The View from the Spaghetti Factory

As Arsenal take on the ageing glitterati of AC Milan tonight, one player will unfortunately be missing from the Rossoneri line-up. Yes, Football’s Daftest Goalkeeper, Mr Nélson de Jesus Silva, otherwise known as Dida, will not be there.

Dida, you may remember, endeared himself to Celtic fans earlier this year. Having been lightly tapped on the shoulder by a pitch-invading scally, he briefly gave chase, only to remember his proud Brazilian heritage, throwing himself melodramatically to the ground, clutching his face in agony as he took his last, halting breaths.

Amazingly brought back to life by… well, a two match ban from his own club for being such a drama queen, Dida has now been sidelined through yet another crushing blow. During last week’s match against Parma, the poor love had to be stretchered off after suffering muscle spasms in his back. The unfortunate rigours of being a professional footballer, eh? Well, not really… he was sitting on the bench at the time.

I’m not sure how much you can credit genetics for your choice of leisure interest, but my obsession with football doesn’t strike me as being particularly unexpected. My grandad, Bill Burnikell, played professionally before WWII (for Lincoln City, Bradford and Aldershot) and later coached teams in Sweden, Chile and Sudan.

Enough general family history, though; this is one of those “isn’t it a small world?” musings. Up at my parents’ place, we’ve got a whole load of grandad-related artefacts, mostly relating to football and/or Sweden. One of them is an issue of “Match”, a Swedish football magazine, dating from 1961.

This particular issue is largely devoted to Degerfors IF, my grandad’s last club in Sweden, who were flying high (especially for a small-town team from Värmland) in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s top division. It’s great to see his picture in the squad list centrefold feature, but I was surprised to see a promising young player called Tord Grip… now best known as Sven-Göran Eriksson’s deputy at Lazio, England and Manchester City. A browse through the club’s chronology shows that Sven was also briefly a coach at Degerfors.

I’ve scanned a couple of pages so far; more to come soon…

Swedish “Match” magazine, 1961 on Flickr

Ha! When I wrote that last football post, I had no idea quite how effective the England team would be in sealing McClaren’s fate.

England 2 - 3 Croatia

They were absolutely bloody woeful. Out of the starting eleven, Joe Cole was competent (although nowhere near his full potential) and Peter Crouch was excellent, doing everything that could be expected of him. However, the lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation is supposed to be knocking balls down to the attacking midfielders, and they just weren’t there. The introduction of Beckham added a touch of class (as well as the necessary support for Crouch in a more comfortable 4-4-2) while Defoe contributed a little extra, not least earning the penalty.

Every other player was either under par or utterly incompetent. Croatia must have wondered whether they’d mixed up their flights to Skopje and London… while Macedonia battled hard for their win, England played like international minnows, leaving Croatia players to run in acres of space and firing loose balls into dangerous positions. This was not a difficult qualification group for a major football nation, despite the improved form of Israel and Russia, nor can England blame bad luck or dodgy refereeing. To drop thirteen points in ten games is inexcusable. Croatia looked good, but barely seemed to be trying. England created their own downfall.

As I write this, McClaren has not yet resigned or been sacked, but it’s almost inevitable that he’ll be clearing his desk at some point during the next couple of days (if not, there’s something *really* wrong at the FA). Intriguingly, the BBC reveals that Marcello Lippi, former trophy-hogging coach of Juventus and Italy, has turned down the job of manager at Birmingham City. If I was in a senior position at the FA, I think I’d interpret this as a sign. There’s your next England manager, right there. Not only is he hugely successful, he also smokes cigars. On the touchline! How much cooler can a manager be? The man’s a legend… let’s get him!

(Oh, and if you’re on Facebook, join my Lippi for England group)

Steve McClaren’s comedy tenure as England coach is slowly approaching the punchline. He now insists both that England will qualify for Euro 2008 and that he’ll keep his job. Well, well. A bit of bullish confidence on behalf of his players is commendable, but what about the second claim?

There certainly seem to be vague suggestions of hints emanating from FA HQ, to the effect that things aren’t entirely hopeless for Second Choice Steve. To confuse matters, the laughably pompous John Terry has backed McClaren this week. Terry’s last foray into the world of football politics, you may recall, was (allegedly!) to stir up the dressing room mutiny that led to Jose Mourinho’s resignation from Chelsea.

With the final (and possibly academic) qualifier against Croatia looming, the likely absences of Rooney and Terry assume greater importance than they deserve. Statistically, England do perfectly well without either of them, thank you very much. However, McClaren’s constant inability to find a Plan B is obvious once more… “We need as many big-game players as possible,” he says, completely forgetting the lessons he should have learned in the recent string of 3-0 victories. We need a balanced, solid TEAM, Steve.

Personally, I don’t think McClaren’s job should depend on England qualifying. Dropping 10 points in a relatively easy qualification group is a good enough reason to dismiss him immediately after the Croatia game. If, by the grace of statistical permutation, England do qualify, it will be *despite* McClaren’s efforts, and there will still be time for a proper coach to assert his influence before the tournament starts.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s position in the Real World has often seemed tenuous in the past, but no more so than several other characters in the rarefied world of top-flight football. His latest outburst, reported in the Observer last week, is particularly daft, though… they’re going to be talking of alcoholism and mental breakdown again!

Setting the scene, Michel Platini, former French midfield hero, was recently elected president of UEFA. His initial plans for the Champions League system were pretty radical, but he’s now aiming merely to transfer one of each country’s allotted places to their domestic cup winners (who would previously have played in the UEFA Cup). Sir Alex doesn’t like the sound of that…

Or let’s make that the quarter-final, shall we? Or is he suggesting that both Tottenham and Blackburn are “nobody”? Granted, Chelsea had a relatively easy passage to the FA Cup final last season, while Man Utd played Premiership clubs in every round, but that’s how random draw competitions work. Ah, but don’t forget… along with managers of the other G-14 clubs, Sir Alex doesn’t like the risk of a random draw. That’s why the Champions League was created in the first place… to remove the plucky little hopefuls as early as possible, leaving the moneyspinning later rounds to Europe’s biggest and richest clubs.

Overlooking Ferguson’s breathtaking arrogance, his fears are unfounded, for two reasons.

Firstly, what does it matter if the FA Cup winners gain their Champions League place more easily (supposedly) than the Premiership champions? For eighteen of the last twenty years, the FA Cup has been won by one of those “big four” teams (Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) anyway!

Secondly, do the hopeful little minnows from Europe’s less fashionable leagues *really* pose such a threat to our noble heroes? The days of Liverpool 10 Oulu 1 are long gone, but apart from the occasional Rosenborg 2 Milan 1 the teams who progress to the last eight of the European Cup are generally from England, Italy, Spain and Germany.

For what it’s worth, I’m delighted that Platini has battled through the old boys’ network to become president of UEFA. I’d love to see him do what he really wants to do, which may well be to limit the Champions League to league champions and cup winners, giving equal places to every UEFA country, but he’s going to have a battle on his hands. The big clubs do so hate the idea of competition.

Iraq 1 - 0 Saudi Arabia (AFC Asian Cup final)

The 1998 World Cup-winning French team was praised as an example of diversity, featuring players from various ethnic and national backgrounds, and hey, look… the victorious Iraq team is made up of Shia and Sunni Muslims and Kurds. Some of us already know that football, despite its looming reputation for related violence, can be a force for good in society. As usual, though, the peace-keeping and “liberating” forces have missed a trick.

I’ll leave it to Bill Shankly to sum up…

In his new book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses a phenomenon of the way we deal with our increasingly complex world. We’re hopeless at predicting major events, but we still analyse those events in the belief that we’ll be ready next time. Of course, there will never be an identical “next time”, because there’s so much randomness in these events. The lessons of 9/11 didn’t prevent Bali or 7/7, and the proven success of Google didn’t inspire us all to bet on the success of Myspace.

On a (slightly) more banal level, football is full of Black Swans. At the start of 2007, when Lincoln City were sitting comfortably in the automatic promotion positions, I was confident. After four unsuccessful attempts in the play-offs, this time they’d do it the easy way. Their scoring rate and away form were unmatched in the division (and possibly the whole Nationwide League)… why would that change?

Well, it changed. A dismal January-March run saw them slip out of the automatic promotion places and into the play-off places, remaining in the top five only by dint of their stunning autumn strike rate. Like all armchair punters, I analysed and compared, trying to spot the pattern which would explain this dip in form and produce the magic formula to turn things around. And of course there was no magic formula… despite all the tweaks to both attack and defence, the players who had performed so well in late 2006 dug in once again and won the necessary points during the last three matches. The Black Swan of the dip in form was followed by the Black Swan of the rediscovery of form.

So, to summarise, it’s play-off time again, and while Bristol Rovers (powering into the play-offs at the last gasp) aren’t the team I wanted to face at the semi-final stage, there’s no point reading too much into the fixtures. With two games to play before the Wembley final, there’s plenty of time for another Black Swan or two.

We already know that some European police forces have a rather more… let’s say “physical” approach than our own Boys in Blue. So when I heard about the trouble at the Man Utd - Roma match last week, the claims of “over-reaction” rang true. Various reports (including BBC Radio 4 news) spoke of innocent families being trapped at the mercy of the ruthless Italian police. I was ready to fume at length about the irony of the situation… while Italian football has hit yet another grim low point, hooliganism in England has been vastly reduced since the bad old days of the 1970s and 80s. And yet we’re still judged according to that outdated reputation. Who are they to batter our fans when they can’t keep their own house in order?

And then I saw the TV footage.

For all I know, there may well have been innocent families trying to enjoy the match, but they weren’t evident. What I saw was a couple of hundred bullish men facing up to the Italian police, their chests and chins thrust forward in the “CAAAAHN THEN YOU FAKKIN WANKAHS!” stance, beer-reddened faces glistening in the floodlights. I’m no expert in crowd behaviour, but I’d suggest that’s probably not the best way to stay out of trouble.

We’ve become smug about our gentrified football industry with its prawn sandwiches, celebrity guests and sponsored family enclosures. However, there’s a danger that we’re blind to a new emergence of violence. Alex Ferguson isn’t always a reliable commentator on wider football matters; the protective leniency he shows to his own players is like that of a proud grandfather. However, I thought he was right on the mark when he claimed that a “mocking culture” in our society was behind the negative behaviour of England fans in the recent Euro 2008 qualifiers.

It doesn’t take a huge psychological leap to see how that could be connected with the prevalent “Me Me ME!” attitude in England… and from there to the self-righteous, seething arrogance of that small minority of Man Utd fans at the Roma match. Far from being unfairly victimised by over-zealous policemen, some of our football “fans” are starting to believe that they have a divine right to set their own standards of behaviour.

Can readers suggest a well-known London resident and friend of George Bush who is also guilty of this, I wonder? ;-)

When you hear football fans booing their own team, you generally conclude that the team is underperforming quite badly. This is nothing to do with the result; there’s no shame in being thrashed by a much better team if the players have tried their best. We don’t expect to win all the time (I can’t speak for fans of certain Premiership corporate marketing conglomerates, obviously) but we expect some passion and determination from the players.

The general consensus is that England showed none of these qualities during the two recent Euro 2008 qualifiers, but even during my eyeball-poppingest, hair-tearingest moments watching the matches, I couldn’t feel comfortable hearing the boos, jeers and taunts *during* the match.

Speaking on the Guardian’s football podcast, Kevin McCarra pointed out that the whole hysteria has been largely media-driven, and I totally agree. Yes, the England team is going through a very shaky patch, but there would have been considerably less bravado among certain sections of the supporters if it hadn’t been for the spluttering ad hominem attacks on McClaren in the tabloid press between the two matches. Jeering the players and coach during the match is not going to solve anything. Nor is making aggressive advances on the England team bench, as a small number of knuckle-draggers apparently decided to do.

That said, though, it’s pretty clear that we have reason to criticise Steve McClaren. The warning signs were there in the friendly against Spain, when he made random scattergun substitutions without any semblance of tactical planning. This cluelessness continued through to the Israel qualifier. Why was the fast, creative right-winger Aaron Lennon on the left? Why was solid central defender Carragher at left back, uncomfortable with the attacking wing play demands of that role? And for the umpteenth time, why did he perservere with the unworkable pairing of Gerrard and (out-of-sorts) Lampard in central midfield?!

The selection was better in the next match, against Andorra, but even victory couldn’t disguise the low morale. Amid the unpleasant taunts and jeers, the chant of “only one David Beckham” was at least excusable for the playful humour… and, let’s face it, uncomfortable aptness.

One of Beckham’s main contributions to England was his ability to take charge and increase his workrate when the rest of the team was in disarray; thankfully, Steven Gerrard showed exactly this spirit in the Andorra match, taking charge in every area of the field and scoring two vital goals. If he can keep doing that, we might not need a Beckham revival, but then it wouldn’t hurt to have them both doing that!

At the other end of the scale, the ignoble award for the week’s football goes to Wayne Rooney. At only 21, he’s a bit young to be trading on past glories, but that’s what he seemed to be doing in both matches. Acting like a petulant teenager, he pouted, swore and underperformed his way through the two matches, reinforcing the theory that McClaren tends to pick teams based on reputation rather than current form. If anything, Rooney had a better attitude at 16 than he does now… sure, he gets the worst of the barracking and niggling fouls from defenders, but so did Lineker, so does Owen, so does Del Piero. Their response has always been to run faster, to try more elaborate tricks, whereas Rooney’s response is to look like the biggest waste of an England shirt in years.

Fifa quota proposal angers Wenger (BBC News)

… and you can see why. The customary lack of English (or even British) players in Arsenal’s first-team squad has become something of a standing joke. However, I’m not going to criticise Arsene Wenger… he’s simply working within the guidelines available to him, and Arsenal have produced some of the most attractive football in the Premiership in recent years, especially since Man Utd went off the boil and Chelsea became so bullishly charmless.

No, what I object to is the system that allowed this situation to develop. What we’re seeing in top-flight English football is the result of unfettered capitalism. That’s what the Premier League wanted when they broke away from the Football League and took control of their own TV rights, and they’re partly responsible for the outcome… precious few domestic players gaining regular match practice at the top level, with the result that the England squad is a hapless mish-mash of precocious individuals and inexperienced understudies. There are some incredibly talented players in the Championship, but as long as the sports media, the money men and even the England coaching setup are obsessed with the Premiership to the exclusion of all else, we’ll never see those players.

To be honest, I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of a quota, because it’s inspired by the same “TAKING OUR JOBS!” mentality that lies behind all the tabloid asylum seeker hysteria. However, something has to be done before the Premiership becomes a cartel of rich multinational businesses and English football ceases to exist as a unique identity. There’s no doubt that the high-quality, cosmopolitan feel of the Premiership has done much to rehabilitate English football after the dark days of the 1980s, but there are dangers. The rich-poor divide becomes wider every season, and the exclusive band of big-money clubs is becoming more and more arrogant, as the whole G-14 affair demonstrates.

The Italian FA imposed a total ban on foreign players between 1964 and 1980, in order to improve the national team. It’s impossible to prove whether Italy’s 1982 World Cup triumph was a direct result of this ban, but I’d suggest it wasn’t entirely unrelated. A total ban in England would be impractical now (not to mention illegal in the case of EU players) but perhaps there’s scope for a limit on non-EU players? Back to Italy again… at the turn of the millennium in Serie A, there was a limit of five non-EU players per club, three of whom could be on the pitch simultaneously. While that led to a damaging fake-passport scandal, a properly-policed scheme of that sort could be a valuable lifeline for English football.