Questions remain

Man Utd transfers still obscure; European coaches due for culture shock

Find out more about World Soccer magazine's online subscription offer.

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

MANCHESTER United's "internal" report into its transfer dealings, provoked by the demands of Magnier and McManus' 99 questions, raises as many questions as it answers, whatever the confidence of United's new chief executive, Nick Humby, that all doubts have been laid to rest.

In particular, I find the bizarre case of the Tim Howard transfer and the obscure Italo-Swiss agent, Gaetano Moratta, less explicable than ever.

We already knew that Marotta had paid over $200,000 of his commission, for reasons obscure, to the Monaco-based agent Mike Morris, a close ally of Alex Ferguson's son Jason and his Elite agency now barred from dealing with United.

It is now revealed, by Humby, that out of the £2.3 million transfer fee paid to the MetroStars of New Jersey for Howard, a colossal £700,000 went to Marotta. But why?

Initially United's explanation, if it can thus be called, was that Marotta had been instrumental in gaining Howard a work permit. But as one who served for two years on the appeals panel for such permits at the Department of Employment, I pointed out -- though not on the panel that waved Howard through -- that no agent ever played the smallest part in our deliberations.

Moreover, given his fine performances in the 2003 Confederations Cup in France, Howard was a shoo-in. Other vast payments to agents are also being examined. Since United are now a public company, the matters can hardly end here.

NIGEL REO-COKER, the highly promising young West Ham United midfielder, spoke sound sense before the playoff in Cardiff where his team went down. Such playoffs, he logically said, were unfair to the teams that had finished high up in the division but could then be (and in this case were indeed then) edged out by those that had come far lower down.

That Crystal Palace should have reached the playoff final at all -- thanks to West Ham's breathlessly late equalizer at Wigan -- was deeply ironic. That they should then, having limped in so relatively low in the National Division One, have beaten Hammers and attained the Premiership, added insult to injury.

The playoff finals may indeed attract vast crowds, but they remain no more than a cynical gimmick supposed to keep interest going in the leagues until the end of the season.

Justice and logic surely demand that whatever team has finished third in the table has a moral right to promotion. Not that I am inclined to shed any tears for West Ham's disappointed manger, Alan Pardew. The callous way he walked out on Reading, where he had been well paid and well treated, was displeasing in the extreme. It took a long time before he had Hammers showing any kind of consistency, after a disastrous run of ineptitude at home.

I don't doubt that West Ham, with their bigger stadium, their larger fan base and their better squad of players (however poorly the team played at Cardiff) would be better bet in the Premiership. Nor do I fail to appreciate the managerial skills of the talented Ian Dowie, a man with an impressive background outside the game.

Now I suppose we shall see a mass exodus from Upton Park. But Reo-Coker suggests some hope.

BOTH Chelsea and Liverpool have been hell bent on acquiring successful European coaches. Jose Mourinho impressively won the European Cup with Porto -- though his luck was in at Old Trafford.

Rafael Benitez not only took Valencia, despite their debits, to victory in the UEFA Cup, but won the Primera Liga as well.

Would either do as well in England? Bobby Robson, who was initially Mourinho's mentor in Lisbon and Barcelona, gives warning that it won't be as easy for him here as in Portugal, where there were only Benfica and Sporting Lisbon to compete with.

Well, what's the difference? Who outside Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United made any true challenge for a largely mediocre Premiership, this year.

At Liverpool, Michael Owen is said to favor Benitez, though you do wonder whether Owen is aware of Benitez's reputation in Spain as a highly cautious coach who bases his tactics on solid defense. And who has been compared unenthusiastically in Valencia with his predecessor, the Argentine Hector Cuper, never persona grata with fans who yearned for the more expansive managerial days of Claudio Ranieri. Who in turn has been so insensitively dragged around Europe by Chelsea, when everyone knew his die was cast.

There is talk of Mourinho bringing in all sorts of new players to Stamford Bridge, some from Porto themselves, others such as Fernando Morientes and Roberto Carlos (why would they need him?). There are already two expensive new arrivals scheduled. Many must leave.

All of this means that instead of Mourinho having the largely compact block of Portuguese and Brazilians he had at Porto, he will, like Ranieri, have to deal with an array of stars from all around the world. And his boast very rationally has been that, with Porto, he has built a championship winning team with a minimum of expenditure and a host of Portuguese players.

Impatient for success, Roman Abramovich, abetted by Peter Kenyon, will no doubt go on spending, but we have already seen the hazards of such a policy.

Mourinho, meanwhile, may well speak such excellent English, but coming to England from Portuguese football cannot help but be a culture shock.

FRANK LAMPARD has belatedly and very properly been offered the kind of new contract he deserved as Chelsea's best player of the season: £80,000 a week, the same sum paid, rather than earned, to the sadly peripheral (not least quite literally in Monaco) Juan Sebastian Veron.

In all modesty, he said he expects Nicky Butt to be preferred to him in the England midfield.

With equal modestly, Paul Scholes declared he could lose his place to Lampard. But why in all rationality Nicky Butt, a player who lost his place in the Manchester United midfield and is at best a doggedly pedestrian player? Even if Eriksson, the man who chose Van Nistelrooy over the dazzling Ronaldo as his FA Cup final man of the match, seems to find him essential as covering midfielder in his so-called diamond formation.

Mourinho favors the diamond as well, but look what happened in the European Cup final when he boldly took off winger Carlos Alberto in the second half for the Russian veteran Dimitri Alenitchev, a classical, creative inside-forward who proceeded to assist one goal and score another.

Lampard? At last Eriksson has seen sense and chosen him ahead of Butt!

AND then there's the case of David Beckham -- who made that half-baked, silly, ill-judged attempt at the Sardinian training camp to exclude certain newspapers and broadcasters from the England press conference -- while pathetically denying all his supposed trespasses and insisting that he was "a nice person."

Well, he probably is, if hardly a vibrantly intelligent one (off the field at least), but the answer was plain enough both to him and his talentless wife, equally in denial.

If they have been libeled, let them by all means sue. And if they won't sue, what can we deduce?

WHAT a delight to watch Nigeria at Charlton last Saturday, running a ponderous if under-strength Ireland ragged.

Above all to see Ubefemi Martins, the 19-year-old attacking prodigy, make what was, surprisingly, his debut for his country.

Instructed firmly by their manager at half time to give the powerful Martins the ball ahead of him, they at once began to do so, enabling him very early in the half to force a fine save from the excellent Colgan, and then to score, dribbling through Ireland's statuesque defenders.

Martins, who ran rings around Arsenal at Highbury in the Champions League, has had a remarkable season with Inter in Milan, keeping far better known and infinitely more expensive players out of the Inter attack. Not least Hernan Crespo, who then found his costly way to Chelsea -- and could well be on the move, again.

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.