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You have to take chances
Posted: Tuesday April 25, 2000 06:40 PM
In April of 1987 Marco Van Basten was a tall, prolific young Dutch striker coming off a knee injury who had just committed his future to one of the giants of European football. In April of 2000, Ruud Van Nistelrooy is a tall, prolific, young Dutch striker coming off a knee injury who has just committed his future to one of the giants of European football. Does the parallel end there? Is Van Nistelrooy the second coming of the great one or is he just another pretender who has greatness thrust upon him? Manchester United has staked some US $30 million on the former. There is a myth that Sir Alex Ferguson has painstakingly and cheaply built a club from scratch, drawing upon talented youngsters. While there is no question that the Beckham, Scholes, Neville generation which now forms the backbone of the team was shrewdly developed through the youth ranks, United has always spent big, at least compared to the rest of the English game. Bryan Robson, Gary Pallister, Roy Keane, Andy Cole, and now Van Nistelrooy: each one shattered the British transfer record. Throw in Jaap Stam (US $20 million, a world record for a defender) and Dwight Yorke (not exactly a snip at US $22 million) and you've got a club which has not been afraid to throw money around, despite nurturing this image of home-grown success. Make no mistake about it. Van Nistelrooy was bought for one reason and one reason only: to win the Champions League. Success in Europe's top competition is now paramount. Little else matters. Unless you happen to be a Lazio or a Deportivo La Coruna, i.e. a club with little tradition of success on the home front, winning the league is like winning a free order of small fries at McDonald's. The US $80 million Powerball lottery is something else entirely. Juventus, for example, is on its way to romping home to its fourth Serie A title in six seasons, but it is already looking to strengthen its squad for next season's Champions League campaign. Bari's Swedish midfielder Daniel Andersson is already on board, while striker Pippo Inzaghi is on the market (any takers at US $40 million?) in order to raise funds for new players. It's the same story at Manchester United, which last weekend emphatically won its sixth title in eight years. OK, so it proved it can squash the rest of the Premiership the way Godzilla might have flattened the Lilliputians. So what? Winning the English league is no longer enough to satisfy Sir Alex's hunger for silverware, nor the sponsors' commercial aspirations. For all the hype, in thirteen years at Old Trafford, he has won just one Champions League (and that was thanks to two twilight zone injury time goals). That's just not good enough, by his standards. And soon it won't be good enough by anybody's standards. This summer, more than any other, you will see clubs breaking the bank, spending cash whether they have it or not. Those who yearn for the old days of the European Cup say they miss the tension of the knock-out. Perhaps that was more fun. But if there's one thing that this season's Champions League has taught us, it's that the most talented teams (not necessarily the best teams) are most likely to go far. Look at the semifinalists. In terms of individual talent, firepower and star quality, the five best teams to make it to the second round were Lazio, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester United. Guess what? They all made the quarterfinals and, apart from Lazio (which committed collective suicide against Valencia) and United (torn apart by a magnificent Real Madrid), they all made the semifinals. Or look at Dynamo Kyiv. Last year, with two superstar strikers, it struck fear in the hearts of Europe. With Andriy Shevchenko out of the equation, it said farewell in the second round. And this was a club whose biggest asset was clockwork-like tactical mechanisms and single-minded cohesion. What this shows is that, for all the talk of team spirit, teamwork and the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, talent is the ultimate discriminating factor. If you have great players, they can win games for you at any moment, in any situation. And it's worth noting that, apart from Valencia, the other three surviving clubs aren't exactly the most cohesive units. In fact, they've had rollercoaster seasons on the domestic front and have endured more bickering and in-fighting than a bad soap opera. Which brings us back to Van Nistelrooy and United. Sir Alex's club is above all a great unit, sprinkled with three or four world-class players. It's the ideal set-up to win leagues, where you need the right spirit to make it through the weekly grind. But the Champions League is another matter. Based on this year's evidence, you need to stockpile as many superstars as possible and keep your fingers crossed. If you happen to have a tight, cohesive unit, all the better. Van Nistelrooy, along with Serhii Rebrov and Mario Jardel, is probably the best striker in Europe, outside the Big Four leagues. Still, his arrival will cause considerable upheaval at Old Trafford. Andy Cole or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (or both) could well be sold as a result. Both knew the system well, Van Nistelrooy will have to adapt, just as he'll have to adapt to the Premiership, where defenders actually defend (at least compared to some Dutch teams). It's a gamble, but a calculated gamble. And Sir Alex is likely to roll the dice again, perhaps to sign US $26 million defender Sol Campbell from Tottenham. Then again, the way the game is going, it's a little bit like a lottery. If you don't play, you don't win. EXTRA TIME Need further proof that national cup competitions are about to breathe their last breath? Consider Barcelona's decision to pull out of the Copa del Rey semifinal second leg on Monday. The Catalan club said it simply didn't have enough players to field a team against Atletico Madrid, which was 3-0 up from the first leg. Injuries, suspensions and, above all, international call-ups had deprived the club of eleven players. Holland had called up six players for its friendly against Scotland on Wednesday. On the same day, Luis Figo had to turn out for Portugal against Italy, while Jari Litmanen was on duty with Finland. Under FIFA regulations, players need to be released 48 hours early for international friendlies. Now, the Spanish Federation, well aware of the regulations (and even more aware that this game was utterly irrelevant given Atletico's lead from the first leg), simply told Barca it had to play on Monday, but said it was free to set kickoff at any time. Barcelona could have decided to play in the early afternoon (it was a public holiday in Spain). This would have given the foreign players plenty of time to join their national teams after the game, without violating the 48 hour rule. Instead, kickoff was set at 9 p.m. It's this decision which pretty much makes it clear that Barcelona had no intention of ever playing that game. If a club doesn't want to take a Cup competition seriously, that's fine. But then, it should just pull out and not bother entering it. This behavior simply turns the Copa del Rey into a big joke.
London-based Gabriele Marcotti writes a weekly column on international soccer for CNNSI.com. To submit questions or comments to Gabriele Marcotti, click here.
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