Gary Speed

Very sad today to read of the apparent suicide of Gary Speed, the team manager of the Wales soccer team. I remember his playing days at Leeds and Everton. With the selection of younger players he had managed to raise Wales in the FIFA rankings. He seemed to have everything to live for. I don't really want to know what underlies this.

England 1; Spain 0.

I watched the friendly international between England and Spain at Wembley last evening. Spain are European and World champions and ranked number 1 in the world. England are ranked number 7. In addition Barcelona have won the Champion's League for three seasons out of four. The Spain team is made up of mainly Barcelona and Real Madrid players.

These were the teams:

England (4-5-1): Hart; G Johnson, Jagielka, Lescott, Cole; Walcott (Downing, h-t), Jones (Rodwell, 56), Parker (Walker, 85), Lampard (Barry, 56), Milner (A Johnson, 76); Bent (Welbeck, 63).

Spain (4-3-3): Casillas (Reina, h-t); Arbeloa, Ramos (Puyol, 74), Pique, Alba; Busquets (Torres, 64), Xavi (Fabregas, h-t), Alonso; Silva (Mata, h-t), Villa, Iniesta (Cazorla, 74).

This was a full strength Spain team, while England were missing Wayne Rooney, John Terry, Stephen Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Young from their first choice XI. Talking about eleven, the week of preparation had been spoiled for England by FIFA;s refusal to allow England to wear a poppy on their shirts for Armistice weekend. This was the first Armistice day when all the warriors from the first world war were dead and it had special importance for England. The poppy is not a commercial, political or religious symbol; just a way of remembering those who had sacrificed their lives in war so that we could be free. It was suggested by FIFA that it would offend the Germans. The Germans said that they had not been consulted and would not anyway have been offended. This was a case of the usual maladroitness by FIFA.

There are two ways to play against Spain/Barcelona. You must either go all out in open play to score more goals than they can - Manchester United tried that against Barcelona in the Champion's League Final last year and lost 3-1, or you must defend deeply and play 9 behind the ball in your own half. That way the best you can hope for is a dull game and, a 0-0 score if you are lucky. Spain plays an intricate, one-touch passing game, aiming to thread their passes between the back line of defenders so that a running mid-fielder can tuck the ball round the goal-keeper.

In the event Capello had England play the Italian way with two ranks of defenders. Spain had 22 attacks on the England goal while England attacked the Spanish goal only twice. However, only two of the Spanish attacks were on target, while both the English attacks were on target. The result was that England won 1-0. The goal came from a long England clearance out of defence which Spain broke up with a cynical foul. From the resulting free-kick James Milner sent a high ball deep into the Spain penalty area where England's lone striker met it with his head and knocked it against the goal post. Rebounds off goal posts are unpredictable and this one ran at head height along the goal line from where the England captain, Frank Lampard scored with his nose.

England defended sturdily for the rest of the second half and ran out winners. Although Spain has lost friendly matches before, there is no doubt that they were trying to win this one with their first team out and a range of top flight substitutes. England started with youngsters in the team and brought in youngsters as substitutes. Undoubtedly England benefited by their centre half pairing of Jagielka and Lescott. These two were together at Everton, a team notoriously difficult to score against. They also had Scott Parker in the Claude Makelele role as stopper in front of the centre halves. Parker, now 32, has grown into this role over years at Chelsea and West Ham and now at Spurs has perfected it. Makelele continued to play this part until he was 38.

I must also comment on the different ways that English and European referees interpret the rules. Tackling from behind is an art, but it is possible to hook your foot around a player who is shielding the ball and dispossess him. Such tackles are seen every week and applauded in the English Premier League. On the continent they are immediately given as a foul and usually red or yellow carded. on the other hand, in a siege situation such as we saw yesterday, one way of relieving it is, is for a very quick player to sprint out of defence with the ball. Defenders on the Continent tend to be rather slower and their one defence against this is to impede the attacker unfairly either by tripping, a late tackle or a body check. This was exactly the tactic that Barcelona employed against Chelsea in the Champion's League semi-final a couple of years ago. In England such a body-check would merit a yellow card, since we like to see counter-attacking. In Europe it is often not even punished. Yesterday Sergio Ramos was guilty of two such body-checks which would have earned him a red card had the referee been British.

The phoenix burns out

Aldershot's dream has ended. Last night they played Manchester United in the 4th round of the Carling Cup and lost 3-0 with Manchester's goals coming from international players from England, Bulgaria and Ecuador. I remember watching Aldershot draw with Stoke City 1-1 in an FA Cup match about 50 years ago and they lost 3-1 to Manchester United in the Cup in the days of Law, Charlton and Best, but teams then can't compare with those of today.

Aldrrshot went out of business in 1991 and took 16 years to re-establish themselves in the Football League by the device of refounding themselves and entering leagues 5 divisions below teh Football League and gaining successive promotions.

News

The chemotherapy gets more difficult to bear. Side effects continued even to the morning of my current and penultimate course which began yesterday. Last night, because of the dexamethasone pre-med, I got only 2 hours sleep. My birthday on Saturday was not very enjoyable because I felt so unwell and quite depressed. Still, thanks for all the e-cards and well wishes from such a large number of people. They, at least, were appreciated.

At last Spring has sprung which is a cue for a song:

Spring is sprung the grass is rizz
Oi wonder where them boidies is?
They say the boids is on the wing but that's absoid
From what I hoid, the wing is always on the boid.

We have the cherry blossom out at last and fat wood pigeons eating it. Forsythia is full out, bright yellow in the front of the house with several patches of daffodils echoing the color. At the back the first of the camellias shines bright scarlet in the sunshine; the others are in heavy bud as are the magnolias. I counted 30 hyacinths in bloom; these are pot plants that we have placed outside in the flower bed. Violets and periwinkle are also flowering and the first of the grape hyacinths. A laurel has been flowering with dark brown blooms for most of the winter and so has the viburnum, though white/pink, not brown. A few cyclamen remain but most have finished flowering. Quite a rarity is the Dorset snowflake which resembles a snowdrop but is much taller with stems about 14 inches high.

Nice to see Manchester United reaching the last eight of the Champions League, though two more players were lost to injury. At least they had Nani and Valencia back. Afer fielding a side against Arsenal with 5 full backs last week they are in danger of having to play with only three defenders next game. They join Spurs and possibly Chelsea who carry a two-goal lead into tonight's match against FC Copenhagen.

We watched East of Eden last night. Well acted by Raymond Massey, but the Oscar nominations went to Elia Kazan, James Dean, and the adaptor of John Steinbeck's novel, Paul Osborn. The Oscar for best supporting actress went to Jo Van Fleet playing the estranged wife and mother. She was better known as a stage actress but she did appear in The Rose Tattoo, I'll Cry Tomorrow (both 1955), The King and Four Queens (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), and Cool Hand Luke (1967).

I have finished reading the last but one of the Robert Jordan series The Wheel of Time. The last volume will be published in November. That gives me something to aim for.

We have decided to defer selling our house. With summer coming we intend to take an extended holiday. The stress of moving is the last thing I want. We have had very few family holidays, my work has always been so all-consuming. This year will be different.

David Beckham

The England football manager, Fabio Capello, doesn't speak very good English, so it was probably a misunderstanding that mad him blurt out that it was unlikely that David Beckham would be picked for future England games.

David Beckham has been an England player for about 14 years and was captain for about half that time. He has been idolized by many in the same sort of way that Princess Diana was, though there has been another constituency that has been (and continues) sniping at him in the correspondence columns.

Nevertheless, he is a good example to young men who aspire to footballing greatness. I don't think most people realise how difficult it is to excel at football. The best footballer I ever played with at school, who garnered county, regional and international honours as a schoolboy turned professional and managed to achieve a few seasons with Reading in Division 3 (South).

Beckham was not the best footballer who ever played for England, but there are few if any who showed more enthusiasm for the cause. Whether you are a concert pianist or a brain surgeon it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in your field. Beckham's expertise was in kicking a football. Remember he featured in a TV advert for Weatabix at the age of 10 doing keepy-upies. Remember that he stayed on after training practising free kicks when the rest of the team went off to the golf course, betting shop or boozer.

The result was that free kick against Greece that stunned the crowd into silence. (And you should not forget that Greece went on to be the next European Champions). Even last season we had an example of Beckham crossing the ball on the volley to make a goal. Remember those two corners that won the European cup in injury time for Manchester United? The stunning long ball to Raul for Real Madrid was typical of his skill and repeated often. Neither Gerrard nor Lampard can rival him in that department.

As a right winger Beckham was neither fast like Walcott nor tricky like Johnson, but by gaining a yard or crossing on the volley he produced an end result that neither of them nor any winger since has produced. His free kicks became a by-word throughout football, and until Ronaldo, no one was better at taking them.

He also kept himself fit. Rooney is already looking dumpy at 23; Beckham has a figure good enough to feature in Gay-mags at 35. People forget that he was London schools cross country champion as a teenager.

Celebrity attaches itself to good footballers - even people like Gareth Southgate. On the whole he has handled it as well as most and has made more money from it. To have done so much without being the best footballer of the century in Britain, demonstrates his ability to make the most of his circumstances.

I can’t say I am much into celebrity culture, but he hasn’t made quite the mess of his life that some of his contemporaries have such as John Terry, Ashley Cole and even Peter Crouch.

A Maradonna Moment

We used to have a saying when I was young to the effect that cheats never prosper. An incident occurred in last night's soccer match between France and Ireland which questions that premise. A goal by Ireland had cancelled out one by France in the first leg and the match was heading towards a penalty shoot-out. Then late into overtime, France scored the winning goal. It was scored by William Gallas, but he received the ball from Thierry Henry who illegally handled it before hooking it back across the goalmouth to be headed in. The goal should have been disallowed and Henry might well have been dismissed the field of play. After the match Henry admitted the offence but claimed that it was the referee's responsibility to spot it. Indeed, had he drawn the referee's attention to the handball, he would have been denigrated by his own team and the French supporters.

However, that is what an honest man would have done. It is hardly honest to protest about fouls committed by the other side and then turn a blind eye to one's own misdemeanors. Honesty is really tested when you suffer for it.

Sports fans the world over turned on the football star, who enjoys a global profile partly thanks to an advertising campaign by Gillette, the shaving brand, that placed him in the very top tier alongside Tiger Woods, the golfer and first $1 billion athlete, and Roger Federer, the man who has won more grand slam tournaments than any other tennis player. The sponsors expect to inflict no punishment on him; they say that he can't be blamed for the referee's mistake.

Diego Maradonna committed a similar piece of dishonesty in 1986 at the World Cup finals. Maradonna was at time thought of as the finest footballer of his generation. After that match, his reputation sank. He became a cocaine addict; he became obese; and he went on the manage the worst Argentina team for half a century. He was recently banned from anything to do with football after an outburst of bad language against the press. I guess he couldn't live with himself after cheating like that. Thierry Henry had better beware.

The Damned United

After success as Tony Blair and David Frost, Michael Sheen can now be seen masquerading as football manager, Brian Clough, in the film, "The Damned United". I haven't seen the film but I have read the book by David Peace.

Brian Clough was a 2nd division footballer and a goal scoring machine. Playing for North-Eastern clubs, Middlesborough and Sunderland, he scored at the rate of nearly a goal a game, but his career ended at 29 with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

He found his way into football management, first at Hartlepools, the bottom club in the football league, then at Derby County - a midlands no-hoper team that he took the top of the 1st division, then with Brighton, another never-been-there outfit, and then on to Leeds United, the most successful team in Britain for the past 15 years.

Clough's recipe for success was pass, run, play for each other, never argue with officials, never criticise referees, never commit fouls, play football as it should be on the ground. One of his sayings was "If God had meant football to be played in the air, he would have put grass in the clouds."

But Clough didn't believe in God. He didn't believe in luck. He believed in Brian Howard Clough and fair play.

Leeds United played football in a quite different way. They were good, but they were hard. They sought out their opponents weaknesses and played on them. They fouled, they niggled, they feigned injury, they time-wasted, they bullied referees; they cheated. Their long term manager, Don Revie, was a meticulous planner, superstitious, and a whinger. He always had an excuse if thing went wrong. It was never him or his team that erred; it was always bad luck, or a blind referee, or the fans or fixture congestion, or the opposition cheating.

Clough and Revie were diametric opposites. Clough was arrogant, outgoing, conceited, often drunk, emotional, unreliable, brilliantly inspiring and a fast talker. Revie was taciturn,, unsmiling, introverted, tight-lipped, religious (in a superstitious way), punctual, regulated and tongue-tied. They did not get on.

Then there were the owners. In the 1970s football cubs were owned by a Board of Directors - usually self-made working class successes. These men had made their money form scrap metal or haulage, they were butchers or owned a fleet of taxicabs. They were often local politicians for how better to get those lucrative contracts than sitting on the council that awarded them. Local graft was the rule not the exception. The well known and irreverent footballer, Len Shackleton, wrote his own autobiography, rather than have a journalist to write it for him. He had one chapter entitled, "What the average football director knows about football". The chapter consisted of blank pages.

As you might imagine Clough did not get on with directors. He found himself dismissed from Derby County and while settled with lowly Brighton was approached by Leeds United. He broke his contract went to Leeds and told the players there to chuck their trophies and medals in a bin, since they'd only won them by cheating. The players, the fans, the directors, and the old manager all hated him and he hated them. He lasted 44 days before being canned.

5 years later he had taken Nottingham Forest, in the next door town to Derby, to the first division championship and twice to become Champions of Europe.

In 2004 he died of cancer having already had a liver transplant for alcoholic cirrhosis.

The novel is a strange one; a impressionistic fiction based on fact. It offended a lot of people, but was critically acclaimed. If the picture that it paints of football is an accurate one, then it is a horrible world. The footballers are foul-mouthed, heavy smokers, drinkers and lechers. Their on-the-pitch behavior is cynical and fraudulent. At one point in the novel Clough the socialist/atheist opines that there must be a heaven because the world he lives in is surely hell. I'd agree with that.

Inverting the Pyramid

The grandfather of my former Pastor's wife played football for England.

William John "Billy" Wedlock (28 October 1880 – 25 January 1965), also known as "Fatty" or the "India Rubber Man", was a footballer who played for Bristol City in 1900–01 and from 1905 until his retirement in 1921. He was a centre-half whose his short and stout stature belied his natural talent. He won 26 England caps between 1907 and 1914,[1] his only rival for the centre-half position being Charlie Roberts of Manchester United, his opposite number in the 1909 FA Cup Final. The East End of Bristol City's ground at Ashton Gate is named the Wedlock Stand in his honour. Wedlock's pub (currently closed) opposite the ground was where he lived and worked for 43 years. He was born in Bedminster, south of the River Avon. He started playing football with Masonic Rovers before joining the Bristol City amateurs, who played as a branch called Arlington Rovers. When he did not make the transition to professional, he transferred to Gloucester County and then joined Aberdare in Wales. Only in 1905 did he return to Bristol City FC, where he stayed until 1921. During the 1905/06 season he won the second-division championship with the “Robins”, and during the following season even were English runner-up. “Billy” Wedlock made a late start, but upon his return became a mainstay right away and went on to become one of the best English centre-halves.




He made his full international début against Ireland on February 16, 1907, and then played for the English national team without a break until 1912. Up to 1914 he played a total of 26 full “A” internationals. Yet from the 1911/12 season onwards, he languished in the second division with his club. “Billy” Wedlock was an excellent centre half-back, outstanding both in attack and in defence. He was very elastic, and popularly known as “India Rubber Man”. Although he was not particularly tall, he had an amazing energy. He reached the Welsh Cup final with Aberdare in 1904 and 1905, and the English Cup final with Bristol City in 1909. When he concluded his active career at the age of 39, he was granted a licence to open a pub in the immediate vicinity of Ashton Gate, the stadium of his club.

What surprised me about this story was the fact that Billy Wedlock was only 5 foot three inches tall. Centre halves are usually six foot two or more. Their role is to be the stopper who prevents the big centre forward from scoring. It wasn't until I read this book, "Inverting the Pyramid" that I understood. It is written by Jonathan Wilson, the football corespondent of the Financial Times and it is a history of playing formations in football. It sounds incredibly boring, but it gives a fascinating insight into social history. I began watching football in 1948 and at that time everybody used the W-M formation developed by Herbert Chapman at Huddersfield and then Arsenal in the 1930s, but before that football had been developed as an attacking game with the teams lined up in the shape of a pyramid. In front of the goalkeeper were two full backs. In front of them were three half backs and in front of them five forwards. At that time the centre half was the play maker - like a quarter-back in American Football. What Chapman did was to withdraw the centre half to be a third defender, and he also withdrew the inside forwards to link with the two remaining half backs. This was the age of the tricky winger exemplified by Stanley Matthews.

My father was at the 1953 Cup Final when Blackpool beat Bolton 4-3. Known as Matthews' Final, it highlighted the skill of the right winger who danced along the right touchline mesmerizing the opposing full back and then sending a high cross over for centre forward Stan Mortenson to head into the net. I attended the Cup Final the following year when everybody expected the other great winger of the period, Tom Finney, to repeat Matthews' triumph. But it wasn't to be. Finney's Preston North End were beaten by West Bromwich Albion 3-2 with a winning goal in the last minute. Something remarkable had happened in the meantime. Hungary had beaten England 6-3 at Wembley in a match that spelled the end of W-M.

Hungary's formation relied on a withdrawn centre-forward with four attackers, but the key was fluidity. Players played for each other rather than for themselves. Even though the players were among the most skilled the world had yet seen, their success was how they moved when they didn't have the ball. Pass the ball the run into space was their watchword. They didn't have the physique of the English players but they had a system.

I'll leave you to read the book if you are interested, but the story is fascinating when seen as a Hegelian dialectic with each thesis met by antithesis and the synthesis becoming the new thesis.

The Brazilians and the Dutch both made their contribution and today we see Manchester United playing without any forwards but with two backs, two wing-backs and seven midfielders becoming world champions.