Author Archive for David Herman

Seeing undelighted all delight

Published
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David Herman
on September 11, 2008
in Sport
. 0 Comments

Every silver lining has a cloud so as you celebrate England’s totally unexpected triumph over Croatia spare a thought for ten who saw undelighted all delight in Zagreb last night:

1. Michael Owen

Michael, who? Yes, already commentators and pundits have forgotten that hat-trick against Germany seven years ago and all those goals against top opposition, from Brazil to Argentina. Any more injuries and that could be it for Michael Owen’s international career. Could his season get worse? First, Newcastle try to offload him, then the manager who wanted to keep him goes and now he’s back in the queue for strikers because of one match.

2. ‘Stevie’ Gerrard

Forget all the flim-flam about who will be captain and about whether Capello will play Beckham. The hardest question facing Capello is can Lampard and Gerrard play together? All the signs are they can’t and now Barry and Lampard (with Hargreaves and Carrick still to return from injury) have put together a very good-looking partnership.

3. Steve McLaren

He had bad luck with injuries and incompetent goalkeepers against Croatia, but just when he’d hoped Capello might have blown it, here comes an easy victory which makes McLaren look even worse.

4. The hacks

Just yesterday, Britain’s best football writer (Martin Samuel in The Times) was saying this was make or break time for Capello. After Andorra and the Czech Republic, this was brewing up nicely for a perfect storm for the England manager, and the hacks love a fired manager. King Kev, Curbishley and now Capello. The perfect hat-trick. But it won’t happen this side of Christmas.

5. Bilic

West Ham not returning your calls? Newcastle putting away their chequebook? What’s it like to see those seven-figure offers recede over the horizon? Will they ever come back? One defeat at Wembley and Bilic won’t see a decent job offer this side of 2010.

6. Sam Allardyce and Stuart Pearce

Remember those happy times when everyone wanted an Anglish manager to manage England? Don’t hear much from them now do we?

7. Sky

England’s best win in seven years and who has the rights? Yup.

8. The Guardian

Those clever boys and girls at The Guardian who spent the 2006 World Cup making fun of Theo Walcott

9. David Cameron

Of course, he’s terribly patriotic and all that but who wants a feelgood moment to sweep the nation? Who could do with England flopping and not making it to South Africa in 2010, which just happenes to be election summer? Just wondering.

10. Capello

The last time an England manager had such a triumph was seven years ago when Sven’s team beat Germany 5-1 in Germany. And what happened in 2006?

Capello’s PR war

Published
by
David Herman
on August 22, 2008
in Sport
. 0 Comments

It started with Beckham. Capello got the hacks so excited about whether Beckham would get to play his 100th game that they lost focus: what kind of job was he doing? Wasn’t he, in fact, showing ominous signs of making no structural changes?

Then came the captaincy nonsense. There was clearly no issue about who should be the captain. Either Terry or Ferdinand, the two obvious candidates, would have been fine. It hardly took a rocket scientist to come up with Terry as captain and Ferdinand as vice-captain. So what was all that about? It just kept the hacks off his back. Once again, he was throwing fish to the sharks t keep them distracted.

If they hadn’t been so busy with Beckham and the captains, they might have stopped to ask, as the away game with Croatia draws ominously near:

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“Big Phil”? Really??

Published
by
David Herman
on June 12, 2008
in Sport
. 2 Comments

It’s hard to know who’s happier — Chelsea or the tabloids. For the tabloids, “Big Phil” is perfect. From central casting. He’s already got a nickname - which they never managed with Avram Grant. And he’s famous. He’s won the World Cup and has managed a very successful Portuguese team with household names like Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo and Deco. And he’s a character (apparently). As for Chelsea, he’s perfect. he’s famous. He’s won the World Cup and has managed a very successful Portuguese team with household names, etc, etc. He might keep Carvalho at Stamford Bridge and might lure Deco over from Barcelona and keep him out of the clutches of Mourinho. And, crucially, he’s big enough a name, to prevent the expected exodus this summer.

If he’s perfect for Chelsea, Chelsea also happen to be perfect for him. They’re rich, he’s inheriting a good side and they’re used to very defensive football.

1) Scolari likes money. After all, he spent much of the 1980s and early 1990s in the middle east managing three different clubs in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as well as the Kuwait national team (one of five Brazilian coaches in three years in the early 1990s) and a Japanese club side in 1997. So it’s not altogether a surprise that he returned Peter Kenyon’s call. Also, coincidentally, Palmeiras in Sao Paulo were the richest club in Brazil when he was there because of a sponsorship deal with the Italian dairy giant, Parmalat. That sponsorship deal finished the year he left for Cruzeiro, his last club job, where he won nothing — they came 3rd in the Brazilian leaguie in 2000 and 21st in 2001. He then left to manage Brazil.

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Mourinho and Inter Milan — a marriage made in heaven

Published
by
David Herman
on June 3, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

Just as Mourinho hit it lucky when he arrived at Chelsea, so now he’s hit it lucky again at Inter Milan. Then, as now, he inherited a terrific team. At Chelsea, the much-maligned Ranieri had already brought on John Terry, a graduate from the youth team. Ranieri signed Lampard and Gallas before the Abramovich days, and then Joe Cole, Makalele, Cech and Robben before he was fired. Not a bad inheritance.

Now at Inter Milan, Mourinho has inherited the second great Inter team, one that can be compared with the team of the mid-1960s that won Serie A three times (1962/3, 1964/5, 1965/6) and the European Cup twice (1964, 1965) and famously lost to Celtic in 1967. Since then Inter Milan fans have had to watch the glory years of AC Milan (European Cup- and Champions League winners five times since 1989 and finalists eight times) and Juventus. Now Inter Milan’s time has come again. They have won Serie A three times in succession and have built a formidable team. The defence is part-Italian (Materazzi and the goalie, Toldo) and part-South American (Walter Samuel, Zanetti and Maicon). The midfield is part-French (Olivier Dacourt and Patrick Vieira) and part-Portuguese (Figo, Maniche and Gomes) and up front are the Argentinians, Crespo and Cruz, and Ibrahimovic, the Swedish striker. Both Roma and Juventus scored more goals last season but no one conceded as few. Like Manchester United and Chelsea, their title defence was built on an iron defence.

That, of course, is how Mourinho likes it. 1-0 is his kind of score. There is just one snag, as there was at Chelsea when he left it.  Inter are an old team. 17 out of 27 in the squad were born in the 1970s. All the big names (except for Cambiasso and Ibrahimovic) are over 30. Some (Figo, Zanetti, Materazzi, Toldo) over 35. This might be OK for the leisurely pace of Serie A, but as Liverpool showed in the Champions League last season, it is no match for a faster side.

And here’s the rub. Lampard and Drogba, the two players Mourinho’s most likely to want to bring over from Chelsea, are not exactly spring chickens. Mourinho never had a youth policy at Chelsea. he didn’t have to. He either inherited star players from Ranieri or bought his own — he spent over £60 million in 2004 and again in 2005.  He bought players at their peak (or, like Shevchenko, past it) and erxcept for Essien and Mikel they were not spring chickens as Grant’s luckless successor will find out.

So you can see why Mourinho jumped at the idea of joining Inter. A good team, on a roll.  All the basics are in place and there’s money to top it up with some of his favourites from Porto (Deco?  Carvalho?) and Chelsea (Lampard? Drogba? Essien?). Portuguese would go well with the contingent already there and African or English might add something new to the Mediterranean/South American mix. But there’s a second problem. Where are the goals going to come from? They didn’t score in either leg against Liverpool and Crespo and Cruz are past their best. No wonder they want Eto’o and Mourinho’s got Drogba’s number for one last  big payday.  It’s not exactly building for the future, but who cares?  Inter and Mourinho want success and they both want it now.

Yves Saint Laurent — And Other French Algerians…

Published
by
David Herman
on June 3, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Visitors to Marrakech will remember the Yves Saint Laurent Gardens. The famous designer was born in French Algeria in 1936, one of that extraordinary generation of  cultural figures born between 1913 (Camus) and 1943 (Jacques Attali).  Others include:  Althusser (1918), Derrida (1930) and Physics Nobel Prize winner, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (1933). Fanon, though born in Martinique in 1925, later lived in Algeria.

Zinedine Zidane, though born in Marseille, was famously of Algerian descent, but belongs to another generation, which includes Olympic gold medallists and world champions, Noureddine Morceli and Hassiba Boulmerka, both champions at 1500 metres.

Shockwaves (from the 2008 Champions League)

Published
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David Herman
on June 2, 2008
in Uncategorized
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What do Sepp Blatter, Jose Mourinho’s appointment today at Inter Milan and Real Madrid’s pursuit of Ronaldo have in common?

Well, two things. The first is football’s relentless move towards globalization: players and managers are now international commodities, moving from Portugal to London to Milan (Mourinho) or from Lisbon to Manchester (and possibly to Madrid) (Ronaldo). This is unstoppable and Sepp Blatter’s blustering won’t stop it.  What is interesting is the growing conflict between football fans who are intensely local and the changing nature of the sport which is international.

The second thing these big news stories have in common is more specific. The huge success of English Premiership in Europe over recent years reached its climax in Moscow with the first all-English final. The most revealing image of the night was not John Terry or Ronaldo but the shot of Blatter, Platini and all the other great and the good from FIFA and UEFA. They looked like the old men of the Kremlin, stony-faced and deeply unhappy. Like Milton’s Satan, they saw undelighted all delight. Is it really a coincidence that it is this summer that Blatter has issued his attempt to bring back national quotas for football clubs? Those with any memory will know that it was similar UEFA legislation which punished English clubs in the early 1990s, counting Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish players as foreign/overseas.  No wonder no English club won the Champions League during those years. If Blatter’s quota is introduced it will have the same effect. But, like Canute, he is fighting against greater forces than UEFA — the EU’s immigration legislation and the new globalization.

Blatter and the UEFA aparatchiks were not the only ones to be shaken by the all-English final. The Italian clubs took one hell of a beating this year. Roma lost to Manchester United, Inter Milan to Liverpool and AC Milan to Arsenal. Not one team from Serie A made it to the Semi-Finals. It was a huge humiliation. The appointment of Mourinho and the inevitable influx of Chelsea players that will follow is the first step to put Italian football back on top. Meanwhile, in Spain egos were just as bruised. Real Madrid were the biggest losers. Yet again, they failed to even make the Quarter-Finals, losing to Roma. Barcelona lost in the Semi-Final, failing to score against Manchester United in more than three hours of football. Messi, Henry , Deco, Gudjohnsen and Eto couldn’t manage a single goal between them. So, of course, Real Madrid have brought out the cheque-book and are trying to buy the best player in the world from — where else? — an English club.  Prepare for plenty of transfer action, hirings and firings, as the big Spanish and Italian clubs try to move the centre of gravity of European football back south.

‘How TV Changed Britain’ — More Stupid TV from Channel 4

Published
by
David Herman
on June 1, 2008
in Media
. 0 Comments

‘How TV Changed Britain’ is a new 6-part series on Sunday nights on Channel 4, looking at TV genres and how they have reflected and changed Britain. A mixture of clips and 30-second soundbites from various talking heads, it attempts a kind of cultural analysis. Tonight’s (June 1) opening show was about the British police on television, from ‘The Blue Lamp’ and ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ in the 1950s to ‘Life on Mars’.

It could hardly have been more pedestrian and predictable. All the old classics were there: George Dixon and ‘Z Cars’, ‘The Sweeney’ and ‘The Bill’, GF Newman’s ‘Law and Order’ and Roger Graef’s fly on the wall series, ‘Police’, and then a breathless rush through the last twenty years (’Silent Witness’, ‘Prime Suspect’, ‘Cracker’ and ‘Inspector Morse’).

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10 Reasons Why Ronaldo Should Stay at Man Utd and not go to Real Madrid

Published
by
David Herman
on May 31, 2008
in Sport
. 3 Comments

1) The Champions League is the biggest trophy in town. Real Madrid last won the Champions league in 2002. That was the great side with Makelele, Figo and Zidane in midfield. Since then, they have made it to the Semi-Finals once. They haven’t got to the Quarter-Finals in the last 4 years. Roma beat them home and away last season. They are a busted flush.

2) Remember the famous Galacticos? All gone. Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos (whatever happened to them?) were the last to go.

3) What about the Premier League Galacticos? With Beckham, Owen and Woodgate Real Madrid did nothing in Europe. After one year at Real Madrid Owen was lucky to get signed by Newcastle, Woodgate ended up at Middlesbrough and Beckham couldn’t even manage that.

4) What about domestic glory? Yes, they have won La Liga for the last two years. But they have only won it four times in the past eleven years.

5) They change manager every year. The last coach to last three seasons was Del Bosque who won the Champions League twice at the beginning of the century. Since then seven coaches.

6) Bernd Schuster? Really?? Schuster or Ferguson and Quieroz?

7) Here’s a hard choice. Who would you rather play with up front: Rooney and Tevez? Or Julio Baptista (remember his time on loan at Arsenal?), Saviola, Robinho and 31-year old sulkypants Ruud Van Nistelroy?

8 ) United are on a roll. Young players. Premiership winners two years in a row. Champions League winners and semi-finalists the year before. Saha will be replaced. Chelsea are about to go into meltdown. Arsenal too, if Hleb follows Flamini out of the door.

9) Who’s the most famous player in the world? Cristiano Ronaldo. Why? because he plays for a team that’s youthful, winning and plays exciting football. When was the last time you heard anyone talking about Saviola, Robinho and Julio Baptista? Yup. Thought so.

10) So what’s the all the fuss about? He’s trying to push up his wages at United and his sponsorship deals. Keep Real Madrid interested and he’ll stay in the headlines all the way from Moscow to the European Championships. If Portugal have a good run, he’ll be in all the sports magazines for another few weeks. That’s half the summer. His agent will be laughing. Real Madrid will not.

John Terry and globalisation

Published
by
David Herman
on May 26, 2008
in Sport
. 0 Comments

What is it that got the media so excited about ‘JT’ last week? Obviously, there’s the appeal of Chelsea’s iron man inconsolable, in floods of tears. Just as obvious, there’s the drama of one of England’s best-known players missing a penalty. After all, no one gave two hoots about sulky Anelka. And Terry embodies Chelsea: for many supporters he is Chelsea.

But what does this mean? Of the fourteen players who started or came on as subs in Moscow, four are English, and three of these were bought from other clubs in recent years. Only Terry came up through the Chelsea youth team. When fans say, John Terry is Chelsea, this is what they mean.

The reality of big-time football is that the top teams are owned by foreign millionaires or corporations; they have foreign managers; and most of their players, let alone star names, are foreign. Increasingly coaches look beyond local council estates and comprehensive schools to Africa, Argentina and southern Europe for their stars. Terry, Jamie Carragher, Stevie Gerrard, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes are the last of a species. That’s why Everton fans mourned the loss of Wayne Rooney. Of course, he was a great player in the making. Anyone could see that. But he was also a local boy. He was one of us, in a way Yakubu or Arteta could never be.

Football has gone global. And fans are torn. They know that’s the way of the world. They know that brings more money, more stars, more great football. But there’s also a sense of loss: the break between the fans and their players. Footballers used to be one of us and when they retired they bought shops and pubs and local businesses. That has changed just as that whole world has gone.

In yesterday’s Sunday Times, Alex Ferguson was talking about the future of Manchester United. he was talking about one of his favourite films, You’ve Got Mail in which a huge corporation, owned by Tom Hanks, buys up a small local bookstore, owned by Meg Ryan. That’s the future of Manchester United, he said. He wants United to be the huge, unstoppable new force. So do his fans. But they also want local players. Hence the tremendous feeling for the last local players. They are local in the new global game, reminders of a game that’s gone and a world that’s gone.

Poor Avram Grant

Published
by
David Herman
on May 24, 2008
in Sport
. 0 Comments

Was it the width of a goalpost that cost Grant his job at Chelsea? Grant could hardly have come closer to winning the Premiership. At one point, before Giggs scored United’s second goal at Wigan, Chelsea were one goal from the title. Twice they hit the woodwork in the Champions League Final and then they were one penalty kick away. It was a tremendous achievement. Grant had to overcome injuries and the loss of key players during the Africa Cup and yet still they kept coming. In the last weeks of the season they beat Arsenal and United at Stamford Bridge, Liverpool in the Champions League semi-final. And through all the speculation about his job and through all the stress of the run-in, Grant retained his dignity. When he was appointed he was universally dismissed. It was insinuated that he only got the job because he was a ‘friend’ of the owner (code for the fact that they were both Jews). No one expected him to do so well. And yet, at the end, there he was in the pouring rain comforting John Terry.

There is one thing that could be held against Grant. Chelsea need re-building. The current squad might last one more season, but that depends on who can resist the siren call of Mourinho and one last big payday in Spain or Italy as they pass thirty. Can Grant be trusted to rebuild the team that others built, Mourinho and before him, Ranieri? That’s one thing he’s not been called upon to do yet. His one purchase in January — Anelka who scored two goals in 24 games and missed that crucial penalty in Moscow — was not a success. Everyone thought it was at the time. It raised morale at Chelsea and everyone agreed Anelka was a class act. But it proved a costly mistake. It is one thing, his critics point out, to inherit a great team built by others. It’s quite another to do what Fergsuon and Wenger have done so superbly, time and again, to tear apart a great team and rebuild again. Clearly, the money men didn’t trust Grant to do this.

So Chelsea have now fired two outstanding managers in eight months. Not bad going. Of course, this is the same megalomania which saw Sven and Benitez on the verge of being dismissed. Truly Ferguson and Wenger are the last of a species — the manager who is trusted to stay on season after season. After them, the deluge.

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