Going off to Cardiff

No one likes these FA Cup finalists, and they don't care

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

THERE'LL be a hot time in the old town tonight. The town being Cardiff where one can only hope and pray it won't, in London parlance, "go off" on the occasion of the FA Cup Final on May 22.

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Millwall's fans have alas been associated with outbreaks of violence since the 1920s, perhaps the worst of the lot following the lost playoff game against Birmingham City at The New Den at the end of season 2001-02. Then, 900 hooligans attacked a far smaller group of police with extreme ferocity. My Deep Throat, who was among the melee with a cell phone in his hand, told me that the police's bravery saved lives.

But Cardiff City have their own hooligan echelon, the so-called Soul Crew, whose excesses have been committed up and down England. Throw in Manchester United's fans who, though very substantially more peaceful than in the violent days of old, could well be drawn into any conflicts, and you shudder for the possible consequences.

Violence, however, doesn't wholly categorize Millwall's fans, who are something of an oasis in an increasingly bourgeois scene, characterized with scorn by United's Roy Keane as the prawn sandwich people. I know Oxbridge graduates who go down to The Den with delight, relishing the friendliness and football knowledge of the fans they meet there.

The club itself has turned somersaults to deal with violence and racism, but it must sometimes have felt like trying to bail out the Pacific with a thimble. My Deep Throat has told me of an incident some years ago at Watford where he stood on the terraces: Watford scored, a local fan exulted, whereupon a huge Millwall fan rushed down and bit his ear in two.

As a team, Millwall over the years have gone through many different phrases. The tendency to associate them with an up guards and at 'em approach, embodied by the likes of their beloved blond fullback, Harry Cripps, should be resisted.

Certainly that attitude has prevailed from time to time. Not least, I recall, when in 1957 they surprisingly knocked mighty Cup fighter Newcastle United out at The Den in the third round, Jackie Milburn and all, thanks largely to the inspired bull at a gate tactics of a burly fullback called Stan Anslow, used that day at center forward. I enjoyed that game, but have also enjoyed the smooth, intelligent football Millwall have played at times.

The team, for instance, managed by that quintessential Cockney Benny Fenton that featured little Derek Possee and Barry Bridges, once an England center forward, up front. Benny lost his nerve in a crucial match at Birmingham, which I also covered, played too defensively, losing to an offside goal scored by Birmingham's Hatton.

It was that Millwall era that spawned one of the best books on football ever written. Eamonn Dunphy's diary Only A Game. Dunphy, a talented Irish inside forward now a well known TV figure in Dublin, made much fun of the aspiring but naive young left winger Gordon Hill. Not least recounting a pseudo tennis matched played against Harry Cripps in a hotel foyer without bat or balls, every "point" being credited to Harry. "I know," said Hill bitterly when I spoke to him about it on a South American tour, "I'd like to smash him in the face."

But he had already had his revenge. When Dunphy had failed at Manchester United, Hill had gone there, flourished, and at that point was on tour with England.

THE eulogy Bob Wilson penned about Arsene Wenger on the eve of last week's ill-starred semifinal was fulsome to a degree. Whereupon Wenger got things as wrong at Villa Park as he had the previous Sunday against Manchester United at Highbury.

In the Premiership match, a rush of blood to the head induced Wenger, with the Gunners leading 1-0, to send on the ever-vulnerable and error-prone Pascal Cygan to play on the left of midfield. Predictably United left him standing and contrived their equalizing goal.

What is it about Wenger and Cygan? How can he persist with so inadequate a defender in the face of all the evidence? Even at such a crucial point in such a crucial match. It is as if Wenger cannot bear to face the fact that he has wasted £2 million. The mind boggles.

So to Villa Park and other blunders. What possessed Wenger, if he did have to "rest" Thierry Henry at the start of the semifinal -- itself a dubious decision -- to replace him with the inexperienced young Frenchman, Jeremie Aliadiere? Wenger's excuse was that if he had picked the £17 million Spaniard Jose Antonio Reyes, the pairing with Bergkamp wouldn't have worked. Who knows? We do know that Aliadiere was way out of his depth.

Yet the determining moment of the match, surely under-reported in the press, was when Robert Pires, perfectly served by Bergkamp from right to left and in abundant space, feebly directed his header wide of the goal. Goals, let me remind you, change games, and Pires -- who took that headed goal at Stamford Bridge so well -- would have put the Gunners in a commanding psychological position.

Still, as Disraeli put it, the defects of great men are the consolation of dunces, and did not even the mythical Herbert Chapman, architect of Arsenal's fortunes, blunder at Walsall in January 1933? There, in a third round FA Cup match against little Walsall, then a third division team, Chapman left out key figures and Arsenal were sensationally beaten 2-0.

GERMAN football, long obsessed by what it felt was the irregularity of Geoff Hurst's second goal in the 1966 World Cup final, is now embroiled in controversy over Germany's 3-2 win in the 1954 World Cup Final over the favorites, Hungary?

In brief, were the German players doped? Ever since so many of them were hit by jaundice after that game, the suspicions have persisted.

Now a Swiss groundsman has testified that he found syringes after that match, under a drain. Ferenc Puskas, Hungary's captain that day, has alleged that when he went into the German dressing room after the final, it was to find German players vomiting. An accusation that has always been angrily denied.

My own feeling is that in all probability there is no smoke without fire, even if the German doctor who looked after that team insists the only injections that he gave them was Vitamin C. In those remote times, naive to a degree, there was no such thing as dope tests.

But what of a much later World Cup final, that of 1978 in Buenos Aires? I still find it hard to understand, again as one who was there, how the Argentines rose from the canvas against Holland in extra time, after looking down and out at the end of the 90 minutes, and proceeded to dominate and win the game. We'll never know, of course; though we can be pretty sure there was dirty work at the crossroads over Argentina's thumping win against Peru, 6-0, which put them into that final.

"DO RIGHT, don't write!" was the old, cynical advice to men involved in clandestine affairs. To which, given the latest Beckham scandal, might be added, "And don't text, either!"

Putting aside the morality of the case, how did those texts come into the public domain? Who was responsible for what was surely a shocking act of betrayal?

It was, I suppose, an accident waiting to happen. Victoria Beckham has ambitions that far outstrip her minuscule talents as a singer. How wise she would have been to feel grateful for the fortune she's made as a Spice Girl -- a member of that manufactured, mediocre group -- rather than lust after fame she will never achieve. Fame which her husband by sharp contrast has achieved in spades, on a worldwide basis.

IF it does indeed transpire that Claudio Ranieri is offered the chance to continue as Chelsea's manager, what a triumph for him and a massive humiliation for Peter Kenyon, brought in at huge expense to be chief executive at Chelsea when there seemed no great need to change the guard.

A salutary warning, too, to Roman Abramovich that in football as in life, money isn't everything. Ranieri has made his mistakes -- so has Wenger, for that matter -- but he has kept his club buoyant, won the affection of fans and players, shown grace under extreme pressure.

Mind you, if he were sacked, he'd reportedly pocket £8 million. Pocket money to Abramovich, you may say, but decent compensation, surely!

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.

His latest book, a fully updated edition of THE STORY OF THE WORLD CUP is available in all good bookshops. Readers of worldsoccer.com can buy this highly acclaimed history of the World Cup and enjoy a 10% discount by clicking here.