BRIAN GLANVILLE
writes for worldsoccer.com each week.
FROM ZERO TO HERO
27/11/08
England's thoroughly convincing, well-deserved victory in Berlin over, it must be said, a palpably mediocre Germany, has evoked euphoria. Suddenly Fabio Capello, in the current phrase, has gone from zero to hero. Yet the victory and its nature deserves analysis. There are all sorts of surprises, anomalies and implications to be taken into account.
In the first place, there was, Heaven be praised, no David Beckham. No idiotic five or ten minutes of Beckham tacked on to the end of a game, yet still presenting him with yet another cheap international cap. The word this time was that he wouldn’t be match fit. Whether, for the last couple of years, he has at any time been fit for international football is another matter.
Yet now that one awaits his bizarre passage to a Milan team which surely doesn’t need him, any more than they, now, and Chelsea, last season, needed the fading Andrei Shevchenko, we can only wait and wonder. He will certainly, if explicably, be welcomed by Ronaldinho, who is perhaps enthusing from memory. And Theo Walcott, so sadly lost to club and country after his wretchedly unlucky shoulder dislocation in Berlin, has praised Beckham’s positive effect on the team’s morale. Off the field rather than on it, I assume.
Walcott has certainly been far more badly missed by Arsenal than by England. In Berlin, it was heartening to see Shaun Wright Phillips display the electric form he had shown for England before his ill fated and over priced transfer to Chelsea. He plainly went for the money and it proved to be a very bad bargain.
For reasons obscure to me, David Bentley did not even get into the squad for Berlin. Nor did Aaron Lennon, who did so well in the 2006 World Cup on those rare occasions when Beckham blessedly made way for him. But his ebullient performance against Blackburn, at White Hart Lane, last Sunday was a huge encouragement to us true believers who have never lost faith in him, his speed, his ability to go outside the back and get to the line. The goal he made for Pavluchenko was classic Lennon. No Walcott, alas, but what conceivable need can there now be for the static Beckham?
Capello gambled in Berlin, and in two instances at least the gamble paid off in spades; though it seemed so unlikely in prospect. Matthew Upson had had dismally ineffectual defensive games against both Kazakhstan and Belarus, and to pick him again might have seemed to be dicing with death. Instead, after he had profited from poor young Adler’s wretched mistake to score England’s first goal, he seemed inspired to give a hearteningly resourceful display.
It was odd, however, just a few days later, to read that Arsene Wenger was thinking of trying to bring him back to Arsenal. Why, in the name of logic, did he ever let him go in the first place, while stubbornly hanging on to the alarmingly vulnerable Pascal Cygan? One felt at the time that Wenger was determined to justify his ill considered £2.5 million purchase of the Frenchman. Upson as an unknown teenager had cost a surprising £1 million from Luton. All too plain who has now had the last laugh.
Stewart Downing was another highly successful gamble. A gamble because on previous appearances for England, he had seemed thoroughly ineffective and uncertain. But in Berlin he came splendidly into form, the ideal left winger, the actual possessor of a left foot, setting up both the England goals, showing the confidence which he had so plainly lacked before.
The third gamble, the all too reckless risk, was to throw on the hapless keeper Carson as a second half substitute? Why, in the name of sheer good sense? David James may not by any means be the most reliable of keepers, for all his undoubted talents. He has given awful goals away in Vienna and Copenhagen, but not quite as awful and decisive a goal as he gave away against Croatia at Wembley last season.
Besides, he didn’t have a place in the original Berlin squad. And he, it is true, with some collaboration from a John Terry who sportingly tried to take the blame, gave away that ghastly goal to Helmes, coming out of his goal when there was no need, confusing Terry, enabling Helmes to put the ball humiliatingly between his legs and follow it up into the net, Oh dear.
Neither Steven Gerrard nor Frank Lampard, of course, was playing which for once got Capello off the hook so far as their eternal dualism is concerned. Capello certainly as one has remarked, didn’t settle it in Belarus. In fact he ducked it, putting both of them on the field, Lampard centrally, Gerrard pushed out to the left wing where he never likes to play but somewhat cravenly given licence to come inside. This he did with supreme effect when he scored that early goal, but later, he left huge gaps on the flank when moving inside. What now? Hard to drop either. Drop Downing? I suppose so, but it wouldn’t be right.
Joe Cole, on recent occasions, has come on to save Capello’s bacon, and there is no doubt about his manifold talents. But having a good left foot isn’t one of them and in essence he is a central, an inside forward, than a true flank player. Credit to Capello must be given however, for using as his chief striker Villa’s exuberant and dazzlingly quick Agbonlahor. I’d certainly keep him in the team in preference to Emile Heskey who still seems to me, despite his recently improved form for England, a limited front player; one who so seldom scored for England. But Wayne Rooney, arguably the most gifted player of his England generation, must always have a place.
Germany? Things seem to be falling apart. Torsten Frings well and truly put the cat among the pigeons when he ranted and railed against his team manager Joachim Low for dropping him. Michael Ballack came in on his side, was rebuked by Low who demanded an apology, which he eventually got, and also by the former German skiller Lothar Matthaus, hardly a stranger to controversy in his time. It was hard to comprehend why Low should give the Hoffenheim centre back Compper his first cap at left back, where he was all at sea against Wright Phillips, while another newcomer in the midfielder, Jones was a nullity.
Remember, pray, that Germany in Monchengladbach could only squeeze through by a single late goal against Wales who also went down by a single goal margin in Russia. Against Denmark, last week, John Toshack so belatedly put Aaron Ramsey not only in the squad but in the actual team and was suitably rewarded. What if he had used him in Germany and Russia, instead of the trundlers whom he inexplicably preferred? But, up front, Craig Bellamy, scorer in Demark as he was against them in Copenhagen, some years ago, makes all the dynamic difference.
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Jacqui Oatley has come under fire since BBC Match of the Day, in one of its transient moments of tokenism, put the poor girl on the box again to commentate on Stoke City v West Bromwich Albion. Let us be objective. She isn’t at all a bad commentator per se. What jars are her stridency and her grating accent. If the Beeb wishes to make such gestures to feminism, as is still seemingly so fashionable, elocution lessons might not be a bad idea. Unless, of course, they can find a more mellifluous female voice.
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The idea that Arsenal should part company with Arsene Wenger just because, after those distinguished 12 years, they have recently gone through a bad patch seems absurd to me. With whom would they place him? That defeat at Manchester City was indeed humiliating, but just look at how many key Gunners were missing, Cesc Fabregas, for whom there is no conceivable substitute, Emmanuel Adebayor, the two casualties, long term. Thomas Rosicky and Eduardo, Theo Walcott, irreplaceable with his pace and panache on the right wing, Eboue, Sagna. Not to mention – this by choice – the ever-disruptive William Gallas. People in glasshouses, and all that.
Before casting that substantial stone about the team’s infighting and morale, Gallas would have done well to reflect on the fact that he himself, with his inadequate pace, was plainly to blame for Aston Villa’s recent second goal by Agbonlahor. And though Gallas in his jeremiad didn‘t cite Fabregas, the whisper is that the young Spaniard was thoroughly put out by Gallas’ bizarre sit down strike at St Andrews last season, when a crucially bad decision went against Arsenal.
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Could things get any worse at Queens Park Rangers? Could Paulo Sousa, now enlisted, not as manager, mark you, but only as chief coach to the club, already be regretting having left his post as second in command of Portugal’s national team? Any comparison one might have made between the stern reign of Jim Gregory, which at least produced substantial results, and that of the autocratic Flavio Briatore, now seem irrelevant. The suggestion that Briatore himself might have become the manager in name as well, it seems, as in practice, was surely unfounded. All that money – Mitta, Ecclestone, even if so much of it seems ominously to be in the wife’s name; and the mountain produces the mouse of a 3-0 defeat at struggling Watford. All very sad to see.
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