Less than 12 months on from the football World Cup and the memory is down to a
headline butt, a wonderful team goal scored by Argentina against opponents I
don’t quite recollect and a fairly exciting quarter-final where Germany, the
hosts, met Argentina. That’s it. England fans will recall the mind-numbing
mediocrity of their peacock-vain team, who strutted around making plenty of
noise before the tournament only to go missing in action. Other national
supporters and nonpatriots need not waste their thoughts on the
all-too-obvious mortality of this supposed champion team. Within minutes of
losing the least dramatic of penalty shootouts, the world forgot England –
another pale World Cup, and not just because England were poor.
Once again, negativity was the decisive tactical theme. Playing the World Cup
just once every four years seemingly creates such an abhorrence of failure
that sides freeze for fear of losing; in the process it has evolved into
another unremarkable event.
In vivid contrast, the Manchester United versus AC Milan Champions League
semi-final first leg at Old Traf-ford last week will linger long in the
mind, not merely for supporters of either side but for those who appreciate
it when the game occasionally puts its make-up and glad rags on to step
beautifully out. For all the greed, egotism and gamesmanship, the sheer
simplicity of football delivers a global desirability to sports enthusiasts
when the muse appears as it absorbingly did in Manchester.
The match began with a headed goal by Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the most
gifted, and definitely the most hyped, player in the Premiership. First
blood Manchester and Portugal, with a clumsy helping hand from Milan’s
Brazilian goalkeeper; it was an eminently forgettable goal, the same of
which cannot be said for the two-goal response from the Brazilian Kaka.
Twice he slipped beyond the United defence to roll the ball past their Dutch
goalkeeper, Edwin van der Sar, with minimum fuss. It looked so easy.
If Kaka is the indelible nightmare Manchester United supporters will not erase
should those away goals prove to be the decisive moments of the two legs,
the second-half response of Wayne Rooney and his mates will be consolation
for those of us who watched the game in the hope of something elevating. The
equaliser was an all-England special.
The nation’s very own Greta Garbo, Paul Scholes, who wants nothing to do with
England but everything with his local club, flicked a fantastic pass over
the wall of Milanese bodies and Rooney, very much the sideshow in the
build-up, muscled his way into the spotlight. All square at 2-2 and the man
who was once the most hyped player in the Premiership, before Ronaldo, hit
the perfect winning shot, courtesy of a perfect pass from Wales’s Ryan
Giggs, to reassert the hegemony, however brief, of the British football
empire over the Portu-guese/Brazilian one.
This was everything the World Cup was not: passionate, dramatic and oozing in
technical ambition and ability. It should be no great surprise because club
football has overwhelmed its international variant. The World Cup is a
commercial opportunity, the Champions League the purists’ pinnacle. Maybe
this explains Scholes’s reluctance to swap red for white. International
football has natural limitations that the big-business world of club
football can bypass. Nationality; not many international teams can field
half a side of world-class performers but the moneyed battalions from
Manchester, Milan, Liverpool, Chelsea and the Spanish mega clubs are never
far short of that number.
Club football does not rely on accidents of birth but the ability to buy and
shape a side. It would be disappointing if the richest club sides could not
match the superior international units. Whereas the international teams
gather intermittently, the clubs are in a state of constant evolution, with
rhythms established over months instead of hoping for miracles in weeks.
Another immense ace held by the club game is its capacity to be truly
democratic in showcasing the best in the world. Lucky as Pele, Maradona,
Zidane and company have been to have played for the right country at the
right time, there are many like Giggs, whose football genius grows with age
but would gather dust, an aged football spinster, if not for the club game.
Think back nearly 40 years to another Manchester maverick, George Best, one of
the greatest according to those he entranced, spellbound, as he dazzled and
dribbled his way to United’s European Cup triumph against Benfica in 1968.
Where would the late Best be in our football memories without that grainy
black and white shot of him waltzing the ball into the net at Wembley?
And where would the growing legion of African talent be without the club game?
Wednesday night’s match between Chelsea and Liverpool was a pale imitation
of Tuesday’s but the power and precision of Didier Drogba was worth the
watching alone. In the blue of Chelsea, surrounded by some of the better
players on the planet, the man from the Ivory Coast has the opportunity to
reveal himself as the superb talent he is, something he would struggle to
achieve if playing predominantly for a developing football team such as his
own nation.
In an age when global borders mean so much less than ever before, it is
anachronistic to expect the best-quality football to be provided by
part-time international teams. The fluid movement of football goods around
the world, and to Europe in particular, has weakened the game’s nation
states as it has strengthened club institutions that are effectively global
multinationals with the financial power to dwarf national football
economies. It is not a purely beneficial form of globalisation. The
staggering sums of money have made the appeal of representing one’s country
less than at any time in history. It has played its undoubted part in the
diminution of the national side, something that matters very much for the
patriot but less, perhaps, for the football fan.
Two titans of a golden age
Tony McCoy’s monopoly on the title of champion jockey continues. Yesterday he
was crowned champion National Hunt jockey for a 12th consecutive season. It
is testimony to one of the greatest wills British sport has ever seen. If
you want to pick up a horse and carry it home for the last half mile, AP is
your man.
But in racing circles he is not the man. Speak to those within the
tight circles of national hunt and few would question the current claims of
Ruby Walsh as the greatest jump jockey of this era.
Walsh sits so silently it is hard to know here the man ends and the horse
begins. Whereas the horse might have the power, McCoy holds the reins. It
works with the stubborn old lags that need shoving to burgle a seller but
with elite equines such as Kauto Star, Walsh – the centaur – is regarded as
peerless.
McCoy’s flaws were seemingly exposed at Punchestown last Tuesday where he rode
Justified at such a breakneck pace alongside Newhill, River City and Central
House in the Kerrygold Champion
Fleming a true leader
Stephen Fleming may not have lifted the World Cup last night but he can leave
the Caribbean with his head held as high as anybody. As captain of New
Zealand’s Test and one-day sides he has earned the worldwide respect of his
peers. His decision to quit the leadership of the one-day side as soon as
New Zealand’s tournament was complete is as admirable as it is wise.
“Your energy levels are sapped when you captain the side, and I want to play
with a fresh mind and finish off my career with some stats that I think I’m
worth,” he said.
Fleming has made the decision for both his team and his own personal reasons.
That is how a sportsman should be; a team player but with enough sense of
personal pride and esteem to contribute individually. An outstanding
skipper, he dreamt the dream of all one-day international captains, the
dream of lifting the World Cup.
He failed to achieve it and rather than hang on grimly to the position and
watch the team slowly deteriorate, he has added momentum even in defeat by
standing down to allow fresh thoughts and a new voice.
He cannot be said to have quit while he was ahead – Sri Lanka cantered over
the Kiwis – but nor has he hung on for dear life and whatever commercial
advantages may personally have accrued. It takes a special leader to quit
without being pushed. In doing this, Fleming has revealed that he has the
attributes required.
Chase that the 7-1 shot, Mansony, picked them off to win, leaving the
estimable winning trainer, Arthur Moore, admitting: “They went at such a
good pace that it helped him.” The jockeys got it wrong – the clear
euphemism for saying the leaders beat themselves.
This was more grist to the mill of those who would question the genial
scrapper, although a gutsy win on Refinement at 16-1 in Thursday’s big race,
the Champion Stayers’ Hurdle, was a timely reminder of his talent; if he did
get carried away on Justified he would not be the only jockey to make a
similar error. In this season’s Champion Hurdle, Hardy Eustace and Brave
Inca raced each other to a near standstill and opened the door for the
patient Philip Carberry on Sublimity. Walsh was the man aboard Brave Inca.
Walsh or McCoy is an irrelevant question. Think of their volume of bookings,
each race a unique tactical affair. Better by far to consider how many
horses they have coaxed home in their distinctive styles and celebrate this
golden age with two jumps jockeys as sporting titans.
Hugh McIlvanney is away
