beer. In 1988 he was sentenced to three months imprisonment for drink driving, and after Liverpool stood by him, perhaps he remained at the club out of some misguided loyalty. Better if he had moved abroad, where his talents would have been better appreciated. He did win trophies at Liverpool, however - two league titles and two FA Cups, scoring 44 goals (mainly penalties) from 218 appearances. But his remains a frustrating career, with its sense of a talent never really fulfilled.

That talent never really ebbed, however. He scores the second goal, a penalty, in this game against Leeds from 1993, but more notable are the two passes preceding the penalty, which show him as the beautifully visionary playmaker he was. First he scoops the ball between two defenders to put Rush clear on goal inside the box. Then he creates the penalty with a finely measured through ball into space. Both first time, instant touches. His left foot was always a precision instrument:

One last clip, an oddity. Many Liverpool fans in attendance claimed this as one of the greatest goals they had ever seen. From an Anfield League Cup tie, Liverpool vs Man United, November 1985. Paul McGrath had scored to put United 1-0 up when Molby ran with the ball from his own half, nutmegged Brian Robson, beat a defender, then hit a dipping 30 yard shot into the top corner. Only there was a dispute on so there was no football coverage on TV. No cameras at the game. Absolutely unimaginable today. No film of the goal, or of Molby's second, a penalty a few minutes later. So somebody has taken the time to recreate it, and it looks impressive, and easily within the scope of Molby's talent:

FIFA's Film Factory

2008-09-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

A Sunday Afternoon, sometime in the mid 1980s. There was never much on tv on Sundays. Old films. Westerns, English dramas from the 40s and 50s. The steady march towards Bullseye and Songs of Praise.

One Sunday, I come across some football on tv. It is unmistakably Brazil. Those yellow shirts, the blue shorts, lean shaggy haired players. But it looks different. The camera is at ground level, roaming around, tracking players as they move across the pitch in tight close-up. The ball is rarely if ever in shot. Instead we can identify where it is by following the eyes of the players, so tightly are the cameras focused upon them. And the commentator. It sounds like - can't be - it sounds like Sean Connery. I am spellbound.

That film was "G'Ole!", the Official FIFA film for the 1982 World Cup. FIFA continue to make an Official film for each World Cup, but the form peaked in the 1980s, with "G'Ole!" and its 1986 follow-up, "Hero". Until very recently I hadn't seen "G'Ole!" in full since that initial viewing on a sunday in the 80s, when I must have been 10 or 11. Its became more and more difficult to get hold of. Unavailable on DVD, videotapes change hands for ridiculous amounts on eBay. It seems odd that FIFA continue to make these films but show no regard for the archive they possess. Clips from these films show up in various other Football documentaries - the brilliant 2006 BBC series "World Cup Stories" (oddly, also unavailable on DVD) was built around various sequences - and they always stand out due to the quality of the footage. There is only one clip from "G'Ole!" on YouTube, but it does manage to convey in 4 minutes or so the exact tone and feel of these films - the amazing, intimate footage, the distracting, often awful music, the epic tone the games are embued with. And of course, Sean Connery saying "Barshalona":

The strangest fact of these films is that they are so vulnerably at the mercy of their director. FIFA might have commissioned a piece which made great use of the exclusive footage they could provide, but it seems doubtful they were quite prepared for how idiosyncratic the results might be. Directors have agendas, stories they are determined to tell, images they wish to include, themes they need to address. FIFA just wanted goals compilations, you feel.

"G'Ole!" was directed by Tom Clegg, best known at that time for "McVicar" (1980), and since then something of a jobbing television director. Clegg, with the aid of writer Stan Hey, seems set upon painting a lyrical portrait of Spain as a beachside utopia, its people uncorrupted by the modern world, living in their beautiful small towns beneath the fiercely blue Iberian skies. There is one montage midway through the film which is filled with shots of old people sitting chatting in town squares, sophisticates at outdoor cafes, children playing and crowds at the beach. The football almost takes a back seat, as Clegg indulges his interest in the World Cup as carnival. There is perhaps slightly too much footage of fans dancing and chanting and drinking, alongside one too many trips to the stadium on the team coach, and the film loses focus towards its climax. Its also bizarrely lecherous - topless sunbathers in the Mediterranean draw a lot of the camera's attention, as so bikinis glimpsed on dancing girls in the Brazilian crowd. Clegg dips in and out of the tournament, allowing us to briefly visit with various sides. So we start off with Maradona and Argentina, then move on to Brazil, France, Spain, Italy and England. Other teams appear in games, as if from nowhere. Poland suddenly materialize in the semi-final, despite not having featured at any point in the hour before. But Clegg is plainly fascinated by minnows. He spends extended passages locked with the Kiwi and Cameroonian teams, watching them at their hotel bases, following them to the stadium and observing their team talks, their running onto the pitch, their valiant failures. The players are generally denied personality - we hear their names, but their roles are quickly sketched stock ones. Platini is skillful, Robson bright and aggressive, Maradona fouled, Rossi redeemed. Nationalities are defined by cliches, too - the relaxed Brazilians, engaged always in Samba, the resilient, methodical Germans. We are expected, it seems, to already know who these players and teams are and what they mean.

But despite its many quirks,"G'Ole!" is still a fantastic piece of work. Mainly because it features so much incredible footage. The 1982 World Cup was a vintage competition, containing perhaps the greatest game in the competition's history - Brazil vs Italy. Spain, at that time still something of a post-Franco backwater, has always been a beautiful, cinematic location, and Clegg and his team shoot and edit the whole thing so that it is all atmospheric and visually arresting. Connery is incomparable and Rick Wakeman's score is not the abomination that his work on the next FIFA film would be. But its the raw material that makes it all work, and in the 1980s there were a handful of giants in International football who these films focus on - Maradona, Platini, Zico, Ruminegge. To see any of them on a pitch, shot so intimately, so cinematically, is thrilling for a nostalgic football fan.

"Hero" is just as strange and fascinating an experience. Written and directed by Tony Maylam, otherwise best known for either his stiff adaptation of "The Riddle of the Sands" (1979) or his cult horror "The Burning" (1981), it tells the story of a tournament in a determinedly poetic and personal way. At the same time, it is hilariously bombastic and epic in its treatment of a ball game, creating an odd but effective dynamic. Maylam focuses on a series of individuals - each of whom could be the "Hero" of the title - and his cameras follow them in flashes through a game, creating a mini-narrative within the wider story of the World Cup itself. What makes "Hero" so sublime is the choice of players - some of the finest in the world at that time; including Michael Laudrup, Enzo Francescoli, Hugo Sanchez, the aforementioned Platini and Zico, and Emilio Butragueno.

But football is a game primarily concerned with the creation, identification and use of space on the pitch. Accurate passing and individual technique - dribbling ability, the skill to beat a man - come to the fore. As such, television cameras are ideally located to capture the most vital action on the pitch. From their position above and to the side, tv cameras can show us the wider picture - tactical configurations, movement off the ball, the spaces opening and closing all around - while also showcasing the vignettes of skill from individuals involved in the play. Both "G'Ole" and "Hero" virtually ignore the former aspect of the game in their zeal to glorify the latter. The films are both shot by cameras at ground level on the side of the pitch, so that we see the action as the players do. The field becomes a three dimensional system of moving lines, ripples of motion, the ball crossing and creating these lines, the players dancers and warriors, clashing, slipping past one another with feints, bursts of speed, rapid passes. "G'Ole!" contains more passages viewed from the traditional angle, but "Hero" embraces its predecessor's innovations wholeheartedly, and long sequences are seen from pitch level. Occasionally Maylam will cut away to show us the actual tv coverage of a goal or a vital moment. So we witness Maradona's extraordinary second goal against England with commentary by the BBC's man : "And that is why Maradona is the greatest player in the World!" But for the most part the voice we hear is that of Michael Caine, his narration slightly removed, affectless, even ironic.

Of course the real "Hero" of the film is Maradona himself, and the last half hour effectively follows his progress through the latter stages of the tournament. He had a big role in "G'Ole", too, with an extended segment showing his brutal treatment first by the Italian, then the Brazilian team, climaxing in his sending off for retaliation. An early scene in "Hero" shows him being kicked and hacked to the ground time and again versus South Korea, but his first goal seems to liberate him - as the film itself acknowledges - and from then on the camera is more interested in his brilliance in manipulating the ball. Francescoli instead is shown being stymied by rough treatment, battered as he is by the Danes in a 6-1 defeat for Uruguay. Its an odd, elliptical approach to a portrayal of a tournament, leaving out so many goals, players and incidents, and yet it works. It self-consciously casts these matches as epic narratives, with heroes and heroic acts, high stakes and gripping climaxes. Maradona alone seems to have read the script, and he provides the film with everything it needs to succeed. The last 20 minutes of the film follow his Argentina through the final against West Germany, and it is loaded with importance, it feels thrillingly epic. Rick Wakeman's score almost spoils it, but what could possibly spoil Maradona's effortless first-time pass for the winning goal or his surging run past four Germans?

What makes these films feel significant is that they feel like the birthplace of modern football coverage. In the 1980s, there were not multiple camera angles of each and every moment available to television viewers, there weren't steadicam operators running along the touchline, automated cameras located above the pitch on wires, cameras behind the goals, cameras in the tunnel. There was one camera. There was no footage of the beautiful girls in the crowd, the crazily face-painted foreign fans playing drums and dancing. There was one camera. It followed the ball around the pitch. Slow motion replays showed the same shot - from that single camera - again and again, just more slowly.
Whereas nowadays modern football coverage looks like "G'Ole!" and "Hero" did. Classily shot and edited, with every single conceivable angle covered by one camera or other. The crowd cut to throughout, the benches watched. Sky had a digital option a few seasons ago where the camera followed a single player throughout a game, if the viewer wished. These films have been surpassed by tv.

Which is the major problem faced by the contemporary FIFA films. The only subsequent one I've seen the entirety of is "The Grand Finale", the film of the 2006 Finals, directed by Michael Apted and narrated by Pierce Brosnan. You might imagine that in this age of YouTube and Goals compilation dvds FIFA would crave a more personal, even slightly pretentious treatment of a tournament, but no - "The Grand Finale" is a goal compilation film with padding, in essence. It focuses on seemingly random games without much context as to what is occurring throughout the rest of the competition, so we see Spain tonk Ukraine 4-0 and are told they were eliminated in their first knockout game. Argentina are introduced with an onscreen count of the number of passes in the lead up to their amazing goal against Serbia, the only action shown from that game. We briefly glimpse Brazil beat Ghana 3-0 in the first knockout round and Brosnan tells us that France subsequently knocked them out. The Epic sense of the earlier films is entirely absent, the sense of continuity and coherent narrative close behind. What we get is mainly the same shots I saw on tv as I wactched these games with a few nice passages thrown in. There is no obtrusive soundtrack (instead we hear the crowd noises, its sighs and roars, loud over the top) , no lyricism, no attempted poetry. It all feels hard, slick, empty, depressingly modern. As does the football played. Watching it soon after viewing "Hero" and "G'Ole!", the pace of the games is shocking. In the 80s, teams played football almost languidly - Brazil stroked it fondly to one another, players trotting about the pitch with their socks rolled down to reveal shinguard-less legs. Now the ball pings about, everybody sprints, tackles erupt in seconds. Even Argentina, guided by Riquelme's slow-slow-slower-quick-quick-slow style knock the ball around at amazing speed. Maybe the cooler climate (Germany, compared wit Spain and Mexico) is responsible. But I think the game has changed in this regard. Perhaps that is why "The Grand Finale" is so lacking in stars comparable to the giants of those films of the 80s. Artistry is more difficult at 1000 miles an hour. For Film directors too, apparently.

Football in sun and shadow 6

2008-06-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

A group of clips of Number 10s. Playmakers. Inside-Forwards. Whatever.

Zico destroys Liverpool, 1981:

Berlusconi's favourite player, the greatest Montenegran player of all time, and one of the best in the world on his day, Dejan Savicevic, Il Genio:

Enzo Francescoli, who will be the subject of a long piece here some day:

Gunter Netzer, the great German playmaker, and Der Bomber. Plus a lovely German song:

Enzo Scifo, little Italian-born Belgian with great feet and a beautiful range of passing:

The greatest hairstyle ever seen on a football pitch, and one of the greatest passers of the ball, too. Watch for a couple of sublime assists from Colombia's 5-0 defeat of Argentina in Buenos Aires in 1993, where "El Pibe" utterly dominated the game:

Claudio Borghi

2008-06-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

It must be like being the cleverest pupil at your school. You always do the best, gets the highest marks in tests, receive unending praise from a teacher. Then you have to leave, and go to another school, a school for older children. Maybe you're not the cleverest pupil anymore. Maybe somebody else - another who was the best in their class - maybe they are cleverer, maybe they do better in tests, maybe they get more praise. Maybe, for the first time, they make you feel inferior.
Or maybe not. Maybe you're the one making the others feel inferior, all the way through school, through every grade and age. But then you reach University. And you don't stand out at all. Here, everyone was the cleverest at their school. This is a thousand people who have always made others feel inferior.

Now imagine you're a young footballer. You play as the link between the forwards and the midfield, in the hole. Your passing is beautiful - visionary, incisive, perfectly timed. You can dribble too, able to swerve and turn at speed past dumbfounded defenders. You score your fair share of goals. You have been something of a phenomenon at your club - a golden boy, of whom great things are expected. You are called up to the National Team, hoping to play a major role in the World Cup. Only there is another player, who plays in your position, who has also been called up. He is, there can be no denying it, better than you are. He is the best player in the World, maybe the best player of all time. He leads your country to victory at that World Cup, scoring some unforgettable goals, and you are lost in his wake. You never play for your country again. Your career -while continuing in a variety of countries for a multitude of clubs - flounders, to an extent. You never live up to those early expectations. You are Claudio Borghi. You are a Nearly Man.

Borghi's great misfortune was to emerge as a young playmaker in the mid-1980s when Maradona was at the peak of his abilities. If he had been Chilean or Paraguayan or Mexican, he would have probably become a legend. As it was, he starred in the Intercontinental Cup Final in Tokyo in 1985, when Juventus beat his club, Argentinos Juniors, on penalties. Italy was so impressed by his extraordinary promise that AC Milan signed him in 1987, but the "3 foreigners" rule meant that he was loaned out to Como (the foreigners preferred by coach Arrigo Sacchi were Van Basten, Gullet and Rijkaard) and upon his return he fell out with Sacchi and was sold on, ricocheting via Switzerland's Neuchatal Xamax to River Plate, Flamengo, Independiente and a clutch of clubs in Chile. That club career would undoubtedly have panned out differently had Borghi been playing for Argentina at the crux of an attack spearheaded by Valdano. The confidence and increased status in world football that would have given him would probably have extended his stay in Europe. Instead Maradona was the chosen one, and the timing could not have been better for his career. Borghi, in contrast, is known now primarily as a Coach, having enjoyed a remarkably successful tenure with Colo Colo, Chile's biggest and most historically prestigious club.

Its not something you read about all that much. The reserves, the substitutes, and how they feel about their role, holding up the squad at the heaviest point. What it must feel like to be a gifted player, only not gifted enough. Sport loves a hero, so those who carry out an important but unseen task are of no interest, and the media obsession with every aspect of football has seemingly worsened this state of affairs. To be an understudy. The strange pressure of it, the resentment, the effect it must have on one's self-worth...

It is more obviously pronounced in a National team, where a player who is the first choice at his club can become second or even third in line. A truly great player can overshadow a dozen others with his talent, his intimidating influence. Zinedine Zidane was always going to be the conductor of the French national team from his first emergence as a young player. But his talent was so vast and so much more complete than that of his rivals that they were all but cast into the wilderness. If Zizou was fit, he played. Hence Johan Micoud, a fine attacking midfielder in his own right, played rarely for France, if at all, when in another generation, he might have been the creative lynchpin. Vikash Dhorasoo, another mercurial playmaker suffered a similar fate (his documentary, "Substitute", basically chronicles his frustrating experiences as Zidane's understudy during the 2006 World Cup). Robert Pires would possibly have developed as a traditional playmaker in the hole if not for Zidane's pre-eminence in the position. Instead he played on the wing, in tandem with Zidane, his talent too great and versatile to be ignored.

National teams are rife with great players being second-best to even greater players, or just to players who fit into the coaches tactical approach better. In modern International football, Riquelme keeps out the genius of Aimar for Argentina. Quaresma and Simao constantly leap-frog one another for Portugal. The Brazilian squad is so bursting with talent that there will always be immense players left on the bench or not even in the selection at all. How does any manager contain Ronaldinho, Kaka, Elano and Diego when there is only really room for a single attacking midfielder on the pitch? He tries to pick as many of them as he can and his team is an unbalanced mess, albeit an unbalanced mess stuffed with genius. So Ronaldinho and Kaka - as the biggest stars, the most proven talents - have been the two most favoured in the past. But this demeans a talent as great as Diego's. He is too good to be a nearly man. They all are.

In the 1980s, the heroic athleticism of Bryan Robson was generally preferred to the classier, silken skills of Glenn Hoddle by a series of England managers. Hoddle was the sort of player teams should be built around. Instead he never lived up to his undoubted talent for his country. This fate has befallen a series of the more obviously talented players to emerge in English football over the past three decades, from John Barnes to Matt LeTissier. Though neither of those players was regularly excluded because of any other single rival, they still lost out to the likes of Steve Hodge and Steve McMahon. It happens in other European countries too.

In the 1960s Italy possessed two extraordinary playmakers - Sandro Mazzola and Gianni Rivera. Mazzola was the star of the all-conquering Inter Milan team of the 60s, while Rivera played for AC Milan (the picture above shows Rivera tackling Mazzola). They were similarly gifted players, both capable of pinpoint passing, either able to dribble or shoot from distance. Rivera was perhaps the more silken of the two, Mazzola a burlier, more athletic presence. Each was the talisman for his club, winning numerous Scudettos and a couple of European Cups each. However, Italian National coach Ferruccio Valcareggi believed that they could not play together. He favoured Mazzola (despite Rivera's greater popularity) and started him in the first matches at the 1970 World Cup. Without Rivera, who had been so effective when Italy had won the 1968 European Championship, the Italian offence couldn't get started. So Valcareggi developed a scheme he called "stafetta" (which translates literally as "relay"). He would play Mazzola for the first half and Rivera for the second. Italy progressed to the final, with Rivera in particular shining as he scored the winner in the 4-3 semi-final victory over West Germany. For the final however, Valcareggi reverted to type and played Mazzola alone until eight minutes from time, when he brought on Rivera. Italy lost 4-1. You could never really refer to either man as a "Nearly Man". But they strangled one another's International careers. Both must have wondered what it would have been like if not for the other.

Rivera in action:

In the late 1980s, Guiseppe Giannini was the playmaker for the Italian team and captain of Roma. But the emergence of Roberto Baggio meant that he lost his place in the starting line up for the national team at the 1990 World Cup, and he retired from Internationals in 1991. He could see what was coming, and he was too proud to be another nearly man, no matter how much genius Baggio possessed. Some players seem almost offended by the competition for the role their career has taught them to consider theirs alone, as if its unseemly. Others are inspired by it. And some, like Claudio Borghi, find themselves facing a force they cannot defeat, a skill they cannot match, and they slip quietly away.

What, then, of Claudio Borghi? Well here he is, wearing the Number 10 shirt and scoring a quite sublime goal from late in his career, somewhere in Chile I think, in the only clip I could find:

Theres something happening but don't be scared

2008-04-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Before tonight's absorbing Champions League Semi-Final match (Man Utd 1- 0 Barcelona, Hurrah!) on ITV, the final ad break was taken up entirely by one single commercial. An awesome commercial. If you like football, you'll probably like the advert - its thrilling, brilliantly shot and even quite funny, especially in the appearance of Marco Materazzi.

I instantly wondered who had directed it. Somebody young and hip, at the cutting edge of cinema, perhaps? Well, no actually, it was Guy Ritchie. I hate his films, but that is based mostly on his inability to write a single believable line of dialogue or create an interesting, convincing character. Visually, he has always been assured behind a camera. His films are all slickly put together with a control and feel for the surface of things - for colour and visual tone and atmosphere - which seems perfectly suited to advertising.

For this advert, he seems to have tapped into a style which has been conspicuous in Pop culture over the last year or so - the first person POV. "Cloverfield" and "[Rec]" have both used this device with a degree of success in the context of horror stories over the last few months, and "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly" used it to heartwrenchingly emotional effect. But what Ritchie's advert (entitled "Take It to the Next Level") is really reminiscent of, especially in its non-football scenes and its vomiting shot, is the briefly infamous video for the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up". It also recalls, to an extent, the Michael Mann Gridiron advert I posted here last year, in its relentless motion and the procession of superstars it parades fleetingly before our eyes. The song is "Don't Speak" by the Eagles of Death Metal. It becomes instantly the best thing Ritchie's ever done:

Football in sun and shadow 5

2008-04-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Diego Forlan with an absolutely perfect finish:

Karel Poborsky with the best goal and the worst hair of Euro 96:

Henrik Larsen with a truly diving header:

Wayne Rooney, remember the name:

Denilson, he of the quick feet:

Tevez for Corinthians:

"Thats the greatest soccer goal I've ever seen!"

Francesco Totti

2008-04-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

And so we come to that thorniest, most awkward of questions: what exactly defines a great football player?
Is it purely down to skill, to the ability to manipulate the ball, to make it do your bidding? Is it some physical gift - the stamina to run back and forth, tackling and passing, for two hours, the pace to outsprint athletes faster than most people will ever dream of being after a flying ball, the strength to barge giants off their feet, the spring to leap and hang in the air? Is it some combination of all these gifts? Or is it defined purely by success? Great players win things. They drive their teams to win matches, to win trophies, cups, leagues. A truly great player enforces his will on a team, on a game, on a season. He wins things. Doesn't he?

There has always been some question over the status of Francesco Totti. It is taken for granted that he is a good player. Outrageously skillful, with vision and cunning, it would be foolish to deny his natural talent. But in Italy - and most especially in Rome - he is regarded as just about the equal of any player on earth, as one of the best in the World, a true modern great. The rest of Europe is not quite so sure. There are a few reasons for this. Totti has never really performed effectively enough on the biggest stages for some. He has been to a couple of World Cups, to European Championships, without ever making too great an impression, some say. Others would query his temperament. He is prone to lashing out if things aren't going his way, and also likely to drop out of games if his team is up against it. He is neither the perfect playmaker, ala Zidane, nor an outright goalscoring centre-forward. Teams have to play around him, critics would suggest. He can't adapt.

Well, to all this I say: Totti is a great player, worthy of comparison to the greats of the modern game. Loyalty to his home town club has served to make his talent seem smaller than it is - he has often been held back by the restrictions of the team at A.S. Roma. When playing alongside colleagues of the right calibre, Totti has delivered the goods, scoring and creating goals and crucially, winning trophies. Roma won Serie A under Fabio Capello, when Totti was given Batistuta and Emerson as team-mates, and he could express himself, safe in the knowledge that some of his own side were on a similar wavelength. Under Spaletti, Roma are a force in Europe, Italian Cup Winners, and Totti has won the Golden Boot as Europe's top goalscorer. The question of what he might have accomplished had he moved to Madrid or Milan is an intriguing one, but irrelevant to the issue of his quality as a player. He has proven that already, in Rome.

Perhaps part of the issue is that his gifts are quite so extravagant. He can do everything well - he dribbles at pace with disguise, the ability to drop the shoulder always an instant away. He is two footed, and his passing and shooting with each foot is frequently extraordinary. He excels at the rapid interplay around the opposition box, quick passes with the out-step, backheels and drag-backs. And he is a fantastic finisher, often scoring the most spectacular, unlikely goals:

He is particularly adept at what Italians call the "cucchiaio" - the chip. This is a compilation formed entirely of clips of Totti sending perfectly dinked balls over the despairing grasps of goalkeepers from all areas around the penalty box. He often takes penalties the same way, and it is as if he feels no pressure, taking a penalty in the 2000 Semi-final shootout with Holland in Amsterdam before a Dutch crowd just that way. And scoring.

But what I most like about Totti is his imagination and his vision. The fact that he scores so many inventive goals testifies to the latter, and his range of passing and prompting is evidence of the former. Having begun life as an orthodox "trequarista" or playmaker, he has been reinvented at Roma in the last two seasons in Spaletti's new tactical formation. He now plays up front, often as a lone striker. But Roma's midfield is full of players who burst forward when they break with the ball, and the effect allows them to join Totti in attack, prompting him to play his perfect little through balls to the feet of his onrushing midfielders. He drops deep to control the play but also roams in the opposition half, dragging defenders in his wake, leaving space for his team to exploit. Or, if he sees an opportunity, Totti can go it alone, either by shooting or trying to trick his way into the box:

It was in this system that Totti scored 26 goals for Roma in the 06/07 Season. He seems to have improved with age, his football intelligence and experience giving him maturity and perhaps better decision-making than in his youth. He is now Roma's highest ever goalscorer and holds the record number of appearances for the club. In modern European football, only Raul and Del Piero, Totti's great rival in the Italian National team, really compare in terms of long-term service to one club. His standing in Italy is perhaps unmatched - he won Italian footballer of the year 5 times between 2000 and 2007. It was a near National state of emergency when he was injured in the last few weeks of the 2005/06 Season in the run-up to the World Cup. He was considered vital to his country's chances of success in the tournament, since Italy lacked another attacker of similar creativity and brilliance. He had an operation which required the insertion of metal plates, yet made it, only semi-fit, to the World Cup, where he played a fleetingly crucial role in Italy's triumph.

His Italian career probably explains why he is regarded with such ambivalence outside Italy. He ousted Del Piero from the role of first choice playmaker in the qualifying campaign for the 2000 European Championships, and was perhaps the Azurri's best player in the tournament itself. Then in the second round match with South Korea at the 2002 world Cup, with so much riding on his performance, Totti was sent off. Italy went out. At Euro 2004, when he was again under great pressure to perform and frustrated with his marking, he lashed out and spat at Danish midfielder Christian Poulsen, and was banned for three games. Without him, Italy's attack malfunctioned badly, and they again went out. His role at the 2006 tournament went some way to redemption, but he subsequently retired from International football to concentrate on Roma.

Disgracefully, he has never won either the FIFA World Player of the Year award, or the Ballon D'Or. But they don't define greatness, or even quantify it. Only what he does on the pitch does that, really. And he does amazing things on the pitch:

Football in sun and shadow 4

2008-03-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

Diego Armando Maradona. The greatest player of my lifetime by a very wide margin. It would be wrong to have him share a post with lesser players, he deserves his own collection of clips. So:

This is what is called a proper range of passing:

Dribbling, attracting some of the most ferociously brutal tackling I've ever seen, making opponents fall over, flip-flops, drag-backs, multiple stepovers:

Deliberately injured (and out for months) by Athletic Bilbao's Goikoetxea during his time at Barcelona, Maradona returned to Bilbao with a score to settle. So he decided to start a fight:

He didn't warm up like anybody else, either:

"Hero", the Official FIFA film of the 1986 World Cup understandably concentrates on Maradona. The entire thing is on Youtube in 10 minute chunks and its all worth a watch, especially part seven, featuring France vs Brazil, Platini vs Zico etc. But this part is Argentina vs England. The greatest goal ever. Michael Caine, synthesiser music. Ace.

Football in sun and shadow 3

2008-02-19T16:07:00.000-08:00

Teofilo Cubilias, the greatest Peruvian footballer ever. And a No. 10. Nuff said.

Quaresma:

Bergkamp:

Rivaldo:

Ariel Ortega, who more or less specialised in scoring goals just like this:

The 1985 FA Cup Final. Man Utd down to 10 men after Kevin Moran has been sent off, against the new champions Everton. Up steps Norman Whiteside:

Hagi:

European 1990s XI

2008-01-17T16:05:00.000-08:00

I buy a lot of football magazines. What I don't buy, I tend to leaf through in shops and read for free. I was reading one I'd never seen before - some sort of Premiership 1990s special that went through that decade, Season by Season - in a shop the other day, and it posited a Premiership XI from the 1990s. This, you'll agree, is an irresistable idea. Best enjoyed in the company of some opinionated Football fans of differing views, but enjoyable and provocative even in the dry pages of a glossy nostalgia football magazine. It is a great team, too, and I find it hard to disagree with a single player:

GK: Schmeichel

Defence: Dixon Adams McGrath Pearce

Midfield: LeTissier Keane Gascoine Giggs

Forwards: Cantona Shearer

Alright, I might include Denis Irwin instead of Lee Dixon, if pushed, and always believed Paul Gascoine was a supremely overrated player, but it is hard to think of a top quality alternative to play in the creative position in Central Midfield from the 1990s. Glenn Hoddle is more of a player of the 1980s, Scholes of the 2000s, and the only other players I can think of who could play there are Zola and Gary McAllister. So Gascoine can stay too. Otherwise, its hard to imagine many teams breaching that defence because with Keane patrolling in front of Adams and McGrath, theres not a weak link in sight. The midfield, Keane's destructive capabilities aside, is full of creativity and genius, with goals coming from all four players. And that forward line would terrify Claudio Gentile - each player a terrific mix of brawn and skill, Cantona dropping into the hole, Shearer playing on the shoulder.

But I think I can just possibly come up with a better 1990s XI. In the 1990s, of course, Serie A was pre-eminent. Juventus and Milan were Europe's dominant clubs and South Americans, Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch players all went to Italy to play their football. Spain's Primera Liga was beginning the rise that woud see it become perhaps the continent's dominant league - neck and neck with Premier League - in the new Century. And France, Holland and Portugal still produced their fair share of decent teams. So my 1990s XI will be drawn from across Europe, excluding the Premiership. Whereas the Premiership team is an obvious 4-4-2, my team would play 4-1-2-1-2, with a holding midfielder, two wingers and a playmaker at the apex of a midfield diamond. Gotta have a playmaker. I think its quite a handy little team:

GOALKEEPER : Jose Luis Chilavert

This was probably the hardest position to fill, apart from Number 10. Peter Schmeichel was so obviously the World's greatest Goalkeeper during the 1990s that he overshadows all of his rivals. Oliver Kahn came close, but he really only rose to proper International prominance near the end of the decade. Walter Zenga is almost exactly the opposite, his career defined by his exploits in the 1980s and slipping from the spotlight in the 90s. The likes of Edwin Van der Sar, Fabian Barthez and Marcel Preudhomme were never quite excellent enough for such a spot. But Jose Luis Chilavert was. The 6"4 Paraguayan played only briefly in Europe during the decade - for Zaragoza from 1988-1991 (he came back to Strasbourg in 2000-2002) - but that creates enough of a loophole for me to exploit adroitly. Chilavert had a massive personality and he was agile and dominant in the air, while also an excellent shot-stopper. What he would add to this team that none of his contempories could is Goalscoring ability. In all, he scored 37 goals over the course of his career, 8 of them for Paraguay, most from free kicks and penalties. He once scored a hat trick for Velez Sarsfield. Here's a video of his goalscoring exploits, including one from his own half against River Plate. Not a save in sight, though, but you'll just have to trust me, he was a good Keeper:

RIGHT BACK: Cafu

The fact that he's the most-capped Brazilian player of all time (with 156 caps) says it all about the man Roma fans christened "Il Pendolino" (The Express Train) because of the way he shuttled up and down the wing from his area to the oppositions all game. Stupendously fit and pacy, he also possessed a beautiful first touch and silky dribbling ability, which enabled him to drive his side on down the right, from where he supported attacks and sent in some lovely crosses. His stamina and timing in the tackle made him an excellent defender, combative in the challenge and stubborn as a marker. But that relentless drive forwards is what makes him (hes still playing at 38) a special player, and the original of a certain type more common in the game now than in the last decade. He has become an adjective. Attacking fullbacks - from Danniel Alves to Alan Hutton - are now routinely referred to as Cafu-esque, the ultimate compliment for that position. This video shows just about all of his talents:

LEFT BACK: Paolo Maldini

After the first leg of last year's Champions League Semi-Final at Old Trafford between Manchester United and AC Milan, Sir Alex Ferguson commented appreciatively on Paolo Maldini that he had played the entire match without making a single tackle. Fergie was applauding Maldini's peerless reading of the game, his ability to see danger before it developed and snuff it out at source. This is the kind of vision the great defenders tend to gain with experience, and it may compensate for the losses they suffer in pace and agility as their careers wear on. Maldini was born with such vision. Perhaps its because hes from a football family, with his father, Cesare, also a respected Italian player and Coach. Perhaps football really is in some players blood. The richness of Maldini's blood is such that he has become Italys most-capped player, has played in Eight Champions League Finals, and was the first defender to win World Soccer's Player of the Year Award, in 1994. He began his career as a left back, then moved to Centre Half, and has switched back and forth ever since. In his prime he had every asset a defender needs - in addition to the aforementioned vision, he was strong and pacy, good in the air, hard in the tackle, and always assured on the ball. No winger would fancy playing against Maldini and no right back would fancy having to track his driving runs upfield, either. He is also a fantastic leader and inspirational Captain, and would weigh in with his share of goals, many of them belters, as this video demonstrates:

CENTRE BACK: Franco Baresi

If Maldini possessed that defensive vision, that ability to sense danger, then Baresi was the very personification of it. He never seemed flustered, never seemed hurried. He never even seemed to have to sprint, moving across the pitch in a light jog, timing his tackles with the judgement and grace of a pickpocket. He was nearing the end of his playing career as the decade began and his experience and knowledge were immense - he would play 532 games for Milan, winning six league titles and three European Cups. He played in two World Cups for Italy (that would have been 3 if he had not refused to play for Coach Enzo Bearzot in 1986). His playing style was that of a Beckenbauer-style Libero. He generally operated behind the defensive line, tidying up, directing operations and picking passes. He was an inspirational captain, and Milan hold him in such high regard that they retired the No 6 shirt when he gave it up, in 1994 at the age of 37. He still works there, as a Youth Team Coach, and you get the feeling that some day soon he'll return as First Team Coach.
One final quality I remember him possessing, in common with many great Italian defenders - he was quite dirty. But extremely clever about it. His fouling was always "professional", almost subtle, never needless.
He wasn't exactly renowned for his goalscoring but this video features quite a lot of that nevertheless, alongside some perfectly timed tackling and a few nice little fouls:

CENTRE BACK: Fernando Hierro

In contrast, Hierro had an incredible goalscoring record for a Centre-Half. 439 games for Real Madrid played, 102 goals scored. From Central defence. 89 Spanish caps, 29 goals scored. From Central Defence. He was fantastic in the air, was part of it, leaping prodigiously and powering the ball goalwards with that thick necked, broad-shouldered force his general physical grace seemed to belie. But he was a beautiful ball-player, too, with a tremendous range of passing, an ability to make space for himself in the thick of things and a lovely first touch. He took - and scored from - many of Real Madrid's free-kicks and penalties. He was so good creatively that Sam Allardice used him as a defensive midfielder, rather in the mode of a Quarter-Back, during his final season at Bolton Wanderers. Of course, he excelled in the position. As a defender, he would be the animal to Baresi's artist - doing the dirty work, winning the headers, covering the ground. But they are both leaders, and any forward line would be intimidated by them.
This goal is a great demonstration of his technical ability:

DEFENSIVE MIDFIELD: Fernando Redondo

I wrote about Redondo before, in my very first football post on this blog. Having such a strong Defensive line behind him would liberate him to a great extent, and he could boss midfield all game, sending those beautifully angled little passes through to the toes of his playmaker, playing one-twos, going on little dribbles. But not much would get past him going the other way.
Time and again in this video we see him go by players with a little trick, a swerve. He was an Argentine player, after all. But who amongst the candidates for the leading defensive midfielders in World Football today displays a similar skill level when on the ball? Makelele? Mascherano? Toure? Nobody. Of his peers in this position, the only one I really considered was Matthias Sammer. But Redondo was a class act:

LEFT WING: Hristo Stoitchkov

He sometimes played up front, but he was originally (and best deployed as) a winger. On the wing, his explosive pace and high-speed dribbling propelled him past reeling full backs, and his distance shooting made him an unpredictable opponent. His goals were generally spectacular, like his tantrums, his arguments with opponents and officials, and his free kicks. He was a scowling, passionate force of nature. He won European Footballer of the Year in 1994 and was joint top scorer at the 1994 World Cup, when he led Bulgaria to the semi-finals. On his day, he was virtually unplayable:

RIGHT WING: Luis Figo

When I first became properly aware of Luis Figo (this was back in the days before you could watch football from just about every conceivable European League if you subscribed to the right satellite channels, back when you had to wait until they were paired with British teams to see some European Giants in action. Unless they were Italian, in which case they were on Channel 4) I really hated him. He seemed to dive more than any other player I had ever watched. He was constantly tumbling, tripping, rolling, getting up with a look at the referee, a wagged finger at an opponent. It seemed gamesmanship. But it wasn't really. He did go to ground easily, but then he got kicked all the time. His style relied on dribbling skill, on his ability to make an oponent look stupid, and many retaliated for their humiliation by hacking at his legs. Figo went down to protect himself and because he had to go down. Another part of that hatred was fear - it was obvious what a great player he was, how constantly dangerous, and when he played against a team I liked, I feared his effect on the game. He's still playing, so I won't go into his huge list of honours, because he'll likely add to it this year.
He always combined a massive heart and workrate with his sublime skill, and never seemed to fear the often outrageous tackles he suffered. He wouldn't offer very much defensively to this team, but then why should he, when he could contribute skills like this:

ATTACKING MIDFIELD: Zinedine Zidane

The Number 10. There were so many high-quality playmakers and attacking midfielders, inside forwards and link forwards in European football in the 1990s that I found it really dificult to pick just one. As you'll see from my next choice. For example, any of these players could have easily played in this team: Hagi, Savicevic, Rui Costa, Del Piero, Laudrup, Rivaldo, Effenberg, Scifo, Ortega, Scholes...at the start of the decade Maradona was still playing in Europe, but his very best years were behind him. So, instead it must be Zizou, who was pretty much indisputably the greatest player in the world for a few years in the late 90s and into the early years of this century. Do I really have to write up his catalogue of attributes? That caress of a touch, the outrageous vision, his ability to glide into space...I once read a quote about Maradona that said that when he played near his potential, he made it seem as if the other 21 men on the pitch were playing one game while he was playing another one entirely. Zidane, at his best, approached similar heights. His teammates often resorted to just giving him the ball and hoping he would do somethiing extraordinary. And he did, many times. Like the great playmakers, he was particularly adept at finding space where there seemingly was none. He would recieve the ball with a marker in close attendance, often two, then his feet would move, a swirl, a flick, all in a blur, and he had a yard, somehow. Enough time to pick out and deliver a pass nobody else had seen or launch himself on a run, dragging defenders into areas they prefer not to go in.
He scored big goals, too, important goals. That volley in the Champions League final in Glasgow for Real Madrid. Two goals in the 98 World Cup final in Paris. He was a big game player. He could carve open any defence.
This video focuses more on the "performing seal" aspects of his play than the excellent passing and setting of a tempo he was master of, but it has some awesome moments:

FORWARD: Roberto Baggio

The player who came closest to stealing Zidane's Number 10 shirt was the little Italian schemer, the Divine Ponytail himself. He was probably the World's Greatest Player in the years between the decline of Maradona and the rise of Zizou, and he almost singlehandedly dragged Italy to the final of the 1994 World Cup. He was both European and World Player of the Year in 1993, won Serie A with both Juventus and Milan as well as the two minor European Cups with Juve. He generally played a little further forward than Zidane and scored more poacher's goals, but was equally adept at dropping into midfield and linking play, building attacks with his acute passing and elusive dribbling. His technique was matchless, his vision and spirit at a similar level. I remember the excitement of his emergence at Italia 90, his class and stature obvious even then - you can generally tell when a major new player has arrived. Baggio was certainly one.
He could play in a two man forward line, he and Zidane alternating position and confusing centre backs with their movement and interplay while the other frontman, more of a spearhead, would have to be able to take on defenders on his own or hold the ball up. Baggio, scoring some awesome goals:

FORWARD: Ronaldo

He was nicknamed "The Phenomenon". There is no hyperbole in that name. At his brief peak, before injuries, psychological and commercial pressures and his own gluttony began to affect him, Ronaldo was an amazing player, almost unstoppable. In his single Season at Barcelona, he scored 34 goals in 37 games. And if there exists the suspicion that he never quite reached his potential, then that is only a sign of just how enormous his potential was. He won two World Cups and three World Player of the Year awards. Not bad for a player playing below his potential.
He was a new kind of forward. He would get the ball, take it beyond defenders with his exceptional pace and close control, then bury it. He could shoot from long distance with incredible accuracy and power. He got tap-ins, headers. He dribbled around goalkeepers, placed first time balls in corners. He was a goalscorer, but so much more. Defences were terrified of that raw pace, the way he could spring beyond them as if they weren't there.
Running onto the kind of delivery that Baggio and Zidane could provide, he would score many goals.
This short video is purely of his Barca season, but is a reminder of how incredible he was in his youth, when he still bounded along, three or four defenders in a cloud around him. What a player:

Football in sun and shadow 2

2007-12-16T16:04:00.000-08:00

The Divine Ponytail:

The Less Divine Mullet:

Fernando Belluschi, who tries to combine the ponytail and the mullet into one hairstyle. He's River Plate's box-to-box midfielder, but hes a little bit of a playmaker too. He'll be in Europe soon:

Ronnie Whelan:

A couple of backheels-

First, Totti in training, with a penalty:

But this is in the European Cup Final! By Madjer:

Football in sun and shadow

2007-11-28T16:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just want to put some beautiful clips of football up, without having to write a long post about some Uruguayan or Bulgarian player from the 80s to accompany them. They speak for themselves, anyway, unless I say they don't, in which case I'll add a witless comment.

Anyway, the beautiful game:

Almost the best part of this is that he misses:

He doesn't miss:

Matias Fernandez:

Dejan Savicevic, a little genius:

Hugo Sanchez, making that Ronaldinho effort look easy:

Diego Maradona, playing for Spurs. No, seriously:

Roy Keane

2007-10-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

"Going to work was like going to War."

21st April 1999, Stadio Delle Alpi, Turin - 11 minutes into the Second leg of the semi-final of their Champions League tie with Juventus, Manchester United were 2-0 down and seemingly out of the competition. Two weeks earlier, Juventus had dominated Utd at Old Trafford in the first leg and been unfortunate to concede a last minute Ryan Giggs goal which kept the English team in the tie. And this was a seasoned Juventus side, with the experience and power of Conte, Davids and Deschamps alongside the skill of Zidane and Pessotto. The notion of getting a result against them at home was an unlikely one, made even moreso by the 2 goal deficit. Inzaghi had scored both of the goals, the first a piece of classic poaching from Zidane's cross, the second taking a wicked deflection off Jaap Stam. There was the suspicion that this Juve team had the measure of Utd. They had crossed paths a few times over the previous five years and Juve had generally emerged on top, a rollicking 3-2 defeat at Old Trafford in 1997 apart. But in this game, Roy Keane seemed to will his team to win. Provided with the aggressive, terrier-like Nicky Butt as his midfield partner, Keane never gave the Juventus midfielders an inch or a second on the ball, hustling and cracking into tackles. Zidane lost some of his composure, Davids seemed to lose some of his bottle. In his autobiography, Keane talks about knowing that Juventus weren't really up for the battle the way his Utd were and about going into a 50-50 with Davids, the Hard man of the Turin side. No contest, he says. Juventus were beaten, they just didn't know it yet. With Butt doing more of the dirty work than the more artistic Scholes usually did, Keane was the chief playmaker on that night, and his passing, when he was on his game, was almost hypnotically consistent. He played simple balls, but in all directions, of all types, long and short, lofted and rolling. He never stopped moving, open for the returned pass. He shouted and cajoled ferociously, driving his team on. He would not lose, you felt. He rose to nod in the first Utd goal and his determined celebration said it all - he knew there was more to come. Even when a late tackle on Zidane meant that he was booked and knew he would miss out on the final, should Utd reach it, he remained focused and driven. A goal from Yorke in the 34th minute meant that Utd were winning on away goals, and Andy Cole sealed the win in the 84th. The team were applauded off the pitch by Juventus fans. Alex Ferguson spoke of his Captain's performance in his autobiography : "It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing as if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose he inspired all around him. I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a player."

Performances like that one are the reason many Utd fans of a certain age love Keane more than any other player, more even than Eric Cantona. He gave the sense of truly caring in a way so many players manifestly do not - he seemed to care to an almost insane extent. Hence the outbursts, the snarling, the fighting. He was a supreme competitor, or as he himself put it: "the robot, the madman, the winner". Nowhere near as gifted as many of his peers in the battleground of midfield in World Football in the 1990s, Keane was a greater player than most of them because of his intelligence, but also because of his desire, his spirit and that aura.

He was a small boy, which made his breakthrough into professional football more difficult. His aggressive, competitive nature must have helped, and after a few failed trials, he eventually played in the Football League of Ireland for Cobh Ramblers, a smalltown club from Cork. There a scout from Nottingham Forest spotted him, and Keane signed for £47,000 in 1990. He quickly broke into the first team, making his debut and excelling against Liverpool at Anfield. He established himself as a starter at the expense of England International Steve Hodge and received his first call up to the Irish Squad. Back then, his style was very different. He was a goalscoring midfielder, with the happy knack of bursting late into the box to smack in a cut-back or a rebound. His game changed considerably after a few years at Man Utd, where he had moved for a then-record £3.75million in 1993. He became a more rounded midfielder, his prodigious energy and workrate making him a truly box-to-box player, both destroyer and creator. Initially he played alongside two players he superficially resembled - Bryan Robson and Paul Ince. But he would come to replace both at the heart of the team. Robson advised him to work on his defending and Keane did so, altering his game and allowing that fantastic engine to carry him into a ceaseless stream of tackles, blocks and interceptions. His reputation, both as a troublemaker and a player, grew. There were high profile red cards for late tackles, and for stamping on Gareth Southgate. His charisma and the fact that he was already becoming the team's new leader meant that he was a great story for the media. He badly injured himself stretching to tackle - to foul - Alf-Inge Haland in a game against Leeds, and missed most of a Season in which his importance to Utd was underlined by the team's lack of success. His return coincided with that Treble Season. But he attracted controversy, in his interviews, in his actions upon the pitch. He swung a punch at Alan Shearer. He led a pack of baying players after a referee to protest a decision. He criticised fans at Old Trafford. He refused to sign a new contract until he was given what he felt he was worth. He brutally, deliberatly fouled Haland in an act of vengeance he was then open about in his autobiography. He spent a night in a cell after a tabloid sting when the team were out celebrating in Manchester led to him becoming involved in an altercation with two women. He criticised the lifestyles and motivation of several teammates. He elbowed Jason McAteer in the face. The media, obviously, loved him.

His record at Man Utd only needs recounting. He played 326 games for the club, scoring 33 goals. He won more or less every available major trophy with the club, including a European Cup, 7 League titles, 4 FA Cups and 1 Intercontinental Cup. He played in 7 FA Cup finals, a record. In 2000, he won both Players and Football Writers Player of the Year awards. He was the only Irish player in Pele's 100 Greatest Living Players list. He was, quite easily, the dominant player of his era in the Premiership.

Perhaps his chief rival for that accolade is Patrick Vieira, his direct opponent at Arsenal. In Keane's time at Man Utd, Arsenal were almost always the closest threat, and his contests with Vieira were invariably central to the success or failure of the teams. Vieira was a better player in purely technical terms, with a great touch and those long telescopic legs enabling him to make some unbelievable tackles, plus a good range of passing and the ability to dribble skillfully. He could dominate an opposition midfield as well as anyone in the game...except Keane. He did not have quite as big an aura, quite as intimidating a presence. When he first emerged as a young player at Arsenal in tandem in midfield with Emmanuel Petit, Keane seemed unprepared for the challenge. But that didn't last long. Keane, as usual, compensated for his technical shortcomings with his will, his intelligence, his charisma, his ability to work harder than anybody else. He seemed to take Vieira's measure over his first few Seasons in England, and after that, Keane generally emerged the victor in their personal duels, just as he did with the emergence of Stephen Gerrard a few years later. Alex Ferguson once commented that Keane needed it to be a personal battle to thrive. He loved the personal combat, you vs. me, it was what brought the best out in him, and as such, he must have relished every meeting with Vieira. Keane probably peaked either in Utd's 6-1 demolition of Arsenal at Old Trafford in 2000 or when he scored both goals in a 2-0 win at Highbury. In the "Battle of Old Trafford" in 2004 when Arsenal players were confronting and baiting Utd players all over the pitch, none dared to approach Keane, not even Vieira, who Keane had shepherded off the pitch after his red card in that match, sparing the Frenchman further trouble. However, the climax of their rivalry came in the tunnel at Highbury in 2005, when Vieira threatened to "break Gary Neville's legs". Keane rushed to defend his teammate by haranguing Vieira about his own lack of qualities, asking him why he wasn't playing for Real Madrid and a few other comments (which Graham Poll, in his autobiography, says were amusingly witty and left Vieira threatening to break Keane's legs too) and ending the exchange with "I'll see you out there" as he pointed to the pitch. If that was some sort of attempted psyche-out by the Frenchman, it backfired, as Keane kept the ball, dominated the game and led Utd to a 2-4 win.

"It disappoints me that I didn't win the World Cup. People say 'but Roy, you played for Ireland, you were never going to win the World Cup'. I never saw it like that."

August 2001, Lansdowne Road, Dublin - Ireland need a result against Holland to qualify for the play-offs for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea. They have, as usual, been drawn in a horrible group with a couple of Europe's modern heavyweights - the Dutch and the Portugal of the golden generation of Figo, Rui Costa and Couto. With Keane near the peak of his powers, the Irish have fought their way to some impressive results - drawing 2-2 with Holland in Amsterdam and drawing twice with the Portugeuse. Portugal will qualify automatically as group winners, and the winner of Ireland-Holland will take second place. Holland's squad is absolutely star-studded with an especially impressive array of strikers including Ruud van Nistelrooy, Pierre van Hoojdonk, Patrick Kluivert, Roy Makaay and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Most of them will be on the pitch by the end of the match as the Dutch desperately search for a goal. By contrast and with the exception of Shay Given in goal and Robbie Keane and Damian Duff up front, the Irish team is full of journeymen, average players who add to the collective. In such company, Keane's qualities become almost exaggerated in their importance. He is forced to prove his stature, to stamp his greatness on the game. He does it, seemingly, through sheer force of will. In perhaps the first minute of the match, Marc Overmars takes possession of the ball. Overmars is one of Holland's flair players, a dagger along the wing, with lovely touch, great pace and an eye for goal. He takes a touch with the assurance and confidence typical of a cultured Dutch player, in no hurry, aware of his space and his options. But one of Keane's best qualities has always been his hunger for the ball and his speed in making up ground in pursuit of it, and he is upon Overmars in an instant. His tackle is typically shattering, from behind, and though he gets the ball, he also takes plenty of the man. Overmars gets up looking shaken with Keane telling him not to make such a meal of it, and from then on, none of the Dutch midfield ever looks confident on the ball again. Mark Van Bommel tries to fight Keane's fire with his own, but finds that in such a war of attrition, few can match the Irish Captain (dutch Coach Louis van Gaal would vote for Keane as his European player of the Year in that Season, so impressed was he). Despite having Gary Kelly sent off in the 58th minute, Ireland win 1-0 courtesy of a Jason McAteer goal, with Keane dominant in the centre of the pitch. Indeed, his tackle and run began the move leading to that goal:

To truly understand just how good a player Keane was, his performances with Ireland have to be considered. For most of his International career, he found himself surrounded by players far inferior to his clubmates. Yet this appeared to inspire him. He drove them on just as remorselessly as he did the Utd team, if not moreso. One Dublin Newspaper regularly ran an alternative set of player ratings after every Irish match based around how many times Keane had shouted at the players. Hence the player shouted at the least had been Ireland's best player, Keane apart. And he was invariably Ireland's best player. This explains the impact his departure from the Squad at the World Cup in 2002 had in Ireland, where it was a socially divisive issue, mentioned in Parliament and omniprescient in the media for weeks. As David Walsh has written, Keane suffered from the burden of being the greatest player produced by a small nation. This meant that he became something of a champion in the Greek Warrior sense of the word. Ireland regularly played teams from bigger, stronger countries. These teams were often manifestly superior to the Irish team. But the Irish could ask any team in the World: who is your best player? This chap? Ok. Well, here is our best player. Now our best player will play your best player off the pitch. Just watch.
And Keane did it, time and again. Faced with Luis Figo, one of the most skillful players of his generation, Keane matched Figo's goal with one of his own and stymied the Portugeuse over and over. In a qualifier for the 2006 World Cup against France at Lansdowne Road, Keane dominated a French midfield made up of Zidane, Vieira, Makelele and Dhorasoo. It is inconceivable that Ireland would have limped out of that World cup in 2002 against Spain if Keane had been on the pitch. He would not have allowed it, not in such a manner, at any rate. But he was not on the pitch. His departure from the Squad was farcical, but just adds to his legend, in its way. It deprived him of his best chance to win that elusive World Cup, but has provided the raw material for two seperate plays and a couple of books: "Roy Keane's 10-minute oration ... was clinical, fierce, earth-shattering to the person on the end of it and it ultimately caused a huge controversy in Irish society." - Niall Quinn

That "oration" is part of what made Keane such a great player. There is a sense that he was almost waiting for the opportunity, that these complaints and criticisms he had harboured were a burden for him and he was almost glad to be rid of them. His wit and sharp tongue flashed occasionally in his interviews, but the snatches of that attack of Mick McCarthy revealed by other members of the Irish squad were both funny and cutting. Keane gave McCarthy no option but to send him home. The entire episode recalls the story told by Tony Cascarino in his book, of the entire Irish team kept waiting on a coach in Florida for Keane, young and relatively new to the squad, who has spent the night and morning in a local bar. Keane eventually arrived wearing a "Kiss me Quick" hat and was confronted by a furious Jack Charlton. "I didn't ask you to wait for me, did I?" Keane replied, stunning the older players, each of whom was petrified of their coach. When McCarthy, then Squad Captain and Senior pro, stepped in, his comment : "Call yourself a professional?" was met by Keane's "Call what you have a first touch?" What happened in 2002 really began on that day, according to Keane. His refusal to accept Ireland's second best status was the real sticking point, however. Ireland is a nation that celebrates reaching the Quarter Finals of a major competition, or at least it used to. Keane's attitude has changed that somehow, his reluctance to celebrate a draw with a great team when he knew Ireland could have won has spread through the culture alongside the great and unprecedented prosperity brought by the EU.

He always seemed to burn with some sort of fury - you could see it in his eyes in certain games, you could feel it in the way he terrified not just the opposition but his own teammates, too. He was a warrior. He laid it all on the line, left everything on the pitch, and he expected no less from those he played with. Thus his book and interviews are full of respect for those he considers proper professionals - the likes of Paul Scholes and Eric Cantona. But plenty of others he is less kind about. He might acknowledge somebody's talen while burying them in terms of personality. Peter Schmeicel played up to the crowd too much. Teddy Sheringham was a typical cocky, flash London wide-boy. He once claimed to have lost track of who he was not speaking to in the Utd dressing room. There are tales of him knocking out the big Danish goalkeeper in a training ground row, a sort of turf war, soon after Keane arrived at the club. Also the story that the famous Beckham "boot-gate" scar was in fact caused by the fist of Keane rather than a boot kicked by Fergie. Tellingly though, few who played with him at United have anything negative to say about him. Sheringham called him the best player he ever played with, as did Ruud van Nistelrooy. Few players share his warrior mentality, and it makes an impression on more sensitive teammates. It has carried him through his first year in Club Management at Sunderland, where he has also displayed his dark wit and acute intelligence in his interviews.

Footballers, whether they know it or not, are ambassadors. For clubs, for countries and for themselves. For decades, Mancunians knew that when they told foreigners where they were from, they would receive "Ahhh - Best, Law, Charlton" in return. Mention Brazil to so many people and they will instantly think of football. Argentina means Maradona. Liverpool might instantly summon the Beatles to mind, but after that its football. Roy Keane is possibly the only footballer from the Republic of Ireland with any kind of similar recognition factor worldwide. I've had personal experience of this which I found strangely touching, when I was in a little shop in the Argentine Andes a few years ago. The proprietor, a little old man, asked where I was from. "Ireland", I replied.
"Ah." he said. "Roy Keane. Very good player."

Argentina 2007

2007-07-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

During the 2006 World Cup, at the place where I work, some of us were allowed to take days off to watch certain games. So the real football fans got to watch England's games from home, or the pub. Which is as it should be. Obviously, Ireland didn't qualify, so instead, I took a day off to watch Argentina - Serbia. Argentina's other group games were at night and I could watch them after work, but the Serbia game was in the afternoon. So I got up late, watched the preceding game, then settled down to watch Argentina destroy (an admittedly weakened) Serbia. It was the most exhilarating game of that World Cup for a fan of beautiful football. Argentina pressed the Serbians high up the pitch, were characteristically sharp and miserly in defence, and played the ball around in a series of short, beautiful passing moves. Riquelme - probably my favourite player in World football for the old-fashioned grace and sublime loveliness of his style - ran the game, supplemented by the constant movement of the likes of Saviola, Crespo and Rodriguez around him. Mascherano and Cambiasso patrolled midfield, snapping at the Serbians, retaining the ball impressively, shielding the Argentine backline. They scored the goal of the tournament, and one of the best goals ever scored at a World CUp. In the second-half, with the game won, Argentina brought on two young players, both of whom scored: Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi. They won 6-0. I watched the whole match in that state you sometimes reach when you realise a film is truly great or when you really love a record: it made me happy, and the awareness of this happiness meant that I felt lucky to be experiencing it. So much modern football is defensive and pragmatic, the pressure of money and demands for success mercilessly squeezing all the artistry and creativity from a game which thrives upon those qualities that it was almost a relief to witness a team devoted to playing football - and excuse this cliche - the way it should be played.

Well, Argentina may have been the best team at that World Cup, but they didn't win it. Their coach suffered a failure of nerve, and they went out on penalties to a typically fit and well organised but inferior German side in the Quarter-finals. But the promise of that team, and the fact that so many of its key members were so young, meant that their time would surely come again. They will probably be among the favourites for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. But, as I write this, they are slated to play their arch-rivals Brazil in the final of the 2007 Copa America in Venezuala in approximately 25 hours. Argentina owe Brazil for a few recent results: in the final of the last Copa America, in Peru in 2005, twice Argentina led, only for an Adriano goal in the last minute of injury time to rescue Brazil, who went on to win the game on penalties. In the final of the 2005 Confederations Cup, Brazil delivered a 4-1 tonking, and there was a similar result in last years friendly at the Emirates Stadium in London where Brazil ran out 3-0 winners.

Brazil are feted throughout the World for the quality of their football, and based upon the calibre of the players the country has produced in the last decade, that seems reasonable enough. Probably the players currently reckoned to be the two best in the World are Brazilian, after all: Kaka and Ronaldinho. Add to those names this lot: Robinho, Daniel Alves, Ronaldo, Juninho, Adriano, Ze Roberto, Cicinho, Fred and Diego. But in practice, Brazil rarely play the "Joga Bonito" dreamt up by Nike's marketing department in competitive games. Instead they favour a far more pragmatic, hard-nosed approach with strong holding players protecting their defence, relying on their flair players to produce some magic from nowhere to win them matches. Those players - Robinho, Anderson and Diego so far in this Copa America tourament - can become isolated, without a supporting midfield player linking play for them, and this puts them under intolerable pressure, as the failure of Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Adriano to sparkle at the last World Cup demonstrated. That the Brazilian coach, Dunga, was a holding midfield player himself, and won a World Cup in a team more respected than loved in Brazil probably hasn't helped him with the reception his team has received at home during this tournament. They have underwhelmed, scraping through most of their games - a 6 goal thumping of a Chilean side reeling from scandal aside - and were fortunate to beat an aggressive, well-organised Uruguay in the semi-final. What makes Brazil look worse is the form of their biggest South American rivals. Because at the moment Argentina look like the best side in international football, and they are playing with the sort of flair traditionally expected of the Brazilians.

They may lose in Sunday's final - Brazil have a way of getting results when it counts, Argentina a way of choking at the very worst moments, and if the Albiceleste have a weakness it may be a lack of pace in defence, just the sort of thing Robinho will be looking to exploit - but what will be remembered will be some of the football they have played. Coach Coco Basile has stayed true to the Argentinian values of football, favouring a fluid attacking line-up playing with a traditional number 10 in the form of Riquelme, who has probably been the player of the tournament. Observe this perfect pass to Lionel Messi against Peru, taking 3 defenders out of the game with a single stroke of the boot:

Riquelme has also scored 5 goals, including this finish with his weaker left foot:

And this free-kick, which he passes around the wall and inside the far post, Zico-style:

But aside from his goals and assists, Riquelme is a force for positive football when hes on the pitch. He always keeps the ball moving, he rarely - if ever - surrenders possession, he always looks for space, and he encourages his teammates to do the same. The fact that his teammates need very little encouragement is testament to their class and skill. Also to the fact that each of Argentina's front three - Riquelme, Messi and Tevez - can play as a Number 10. Their interplay has been breathtaking, each displaying vision and individual skill when required. None more than Lionel Messi, finally being given his chance in the National team after being restricted to the bench for most of the World Cup. His dribbling ability, acceleration and touch are all superb, but he has the boundless courage and confidence of youth, never ever afraid to take on an entire massed defence with the ball at his feet. He has also scored what was probably the goal of the tournament:

In the first two games of the tournament, Basile went with a traditional "Little & Large" front two of Messi and Hernan Crespo, leaving Carlos Tevez on the bench. Crespo is a centre forward of the highest class, a predator whose movement, aerial ability and eye for goal are comparable with anybody playing in his position in football today. He showed his value to his country with his goals in each of his first two games. His injury - taking a penalty kick - in the second match eventually allowed for the introduction of Tevez, and the Argentine frontline was suddenly an entirely different beast. Tevez shares Messi's dribbling skill, but is more powerful, better at holding the ball up, more direct, and more useful at pressuring defenders when he is hunting possession. The combination of Messi and Tevez running onto passes from Riquelme is a terrifying one for a defender and leads to goals like this one:

A couple of other players have been recalled to the squad and allowed the attacking line to work its magic. Juan Sebastian Veron has played in deep midfield alongside the more defensive-minded Esteban Cambiasso, and his presence is one of the key factors in Riquelme's freedom of expression. Veron takes the ball off the defense and from Javier Mascherano and drills precise long passes across the pitch or feeds Riquelme, allowing the playmaker to remain in the part of the pitch where he can do the most damage. Veron is also capable of shooting powerfully from distance, as this effort against the USA demonstrates:

However, hes never been the most solid midfielder from a defensive point of view. The return of Javier Zanetti at right-back has meant that he has never yet had to be. Zanetti works the entire right side of the pitch, racing forward to support attacks and yet somehow always positionally sound in the defensive third, allowing Veron to play his way without ever becoming a liability. Also vital in allowing the creative midfielders to work their magic has been Javier Mascherano in the holding role, the key No. 5. With the decline in Claude Makelele's game, Mascherano has rapidly developed into probably the best player in this position in the world, as his superb marshalling of Kaka during the Champions League final suggested. His anticipation and reading of the game are startlingly astute, meaning that he always seems to be in the right area of the pitch to snuff out an attack as it begins. Combine this with great stamina, thunderous tackling and the ability to keep his passes simple yet intelligent, and you have the perfect holding midfielder. Hes also begun to score goals, notching up two so far in this tournament, the first of them a beautiful finish:

Argentina's strength in depth means that there are quality alternatives to all of these players on the bench. Pablo Aimar is a great playmaker, more similar to Messi than Riquelme in his movement and touch, but with enough quality to have guided Valencia to a Spanish title a few years ago. He would be the Star player in almost any other International team, yet is reduced to guest-starring for Argentina. A role he can play to perfection :

Fernando Gago offers a more creative alternative to Mascherano, Milito and Palacio are quality strikers in the target man and pacy runner mode respectively and Lucho Gonzalez can play in more or less any position in midfield with equal effectiveness. If the team has a weakness, it is in defense. Argentina have yet to be properly tested defensively in this tournament, and Brazil would be expected to offer that test tomorrow night. Gabriel Heinze is committed and strong in the tackle, but vulnerable against pace, as is the ageing, if still commanding, Roberto Ayala. Gabriel Milito has had a poor tournament, seemingly prone to slips in concentration, something he will need to address before he finds himself facing Robinho & co.

Despite this, Argentina should really beat whatever side Brazil put out tomorrow to win the tournament. What all of the clips and words above don't really transmit is the impression of Argentina's play. The way the team moves the ball around, husbanding it jealously across the pitch in little triangles, the corners of which continually circle and wheel around one another. The absolute perfection of touch and technique. The little dribbles and back-heels and stepovers, performed with casual fluency by all of the players. The way passes are perfectly weighted, rolling with immaculate timing into the stride of a player in motion. The killer instinct in front of goal. The hunger for the ball, the constant support for the player in possession. The way they contemptuously shrug off teams who attempt to foul and bully them out of their rhythm. The tireless pressing of the other team when they have the ball. The way the scorers frequently race screaming to the bench so that the entire squad can celebrate together.
Its all been beautiful and exhilarating to watch. The only other team I've written about in such glowing terms are Brazil in 1982, and while it may be premature to rate this team alongside that one, they play with a comparable love for the beauty of the game, with a joy and a freedom missing in too much modern football. That team is remembered fondly despite never having won anything significant, and whatever the result in the final, I have a feeling this Argentina side will be similarly regarded by posterity. Joga Bonito, indeed.

Marco Van Basten

2007-06-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Marco van Basten is one of the greatest players Holland has ever produced. He may even be the second greatest, after Johan Crujiff. Consider the quality of footballers who have come from such a small country over the last 40 years, and van Basten's own stature as a player becomes apparent: Johan Neeskens, Ruud Guillet, Frank Rijkaard, Ronald Koeman, Johhny Rep, Wim Kieft, Denis Bergkamp, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Arnold Muhren, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Patrick Kluivert, the deBoer brothers and Arie Haan. Marco van Basten was better than any of them. He was the best goalscorer of his generation, not just in terms of his actual goalscoring record - altough with 276 goals scored in 338 games, that is undeniably impressive -but also in terms of his skill level. I could end this post with just this clip, because it makes my argument perfectly:

That goal was scored in the Final of Euro 88, and it was the goal of the tournament. To strike the ball so perfectly - it arcs right over the keepers head and into the side netting at great pace - from that angle, when it has come from over the shoulder, with a defender bearing down on him, and in such a big game, shows van Basten's class and confidence. But then, he's Dutch, brought to Ajax Amsterdam and their famous football academy from his home in Utrecht in 1981 at the age of 17. Ajax train their youth teams the Dutch way. This means that while they train every day, working on technique and fitness and skill, they are also educated in tactics and the more scientific areas of football. "Total football", the Dutch school of thought from the 1970s, survives today in an updated form - players are brought up able to play in every position, giving them an insight into how that position needs to be played and how it can best be utilised. The result has been a few generations of players who understand what is happening on the pitch, are capable of analyzing why it is happening, and are unafraid of sharing their opinion about it. This has led to the many Dutch squad implosions and walkouts and arguments over the years which have played their part in the fact that Holland has never won the World Cup. Van Basten himself has stated that the most common words in a Dutch dressing room, uttered by every player after a word from the coach, are "Yes, but..."

While it may generate divisions, the Dutch means of developing players also fosters confidence in those players. The Dutch have never been afraid of expressing themselves on the pitch. Indeed, of all the Northern European nations, they undoubtedly play with the most elan and conspicuous skill - it has been part of the football culture of the Netherlands since the 1960s, and all of Holland's great teams and achievements have been based around it, from Crujiff's Ajax and International teams in the 70s to the 88 team of Guillet-Koeman-Rijkaard and van Basten to Louis van Gaal's Ajax in 1995. In the European game, perhaps only Portugal and France have consistently played with a comparably attacking, entertaining style. But the Dutch have done it their way, basing their football rigorously on their own principals and deliberately allowing that to influence the way the game is played all over the country. Players like van Basten are the result. As a striker, he could do it all. He was big and blessed with superb upper body strength, meaning that he could hold the ball up as well as any forward of his generation. He was tall, had a great sense of timing and positioning, and possessed a good leap, meaning that he scored lots of headers:

This outrageous finish, against Real Madrid, is a display of amazing control and power for a header. He manages to put it right in the top corner too:

But unlike many physical target men, he had sublime skill, too, allied with a great agility that was possibly the legacy of his childhood love of gymnastics. He uses both for this goal, somehow managing to clip the post with the shot, leaving the goalkeeper utterly motionless:

He could dribble too, was good with both feet, linked the play skillfully and creatively, and his ability to glide onto through balls was probably his greatest strength. That and the aforementioned confidence, which meant that he was a Big Game player, scoring goals in Finals and key games throughout his successful career. He scored in the European Cup final and the European Championship Final. But then he scored in so many of his games and so many of those goals were classic centre forward play, but he always seemed capable of picking his spot, and crucially, he always made it look so easy, and so simple :

All of those clips demonstrate his supreme elegance - he did everything stylishly. His range of talents and awareness suggested that he might have matured into a playmaker as he aged, but his career was cut short by a recurring injury at the age of 28. Still, his achievements are legion, and awesome. Beginning at Ajax, where he made his debut as a substitute for the legendary Crujiff in 1982, in a moment heavy with symbolism. Of course, he scored. He went on to score 28 goals in 26 matches in the 1983-84 season. Crujiff introduced him to the then-coach of Inter Milan as "the new Crujiff", which is incredibly strong praise from a man who never underestimated his own gifts. In 1986, van Basten won the Golden Boot as Europe's top scorer with 36 goals, a tally which attracted the attention of AC Milan. He moved there in 1987, having scored 128 goals in 143 games for Ajax to help win two Dutch Championships, two Dutch Cups and one Cup Winners Cup.

More trophies would follow at Milan, where he was the tip of the awesome spine of what is one of the indisputably great teams in the last 3 decades of European football. Behind him, Van Basten had the incomparable Franco Baresi at centre back and Ruud Guillit in midfield, alongside the likes of Frank Rijkaard, Roberto Donadoni, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini. Milan won the Italian title in his first season, but van Basten missed all but eleven games, troubled by the ankle injury that would ultimately end his career. He was included in the Dutch squad for Euro 88 but was not in the first team.
In that tournament, Holland found themselves in the "Group of Death" alongside England, the USSR and Ireland. Holland lost their first game, 1-0 in a tight struggle against a difficult Soviet team. Van Basten made his impact in the second game for the Dutch, when they faced England, both teams needing a win after losing their first game. He scored a hat-trick and more or less utterly humiliated Tony Adams in the process as the Dutch ran out 3-1 winners. He also made himself undroppable, and justified his continued selection with a late winner against hosts and favourites West Germany in the semi-finals, then that amazing goal in the final.

He maintained this form when the season resumed and he returned to Milan, fit and playing regularly. He scored 19 goals that season, won European footballer of the year, and scored twice in the European Cup Final against Steau Bucharest. The next season he again won European footballer of the year and Milan successfully defended the European Cup, defeating Benfica in the final. His years at Milan are a list of honours and incredible acheivements: in all, he won European Footballer of the year three times, World Player of the year once, was Top scorer in Serie A three times, won two European Cups, 3 Italian titles, two intercontinental cups, two European supercups and three Italian Supercups. In addition he was a crucial part of the Milan team which set a long-standing record for consecutive appearances without defeat (58 games in total) during the 1992-93 season. His goal-scoring record in this era is more impressive for the fact that it was maintained during the richest years of domestic Italian football, when teh worlds great players flocked to Italy and defences were legendarily tight in the best Italian fashion. Few defences were too tight for van Basten, and the Italians nicknamed him "Marco Golo". He was so important to the team that when he fell out with Coach Arrigo Saachi, Milan Owner Berlusconi sacked the coach rather than sell the player. The fact that he quarrelled with a coach as venerable and cerebral as Saachi illustrates that Dutch capacity for opinionated comment, and van Basten's self-assuredness. However, his ankle injury recurred and he underwent a series of operations, none of which was enough to save his career. He returned for the end of the domestic season and played in the European Cup FInal, which Milan lost to Marseille. It would be his last game for the club, and indeed his last game as a Professional Footballer. Recently he has enjoyed some success as Coach of Holland, where his confidence and intelligence seem to have been put to good use, but he is best remembered for the stylish and lethal quality of his striking, particularly in his years at Milan:

Rui Costa

2007-05-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Rui Costa was perhaps the most old-fashioned, elegant playmaker of his era. But he played in Italy at a time when Serie A had more than its fair share of the world's great playmakers - Zinedine Zidane, Dejan Savicevic, Allessandro Del Piero and Roberto Baggio, among many others, all played against Rui Costa during his time at Fiorentina and AC Milan - and as a result he never quite received the recogniton he deserved. In addition, he was part of Portugal's famous "Golden Generation", alongside the equally talented Luis Figo, meaning that he never even received the acclaim he warranted in his homeland, always having to share the spotlight with his team-mate. But in the late 1990s, if you searched Europe for a player capable of controlling the pace of a game, or of opening up a defence with a dribble or a perfectly placed through-ball, there was really nobody better.

His vision was perhaps his greatest, most unique gift. There is a sequence in the video below highlighting his ability to pick out a forward closing in on goal, often from within the centre circle, with a single, perfectly weighted, precisely-threaded ball between scrambling, panicked defenders. Forwards as celebrated as Gabrielle Batistuta and Andrei Shevchenko both benefitted greatly from this talent. Rui Costa made it look effortless, never seeming rushed in possession and always appearing assured of what he intended to do, he seemed always to have more time than anyone else on the pitch:

That confidence obviously came from his technical virtuousity. His touch was gentle, but he was blessed with the pace and acceleration of a winger when he strode forward with the ball, shedding defenders as he went with shimmys and stepovers. He had the ability to pick out a pass at any moment, but he was just as likely to perform a lollipop or set himself for a shot. So many of the goals in the above video are placed finishes, curlers which he caresses into the corner of the net, mockingly just beyond the grasp of a goalkeeper, his composure marked and admirable. But he was also capable of drilling shots from outside the box:

This stupendous goal for Milan shows a combination of his skills, with a little run to start off, then a blasted curling ball into the top corner from outside the box :

Born Rui Manuel Cesar Costa in Lisbon in 1972, he was spotted at a trial for Benfica, the Lisbon club he supported throughout his childhood, by none other than Eusebio at the age of 10, and spent his teens playing for Benfica's youth teams. In 1990 he was loaned out to AD Fafe for a season, gaining experience of the professional game. Perhaps the greatest experience he gained, however, came from his time spent in the Portugeuse Youth system. Overseen by Carlos Quieroz, that system had produced the team that won the Under-20 world Youth Championship in 1989 in Saudi Arabia. In 1991 the Championships were held in Portugal itself, and a team including Costa, Figo, Fernando Couto, Joao Pinto, Paolo Sousa and Sergio Conceicao beat Brazil in a penalty shootout in the final. Rui Costa took the deciding penalty, watched on television by most of the population of Portugal, and expectations of what this "Golden Generation" would achieve at senior level were stratospheric. Costa was welcomed into the first team at Benfica during the next season by coach Sven Goran Eriksson, playing in his customary role as attacking midfielder. I first saw him play when Benfica beat Arsenal at Highbury in the European Cup in 1994, and he was the oustanding individual. He liked to pick the ball up in central midfield and stride forward with his distinctive busy movement, skinning opponents and evading tackles before laying the ball off. Some players wind up before they strike the ball, you can see them prepare their body in the seconds before they execute the move they intend, their shoulders tigtening slightly, their hips rotating, heads maybe tilting to a certain angle. But Rui Costa struck the ball with fantastic ease - it rolled off his feet, always in his stride, as if he had not even meant to pass it, as if the perfectly placed ball he had just delivered was an accident, a fluke of his pumping sprint. That sprint too - he was deceptively pacy - never looked too strenuous, due to his strange jerky gait. He worked hard, covering lots of ground, working the spaces of midfield, but never tracking back, not making too many tackles, as if he thought defensive duties were beneath one with such extravagant technical gifts. One of his managers at Fiorentina, Claudio Raineiri, was prompted to ask him if all games in Portugal were played on a slope, because he never ran back to defend.

He won a Portugeuse league title and cup at Benfica before he was sold to Fiorentina in 1994. Instantly striking up an understanding with the awesome Batistuta, he remained there for 7 seasons, winning two Italian Cups and constantly being linked with transfers to bigger clubs. But he enjoyed the pace of life in Florence and obviously enjoyed the adoration of the Fiorentina fans, where he and "Batigol" were two very big fish in a relatively small pond. He also enjoyed absolute freedom on the pitch, especially under Turkish coach Fatih Terim in his last season. Terim, realising how important Costa was to the teams attacking style, especially in the absence of Batstuta, who had moved to Roma, told the Portugeuse that he had the freedom of the pitch, he could go anywhere and do anything he chose. When Terim moved to AC Milan in 2001, he brought Costa with him for a fee of 35 Million euros. Here he was instrumental in Milan's European success, helping them to a Champions League victory in 2003. That summer, Milan purchased the young Brazilian Kaka, and he quickly replaced the ageing Rui Costa as the player in the withdrawn role behind Milan's strikers. They are very similar players, and it is a great tribute to Kaka that his contribution was so great that Milan have not missed Costa since he left to return to Benfica in 2006. In those last two seasons at Milan, Costa played rarely, since Milan had a surfeit of playmakers - as well as Costa and Kaka there were Clarence Seedorf and Andrea Pirlo. He is still contracted to Benfica and intends to end his career there, where it started.

The Golden Generation never really lived up to its billing, though they came close. In Euro 96, they were eliminated by eventual finalist the Czech Republic in the quarter-finals, having played some lovely football to get there. However, they never really looked like the finished article, the many individual talents on display not quite blended properly yet. They had been in Ireland's group for the Qualifiers, and I remember being shocked by how fluent and skillful they had seemed when they took us apart, 3-0, in Lisbon. Costa scored a beautiful goal that night, firing a 30 yard screamer into the top corner, and he utterly controlled the game, embarassing our midfield. They seemed to be living up to their billing as "the European Brazil", at least in terms of the flair and skill with which they playe dthe game. They were grouped with European Champions Germany in the qualifiers for the 1998 World Cup, a tournament for which that group would perhaps have been at its peak. During the German tie between the two countries, with Portugal leading, Rui Costa was sent off for taking too long to leave the field, Germany recovered to win the match against 10 men, and they qualified for the tournament at Portugal's expense. Euro 2000 was to be the first tournament at which they showed the true beauty and effectiveness of their football, with Costa orchestrating everything. Their amazing 3-2 win against England in their first game, when they came back from 2-0 down, set the tone. Alongside hosts Holland they were the entertainers of the tournament, playing flowing, attractive attacking football. However they ran into World Champions France in the semi-finals and were eliminated, after a tense, tight contest, by a controversial Golden Goal. Zidane scored with a penalty after Abel Xavier handled in the area, the Portugeuse threw a massive tantrum, but they were out. Worse was to come in the 2002 World Cup in Japan & Korea, where Portugal, in common with other favourites France and Argentina, were dumped out of the tournament in the group phase . After an hour of their first game against the USA, Portugal were 3-0 down, a barely imaginable scoreline. They pulled two goals back, but their campaign never really recovered from that early shock, even though they beat Poland 4-0. They needed a draw against South Korea in the last game to advance to the knock-out phase, but instead had two players sent off and lost to a late goal from Park Ji-Sung.

The Golden Generation had aged, and both Costa and Figo were no longer considered certain starters for Euro 2004, which Portugal hosted. A new generation of stylish Portuguese players led by Cristiano Ronaldo and Simao Sabrosa had emerged, and Brazilian coach Phil Scolari trusted them, loading his squad with players from the Porto team which had just won the Champions League. But Costa still made a worthy contribution, displaying his class when he came off the bench during the quarter-Final clash with England to score this goal:

The final, which Portugal lost to Greece, would prove to be his last match for his country. He is the third most capped Portugeuse player of all time. However, it is for his exploits at club level for which he will be chiefly remembered, certainly at Milan and Benfica, where his talent was rewarded with the tropies it deserved. But especially at Fiorentina, where he played probably the best football of his career before a devoted audience :

Paul McGrath

2007-04-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

On 11 June, in the first game of the Italy 1990 World Cup Finals for either country, England played the Republic of Ireland in Cagliari. The game was terrible, like an English Second division match. The players all knew one another too well, their systems and styles cancelled each other out, and both teams were petrified of losing in what looked like being a very tight group. England took the lead with a Gary Lineker goal - the usual tap-in - before Kevin Sheedy equalised with a drive from the edge of the box. Both teams looked like they were content with a draw. The Italian press hated the match and described it as the worst they had seen so far at the finals, with the standard of football shamefully unimaginitive and primitive (Ireland would go on to play a worse game against Egypt a few days later). Both teams would qualify for the last 16, but neither played well in that group stage. Indeed, only two players really stood out at all from either team :Paul Gascoine for England and Paul McGrath for Ireland.

Paul McGrath is a legend in Ireland. As Footballers go, only Roy Keane really compares in terms of public affection. The Irish crowd chant of "Ooh-Ah Paul McGrath" (which Man Utd fans converted to Ooh-Ah Cantona) was best used when Nelson Mandela visited Dublin in the 1990s, only to be greeted with chants of "Ooh-Ah Paul McGrath's Da". The Irish chat show "The Late Late Show", the worlds longest running chat show, devoted one of its weekly programmes entirely to a review of McGrath's career, with appearances by most of the major figures in Irish football history. He has featured on an Irish stamp. I feel like even all these facts don't adequately convey just how worshipped he is. Given the meagre accomplishments in his club career, especially in comparison to other Ireland legends like Keane, Liam Brady, Johnny Giles or even Damien Duff, this may seem strange. But McGrath is probably the greatest defender ever to wear an Ireland shirt, and one of the handful of best players the country has ever had. The Irish football public knew class when it saw it, especially in the 1990s, when much of our football was effective but not especially classy. The way Paul McGrath played football was always classy.

Especially considering the way he lived his life. A functioning alcoholic for much of his career, in his autobiography he describes suicide attempts, black-outs, going AWOL while on Pre-season tours and playing many games drunk. He went missing a couple of times when he should have been playing for Ireland in impotant qualifiers, turning up in small hotels then fleeing from the media. All this only made him more popular in Ireland, where people love a flawed hero. McGrath is obviously a troubled man, and his vulnerability makes it easier to like him. Not only his evident self-destructive streak, but his chronic shyness and the way that he played the last decade of his career plagued with a succession of serious knee injuries only made him seem more heroic. As does his background - the child of an Irishwoman and Nigerian, he was given up for adoption as an infant and spent much of his childhood in a series of Dublin orphanages. Ireland was not remotely multi-cultural until this century, and it must have been difficult to grow up in the 1960s and 70s, mixed-race in working class Dublin. Football would have been a good escape, especially to somebody so naturally athletic and gifted. His first professional club were St Patricks Athletic, where he drew the attention of several English clubs and earned the nickname "The Black Pearl of Inchicore". Manchester United signed him in 1982, and he joined a side with a few Irish players already established, notably Frank Stapleton and Kevin Moran. This eased the shy McGrath's social acceptance, and he gradually eased himself into the first team of a talented United squad.

But it was a United squad destined never to win the biggest prizes. Many blame that fact on the incredible drinking culture at the club at the time. The team was the best in England on its day - routinely beating the dominant Liverpool team of the era - but inconsistent and often appallingly sloppy. Players like McGrath, Moran, Norman Whiteside, Brian Robson and Gordon McQueen would go on marathon midweek benders involving lock-ins and endless pub-crawling. Manager Ron Atkinson turned a blind eye, in the main. And there was some success - that United side won the FA Cup in 1983 and 1985. The Cup Final in 1985 was possibly McGrath's finest hour in a United shirt. Playing an Everton team that was probably the best in Europe at the time, winners of the League and the Cup Winners Cup, United went down to 10 men when McGrath's partner in central defence, Moran, was sent off for a lunging tackle on Peter Reid in the second half. McGrath later said that he partly blamed himself for that, since it was his poor pass that had presented Reid with the ball. He more than redeemed himself in the game, utterly dominating Everton's forward pairing of Andy Gray and Graham Sharp for the rest of the match. McGrath's principal gift was his great ability to read a game. On his good days he seemed to glide around the pitch, never rushed or stressed, always ahead of his opponents, nipping in to steal the ball off a toe, timing his leaps perfectly, always playing simple balls out of defence. He was strong and fast and agile, too, meaning that he could dominate any kind of centre-forward, from a nippy ball technician to a monstrous bruiser. That day he dominated two of them, always first to the ball, never caught out, ever alert and sharp.

Alex Ferguson was less forgiving of that United teams drinking culture, and he quickly broke it up, getting rid of Whiteside and selling McGrath to Aston Villa in 1989. He later said that McGrath was perhaps the most naturally gifted player he had ever managed, which is obviously the highest of praise. After a shaky start, Mcgrath went on to become Villa's bedrock player under first manager Graham Taylor, then Josef Venglos, until he was finally reunited with Atkinson. That Villa team came close to winning the League on a couple of occasions, finishing second behind United in 1993. McGrath was the Fan-favourite, nicknamed "God", and impressed his fellow professionals so much that he was voted Players Player of the Year in the same year. He would go on playing club football at the likes of Derby and Sheffield United until he was 37 years old and had undergone eight separate knee operations. From his first year at Villa he didn't train with the rest of the team because his fragile knees couldn't take the strain. Instead, he did an hour a week on an exercise bike. And yet his performance levels never really seemed to suffer. He got better with age and experience as his understanding of the game developed.

Part of his high standing in Ireland comes from having been a major player during the years of the National Teams greatest success. He played in the 1988 European Championships and the 1990 and 1994 World Cup finals. He excelled in each tournament, in fact. Coach Jack Charlton took his lead from previous manager Eoin Hand by playing McGrath in midfield at first. Ireland had a surfeit of quality centre backs during that era with Moran, David O'Leary, Mark Lawrenson and Mick McCarthy all in contention alongside McGrath. But McGrath had a combination of physical presence and ease upon the ball none of them could really match and so he found himself deployed as a holding player. He excelled there, too, neutralising the threat offered by Ruud Guillit in 1988. By 1994 he had established a new partnership at centre back with Phil Babb, while Roy Keane and Andy Townsend bossed midfield. In the first game of that tournament, Ireland faced Italy in Giants Stadium in New York. Italy, with players like Roberto Baggio, Beppe Signori, Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi in their squad, were one of the tournament favourites. The game at Giants Stadium was expected to be like a home match for the Italians, with the great Italian community of New Jersey coming out to support them. Instead the stadium was filled with Irish supporters and Ireland fought out a 1-0 victory.

McGrath, whose left arm was paralysed by a virus throughout the match, was as poised and indominatable as ever. In his book he describes the way a match builds up a rhythm of its own, the way a forward and defender can both feel it. In that match, he says, Baggio, probably the best player in the world at the time, knew McGrath had the better of him, and he kept his distance. In that tournament, Ireland peaked in that, their very first match. All that remained were mediocre performances in the sweltering heat of midday games in Orlando in high summer and a desultory exit to Holland. McGrath was ushered out of the squad by new manager Mick McCarthy a few years later, nearing his late 30s, his knees in worse condition than ever. By then Ireland had a new talisman in Roy Keane, the heir to McGrath's crown as the teams only indisputably World-Class player. Keane gave Irish fans that feeling of safety that McGrath had done. With one of them in the team, there was always a strange feeling of security,as if they wouldn't alow us to lose, as if we knew that they would improve the standards of their frequently average colleagues. Generally they did. And never moreso than McGrath against Italy that day in New York.

Its just a pity that his catalogue of injuries and alcoholism conspired to deny him a fitting historical status outside Ireland. In 1987 he played at Wembley in a Centenary Game for a Football League XI against a Rest of the World XI that was like something from Pro-Evo* and looked totally at home. He was reckoned by many to be man of the match and comfortably subdued that terrifying attacking line-up.

There aren't any videos of him playing on the internet - I suppose great tackles, defensive headers and interceptions aren't as popular as goals and stepovers - but this is an excerpt from an Irish documentary about the 1994 World cup that gives you an idea :

* Football League XI : 1-Peter Shilton, 2-Richard Gough,3-Kenny Sansom, 4-John McClelland, 5-Paul McGrath, 6-Liam Brady, 7-Bryan Robson, 8-Neil Webb, 9-Clive Allen, 10-Peter Beardsley, 11-Chris Waddle.
Subs: Steve Ogrizovic, Steve Clarke, Pat Nevin, Osvaldo Ardiles, Norman Whiteside, Alan Smith, Selector: Bobby Robson,

Rest of World XI : 1-Rinat Dasaev, U.S.S.R.; 2-Josimar, Brazil; 3-Celso, Portugal; 4-Julio Alberto, Spain; 5-Glenn Hysen, Sweden; 6-Salvatori Bagni, Italy; 7-Thomas Berthold, West Germany; 8-Gary Lineker, England; 9-Michel Platini, France; 10-Maradona, Argentina; 11-Paulo Futre, Portugal.
Subs: 18-Andoni Zubizarreta, Spain, 12-Lajos Detari, Hungary, 17-Dragan Stojkovic, Yugoslavia, 13-Igor Belanov, U.S.S.R., 15-Preben Elkjær Larsen, Denmark, 14-Lars Larsson, Sweden, 16-Alexandre Zavarov, U.S.S.R. Selector: Terry Venables, England.

The Football League XI won 3-0 with two goals by Robson and one by Whiteside.

Juan Sebastian Veron

2007-03-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

If you've read any of my other football posts, it'll be evident that I have a thing about playmakers. Number 10s. But then what fan of beautiful football doesn't? But there are other kinds of playmakers. Number 10s generally play in the "hole" position between midfield and attack in order to give the opposition the biggest problems. In the hole, neither the opposition's defence or midfield is sure whether they should be marking him. In the modern game, the best playmakers are either man-marked or the responsibility of a holding midfielder. But there is another sort of playmaker, one who plays further back up the pitch, in a more conventional central midfield position, and dictates passing from there. The midfield general, I suppose, though thats a phrase you don't hear so much anymore. Its almost a quarterback role, really, best-suited to players who can deliver high quality long passes to forwards in a split second. Perhaps the most successful example in the modern European game is Andreas Pirlo at AC Milan. Pirlo plays in a position normally associated with defensive midfielders, yet his tackling and covering abilities are limited at best. His passing, on the other hand, his ability to deliver a perfectly weighted through-ball to a sprinting Kaka or Gilardino on the edge of the opponents box from the half-way line, is exceptional. His ability to dictate play through his slide-rule passing is such that one of his nicknames in Italy is "metronomo". But, until last year there was another player in Serie A with a greater range of passing than Pirlo, a more sublime touch, more acute vision. That player was Juan Sebastian Veron.

Like Juan Roman Riquelme, Veron is a controversial figure in Argentine football. Like Riquelme, he was made the scapegoat for the failure of a talented Argentina squad to win a World Cup. But hes a very different player. Elegant and athletic, he covers ground effortlessly. Indeed, football seems almost too easy for Veron, which is perhaps why he has had image problems with fans. He never seems to be trying too hard, trusting instead in his athleticism and his brilliant technique. The fact that he is traditionally paired with a more obviously load-bearing or water-carrying player - Diego Simeone being the supreme example - only makes Veron look lazier and less commited by comparison. But his technique is his greatest strength. While he played for Manchester United, he and David Beckham played out an amazing warm-up routine before every game. They would take up positions on opposite touchlines and stroke the ball across the pitch in long sweeping arcs to one another, neither ever having to move even a step to receive the others pass. It served as a way for each to find his range. Once Veron's range was found, he was capable of punishing any opposition with a series of searching passes between defenders. Observe this volleyed pass, first time, to a breaking Beckham (whose finish isn't bad, either) :

Veron's father, Juan Ramon Veron, was a striker for Argentina and Estudiantes, nicknamed La Bruja, the Witch, which is where Seba's nickname La Brujita (little witch) comes from. He was renowned for his fine technique, another thing his son obviously inherited from him. Veron Jr began his career at his father's old club, Estudiantes, before moving on to Boca Juniors, where he played alongside the likes of Maradona, Claudio Caniggia and Kily Gonzalez. He only played 17 games for Boca in 1996 before he was brought to Europe, another in a long line of young Argentinians poached by big Italian and Spanish clubs. He spent 2 seasons with Sven Goran Eriksson's Sampdoria in Italy, breaking into the Argentina team and playing in the 1998 World Cup, where his deliberate style and ability to dictate the pace and direction of play from a deep position was perfectly suited to coach Daniel Passarella's cautious, defensive style. After the World Cup, Eriksson again bought Veron, this time spending £15million to bring him to Parma. That Parma team - with Lilian Thuram at the back and Hernan Crespo scoring plenty of goals from Veron's assists - won the Italian Cup in 1999. But Eriksson had already left for Lazio, and he soon lured Veron and Crespo to the same club, paying £18.1 million for the former and £35 million for the latter in the obvious hope of buying the Italian title. It worked, with Veron the fulcrum of a Lazio side that was to win the Serie A title, the Italian Cup and the Super-Cup in 2000. Veron was at that time being mentioned as one of the greatest players in the World, and alongside his miraculous passing ability, he was scoring some impressive goals :

But controversy was already following him. There had been talk about the vailidity of his European passport in Italy for some time, and in 2001 a scandal erupted. Veron, feeling that Lazio were not offering him the proper support, moved to Man Utd in July for £28.1 million, a British record fee. His escalating value and the talk of his ability increased expectations at the club, which had won the Premiership in each of the preceding three seasons. Veron slotted into what had been, at its peak, arguably the best midfield in Europe, with Ryan Giggs on the left wing, David Beckham the right, Roy Keane and Paul Scholes in the middle and Nicky Butt as a utility player. Veron was expected to play in the centre with Keane, but the two proved curiously incompatable. Keane was no mere water-carrier in the Simeone mould, but a box-to-box player, who tackled, harried, organised everyone around him and established his own rhythm of simple, short passes and directed and bullied his team all over the pitch. Whereas Keane and Scholes had played together for years and had developed an understanding, Veron and Keane never really got the chance to. Keane's game seemed to cancel out Veron's, making him strangely peripheral in many games, his obvious gifts blunted. Veron also seemed disturbed by the pace and intensity of the Premiership, where he was never given the time he had taken for granted in Italy. After some early promise his performances in England became inconsistent, and his spirit and attitude were questioned. In his first season with United, Arsenal won the League, United exited the Champions League to Bayer Leverkusen, and his status as a great player was brought into doubt.

His salvation seemed to lie in that summers world Cup in Japan and Korea, where Argentina were pre-tournament favourites alongside holders France. This was an Argentina side where Veron was the chief creative force, coach Marcelo Bielsa favouring a European-style pressing game which had seen his squad take the qualifiers in South America by storm. But following the countries recent Economic meltdown, there was a lot of pressure on the players to lift the nation. That job was made more difficult by the group they had been drawn in - this tournaments "Group of Death" alongside England, Sweden and Nigeria. Argentina were to discover that the fast pace that had worked so well in South America was less effective against European teams used to playing at such a pace. They beat Nigeria 1-0 in their first game, but failed to really gel, with Veron quiet and not as dominant as he had been in the qualifiers. He had arrived for the tournament having picked up an injury and struggled for fitness throughout, which was evident in the next game, a 1-0 defeat to England. Though Argentina controlled the majority of the possession, Veron was outplayed by a combination of his United colleagues, Scholes and Butt, with the latter particularly effective at closing down and hassling the Argentine. He was substituted midway through the second half and replaced by Pablo Aimar, a playmaker more in the classic Argentine mould, who, with his quick feet and clever link-up play, offered a much more acute threat in his time on the pitch than Veron had done. Devastated by that defeat to such old rivals, Argentina could only scrape a 1-1 draw with Sweden, and were eliminated from the competition. Many at home blamed Veron.

This was evident when he played in the teams first competitive home match since the World Cup, a South American qualifier against local rivals Chile in Buenos Aires in 2003. The crime of playing so poorly in 2002 was compounded by Veron making his living in England - as banners around the stadium reminded him - and he was booed onto the pitch and throughout the game by his own fans. Soon after, injured yet again, Veron lost his place in the squad. When Jose Pekarman replaced Bielsa as Coach, he made his preference for Riquelme as playmaker plain, and Veron was frozen out. He did not help his case any by feuding with Argentine captain Juan Pablo Sorin, however. The injury that cost him his place in the squad was also to lead to his departure from United. He played better in his second season in England, enjoying a run in the team alongside Phil Neville at the heart of midfield due to injuries to both Keane and Butt. Their twin showing against Arsenal - a gritty 2-0 win when Veron tackled, chased, closed down, and looked as if he had adjusted to the Premiership with ease - was a big turning point in the struggle for the title that season. He had always played better in the Champions League, and this season was no different, as he made and scored goals in the Group stages. However, his injury ruled him out at a crucial late stage in the season when United began a trademark run of victories to come from behind and overtake a flagging Arsenal. This was mostly achieved by the classic Giggs-Keane-Scholes-Beckham midfield, and in th echampions League, Veron returned to fitness too late to help the team overcome Real Madrid at Old Trafford, where they lost on aggregate. He celebrated winning a Premiership medal, but Alex Ferguson had seen that his team played just as well without Veron, and he was sold, against his wishes, to Chelsea for £15 million in the summer.

Chelsea had just been bought by Roman Abramovich and Manager Claudio Rainieri went on something of a spending spree, buying Damian Duff, Joe Cole, Hernan Crespo and Claude Makelele in addition to Veron that summer. Veron started well, scoring a goal in the first day victory over Liverpool, but he missed much of the rest of the season through injury, again returning to be brought on (and played catastrophically out of position, on the wing) in Chelsea's Champions League Semi-final defeat to Monaco. Chelsea fans, suspicious of having signed a player who had seemed to fail so conspicuously in Manchester and preferring Lampard, Cole and Makelele in midfield, already regarded him as a flop, after a single season. Rainieri was sacked and replaced by Jose Mourinho, who loaned Veron to Inter Milan for the next two seasons. Playing again at a pace he liked and in a more sympathetic, latin environment, Veron began to show his qualities once more, helping Inter to Italian Cup victories in 2005 and 2006.

This is a story with something of a happy ending. In 2006, Veron returned to Argentina, to the club of his boyhood and his father, Estudiantes. Now coached by his old friend and midfield minder Diego Simeone, Estudiantes had not won an Argentine championship in 23 years. With a month left in the Argentine Apertura, it looked like they would have to wait. But Boca Juniors kept on dropping points and Estudiantes, with Veron's experience and vision well-served by a young team full of hunger and potential, kept on picking them up. Eventually it came down to a play-off. Boca went 1-0 ahead in the first half, but Estudiantes, encapsulating their season in a single match, emerged victors at 2-1, and won their first championship in 23 years. A few weeks later, Veron was called up to the Argentina squad for the first time in 4 years. New Coach Alfio Basile was ardent in his desire to be an actual working coach for Argentina and not just a selector, and so he called up a squad of domestic-based Argentine players for a training camp. Veron obviously benefitted from this and with Basile declaring his intention to select more of these players in the future, there is a chance that he may play in this summers Copa America in Venezuala. Perhaps his comeback - and redemption, in the eyes of Argentina fans - is still to play itself out. In terms of his career, his major error was in underestimating just how difficult it would be for him in England - he trusted in his talent, and then discovered that it was a talent requiring specific conditions in which to flourish. Those years of failure at what should have been his peak hang over his career, but he is a player with Champions Medals from Italy, England and Argentina on his mantel, not a bad haul by any standards.

Heres a good compilation of what hes capable of, with as many great asists as goals :

Juan Roman Riquelme

2007-02-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

I've written before (in the very first football entry on this blog) about the importance of the Number 10 shirt in Argentinian football and about Argentina's stupendous line of creative playmakers since Maradona. But Maradona is an impossible player to emulate. Arguably the greatest player in history, easily the greatest player of his generation, he could do everything that a creative player is required to. He could dribble like no player before or since, twisting and teasing, his low centre of gravity and amazing acceleration making him difficult to dispossess even illegally. He could run a game with one or two touch passing, sweeping the ball this way and that across the field, dragging defences out of shape with flicks and perfectly weighted long balls. He could shoot from distance, either delicately placing or blasting the ball wherever he wanted it. He obviously wasn't the greatest player in the air - altough he could still outjump Peter Shilton, a good six inches taller than him when it mattered - but he was usually the player supplying the crosses, not the player on the end of them. His true genius was in the combination of all these talents. On his game he was unplayable, no team could cope with him. In the 1986 World Cup Final, Germany detailed two players to mark him, hoping to copy the effect Berti Vogts had on Johann Crujiff in the 1974 Final. Lothar Matthaius, West Germany's best player, followed Maradona everywhere, and when the Argentine had possession Matthaius was joined by one of a revolving number of players in closing him down. For most of the game this worked, but Maradona only needed an instant to hurt an opponent. His pass had set off Valdano on the run that led to Argentina's second goal, and not long after, he embarked on one long run right through the centre of the German defence, evading tackles, which ended with him in mid-air having been kicked by two players at once. Then, with seven minutes remaining and the game tied at 2-2, Maradona, with three Germans in close attendance, found Burruchaga breaking free in the German half with a beautiful first-time volleyed pass. 3-2. Argentina were World Champions.

Most of the Argentinians who have been hailed as "the New Maradona" have excelled while running with the ball. It is this aspect of football, the "gambeta", as they call it, which most excites the Argentine football imagination. It is also what Maradona is best associated with, his goals against England and Belgium in the Quarters and Semis of the 1986 World Cup springing instantly to mind. Players like Saviola, D'Alessandro, Messi, Ortega, Tevez and Aimar have all been excellent dribblers, while Juan Sebastian Veron and Juan Roman Riquelme are more old-fashioned, passing playmakers. Riquelme in particular seems the last of a dying breed. He has no pace to speak of, and so would seem unsuited for the hustle and flying shrapnel of a modern midfield. Yet he never seems hurried and always seems to have time and space on the ball. He never panics. When he is man-marked, he finds enough space to hit devastating one touch passes, Maradona-style. His technique is beautiful, his control flawless, allowing him to caress the ball and make it do exactly what he wants, and so those passes, be they long or short, volleyed or slid along the grass, never seem to miss their intended targets.

Much of Riquelme's work goes almost unnoticed. He takes the ball and relays it accurately, often with the same touch. He moves with his head up and reads the game superbly. He is always moving into space, calling for the ball, moving it along and finding space yet again. This is not often flashy work, as the ball moves back and forth across midfield and his team probes for weakness. But it is Riquelme dictating the pace of that probing, Riquelme's eyes the keenest at identifying the weakness. Creating angles, pulling opposition players out of position, making space for his teammates. The game of the classic playmaker is all about angles around the penalty area, creating gaps in a defence through which to slip the ball. Riquelme is a master at this art. The second goal of Argentina's 6-0 routing of Serbia in the 2006 World Cup was the goal of the tournament, with 24 passes in a minute in the build-up, and its a typical example of Riquelme's subtle prompting. He plays a one-two with Saviola before the ball is passed across the face of the Serbian area to Cambiasso. His touch is a mere flick straight into Saviola's path with the outside of his right foot that instantly eliminates two Serbians from the play allowing the move to culminate in a beautiful goal :

That sort of touch is pure Riquelme : casual, perfect, with an almost sensual feel for the properties of a football. He is capable of dribbles and tricks as well, his ability to get himself out of tricky situations enabling him to maintain his teams possession of the ball, obviously an eternal priority :

His touch is so subtle and delicate that if you watch many clips of him in possession he barely touches the ball with his toes or with either instep or outstep, as most players do. His lack of pace is almost an advantage when it comes to controlling the ball - when faced with an approaching defender he knows he cannot knock the ball beyond them and then outsprint them to collect it. So he has to be clever and use trickery. He tends to drag and spin the ball beneath his studs, minutely inclining and angling his ankles to spin it in first one direction and then another. He is also extremely strong - he is 6ft - and can turn his back on a defender and hold the ball up seemingly indefinitely, losing little ground with twists and turns until he sees a runner he can pass to.

You would imagine that such a talent would be cherished by any footballing nation, but Riquelme is a controversial figure in Argentina. The Argentine style has always combined skillful individual dribbling with fast, short passing along the ground. The above goal against Serbia is perhaps the perfect example. Riquelme's critics contend that he slows the game down too much when in possession. He has been derogatorily called "the tollbooth" in reference to the appearance that everything stops when it comes to him. But this is to miss the point. Riquelme is always in control of that pace, skillful enough to slow things down when he needs to, but with the timing and technique to inject just the right amount of pace into the movement of the ball at the right moment. Jose Pekerman, coach of Argentina at the last World Cup and a big fan of Riquelme, has commented that in football, it is the ball that needs to move fast, not the player. He was the first National coach to give Riquelme a regular place in his starting line-up. Indeed, he built his team around the playmaker's talents, meaning that the likes of Veron and Ortega, still major figures in Domestic football, were dropped, and Aimar, Saviola, Tevez and Messi all rotated from the bench to supplementary positions in the teams offensive formation. He was rewarded by Riquelme by an utterly dominant performance against Brazil in a South American qualifier in Buenos Aires, topped off by this goal and the audacious volleyed pass with the sole of his boot that precedes it:

Argentina qualified for the World Cup ahead of Brazil. After a strong win against a powerful Ivory coast and the destruction of Serbia, they were favourites in the early stages. Riquelme was controlling games in the manner expected of him, but he seemed to tire as the tournament progressed and was not quite so influential in the first knock-out match against Mexico, though Argentina edged it with Maxi Rodriguez's wonderful goal. Against Germany, in a tight midfield battle, Riquelme was again crucial. Argentina were leading and dominant, Riquelme spraying passes around and the Germans unable to hold onto the ball when they could get it off the opposition. But Pekerman surrendered to his defensive instincts and substituted his Number 10. Moments later the Germans equalised and they, not an Argentina without its conductor, were the dominant team throughout extra-time, only to win on penalties. Pekerman resigned, Riquelme only lasting a single game as Captain before retiring from International football altogether, claiming that the criticism he had attracted in Argentina during the World Cup had made his mother sick.

He has had a tough time with the Argentine press ever since he left the country to move to Barcelona. He had been signed by Boca Juniors from Argentinos Juniors at the age of 17, and broke into the first team a year later. Here he became a central figure, Maradona's favourite player, and bearer of the heavy burden that is the Number 10 shirt. He wore it lightly at that time, helping Boca win the Argentine Championship three times between 1998 and 2001, winning the South American equivalent of the Champions League, the Copa Libertadores, in 2000, and the Intercontinental Cup (beating Real Madrid 2-1)in the same year. He was voted South American Footballer of the Year in 2001, putting him in the company of legends like Maradona, Zico, Pele, Socrates, Enzo Francescoli, Carlos Valderama and Romario. In 2002 he became involved in a contract dispute with Boca and was eventually transferred to Barcelona. He already had a reputation as a quiet player, singular in his needs in training, and unable to perform to the best of his abilities unless he had a midfield "minder" to do his dirty work. At Barcelona, coach Louis van Gaal made it clear to his new player that he did not actually want him, that he was a "political" signing, and promptly deployed him on the wing, utterly wasting his talents. To compound these problems, his brother was kidnapped and held for ransom in Buenos Aires only a few weeks after he left Argentina. Riquelme negotiated with the kidnappers and eventually paid the ransom money. But unsurprisingly he played fitfully after his first few months in Spain, until Barca eventually sent him on loan to Villareal in 2003.

Villareal are a small club in a small town, and their Chilean coach, Manuel Pelligrini, based his playing style on South American football, recruiting a backbone of talent from that continent. Brazil-born midfielder Marcus Senna won the ball and did the running for Riquelme, while Uruguayan Diego Forlan gave him a yellow shirt to aim for with his through-balls. At the back, Argentine captain Juan Pablo Sorin commanded the left wing, and there were three other Argentines, an Ecuadorean, a Bolivian and a Mexican in the squad that reached the Semi-finals of the Champions League in 2006. That Champions League run was due to the disciplined, fast-passing game Villareal played, and Riquelme was utterly cruical to that. Diego Forlan won the European Golden Boot in 2005 with 25 League goals, a good proportion of them coming from Riquelme assists. He was the same player he had been at Boca, and the name on his shirt read "Roman" instead of Riquelme to signal the psychological break from the events at Barcelona. He was nominated for the FIFA World Player of the Year award the same year and came second only to Ronaldinho in year-end polls amongst Spanish football writers. But it all went wrong for him in 2006. That World Cup exit and his subsequent International retirement, at the age of 29. His penalty miss against Arsenal in the Semi-final of the Champions League, which resurrected old Argentinian criticisms of his lack of mental toughness. And in recent months he has fallen out with Pelligrini and been left out of the Villareal squad which is not performing to anything like its levels of 12 months ago in his absence. The club signed Chilean wonderkid (and Winner of this years South American Player of the Year Award) Mattias Fernandez from Colo Colo around the same time Riquelme and Pelligrini's problem came to light. Fernandez is a more modern style of playmaker, and he has gone straight into the team, playing in Riquelme's position, but without much success so far. It takes a while for a South American to acclimatise to European football, as Riquelme would testify.

So Riquelme spent much of the transfer window looking for a move away from the club he drove to unprecedented success. Bayern Munich, Man Utd and Inter Milan were all rumoured to be interested, but nothing came off and at the time of writing he remains a Villareal player, though one who is not playing. For me, he is one of the top 5 players in World Football, and the fact that he is essentially without a club at the moment is one of those instances of insanity football throws up from time to time. This compilation ends with a few minutes worth of his performance against England in last years friendly in Geneva. I remember reading after that game the English players testimonies about how elusive and superb he had been. Watching the match, the first half had seemed almost a private duel between Riquelme and Wayne Rooney, each daring the other onto the next piece of intuitive genius, until Riquelme pulled away from Rooney, the younger man's relative inexperience showing as Riquelme dictated the course of the game and repeatedly made John Terry look like an idiot. Pekerman substitued him with only a few minutes left and Argentina 2-1 ahead. In his absence, and granted some possession of the ball, England scored two late goals and won the game. Of Course Pekerman repeated the mistake in the World Cup....

*But hes still playing, I hear you cry. Well, just about. But I never said those were the rules, did I?

Brazil 1982

2007-01-05T17:55:00.000-08:00

This started out being about Zico, probably the most talented individual of the Brazilian team from the 1982 World Cup in Spain. But I kept wandering away from him and his long and glittering career just to talk about that team, the wonder of its performances in that World Cup, and how it shaped the way I see football, the World Cup itself and all Brazilian teams, indeed, all teams, since.

The best team doesn't always win in football, especially in World Cups. This is a cliche which is usually backed up by a few references : Hungary in 1954, Holland in 1974, and Brazil in 1982 (we might add Argentina in 2006 to that list, but thats another post). Italy beat Brazil in 1982 in one of the best matches ever played. With Brazil out of the way, the Italians went on to win the tournament. But ask a football fan about that World Cup, and probably their first and favourite memory will be of the Brazil team.

First of all, it had a list of players of a stupidly high standard : besides Zico, there were Socrates, Falcao, Eder, Junior, Cerezzo, Oscar, Leandro and Serginho. If the majority of Brazilian internationals have an almost flawless technical ability, then this team set a standard none has since matched. They were all capable of changing a game with a piece of trickery, a cannonball from outside the box, a cunning, disguised pass, a sly dummy. Coach Tele Santana believed fervently that football was entertainment, and drilled his teams to play exciting, attacking football. This team was the epitome of that philosophy - built only to attack, to play forwards relentlessly. One of its greatest offensive weapons was Junior, the classic model of the bucaneering full back.

This team won every match in its South American Qualification schedule, never an easy task. Then, on a European tour in 1981, they beat England, France and Germany, each on home ground. In their final warm up match before the tournament, they beat Ireland 7-0 in Brazil. If ever there was a footballing equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters, here it was. They didn't really do simple goals, either. This is Eder's winner from Brazil's first game in the World Cup proper, a 2-1 victory over the USSR. Observe the passing and movement in the build-up, Falcao's sublime little dummy on the final pass, and the fact that Eder doesn't just hit it,he flicks the ball up into the air just so he can volley it, same-footed( and past an utterly static Dasaev, at that time the best golakeeper on earth), into the top corner :

Eder was the team's left-winger, sometime taker of free-kicks (he sent one around the wall against Scotland at what looked like a right angle) when Zico didn't fancy it, and he was nicknamed "The Cannon" for the incredible power of his shooting. Brazilians have the coolest, most fantasy football names, too, and his full name is perfect for a South American footballer : Eder Aleixo de Assis. It seems incredible to say that for a player of such flair and skill, he wasn't even anywhere near being the star of the team.

But then he had competition. Zico ( real name : Arthur Antunes Coimbra, nickname : Galinho, or the Little Rooster, and no I don't have a clue why, it must be a Brazilian thing) was arguably the greatest player in the world in the era between Crujiff and Maradona, an attacking midfielder with an eye for spectacular goals, fantastic dribbling ability and a great range of passing. His free-kicks were all about elegance where Eder's were about power. Zico stroked the ball unerringly into the top corner, as if the wall wasn't there, as if the goalkeeper never had a chance. Go to Youtube and do a search, there are some unbelievable Zico compilations on there. This goal from 82 isn't even one of his best :

Then there was the team's captain, Socrates, cult hero whose face adorns t-shirts you can buy at Spitalfields and in Urban Outfitters. His full name is too big for brackets : Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira. I'm not making this up. He was a qualified medical Doctor, held a doctorate in philosophy and smoked and drank heavily. While also being Captain of the best football team on earth and one of the best midfielders in the world. On the pitch, he tottered about like some Sunday morning park footballer, but his reading of the game was unerring, and his touch was always graceful, his decsion-making seldom wrong. He was particularly famed for his regular back-heels, which were always casual and yet always precise. He also cropped up occasionally with a crucial goal :

Then there was Falcao (relatively uninterestingly named plain old Paulo Roberto Falcao), Zico's partner in midfield, an elegant playmaker, driving force behind the Serie A winning Roma team of the mid-80s, and owner of that most crucial of 1980s footballing hairstyles, mullets excepted : the Ginger Afro. Thats him, on the right, the other chap is Zico :

Like everyone on that team, Falcao sometimes liked to blast one into the top corner from 30 yards. This one, for instance, from the afore-mentioned classic against Italy :

Junior, the teams left-back (full name : Leovegildo Lins da Gama Júnior, nickname : the Helmet, nope, don't ask me, mate) didn't seem to understand what a defenders job actually was. He spent most of his time skinning his opposing full-back and arrowing towards goal. Here he scores against Argentina :

That collection of talent somewhat overshadowed Serginho, the centre-forward, who was almost a British-style player, aggressive and powerful, used to niggling opposing defences into errors. If this team had any flaws offensively, then they were in the forward line. Serginho's game wasn't really suited to the pure football played by Santana's side. Indeed, he was only playing because of an injury to the first choice striker, Careca, a more cultured player. But the others had enough firepower to outgun any opponents, or so it seemed in the early rounds of the competition, when they dismissed the USSR 2-1, beat Scotland 4-1, and New Zealand 4-0. If those results made them appear flat-track bullies, well, then they beat an Argentina side featuring a young Diego Maradona (who was sent off for striking out in frustration) 3-1.

On July 5th 1982 they faced Italy at the Sarria Stadium in Barcelona. The World Cup was a very different competition back then, with two group stages before the knock-out stuff began at the semi final stage. Against Italy, Brazil only needed a draw. If they got that they would face a Poland side denied Boniek, its leading player, in the semi-finals. Italy were still struggling for form, having drawn their three group games against Poland, Peru and Cameroon. They only qualified for the second group stage on goal difference. Once there they had beaten Argentina, mainly because their hard-as-nails defender Claudio Gentile had kicked Maradona all over the pitch, recording a World Cup record for fouls on a single player. The rest of his teammates had taken his example and Argentina were bullied out of their rhythm and the competition. Italy were not talking to their national press. Star striker Paolo Rossi, just returned to the game after a long ban for his involvement in a match-fixing scandal, was misfiring, yet to score or even play well. It seemed like a formality that Brazil would win.

But what made this Brazilian team such a joy to watch was their commitment to constant attacking football. Here it would prove their undoing. Italy, as always, could defend as strongly as anyone in World football. They played on the counter-attack, and within 5 minutes they were 1-0 ahead, Rossi finally coming good with an easy header. Brazil equalised through Socrates before Rossi scored again, a shot from the edge of the box exposing the weakness of the Brazil keeper, Valdir Peres.
Again, Brazil came back,and I remember watching the second half of the match, with Brazil dominating, threading the ball around the pitch, shooting every few minutes, then the Italians retaliating with their own lightning-quick breaks. It was football of a quality I had never seen before, football like something from a modern computer game. These men in yellow shirts played a different game to the players I regularly saw in the English league. Even their kit seemed more galamourous and beautiful than the usual red and white and blue and white combinations I knew so well. It has been claimed that part of the spell that the World Cup-winning Brazilian team of 1970 cast upon the World's population was down to the fact that 1970 was the first televised World Cup and the Brazilian kit - golden shirts and a gleaming, metallic blue for the shorts - looked so glorious in full colour under the Mexican sun on television screens across the planet. As a young boy I fully understood that in some instinctive way - football kits were important totems, the colours and combinations seemed to have some power and meaning I felt but would never have been able to articulate. Brazil had the best team and the best kit. Against Italy (whose Italian nickname, the Azurri, even comes from the colour of their shirts), their football finally paid off as Falcao equalised in the 68th minute. Its that goal from up above, and you can see how important it was from his mental celebratory sprint across the pitch.

But Rossi wasn't to be denied. If Italy had done enough to qualify they would have retreated, protected their own goal. Not Brazil. They kept attacking, looking for more goals. In the 74th minute, Italy forced a corner and Rossi scored after a scramble on the edge of the area. Brazil attacked frantically for the remaining 15 minutes - and had a series of glorious chances - but Rossi's hat-trick had finished them off, and the game ended 3-2 to Italy. Brazil were out and Santana resigned.

The spine of that team returned for the 1986 World Cup, but Zico, Junior, Falcao and Socrates were all 32 and over, and they never played to the same high standard. They were eliminated (in another classic, and on penalties) by Platini's France in the Quarter-finals. It would be 1994 before Brazil would again win the World Cup, and they did so playing a relatively dour, defensive brand of football. The legendary status of the 1982 team, despite its lack of success, remains undimmed.

The 2006 Brazilian side, blessed with its purportedly dazzling attacking line-up including Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Kaka, Robinho, Adriano and Juninho, was compared to the 1982 team in the run-up to a World Cup they were favourites to win. But they never gelled, they never even really entertained, and as a team, they don't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. Brazil 1982 seem to me to be the best team I ever saw, playing football the way its supposed to be played. Still, I suppose the 2006 team had a couple of decent players. This chap, for instance. Zico himself would be proud of a goal like this :

Mark Hughes

2006-12-22T17:52:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you simply cannot avoid football cliches. Sometimes they say it all, so well, that you have to embrace them. Mark Hughes, or Sparky, as Man Utd fans know him, was never a great goalscorer. But he was most definitely a scorer of great goals.
The picture of him above sums it up - he scored a preposterous amount of volleys in his career, among them some astounding, acrobatic scissors kicks, bicycle kicks, and the occasional plain or garden variety volley whilst he was actually facing goal. My first memories of him are for his amazing volleyed goals, one scored for Wales against Spain in a World Cup qualifier (in 1985, I think) where he leapt into the air and scissor-kicked an outrageously high ball into the top corner from the edge of the box:

He saved Man Utd in the 1994 FA Cup final with a volley in the last few minutes:

He also had a propensity for screamers from distance and insanely brave headers. He was my favourite Utd player when I was a little kid, and I was gutted when he was sold to Barcelona in 1986. But that somehow just made it even sweeter when he returned in 1988 and went on to be part of Alex Ferguson's first title - and Double - winning team.

He had joined United straight from school in 1980 and made his debut in 1983. That United team, managed by Ron Atkinson, was a complex beast, full of class and talent with the likes of Arnold Muhren, Paul McGrath and Gordon Strachan, but also a team of big, scary warriors - the likes of Bryan Robson and Kevin Moran. Perhaps their scariest pairing was up-front : Mark Hughes and Norman Whiteside. Both big, physical players, both young and technically gifted, both fond of a tackle in a typically bruising celtic manner. Hughes' strengths were obvious even then - he had phenomenal upper-body strength, and his ability to hold up the ball was better than any other forward of his generation. Tough enough to handle any rough treatment from defenders, he was aggressive enough to give it back. Throughout his career, when I read interviews with Centre-halves from various clubs they would name him as their most difficult opponent. Not because he would tear past them with the ball glued to his toe then rifle it into the top corner - though on a good day, he could do that too - but because he would chase them down, tackle them as hard as they tackled him, win more than his share of headers against them and generally never give them any time to relax.

Fans loved him for that, but his eye for a spectacular goal didn't hurt. He scored 37 in his first 89 games before the move to Barcelona, in which time Utd won the FA Cup, in 1985, the same year in which Hughes was voted PFA Young Player of the Year. He failed at Barcelona, his form deserting him, perhaps due to the more patient, technical nature of the Spanish game. Hughes physical gifts and bombastic workrate did not work as well in the Nou Camp as his new teammate Gary Lineker's sneakiness and perfectly-timed runs into the box. It took a loan move to Bayern Munich in 1987-88 for his form and self-belief to return. Alex Ferguson then brought him back to Utd for a club record £1.8 million, a bargain when you consider that he went on to score 82 goals in 256 appearances, win the FA Cup twice more, the League Cup once, and the League itself twice. Most satisfying for him was probably the Cup Winners Cup Final in 1991, when he scored both goals against his old club Barcelona, the second, the winner, a crushing drive from a seemingly impossible angle.

He also won PFA Players Player of the year twice in this period, in 1989 and 1991, and it is the high regard in which he was held by his peers that perhaps speaks most eloquently about what an honest, hard-working player he was. That first title-winning Utd side of Ferguson's was built almost entirely on strong personalities - men with backbone and fighting spirit. Schmeichel, Bruce, Pallister, Robson, Ince, Cantona and Hughes were a fearsome line of footballers, willing to battle for results when the flair they usually deployed wasn't working. Hughes was Cantona's favourite strike partner, willing to do the dirty work and let Eric strut his stuff, but also capable of turning a game on his own with one of those spectacular leaps or diving headers. His distribution was always astute, and he and Cantona seemed capable of reading each others runs and movement perfectly. With Brian McClair as their third striker, that United side was able to outscore most opponents.

Hughes second departure from United, in 1995, was due to his age. He was 32 at the time, and Ferguson wanted to build a new, younger United squad, so he was sold to Chelsea in a clear-out that also included the sale of both Paul Ince and Andrei Kanchelskis. Hughes enjoyed something of a renaissance at Chelsea, scoring 25 goals in 95 games between 1995 and 2000, and helping the club win the FA Cup in 1997 and the Cup Winners Cup in 1998. He then spent a few years wandering from Southampton to Everton to Blackburn, sometimes using his physical presence and experience in central midfield, from where he was probably the key player in the 2002 League Cup final as Blackburn beat Tottenham 2-1.

The newfound maturity and leadership he displayed on the pitch may have grown out of his new role as a manager, as he had taken over as Wales Coach in 1999. He rejuvenated the Welsh squad and brought them closer to a major tournament than at any time since 1986 - when they had narrowly lost out to Scotland - by securing a play-off spot against Russia, which they lost, 1-0 over two legs. Hughes then moved to Blackburn as manager, where his relative success has positioned him firmly for the job of coach at his old stomping ground whenever Alex Ferguson decides he has had enough.

However successful he may be as Coach, his attitude and skill as a player is unforgettable :

Liam Brady

2006-12-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

Liam Brady may well be the greatest Irish footballer ever. There is a small pool of contenders for that title, perhaps four once we exclude George Best on the grounds that he was from Northern Ireland, and not the Republic.
There is Liam Brady, and there are Roy Keane, Paul McGrath and Johnny Giles. Brady was probably the most skilled of the four, perhaps the only true magician to ever play in the Ireland team. Gifted with a sublime left foot, Brady was a creative midfielder, a Number 10 who actually played wearing Number 7, and the talisman for Ireland, Arsenal and Juventus in the late 70s and early 80s.

He went to the same school as me (as did the current Irish Prime Minister) but when I attended, the rumour always was that Brady, easily the pupil's favourite past-pupil, had been expelled. It was a Christian Brothers School, very seriously G.A.A (meaning it enthusiastically promoted Gaelic games and tried to dissuade pupils from playing "English" games like soccer), and back in the 60s and 70s, that may even have resulted in disciplinary measures being taken against anyone who preferred to play football over Gaelic Football or hurling. But Dublin is a city in love with football, and in the 60s and 70s it produced a stream of players who thrived once they had moved to England. Brady came from a strong football family - his brothers played for QPR and Millwall, and his uncle had played - and was spotted by an Arsenal scout playing for St. Kevins Boys, a Dublin schoolboy institution. He signed for Arsenal in 1970, aged 15, and made his first-team debut at 17.

His game was built on his passing. He had a lovely first touch, and he was one of those midfielders who never seemed rushed, who always seemed to find himself in space, and who rarely gave the ball away. His long passing was as good as his short, and altough he obviously favoured his left foot, he did not really have a weak foot - he could pass and shoot with his right too. His skill demanded that every move passed through him and so he dominated games. Irish players generally possess a combatativeness and hunger in the challenge that helps them settle quickly in the British game, and Brady was no different. Though he had a slight build, he was sharp in the tackle, nipping the ball off opponents and covering a lot of ground for a ball-playing midfielder. He was the best player in an otherwise mediocre Arsenal side between 1974 and 1980, and was voted PFA player of the year in 1979, the same year in which Arsenal won the FA Cup, beating Man Utd 3-2 in a famously thrilling final. Brady, or "Chippy" to his teammates, started the move that led to the winning goal, of course.

He is also fondly remembered by Arsenal fans for this goal, scored against Spurs in a 5-0 win, typical of his class and mastery, but also illustrating his nice tackling :

But he grew tired of what he perceived as Arsenal's lack of ambition. In 1980, Arsenal played Juventus in the semi-finals of the Cup Winners Cup, and Brady enjoyed what he later called his greatest ever game in Turin, where the Italians were defeated 1-0. In the first leg at Highbury, Marco Tardelli had been sent off for repeatedly fouling Brady. Arsenal lost on penalties to Valencia in the final, but Juve had been impressed enough to buy him for £600,000 and make him one of their first foreign signings after the Italian game was opened up to imports. Brady had almost joined Man Utd for £1.5 million, in what would have been a British record transfer, but he felt he needed a new challenge beyond the English game.

At the time it was unusual for British or Irish players to go abroad, but it is indicative of Brady's class that a club of Juventus' stature was interested in him and of his intelligence that he was so eager to go. The only recent English player to succeed on the continent had been Kevin Keegan, who had led Hamburg to a Bundesliga title and European Cup Final. But the German game resembled the English game in its pace and physicality, whereas the Italian game was slower and more tactical. Brady may have suspected that given the technical quality of his style, he would fit in perfectly.

He quickly became Juventus' key player and pivotal to them winning the Serie A title for two consecutive seasons, scoring 13 goals in his 57 games. Near the end of the 1982 season, there were rumours that Michel Platini was to be the clubs big Summer signing, and given that he played in the same position as Brady - and even had a similar style - and that his presence would mean there were more than the Italian limit of 2 foreigners at the club, Brady feared for his future. He was informed that he would be sold in the close-season, but even with this knowledge, Brady took the crucial penalty in the final game of that season away to Cantanzaro and Juventus won 1-0, pipping Fiorentina to the title by a single point.
Brady moved on, first to newly-promoted Sampdoria (82-84), then to Inter Milan (84-86) and Ascoli (86-87). He finally returned to London to play for West Ham until injury forced him to retire in 1990. In Italy, he is remembered as one of the best foreign imports ever to play in the country, and one of the few players from the British Isles to succeed in the Italian game.

He was unlucky to play for Ireland during a long poor spell for the teams international fortunes. Despite the quality of players Ireland exported to the English game, the Irish team was forever narrowly missing out on qualification to the Major tournaments, generally at the hands of a bigger Football Nation. Twice in the 1970s, once with Brady in the side, Ireland were closely eliminated by the USSR. For the 1982 World Cup Qualifiers, Irelands group included Platini's France, a Holland in the process of rebuilding, a young and dangerous Belgian team and Cyprus. But this was possibly the greatest ever Irish team in terms of sheer talent, with players from most of England's major clubs represented, including the likes of David O'Leary, Frank Stapleton, Ronnie Whelan, Kevin Moran, Paul McGrath, Mark Lawrenson and Tony Galvin, all of whom played for either Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool or Spurs. Ireland lost two matches in that group, one of those a 1-0 defeat in Brussels when a goal was controversially disallowed, the other in Paris. The final match was against France at Lansdowne Road and Ireland won an amazing game 3-2, only to miss out on qualification to the French on goal difference. That French side would reach the semi-finals in Spain and two years later became European Champions.

When success finally did come to the Irish team, Brady was reaching the end of his career. He played in the qualifiers for the 1988 European championships, but his relationship with new manager Jack Charlton was strained. Charlton liked his Ireland side to play a pressure game, pumping long balls directly towards tall strikers and constantly harrassing the opposition when they had the ball. It was ugly, but it worked against continental teams who were used to being given time and space to play their football. But it wasted Brady's talent for moving the ball fluidly and imaginitively and for bringing his teammates into the play. Nonetheless, Brady was too great a talent for Charlton to ignore, and he played in the qualifiers until his way with a sharp tackle got him sent off in the final game against Bulgaria, earning him a suspension for the first two games of the tournament. As it happened, Brady was injured playing for West Ham shortly afterwards, and his injury would have ruled him out anyway. He played his last game for Ireland in a friendly against West Germany in 1989, before qualification for the 1990 World Cup had been secured. There was always the sense that Charlton was glad to see the back of him, and indeed he substituted him early in that match, for which Brady bitterly resented him. Its a horrible irony - and not unlike that of George Best with Northern Ireland - that Ireland's greatest ever talent never got to play for his country in the greatest tournament.

But he was the country's most successful footballer before Roy Keane, and the first to succeed on the Continent, where so many others from the British game would fail. He also scored this winning goal, his ninth in his 72 internationals, against Brazil in Dublin in 1987. I was at that match, and even then there was a sense that he was the best we had ever had, and maybe would ever have, and the crowd celebrated this goal accordingly :

Michael Laudrup

2006-11-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

The World Cup in Mexico in 1986 was the first one I was really old enough to appreciate. I have memories of Spain in 1982 - I watched at least one of Northern Ireland's matches and the Brazil-Italy game, probably the best game I'll ever see though I wasn't to know it then. But I was seven in 1982, and though I liked football, it wasn't quite a passion in the way it became in subsequent years. By 1986 I was hooked. 1986 was the first time I bought a Panini sticker album - we filled it, my brother and I - and the first time I read about foreign teams before the tournament. I knew who Ruminegge was. I knew Platini and Boniek and Zico. I had some idea of which teams were expected to do well in the competition. There were a few players from my club involved - Bryan Robson and Norman Whiteside - and I wanted them to do well. 1986 is probably also the year my love of Argentinean football began, with Maradona's incredible genius.

I knew Denmark before the tournament. They had been in Ireland's qualification group and had beaten us - handily - 3-0 in Copenhagen and 4-1 in Dublin. They had an exciting attack-minded team, fluid and full of movement and with goals coming from all across their midfield and forward line. They were fresh from appearing in the semi-finals of the 1984 European Championship, where they went out on penalties to Spain. Their fans were fantastic and not unlike Ireland's would be some years later - loud and colourful and seemingly just happy to be there. They called their team "Danish Dynamite". Their forward pairing was the most explosive element of that team. The experienced Preben Elkjaer led the line aggressively, winning high balls and chasing down defenders. Supplying the guile and vision was young Michael Laudrup.

Denmark had been drawn in their first World Cup in the "Group of Death". Every tournament has one - a group with no obviously weak team. This time the other three teams were Germany, Uruguay and Scotland. Denmark could expect to come maybe third out of that group, behind the ever-impressive Germans and Enzo Francescoli's Uruguay.

But Denmark won the group, at a stroll. They beat all of the other teams, including a 6-1 thrashing of Uruguay featuring this goal by a then 22-year old Laudrup :

That match was on past my bedtime, probably. During that summer I would get up and watch highlights of football matches played at 1am the previous day. Thats was how I saw that goal and became aware of Laudrup. That was also how I became aware of Denmarks departure from the tournament, beaten again by Spain, 5-1. But that Laudrup goal against Uruguay made a big impression on me. I loved dribblers back then. It seemed to me to be the way football should be played. Get the ball, beat a man with a feint, beat another with a jink, do it again. So obviously, Maradona was a god to me. But that World Cup introduced me to some other great playmakers from less fashionable countries than Argentina - Laudrup from Denmark and Enzo Scifo from Belguim.

Laudrup could dribble brilliantly, of course, his ability to flick the ball from one foot to the other with equal dexterity baffling a succession of defenders, but his game was based more on his ability to pick out an outstanding pass. His first European exposure came when Juventus signed him from Brondby in 1983 and immediately loaned him out to Lazio. He had been bought probably as a replacement for Michel Platini, but Platini was in the peak form of his career, and eventually Laudrup was brought back from his loan period - after two years - to play alongside the Frenchman in place of Boniek. Juventus have a reputation for playing powerful, efficient football and Italian pragmatism usually only accommodates one playmaker, but the Platini-Laudrup combination won Serie A in 1986. When Platini did retire in 1987, Laudrup was unable to dominate games the way his illustrious predecessor had done and Juventus had a couple of years without the success the club was accustomed to.

When Johann Cruijff took over as Coach of Barcelona he set about building his so-called "Dream Team". Only three foreign players could play at any one time alongside homegrown players such as Pep Guardiola and Goikoetxea. Cruijff placed the temperamental Bulgarian striker Hristo Stoichkov up front, with the cultured Ronald Koeman in defence. In between he needed a player who recalled his own playing style, somebody to pull the strings and make things happen. Laudrup was such a player. The Dream Team lived up to its nickname, winning La Liga four times consecutively between 1991-1994 and winning Barcelona's first European Cup at Wembley against Sampdoria in 1992. To bolster an already strong team Cruijff bought Romario, and he and Laudrup struck up an immediate partnership, Laudrup supplying the ammunition for the Brazilian's unfaltering finishes. Romario called Laudrup the best player he ever played with, and with characteristic modesty, said that he was the 5th best player of all-time, behind Pele, Maradona, Romario himself and Zinedine Zidane. This pass is something of a Laudrup trademark, since perfected by Ronaldinho - the player looks one way and moves the ball the other :

However, the presence of three such high-profile foreigners in Barcelona's ranks meant that the three had to be rotated. Laudrup was left out of the starting line-up against AC Milan in the European Cup final in 1994, Barcelona lost 0-4, and Laudrup left, moving controversially to Real Madrid. In his first season Madrid won La Liga, ending Barca's period of dominance. Laudrup would only stay for one more season but impressed Real's fans and players so much that he was voted the 12th best player ever to play for the club by Marca in 2002. Raul called him the best player he has ever played with, above the likes of Zidane, Figo, Redondo and Ronaldo. When he left Madrid he floated for a while, playing in Japan and for Ajax before retiring.

If he had been born in South America or in one of Europe's traditional football powers, then Laudrup would be held in higher regard than he is. He was the classic Number 10, exceptionally technically gifted, a great passer, dribbler and capable of fabulous long-range shooting. Platini once praised him as one of the most talented players in the history of the game, lamenting only his lack of selfishness which meant that he scored too few goals. But there is something intrinsically Scandinavian in Laudrup's love of an assist, his appreciation of his team-mates, and ability to find them with some seemingly impossible balls.

He did not help himself in terms of how posterity views him : In 1992 he was involved in a dispute with the Danish coach, Richard Moller Nielsen, over the teams tactics, and quit during qualification. When Denmark were summoned at the last minute to replace a disqualified Yugoslavia at the European Championships in Sweden, his younger brother, Brian, also a gifted playmaker, took Michael's position as Denmark won the tournament, shocking Holland and Germany to do so. When he returned to the Danish squad, they failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup and were eliminated early from Euro 1996. In France in 1998, Laudrup enjoyed a last hurrah on the international stage, playing as Captain alongside his brother as Denmark reached the quarter-finals where they were eliminated narrowly, 3-2, by finalists Brazil.

The game before that, where Denmark had routed a fancied Nigeria side, featured two typical examples of Laudrup's vision and unselfishness in the passes for the first and third of Denmark's goals, and is a good clip to finish with :

Fernando Redondo

2006-11-18T17:46:00.000-08:00

Most of the players I have a fondness for - the ones I loved most as a boy, the ones I enjoy watching most now - are attackers. Its is no coincidence that many of the greats of the history of the game were natural Number 10s. Maradona, Pele, Platini, Cruyff, Zidane, Puskas and Baggio all played in the space between midfield and forward line, shaping attacks with clever angled passes, explosive dribbling and intuitive misdirection. The player in that position can, if possessing sufficient skill and tactical acumen, utterly control a game. He is the conduit through which each of his teams attacks must pass. When it goes well, he gets all the praise and all of the glamour.

But the modern game, where players are fitter and faster and stronger, has made it more difficult for these conjurors to practice their art. There is less time on a football pitch now than at any time before, less space. Speed of thought must be even quicker, ball control more acute. The modern midfielder is a powerful athlete, capable of covering miles at high speed in every game, and a jack of all trades - he must be a good tackler, a perceptive reader of the game, capable of passing long and short, able to dribble if the need arises and apt to break into the box to score a goal. Players like Steven Gerrard and Michael Ballack typify this new breed, while the traditional Number 10 slowly dies out except for the odd abberative child genius - Wayne Rooney qualifies, as does Yoann Gourcuff at AC Milan (Bordeaux this Season). Only in Maradona-worshipping Argentina is there a concerted effort to promote the playmaker in the classic mould as a workable part of a modern squad. Accordingly, Argentina have produced an astounding number of high-quality Number 10s in the last two decades, most of them cursed to live with "Next Maradona" status from their youth-team debuts for their country. A list of such names would include Ariel Ortega, Juan Roman Riquelme, Pablo Aimar, Andreas D'Alessandro, Javier Saviola and the two main rivals for the title of the newest new Maradona, Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi.

Less-heralded than the Number 10, but just as important to the way Argentinean teams play their football, and also threatened by the modern midfielders need to be a great all-rounder, is the Number 5. In the Argentine tradition, the Number 5 shirt goes to a central midfielder rather than a defender. The last great Argentine Number 5 was Fernando Redondo. Redondo was a defensive midfielder, but not quite in the vein of a Makelele or a Keane. Instead, he was a deep-lying playmaker. He broke up opposition attacks with sharp tackling and set in motion attacks of his own with crisp, short passing. He didn't race forward and break into the box. He didn't score many goals. He didn't cover every blade of grass for 90 minutes. But he could control a game like no other central midfielder I have ever seen. He played with his head up, always reading the movement of the players around him, always aware of where his next pass was going. The Argentine football character is founded just as much on steely, often brutal aggression as it is on sublime skill, and Redondo was as combative as a ball-winning Midfielder must be. His tackling was hard and he was a big man - a formidable physical presence in the centre of the pitch, around which his team revolved. His technique was extraordinary and he was a flashier Number 5 than his most recent heir in the position, Javier Mascherano - he showed a control and understanding of a football comparable with most of the Number 10s listed above. Playing right at the fulcrum of a team - in the heart of midfield - requires a different personality than that needed to operate in the "hole" behind the forward line. Quiet players such as Zidane and Riquelme can thrive further up the pitch. But in the heart of the battle, the congested central area of the field, squeezed and stretched between two sets of defenders and attackers, the central midfielder must display a big personality, the will to dominate his own team as well as the opposition. Redondo needed to be able to destroy and create in an instant, to orchestrate and bully his team-mates and to see the bigger tactical picture at all times. All of which he did, beautifully.

But he under-achieved, given his tremendous talent. He spent his first years as a professional in Buenos Aires with Argentinos Juniors, then spent four years at Tenerife before moving to Real Madrid. Finally playing for a Big club, he won La Liga twice, and the Champions League twice. He was probably Madrid's most important player in their 1999-2000 Champions League campaign, dominating Roy Keane at Old Trafford in the quarter finals in a manner seldom seen. His backheel to set up Raul is just a moment of genius :

After that triumph, Madrid, amazingly, sold Redondo to AC Milan. Madrid's Ultras literally rioted at the news.
His two seasons at Milan were blighted by injury, and he rarely played. He refused to accept wages from the club, believing that, as he was giving them nothing, then they should give him nothing. These injury problems were what led to his premature retirement in 2003. The mixture of stubbornness and an uncommon sense of personal principles suggested by his stance over wages is perhaps what ruined his International Career. He reportedly refused a call-up to the 1990 squad because he disagreed with the teams defensive tactics. And he would not play for the team when Daniel Passarella was coach because he refused to play anywhere other than central midfield, altough the Argentine press speculated it was because Passarella demanded that all his players cut their long hair, and the ever-stubborn Redondo refused.

He only played 29 times for Argentina and appeared at only one World Cup, in America in 1994, where he was probably his teams most consistent player. That squad had the potential to win a tournament lacking a truly great team. It had the strong spine needed to win a World Cup, with Ruggeri playing in his third World Cup at the centre of defence, Redondo running things in front of him, a seemingly rejuvenated Maradona prompting the forwards, who were the legendary Gabriel Batistuta and Claudio Caniggia. But Argentina, after a great start, were sent reeling by Maradona's expulsion on a doping charge, and were knocked out in the game of the tournament, 3-2, by Romania. This lack of World Cup exposure is most likely the reason that Redondo's recognition factor is not commensurate with his talent or stature within the game.

In Argentina, his importance is acknowledged. The emergence of a startlingly talented young defensive midfielder in the classic Argentine mould at Boca Juniors over the last few years saw the youngster accorded the Number 5 equivalent of the dreaded "New Maradona" title. Fernando Gago has been dubbed the New Redondo. As if that wasn't enough to live up to, in 2007 he moved to Real Madrid...