Giving the devil his due

FIFA's Blatter hardly deserved such a welcome in England

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

SAY it isn't so, Mark! Can it really be true that Mario Palios, chief executive of the Football Association, wants to mend the FA's fences with the ineffable Sepp Blatter, ever-contentious president of FIFA, the Joao Havelange (his mentor, don't forget) of our times?

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I never had much -- no let's rephrase that -- any time for Palios' egregious predecessor Adam Crozier, whose financial profligacy landed the FA with massive debts, who superfluously and expensively moved the headquarters from Lancaster Gate -- without even going through the proper procedures -- and sacked many a tried and true servant of the association, to install a host of female market apparatchiks at £80,000 a year each.

My own view was that Crozier should never have been appointed in the first place, after revelations about his dealings at the Daily Telegraph, but at least he was right to unleash his broadsides against Blatter in Seoul before the 2002 presidential elections -- in vain, of course.

The only real chance of stopping Blatter was four years earlier in Marseille, when the big Swede Lennart Johansson seemed home and dry, only, mysteriously and inexplicably, for his vote to crumble so radically that he admitted defeat even before the final poll had to be taken.

There has been -- and can be -- no stopping Blatter after that, any more than you could have stopped the outrageous Havelange. Given the fatuous structure of FIFA, where the smallest, most obscure football country's vote is as good as the greatest, the way is endlessly open to manipulation.

Give the devil his due, Blatter, as one has said before, is utterly within his rights to put an end to the fiasco of friendlies, brushing aside the silly casuistry of Sven-Goran Eriksson and Co. to decree that no more than six -- Sepp originally wanted five -- substitutions can be made in friendlies.

As against that, he is to bring back that monstrosity, the so-called Club World Championship, and this at a time when he is deploring the proliferation of tournaments, even having the brass neck to try to interfere with the existence of FA Cup replays -- already cut down to one, when in the old days, of course, they could go on almost indefinitely.

But to see red carpets unrolled for Blatter in London, to confront the astonishing, emetic news that he was even going to be received by the Queen, was to confront the awful realities of the higher -- lower? -- politics of world football.

Besides, didn't Havelange himself, the Teflon President, stay in office for 24 years, while the game's leaders -- not least Harry Cavan of Northern Ireland -- groveled to him?

Please don't read David Yelland's How They Sold The Game if you haven't already. It will only upset you with your sense of impotence.

ANOTHER of the decisions taken by the International Board on the occasion of Sepp Blatter's regal visit to London was to confirm the new interpretation of the offside law.

This nicely coincided with the controversy over the two goals which Arsenal scored in the first four minutes against Charlton at Highbury last Saturday.

Alan Curbishley, Charlton's estimable manager, contended that both should have been disallowed for offside -- against Robert Pires in the first place, Thierry Henry in the second. Though he plainly saw nothing wrong with the goal whereby Charlton replied, since the free kick that Claus Jensen knocked in off the post should not have been awarded, Lauren having certainly taken the ball with his punished tackle.

Yet I do take Curbishley's point, the more so as my mind goes back to the Valencia experiment. You may remember that a few years ago scientists in the Spanish city decided that it was literally impossible for a linesman to give an offside decision, since this entailed first seeing the place from which the ball was initially kicked, then swiveling round to descry where the attacking player had come from to receive it.

As we know, what counts is where that player is placed when the ball is played, not where he is when he runs on to it. It's clear enough that the new gloss on the rule makes it harder than ever for any linesman to know what is happening.

As things now stand, there will be an infinity of debatable decisions. Already the change in the law, whereby an attacking player in line with defenders is onside rather than offside, has given a great advantage to the attacking team. The new rule will be a defender's a referee's and a linesman's continuing nightmare.

As the famed Billy Shankly of Liverpool said, "If a player isn't interfering with the play, what's he doing on the field?"

AS the old Rogers and Hart song had it, "How strange the change from major to minor." Or, in this instance, you might say, from minor to major.

Great rejoicing on Teeside at Middlesbrough's at last winning, after 129 years, a so-called major trophy: the Football League Cup. I keep forgetting who happens to be sponsoring it at any particular moment. This after Boro in their long history, twice thwarted not long since in cup finals at Wembley, had managed merely to win the FA Amateur Cup twice, in the late 19th Century.

A local comedian called Davie Morris used to bring the house down with his catch phrase, "Boro for the cup," but of course he meant the FA Cup. The League Cup even when it had more connection with reality than it does today was never much more than Alan Hardaker's Revenge on the FA.

But now, when so many of the big clubs snub it, how can it be taken so seriously? Boro surely would never have reached the semifinal, let alone the final, had Arsenal not put out two reserve-filled squads against them. When the chips were genuinely down, the Gunners simply brushed Boro aside, almost concurrently with those League Cup games.

SPEAKING of Arsenal, why was there so much exuberance over their uneasy 3-2 win in Spain against Celta Vigo, even if it did mean that they'd prevailed at long last in the previously forbidden territory?

The Gunners' central defense that evening was shockingly fallible, giving away goals and chances unworthy of its reputation. And whatever the merits of its long unbeaten run in the Premiership and the quality of its first half football against Charlton, football matches last for two halves, and how close it came to a 2-2 draw when that overhead kick by Jonathan Johansson hit the post.

WHILE I was watching West Ham United in the second half demolish Cardiff City at Upton Park, 1-0 being a meager reward for their dominance, poor Wimbledon were losing 4-0 at Watford.

How they could have used their three young ex-players who all got on the field for West Ham! Above all Nigel Reo-Coker, who seems to me, still aged only 19 and turning 20 in May, a player of enormous potential, great versatility, an attacking midfielder of pace, intelligence and skill. He was, even as a teenager, already captain of Wimbledon, which testifies to his confidence and character.

His former teammates with the Dons, McAnuff and Nowland, each got on the field, as substitutes. What damage those misguided Norwegians have done to Wimbledon, installed in Egil Olsen, a maverick coach who might have been fine in Norway but was death to the Dons. Nor does the former savior of the club, Sam Hammam, now patron of Cardiff City, escape the slings and arrows of embittered Wimbledon fans.

One's sincere sympathy goes to the Dons' hapless manager, Stuart Murdoch. As fast as he introduces new talent to his team, he's forced to sell it.

SVEN-Goran Eriksson, under fire again with the revelations that he has supposedly earmarked Pavel Nedved for Chelsea, is said to know already the squad he will take to Portugal for the European Championship.

If true, this seems fatuous to me. Surely the door should be kept open for suddenly emerging talent, and equally to eject those who in the meantime fall away in form.

Ledley King, of course, is one obviously strong candidate, though Eriksson seems to hint that there is no chance of his being chosen.

And I can think of two or three in his present squad who scarcely deserve their place.

MANCHESTER United's recent failings make it plainer than ever that Alex Ferguson is too often swayed by personal pique at the expense of true objectivity.

It was quite absurd to get rid of David Beckham, who hasn't remotely been replaced, just as it was to jettison Jaap Stam, seemingly because of his autobiographical revelations of the way he had tapped at PSV.

Note please that his form at Lazio has been so impressive that he'll be off to AC Milan next season. And who replaced Stam at United? The fading, laboring Laurent Blanc. Fergie's folly.

Meanwhile, Peter Kenyon, who jumped ship at Old Trafford to become chief executive at Chelsea, has generously said he'll cooperate with inquiries into doings at Old Trafford. I don't see he has much choice, and it will be interesting to hear his take on the Tim Howard affair and even that of David Bellion, whose passage from Sunderland to United so enraged Sunderland's Chairman, Bob Murray.

Ferguson, however, had every right to be incensed at Loftus Road by the inept failure of the referee to award a penalty for Edwin Van der Sar's blatant foul on Louis Saha. Quite how Alan Wiley failed to see anything wrong with so illicit a challenge beggared belief.

At Upton Park, I sat behind the former senior referee George Cooper, who confirmed my belief that the talented young Cardiff and Wales center back Danny Gibbidon should have been sent off for so obviously pushing Bobby Zamora of West Ham in the back when he had a clear run at goal.

Lennie Lawrence, Cardiff's manager, praised the referee George Cain for giving no more than a yellow card both to Gabbidon and to an irate Thomas Repka, who seemed to square up to him in the second half. But two blacks don't make a white. Nor do two yellows.

FEW major managers are as honest as Bayern Munich's Otmar Hitzfelt, whose team meet Real Madrid in the Bernabeu next week.

They should have beaten Real in Munich last week and would have done were it not for another of those ghastly blunders by their keeper Oliver Kahn, letting through that far from irresistible free kick by Roberto Carlos. Just as he gave away that awful goal in the 2002 World Cup final against Brazil, after the press had made him best keeper of the tournament, the vote having been cast before the final.

"We lack stability," he admits, "especially in central defense, where we have serious problems."

Bayern also, he declares, lack "great personalities who can solve problems in critical moments."

And he laments the absence of two key midfielders in Sebastian Deisler and clever Mehmet Scholl.

"You only have to see how hard we find it to create clear chances to realize how much we miss those two!"

Brian Glanville is Britain's most celebrated football writer. He also writes a monthly column in World Soccer magazine. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

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