Dud choices

Ronaldo eclipses Beckham memories in lackluster FA Cup final

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By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

WHETHER it was England's manager Sven-Goran Eriksson or his entourage of FA suits who were booed by the Millwall fans before the kickoff at Cardiff last Saturday, who can say?

But Eriksson certainly deserved a good booing at the end. What on earth could have possessed him to choose Ruud Van Nistelrooy as his Man of the Match? The mere fact that he had scored a couple of goals, one from a penalty, the other from a tap in?

Asked afterwards whether he was surprised at Eriksson's choice, Alex Ferguson smiled and replied, "Ruud was surprised!"

Both Ferguson and Millwall's embattled Dennis Wise were emphatic that the award should have gone to the dazzling young Ronaldo. Having seen the Portuguese turn on the style at Villa Park a week earlier, I was quite convinced that he would run rings around Millwall's hapless left back Robbie Ryan, as indeed he did.

With his glorious sleight of foot, his pace, his readiness to take on his man -- now complemented, as Ferguson pointed out, by his readiness to lay the ball off if it seems apt -- Ronaldo now looks the classic outside right in the way the multi-tattooed human hoarding David Beckham never did.

As I've so often said before, Beckham has resourcefully made the best of his limited abilities, notably a splendid right foot both powerful and accurate. But to watch Ronaldo is a joy, indicating that United need no longer mourn for Beckham, now that they have a true winger who can do so much more.

And Dennis Wise? He has had a severe post-final press and on the whole deserved it. I'd quarrel only with the criticism that he was wrong and self-indulgent to choose himself in his diminished physical state.

Indeed at the press conference I immediately asked him how fit he had felt, to get the honest reply that he was far from fit, but that he had felt obliged to play because Millwall's resources were so slender, the bench consisting largely of untried teenagers.

The loss of Kevin Muscaat -- he who lives by the sword? -- and the menacing head of Danny Dichio, plus the injury to Wise himself, put Millwall, already underdogs, at a massive disadvantage.

Wise did little or nothing of consequence, unless you include his numerous acts of aggression; but his tactics, even in those difficult circumstances, seemed hopelessly negative and renunciatory. They might be summed up in the words, "Come and get us!" Which United, after an uneasy start, duly did. Not a single save for American Tim Howard in the United goal to make.

Wise criticized his solitary striker Neil Harris for being out of form for "the last seven or eight games," but what was he expected to do, all alone, against United's defense? Not least because the elegant, usually adventurous, Tim Cahill seemingly had orders to take no risks and thus was denied any valid part in the game.

Of course United were very lucky indeed to have Paul Scholes on the field at all, given the ludicrously indulgent way he was spared a second yellow card a week earlier at Old Trafford after his crude foul on Frank Lampard.

As for Jeff Winter, refereeing his final game, he seemed determined to follow a policy of sheer indulgence. Wise was lucky to be yellow carded only late in the game. And I was struck by the fact that -- whereas Rob Styles had booked both Ronaldo and Darren Fletcher for kicking the ball away at Villa Park the previous week -- Winter took no action when Harris did just that in the 10th minute of the final.

I still detest the whole unbalanced system of red and yellow cards, as I have ever since its introduction, but rules are rules, and if a caution is decreed for that offense, why is it not given?

IF it comes to a choice in England's central midfield in Portugal between Scholes and Chelsea's Frank Lampard, surely Lampard should be the man.

Scholes hasn't scored for England in living memory; he himself has admitted he has been out of form this season, while Lampard has with one or two brief lapses been outstanding.

As for wasting a place in the England squad on Nicky Butt, so seriously short of match practice, let alone (whatever happened in the last World Cup) international class, it beggars belief.

To play Stephen Gerrard, in transcendent form in the last weeks of the season, out on the left -- on his right foot! -- still seems grotesque to me. I was interested to see Joe Royle regret that Gareth Barry wasn't called, or recalled. I saw him play impressively well at Southampton, less so against Manchester United, but he is after all the real, left-footed thing.

I still think Eriksson's squad is unadventurous, still hope that Jermain Defoe will figure, still regret that he didn't give Shaun Wright Phillips a run in Gothenburg so that he could see whether he had the "big match temperament" to match his form for Manchester City. It was all too obvious, all too early, that Alan Thompson hadn't got it.

TALKING of dud choices, what possesses France's team manager Jacques Santini to keep picking Marcel Desailly?

Desailly was booed last week in Paris on the occasion of the 0-0 draw with Brazil, the consequence it seemed of his alleged elbow in the Monaco-Chelsea game.

He came off at half time. Yet despite his lethal loss of pace, so evident when he was playing that night in Monaco, he is still in the Euro squad, while the talented young Auxerre center-half, Mexes, is not?

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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