All Or Nothing A year in the life of the Champions League
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After witnessing what was indisputably the finest match of the World Cup in Tuesday’s semi-final between Germany and Italy, its Wednesday counterpart between Portugal and France was always destined to be a let-down. The second semi started well enough, but then lapsed into the type of grim struggle that many of us had been fearing, based on the performances of the two teams to that point, as well as the general tension that seems to have partially paralysed participants of the knockout phase of the competition.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the only two teams to have scored more than twice in any one game of the knockout phase – France against Spain and Italy, against Ukraine – are the two that have reached the final, teams that posess sang froid in the moments that really count. Think of the French expertly picking off Spain and Brazil, or of the Italians remaining nerveless at the last to dispatch first Australia and then Germany.
That second semi in Munich was everything that Germany 2006 has become in microcosm. Tension? Check. Sturdy defenders? Check. Classy midfielders? Check. Proper goalscorers? You’re having a laugh. While the tournament has not been without its merits (you could even argue that the general paucity of goals since the group stages has ratcheted up the thrill quotient, making each game a study in brinkmanship), dead-eyed shooting has not been one of them. It wasn’t so much of a surprise to see Pauleta, who had such a poor Euro 2004 despite his team’s great run and his own imperious form in Ligue 1, struggling alone up front like a small boy with his finger plugging the hole in the dam. But to see Thierry Henry in the same boat (albeit one with a rather faster engine) was a displeasure we’re thoroughly less accustomed to.
In the cases of both these players, it’s easy to have sympathy. Their respective teams aren’t set up to get the best out of them. Pauleta is a fine finisher but has been feeding on scraps – he has neither the pace or the physicality to play as a lone striker. Henry is also uncomfortable in a team of flair players set up to smother, and he too is no sort of point man, disposed as he is to dropping to the left to make the most of his incomparable acceleration. Still, neither has shown any of the qualities so abundant at club level.
The one thing that Portugal have lacked – for they have genuine class in most positions – is a real danger up top. Luis Felipe Scolari may be regarded at a master of thinking on his feet, but his use of Helder Postiga instead of Nuno Gomes (a scorer in the Euro 2000 semi against the French), was baffling. Granted, Nuno Gomes only scored three times after Christmas this year, but he did manage 15 for the season, which is roughly three times the amount that Postiga has managed in the last three campaigns put together. Whisper it, but France may have been better off including Louis Saha, a more pure poacher, at Henry’s expense at times. This, of course, is an option they won’t have for the final as the Manchester United man will be suspended, though don’t forget they have the so-far-neglected David Trezeguet on the bench too.
So where are the rest of the sharp-shooters? Barring an extraordinary performance in either the final or the third place play-off, Germany’s Miroslav Klose – on five goals, the same as his tally in Japan/South Korea four years ago – will end up with the Golden Shoe. Just as Germany have been the tournament’s most attacking team, Klose and Lukas Podolski have been its best front pairing (perhaps because a majority of teams have been playing with just one up top?). There is a lot to admire about Klose, who has an unquestionable scoring record at international level and enjoyed a prolific season with Werder Bremen, but his style is rather more perspiration than inspiration.
Of the major strikers expected to do some damage before the tournament, fitness has been a key issue. You can only feel sorry for Michael Owen – who habitually tends to gather momentum as a major finals progresses – and Wayne Rooney didn’t have the best preparation either, though it should be pointed out that he didn’t score once in the World Cup qualifiers even when fully fit. The lack of influence these two had was undoubtedly a big part of what England were missing. The Czechs suffered badly too, from the absence of the extraordinary Jan Koller (who still managed to score in the half-hour or so he managed against the USA) and the Euro 2004 top scorer Milan Baros. Ronaldo looked to struggling for condition and also started slowly, though had Brazil progressed beyond the quarter final, he surely would have been there or thereabouts in the race for the Golden Boot. Indeed, if he had hit the ground running, you could reasonably assume that he could have really filled his boots in the group stage.
Looking at the best scorers from last season’s European leagues also leaves us disappointed. Luca Toni has looked largely pedestrian despite his record-breaking Serie A season and, if common sense prevails, should be replaced by the more technically gifted Alberto Gilardino for Sunday’s final. David Villa (this column’s pre-tournament bet for top scorer) looked sharp, and scored three times despite lasting under an hour in all three of the matches he started. His fellow Spaniard Fernando Torres also scored three times, and perhaps the biggest disappointment of this promising Spain team going home prematurely was being robbed of the chance to see this exciting pair work their magic in the competition’s latter stages.
As time goes by, World Cups feel more and more surreal while we’re actually in the thick of them. Maybe it’s the realisation that they make little sense without some sort of historical perspective. This one has been no different. The shocks of a certain quality of side going home - first Spain and then Brazil, via arguably the best side in this year’s tournament, Argentina – will probably seem logical in years to come, presented as part of the whole story of the tournament. At the moment, these events, along with the progression of Germany, Italy, France and Portugal, confuse.
You could argue, of course, that while the football has shocked in fair measure, it hasn’t excited. The very presence of the semi-finalists tells us that defence has been the best form of attack in the tournament. Italy’s key players have undoubtedly been goalkeeper Gigi Buffon and captain Fabio Cannavaro, Portugal have adopted a safety first approach (despite the presence of the likes of Figo and Deco) and Thierry Henry has been largely peripheral to France’s progress. The second round match between the French and Spain has arguably been the key game of the tournament so far, not just in representing the resurrection of the French (the shock of the World Cup, even ahead of Ghana’s win over the Czechs), but in the game’s tone, where the more expressive, attractive side were choked by strength and good organisation. As much as Zinedine Zidane rolled back the years to spectacular effect against Brazil, Patrick Vieira is the player who has truly dragged France into World Cup contention. The recovery of his best form against Togo, when Les Bleus most needed him, has proved to be the catalyst for the French.
Many would be pleased to see Germany lift the trophy not just as the host nation, but the one truly attacking team left in the competition. Their inversion of the approach of their fellow semi-finalists has been borne of necessity as much as anything else, however. Philipp Lahm, the German defender who has garnered universal plaudits, is more noteworthy for his intelligent attacking down the left than any other aspect of his game. The feeling also persists that they have yet to be fully examined at the back, something that should have happened against Argentina and would have (perhaps, even, to fatal effect) had the otherwise admirable José Pekerman not made substitutions so lacking in ambition in the period directly before Miroslav Klose’s quarter-final equaliser in Berlin.
Besides, though we’ve not had what we hoped for from Ronaldinho, Rooney or even Thierry Henry (yet), there’s a lot to be said for enjoying quality defending. Vieira’s return to his old imperiousness has been thrilling to watch, and there’s been much to admire about the France rearguard unit. Gallas and Sagnol especially have been excellent, and though Gregory Coupet’s superiority as a goalkeeper can be in no doubt, Fabien Barthez has still yet to let down his country in a major finals. Ricardo Carvalho and Miguel have been as integral (in vastly different ways) to Portugal’s effort as they were in Euro 2004, and in Cannavaro, the Italians have not only one of the players of the tournament, but one of the world’s outstanding defenders of the past 20 years. To see the Juve man bring all his experience and intelligence to bear – not to mention his ‘absolute mastery of the black arts’, as one daily put it last week – is a rare treat.
While we’re on the subject of the shadier side of on pitch events, it would be good to put to bed the tiresome persecution of Cristiano Ronaldo. Sure, he didn’t exactly help Wayne Rooney’s situation in Gelsenkirchen, but to suppose that he prompted the referee to decide on a red card for the England striker beggars belief. However hard done by Rooney still believes himself to be, I’m sure he would be the last to subscribe to this point of view. The righteous outrage is yet more bewildering to anyone who has seen Ronaldo play before – was he ever going to win any awards for the most sportsmanlike player in Europe? His double and triple rolls after being challenged were so predictable as to be Saturday afternoon’s stick-the-kettle-on moments. Far more affronting was Thierry Henry falling to the floor, clasping his face after Carles Puyol’s hand-off in the second round. In an age where few of the strokes footballers pull genuinely shock anymore, this – from a man almost universally admired - was a crushing disappointment. You owe us, Thierry.
Whatever your perception of him as a media figure, David Beckham’s departure from the England captaincy was also a genuinely sad moment. A proud man, jumping before being pushed by the new regime if rumours from the past few months are to be believed, Beckham’s efforts deserved more than a trio of tatty quarter-final defeats in the major championships he led his country in. While some will continue to deride him as a glorified clotheshorse, the truth is that Becks is the country’s outstanding captain since Bobby Moore. He may never be a bulgingly-muscled, bloodstained shouter, but here is a man who has been prepared to run through walls for England and give everything he has, the qualities that would, if he could speak Spanish, probably have made him captain of his club side Real Madrid by now. His very will made him from a good player into an outstanding one – it’s hardly his fault that he couldn’t fashion a similar growth for the entire national team. That was someone else’s job, someone whose passing, I imagine, will be far less mourned than that of Beckham.
I can take England being disappointing at the World Cup. I can accept the slow grind of the scratchy early performances, followed by the win over moderately difficult opposition that leads to the tabloid-led ‘We’re gonna win the cup this time’ frenzy, before the customary quarter-final exit. Brazil’s form so far is, however, a real bummer.
We’re now approaching the quarter-finals, and save the odd highlight – Kaká’s goal against Croatia, the signs of Ronaldo getting back to form – the champions have been as flat as the dregs of champagne left in the bottles from the June 2002’s winners’ party in Seoul. The 2006 World Cup has all been very enjoyable so far, but what everyone really wants to know is when will Brazil start to fizz, and what will make it happen?
Unbelievably enough, the answer lies outside the Magic Quartet, and it’s not even Robinho. In the 12 months leading up to the World Cup, Juninho Pernambucano has scored more goals for the national team than anyone else (look up exact stat). In his one World Cup start so far he scored (albeit in a dead rubber against Japan) with a typically well-struck shot that will have sent shivers of recognition down the spine of many a Ligue 1 goalkeeper. Juninho is industrious and an excellent passer, not to mention his status as the set piece don of the Brazilian squad - which is no mean feat, though the idea that Roberto Carlos was ever thus was merely an illusion borne of his extraordinary banana-trajectoried thunderbolt against France in 1997’s Tournoi.
You might, in these words, smell a hint of Lyon bias (and if you want that, I’m happy to point out that the back door would be much more firmly bolted with the inclusion of the impeccable Cris at the expense of the dubious Juan. And the in-form striker Fred did score after about 70 seconds after coming on against Australia, so maybe he’d be a better bet than the thus-far disappointing Adriano). And of course, you don’t need to be Stephen Hawking to figure out that the real key for Brazil is Ronaldinho, because if he so much as comes close to his club form with Barcelona, the sixth World Cup will be theirs, simple as.
But – and the reason behind their failure to kick on, and the disappointment we feel at that – the genius has barely even started his own tournament yet. After two seasons at Barcelona where he has astounded to the extent that anyone who doesn’t believe that he’s the world’s greatest player of the moment, has clearly not watched the game in that period, Ronaldinho is actually struggling. The great man has been restricted to a few cameo flicks, dummies and runs thus far, recalling the far-too-intermittent brilliance of his spell at Paris Saint-Germain, when he was more in the business of showing off and antagonising his coach, Luis Fernandez, than putting the rest of the football world in its place.
You could argue that his Barca form has led to us expecting too much of him – the potent brew conjured from the visionary skills allied with an incredible workrate that leaves spectators and opponents alike breathless surely can’t be maintained indefinitely. Yet this is less about the man, more about the system. The expression ‘Magic Quartet’ itself gives the impression of a free-flowing, untameable force, implying a hint of the Harlem Globetrotters, when in reality, coach Carlos Alberto Parreira’s plan is rigid, every player having a clear function with little room left for displays of virtuosity. Remember, Parreira was also in charge at the 1994 World Cup, when the most workmanlike Brazilian side in living memory won the tournament on penalties (the only in the history of the World Cup that this has happened, of course) having scored a grand total of one in the semi-final and final combined. No wonder poor old Ronnie looks like he’s playing in a straight jacket.
The signs in the Ghana match were, however, that Parreira might be changing his view, as he replaced the pedestrian Adriano with Juninho after an hour. Parreira did say before the tournament that he would keep going with the Magic Quartet ‘as long as it was working’, and seeing as only Kaká and now Ronaldo have hit anywhere near the form expected of them, it’s fair to say that it’s not working any more. With the inclusion of Juninho from the start, a flair player who’s not afraid of hard work and getting a tackle in, in place of Adriano, all of a sudden Ronaldinho is off the leash. And let’s face it, he’s a man who probably feels as if he has a little catching up to do –which is great news for the viewing public and very, very bad news for the other teams in the tournament.
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