Pass the Porto

European champion coming apart; England threw away France match

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By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

Poor Porto. Scarcely have they triumphed in the European Cup final than the whole team is in disintegration.

Of course, the manager has gone as well, Jose Mourinho now cheerfully and somewhat flamboyantly taking up residence at Chelsea. He did a superb job beyond doubt at Porto, but one still wonders if he can do as much at Stamford Bridge.

What he had, one must repeat, in Porto was homogeneity; the one major exception being that clever Russian Dmitri Alenichev, who now says that he wants to be on his way as well, though he is strangely guarded about the reasons.

Alenichev excelled, as we know, when he appeared in the European Cup final, both assisting and scoring goals, and he is playing here in Portugal with the same confidence and elusive skill that one admired when he began his long career in the Russian international team.

Porto will, of course, have a new manager in Italy's Luigi Del Neri, who has performed small miracles with limited resources at little Chievo.

But again, for different reasons, it remains to be seen whether he can do the same job at a largely rebuilt Porto, where Ricardo Carvalho and Costina, pillars of defense and midfield respectively, are to be on their way, while the highly influential Deco could well be en route to Chelsea. Where a fine young Czech keeper, Peter Cech, and a clever young Dutch left-winger, Arjen Robben, neither of them signed by Mourinho, are also due.

Mourinho means to slim down the squad; but under present circumstances that seems rather to be begging the question.

In the meantime, a Russian journalist in Lisbon assured me that despite the imminence of what seems likely to be a formidable audit commission report, Roman Abramovich won't be in trouble like other oligarchs, as there are those in the Kremlin who like him. We shall see.

YOU can hardly say that the Lazio and Italy right-flanker Stefano Fiore is burdened by a sense of history. Before the Euro tournament started he, like Gennaro Gattuso, was complaining about being left out of the side, though both did appear as substitutes in Guimaraes against Denmark.

But 70 years ago, there were shades of Mauro Camoranesi, the South American who Fiore insisted should not have been preferred to an Italian, in the case of Enrico Guaita.

Guaita was another Argentine outside-right who, as an oriundo, a South American of Italian extraction, was one of three such players to figure in the 1934 World Cup final, Luisito Monti and Raimondo Orsi being the others. In a grandiose moment, Vittorio Pozzo, the commissario technico of the Italian team, proclaimed: "If they can die for Italy, they can die for Italy!" Meaning that they were liable for military service. But when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, Guaita and other oriundi were caught trying to sneak across the Swiss border, evidently prepared to play but not to die.

TO ERR is human, but the catalogue of errors whereby England threw away their match against France was surely exceptional.

What in the name of logic possessed Steven Gerrard, of all unlikely people, to direct that pathetic back pass to his keeper David James, and thus bring about the penalty whereby Zinedine Zidane won the match?

And however splendid the save by Fabien Barthez, what excuse can there be for David Beckham, whose right foot is his fortune, missing another penalty, just as he did less expensively --- though more culpably --- in Istanbul against the Turks? Even as his fine and typically accurate free kick gave England and Frank Lampard the fine opening headed goal.

Then there the clumsy futile foul by Emile Heskey, surely lucky to be in the squad (why not Jermain Defoe?) let alone on the field.

Memories, alas, of Steve Hodge, who inexplicably and wantonly kicked the ball over his head in the Azteca stadium in the 1986 World Cup, thereby propitiating the notorious Hand of God goal scored by Diego Maradona.

Funny to think that had Sven-Goran Eriksson only kept his misbegotten flawed diamond formation, Gerrard would have been out on the left, where he could not have done that harm.

AS FOR errors, so many were made by Big Phil Scolari in that opener against Greece. Even if Cristiano Ronaldo gave away that penalty, he should surely have been on from the start and so should Deco. And isn't it time Fernando Couto, who stood off scorer Karagounis after Ferreira's shockingly slack pass, was put out to graze when Ricardo Carvalho is around?

Not to mention the drab performances in attack by Pauleta, such a scorer at Paris Saint-Germain, but not at this higher level, and his equally ineffective attacking partner, Simao.

The Greeks who, let us remember, should have beaten England at Old Trafford, only to be robbed at the last by Beckham's free kick awarded for a nonexistent foul, did very well indeed. But Scolari did make things much easier for them.

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