A wing and a prayer

These Euro 2004 wingers have proven the value of wide players

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By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

CHRIS WADDLE, a famous two-sided winger himself in his day, was scathing about England's lack of real wing play but enthusiastic about the wingers we have seen in this tournament.

Chris was emphatic about the importance of the forward who can get to the line and pull the ball back -- surely the most dangerous pass in the game and one used to supreme effect long ago by those two great wingers, Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney.

England now, by sharp contrast, don't use real wingers at all. Waddle was emphatic about the nature of David Beckham's play on the right wing, which clearly goes counter to all he wants to see in a true winger. I take the point entirely, for I have always said that Beckham is a right winger sui generis.

Well, that great right winger, or anything else in attack, George Best has said much the same, but in far less flattering terms. Thanks to his remarkable right foot -- though not so remarkable when he culpably missed the spot kick against France -- Beckham largely gets away with the fact that he has little pace and no great ball skills. In other words, you can never ask him to get past his man on the outside, go to the line and pull back that lethal pass.

But this has been an English problem ever since the time of Alf Ramsey's Wingless Wonders in the 1966 World Cup. It will be remembered that though Alf had the likes of Terry Paine and John Connelly available, with Peter Thompson a possible previous choice, he ultimately chose to play a 4-3-3 formation with natural midfielders Alan Ball and subtle Martin Peters on the flanks.

Ironically enough, one of the reasons that it worked in the World Cup final was that little Ball performed on the right wing in a style any true winger would envy, making mincemeat of the powerful Karl Heinz Schnellinger, his opposing full back, and pulling back the ball, from which Geoff Hurst hit the underside of the crossbar, for what counted, rightly or wrongly, as the third English goal.

Hans Keller, that clever old Viennese lower of the old Austrian Wunderteam, wrote in the New Statesman the day before that final, "Next week I shall describe how England won the World Cup and what we can do about it."

You can see what he means all these years on. Real wingers have been discouraged in English football on the grounds of a spurious practicality. I remember Jackie Charlton, that arch pragmatist, reading me a lecture as manager of Sheffield Wednesday about my predilection for wingers, the burden of his song being that in modern football you just couldn't afford them. Well, this Euro tournament has proved him and such doom-laden defeatists utterly wrong.

Let me give three examples. Or four, if you want. I suppose one of the finest attacking displays anyone has seen here has been that in the second half of the Spain vs. Greece game by the Spanish right winger Joaquin, who came on only in the second half for Etxeberria, himself in dazzling form in Spain's previous match versus Russia.

Joaquin showed power, pace, control and splendid readiness to take on and beat defenders, till he got to the line. He assisted one important goal (did the ball run out of play? "No," said the referee) and should have had another when Raul so inexplicably headed over the bar.

Another right winger to excel has been the Czech Karel Poborsky, eight years on from his fine form in the Euro 96 tournament. After that, Poborsky was happy to join Manchester United but not so happy to find when he got there that his scope was limited, that Beckham was in the ascendant. Not till he got back to the continent -- with the likes of Benfica, Lazio and now Sparta Prague -- did the old flair and fire return. Now at 32, as his colleague Pavel Nedved says, he is as good as ever, making mere age an irrelevance.

And then there's Cristiano Ronaldo, meagerly used by Big Phil Scolari, the coach whose choices have been highly debatable. He gave away a penalty, yes, in his first game, but he headed a goal, shone on the left and created a goal against Russia from the left again, in his second, limited outing.

DID Sven-Goran Eriksson, who so ineptly chose Van Nistelrooy above Ronaldo as man of the match in the FA Cup final, somehow pick Milan Baros as top man in the Czechs vs. Lativia game, when Baros with his selfish folly had given away the Latvian goal?

And what of Igor Stepanovs, such a flop at Highbury, yet not only a bulwark against the Czechs, but the man who robbed Baros, then made the sweeping pass that led to the dramatic Latvian goal?

FRANCE undervalued? They needed vast luck to beat England and even to draw with Croatia, unrecognizable from the team that drew feebly with the Swiss. Thierry Henry? Hardly an irresistible force out here.

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