BRIAN GLANVILLE
writes for worldsoccer.com each week.
CORINTHIAN VALUES?
06/09/06
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So where did all the money come from and where now does it go to? The whole strange affair of Javier Mascherano, Carlos Tevez, West Ham United and the mysterious “entrepreneur” Joorabcchian grows more bewildering by the moment.
What is clear in these first days after the transfer of the two Argentine stars to Hammers is that the Iranian is no more than a front man. Not that one did not suspect this long ago when the Argentines were suddenly bought from Buenos Aires by the Corinthians of Sao Paolo in Tevez’s case for a colossal sum. Strange to see, given the fact that most Brazilian clubs even the best known teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. There had been a vast infusion of money from somewhere; Russian oligarch money it was thought at first and the suspicion remains. It certainly couldn’t have come from young Kia, whose various English companies have now been exposed as a collective disaster. There is talk of Arab money, Middle Eastern financing, which is another possibility, which is another possibility.
Meanwhile, the egregious Kia makes things no clearer with fatuous statements that the way to go now is to find promising young footballers, buy them, develop them, and then sell them. Tevez and Mascherano, World Cup stars, don’t by the remotest stretch of imagination come into that category. Now David Gill of Manchester United discloses that Masherano was offered to his club before he and his compatriot were sold to West Ham. Where nobody outside Upton Park, and perhaps not even there, expects them to stay indefinitely. So if Kia, with all his dud businesses, seems essentially a man of straw, cui bono, as the Romans put it; who stands to benefit? The idea that Kia could ever take over Wet Ham has become risible. But West Ham themselves have stated that though negotiations have been bruited, they are not with him, nor with the company Media Sports Investments he had now abandoned.
What a difference it made to Wales when little Robert Earnshaw, he of the Big Match Temperament, came on belatedly against the Czechs last Saturday!
Suddenly he and his fellow young substitute, Cotterill, recently bought for £2 million by Wigan, were vigorously getting Wales back into the game, their clever combination resulting in the panicky own goal which equalized and briefly gave hope of a point. For me Earnshaw, though African by birth represents the classical Welsh phenomenon, so well known in the long halcyon days of Secretary and virtual team manager, Ted Robbins, of the player transformed as soon as he put on the red shirt of his country. In Robbins’ day Third Division footballers, galvanised, became heroes for an afternoon. Earnshaw made a glorious and decisive debut which I saw in Cardiff, against Germany. He transformed the game in Belgrade against Serbia a few years ago, when Mark Hughes, essentially another non-believer, finally put him on. He flourished with Cardiff, but failed despite the occasional star turn to convince Bryan Robson at West Bromwich Albion, and now finds himself in what I still call the Second Division with Norwich. For whom he scored twice, once from the spot, the week before the game in Teplice. What of it? Just give him the red shirt and watch his smoke.
That Saturday of so many World Cup matches was also notable for the re emergence of two stars of the recent past: Jari Litmanen of Finland and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer of Norway. Each scored two goals for his country in impressive away wins. Litmanen in Poland, one a penalty, Solksjaer in Budapest, versus Hungary. Litmanen, who once graced the ranks of Ajax and Liverpool, is a veteran now, but plainly the skills and flair remain. Solksjaer, hearteningly, at last seems to have emerged from the protracted miseries of serious injury. Just in time for Alex Ferguson to feel relief. Selling Van Nistelrooy, letting the promising young Italo-American Rossi go out on loan, seemed to have left Manchester United dangerously short of strikers. But if “The Baby Faced Assassin,” a nickname he detests, can only stay free now from injury, United have at least three formidable alternatives for their front line.
One thing the Czech performance in Teplice showed was how valuable Thomas Rosicky could be to Arsenal if they only have the sense to play him in the middle. Functioning in central midfield for the Czechs, he was outstandingly effective, pulling the strings of attack, quick and elusive in possession. In a word, doing the things that, from a more advanced position, Dennis Bergkamp, invaluable brains of the outfit, was alone able to do for the Gunners. Sticking Rosicky out on the left, as happened when the Gunners went down at Manchester City, is a criminal waste of his talents. Arsene Wenger one hopes, for his own and Arsenal’s sake, will speedily see the light.
Well, Claude Makelele changed his mind in the end, emerged from his transient international retirement, played for France away to Georgia, and alas was injured in the process.
The whole affair however had had elements of absurdity. When Makelele decided to retire, France’s highly-strung manager, a figure of faint, gesticulating absurdity on the World Cup touchlines, became shrilly outraged. Makelele he cried had no right to retire. If he insisted on doing so, he would see to it that he incurred suspensions from Chelsea’s games. Whereupon FIFA’s Andreas Herren quietly and cogently pointed out that a player has every right to stand down from international football. Indeed had the impulsive Domenech just paused to think, he might have remembered that during his own regime, both Zizou Zidane and Lilian Thuram had retired; only to change their minds and return to the colours. Domenech, alas, simply made a fool of himself.
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