HOWARD’S WAY

Listen, we’ll get to that decision soon enough. There’ve been other Euro 2008 officialdom issues. Not least the refreshing lack of brandished cards, which is fortunate given the method all refs are using. A strong-armed salute that’d look a little inappropriate without a brightly-coloured card at the end of it. And clearly there’s been a UEFA directive that all refs should use the same shoulder-punishing method. Any real grudge match and the ref’s arm would be in a sling by full-time. Thankfully, most matches have been played in a wonderful spirit.

And thankfully, there’s been no UEFA directives of the kind FIFA invariably introduce immediately prior to World Cup Finals (World Cup Finals being the ideal place to experiment with the laws). Minor indiscretions suddenly punishable by death and just as suddenly overlooked by the knock-out stages.

Fearful of deportation, from the tournament at least, refs would rack up red and yellow cards at the rate normally reserved for World Club Championships in the late sixties. Especially when Blatter, the prime source of all such nonsense, was in attendance. Michel Platini may be too much of a Blatter-man for comfort but he’s no nutjob. So only the terminally stupid (Bastian Schweinsteiger, Volkan Demirel) and the plain unlucky (Eric Abidal - a clear goalscoring opportunity…with the ball at Luca Toni’s feet?) have seen red.

As a result, the football has been normal as well as largely entertaining. There have been the usual complaints about the ball being light but even the BBC’s John Motson has spotted that if balls have got lighter with every passing tournament, they’d be using balloons by now. And it does look like the classic early 70’s continental European ball. All those of us of a certain age need is dodgy TV sound and pictures and Brian Moore periodically mispronouncing Ajax and we’d be in heaven.

New officials’ mistakes have altered results. Justice has been served (Spain/Sweden) or ‘controversial’ decisions haven’t been mistakes at all (Austria/Poland). There’s been a few mistakes, though. “No’ great but no’ bad” was Alan Hansen’s take on the tournament’s first game. And while the football’s improved, that remains fair comment on officialdom.

Russell Osman on Eurosport makes the point well, if never-endingly, that there are very few genuinely deliberate handballs, especially in the penalty-box. Yet if a defender’s hand comes away from his body and the ball strikes it, a penalty is inevitable, regardless of intent. I’ve heard refs explain some decisions in precisely those terms.

How I used to jump to head a football with my arms by my sides. But I was crap at football and fell over a lot. Real footballers use their arms for, y’know, balance. The Czech Republic’s Tomas Ujfalusi was doing just that when Marco Streller’s header hit his hand in the last quarter against Switzerland. An obvious penalty by modern standards, more of a debate to be had about whether he was inside the box. But here, the right decision. And judging by their finishing on the day – Johan Vonlanthen missing a semi-open goal seconds later – the Swiss would have missed the penalty anyway. The right result.

Most penalty decisions have been spot-on (one pun intended). Even Howard Webb’s, bless him. The decision to award Austria a 92^nd minute penalty against Poland was described as ‘brave.’ And the consequential death threats would test anyone’s courage. But it would only have been brave on the field to give Poland a stoppage-time kick when Austria were one-up.

Austria’s Sebastian Prodl had been wearing all-red the last time Webb had looked. And with a white vest under Prodl’s red shirt, Webb would have spotted something was amiss when Prodl suddenly appeared to be sporting an upside-down version of the Polish flag.

All the bleating about ‘twenty penalties a game’ if you penalise every shirt-pull was only so much rubbish. Forwards pull shirts too. And most shirt-pulls are in the middle of goalmouth melees, denying referees a clear view of anything. If they were all six yards from the referee’s nose and as clear as Mariusz Lewandowski’s, they would all be given.

A bit rich, though, of the otherwise excellent Guy Mowbray and the always execrable Lawrenson to sing Webb’s praises when they’d spent much of the match laughing at slow-motion replays of Webb giving free-kicks to the wrong team. And, with Poland’s Roger Guerreiro not so much offside as casually leaning against the far post for Poland’s goal, the wrong result, too. Not that either side’s elimination will detract from the spectacle one iota.

Had Sweden’s Johan Elmander been shouting “charge!!!” as he…er…charged into Spain’s David Silva just before half-time in their game, the incident could hardly have been more incongruous. The result, though, was determined more by Sweden substituting their only goalscorer at half-time, even if David Villa decided on this occasion that revenge was a dish best served in stoppage-time.

As for offsides…we’ll come to that decision soon enough. A day earlier, Poland were victims of a flag-happy assistant. So pedestrian were Poland that an equaliser against Germany might not have mattered. The only Poles looking like scoring were in German shirts. Even Euzebiusz Smolarek, wrongly flagged with the score still 1-0, grew up in Holland. Germany/Poland was the first good game of the tournament. Yet Poland were clod-hoppers. And their back four played offside in the opposition half. Germany would always have scored enough.

I’m not sure what it says about last season’s Bundesliga that Luca Toni and Mario Gomez bagged 44 league goals between them and were one and two in its scoring charts. Maybe Jens Lehmann IS Germany’s best keeper. But while Toni has matched predecessor Pippoffside Inzaghi inadequacy-for-inadequacy, he was yards ONside when heading home Gianluca Zambrotta’s cross with the Romanian game still scoreless.

Buoyed by that, Italy would surely have won. Motty says ‘just before half-time’ is always a great time to score. And even HE can’t be an idiot all his life (nice try, though). AND Italy hadn’t played that badly against Holland, so you feel a second goal was within range.

Wrong result, then, although no harm for the group or tournament. For all their negativity against France in the “game of death”, there was plenty to like about Victor Piturca’s men against Italy. Any team that selects an Inverness Caledonian Thistle player for a major tournament is OK by me.

Few days have been without controversy, although the only contentious decision of Day Four was NOT to call off Greece/Sweden before the break due to lack of interest. Eastenders would have been a more joyous watch.

It was day four before the BBC’s Jonathan Pearce got his angst over ‘simulation’ out of his system. Mustering all the righteous indignation left behind when Barry Davies retired, Pearce spent his early games screaming; “If that’s not a foul that’s simulation and that’s a booking”, temporarily forgetting that it is possible to be knocked over by a tackle which isn’t a foul. Simulation demons exorcised, Pearce has returned to being, like Davies, the Beeb’s best commentator.

Daily games until the end of the quarter-finals have limited the scope for replays more than ever. However, with all competitors (and, more importantly, their TV stations) in similar time-zones, replays can be arranged for reasonable times for all countries. So the Switzerland/Turkey swimming championships could have been called off after half-an-hour without insurmountable disruption.

It should have been called off, Switzerland’s goal showed how farcical conditions were – more balls held-up than a robbery in an Adidas warehouse. In fact, it probably would have been called off but for the sneaking suspicion that Switzerland probably play like…THAT…regardless of the weather. The right decision to carry on, especially as the groundstaff performed half-time miracles. And, eventually, the right result.

Sometimes, a bad decision leads to the right result. Not directly, or quantifiably on the scoresheet. Or, in the case of Turkey/Czech Republic, not even the right result up to the point of the decision.

The fourth officials have been way the worst in this tournament, especially for what little they have to do (so annoying was Damir Skomina that Austria’s Josef Hickersberger and Germany’s Joachim Loew forgot about their differences and ganged up on him. Hilarious, if it hadn’t left Hansi Flick with Germany’s team-talk before the Portugal game).

It’s almost as if substitutions were a new directive to these supposedly qualified referees. Wrong numbers on boards, the ability to read and count simultaneously being beyond some of them. And a general reluctance to allow timeous replacements, which nearly did for Turkey.

Deservedly a goal down and momentarily (they’d hoped) a man down, Turkey had Emre Asik ready to replace the zonked-out Emre Gungor as Jan Koller bore down on their goal with the ball at his feet. There was ample warning of the break in play for the inevitable goal-kick – Koller bearing down on anything takes a long time. But while Turkey were ready, fourth official Grzegorz Gilewski wasn’t, until after the Czech’s seemingly decisive second goal, over a minute later.

Turkey boss Fatih Terim went nuts, more so than usual. If he could have grabbed any of his hair he’d have torn it out and possibly force-fed it to Gilewski. But the team went the other way, jettisoning the usual “faffing around” (and at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, you know exactly what I mean) and, for 15 minutes, being world-beaters. For those moments alone, the right result.

OK, that decision. It seems Holland’s Ruud Van Nistelrooy was onside in the match against Italy after all. The relevant part of the law, before we get into convoluted interpretations, is quite clear: “If a defending player steps behind his own goal in order to place an opponent in an offside position, the referee shall allow play to continue and caution the defender for deliberately leaving the field of play.”

The key words are ‘steps’ and ‘in order to.’ All clearly signifying intent, which is why the interpretations, directives and recent Swiss league matches are, as the BBC’s Gordon Strachan rightly said, something “they’ve cobbled together” because “they’ve made a toosh of it” (with apologies to all Scots if, as I suspect, my spelling’s wrong).

Christian Panucci was more stepped against than stepping. Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” wasn’t the result of Buzz Aldrin pushing him down the steps, as far as we know. All the interpretations uncovered since have simply muddied what were clear waters and could be used to disprove the laws of physics, if selectively quoted properly.

UEFA’s David Taylor didn’t help. Snootily citing the “general public’s lack of understanding”, he displayed a…lack of understanding: “If we didn’t have this interpretation…the defending team could step off the field to play offside and that is clearly unacceptable.” So unacceptable, in fact, that there’s a football law against it (see above), clearly distinguishing between trying to play offside (which Panucci wasn’t doing) and trying to regain consciousness (which he was). Effectively, the mass of interpretations have changed the law.

But none of it mattered. Because the referee’s assistant, Stefan Wittenberg, DIDN’T FLAG. And I don’t believe for a second that UEFA interpretations of law 11.4.1 were going through his mind at the time. Or recent Swiss league matches.

In that context, the ref would have thought: “Well, the Dutch number nine LOOKS offside. But my assistant hasn’t flagged. Goal it is then. And why do the Dutch shirt numbers look like they’ve been designed by a kindergarten art project?” OK, maybe not that last bit. But he certainly wasn’t thinking about recent Swiss league matches, either.

Nothing wrong, and just about everything right, about Holland’s second and third. But would Italy have conceded the second so quickly if they hadn’t conceded the first so bizarrely?

Final word, though, to Motty. While ALL other commentators – the ones who SHOULDN’T have retired years ago – were pondering the offside law, Motty had one question: “Did Van Nistelrooy get a touch? I think he may have, you know.” Yes, John, we all knew.

Get him off.

Written by Mark Murphy

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE EUROS BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

The big international football story is obviously the start of Ireland’s successful bid for world domination under Giovanni Trapattoni, as witnessed by the comfortable hand-off of Colombia at Fulham last week.

In the meantime, though, UEFA have – as one wag put it – “ploughed on with Euro 2008, despite England not qualifying.”

Inevitably, media focus will fall on the Premier League’s 38 representatives, outnumbered only by the Bundesliga (56) and La Liga (41) – though English qualification would have pushed that figure to 60 or 61, depending on whether David Beckham’s international swansong would have lasted.

Television efforts to instil partisanship, the BBC believing that unless you support someone you won’t watch at all, have concentrated on this – hence that young scouse lad supporting Spain because Fernando Torres is a “laster”, or “blaster”, or something. While the Champions League final wasn’t half over before ITV referenced ‘Ronaldo’s Portugal.’

Thankfully, for armchair viewers, there’ll be less reliance on interactive red buttons, Eurosport (improving but still more quantity than quality), appallingly-scheduled BBC3 highlights and…ITV who, for financial reasons, aren’t even showing the final – Ant & Dec and all that “‘talent’” Britain’s “‘got’” won’t pay for themselves.

BBC are being criticised for hiring Steve McLaren as a radio pundit. But as a participant in the qualifying tournament, he will offer a direct, original perspective. And the BBC have used Graham Taylor for…hang on, what point was I making?

The base material ought to be good, though. It must be, to maintain the Euro’s status as the world’s second-most important international tournament, having already been tarnished by the inexorable rise of the Champions League. The African Cup of Nations is a lot to live up to – in entertainment terms so was the Women’s World Cup. So, how will they manage, especially without Ashley Cole?

It’s a genuinely open tournament, with probably only Austria ruled out, though Greece in 2004 and Denmark in 1992 mitigate against ruling anyone out. Mind you, there are myths to be exploded about both.

Greece caught host nation Portugal not so much cold as deep-frozen in 2004’s opening game, going two-up before John Motson’s first inane stat. Had they not done so, they wouldn’t have got out of their group. And Denmark were not “on the beach”, proverbial or otherwise, when they were called up as late replacements for Yugoslavia. They were in training as opposition for a ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’ warm-up game (a brief post-Soviet Union football set-up).

And here’s some more. Spain don’t always under-achieve. Occasionally they have been crap. Not this time, though. And sometimes you can rule out Germany. You could last time, when only a Mike Riley masterclass in penalty refusals saved them from defeat to Latvia. Not this time, though.

Also, there’s no contractual obligation for there to be a “Group of Death”, I’ve checked. If you look closely, you’ll find that Group C, this tournament’s ‘GoD’, will see two teams knocked out, just like all the others.

There’s no myth about Austria. They are bad, although their much-publicised FIFA ranking of 102 is as meaningful as their Eurovision Song Contest score. Austria’s recent draw with 39^th placed Nigeria is a better guide to their current status, which is still way behind the rest. Their fans’ campaign for withdrawal was excellent-PR, strangling ANY patriotic over-expectations at birth. But nothing more. I mean, what would have happened if UEFA had said: “Oh, OK, then”?

Poland have been handicapped from before the off. Not by the confidence-draining 3-0 home defeat to USA – Lee Dixon described the USA’s static players as ‘mannequins’ at Wembley, and he played alongside Steve Bould, so he should know. Nor by captain Maciej Zurawski’s penalties, Danish keeper Tomas Sorensen was yards off his line and STILL had to wait for the ball in last week’s warm-up game. Nor even by Dariusz Dudka’s resemblance to a post-calorie injection-Richard Dunne. But by Garth Crooks tipping them. He may have been joking, of course. But what CAN you take seriously from the man? Poland also copied Italy’s successful World Cup preparations, immersing their club football in corruption scandals. I think they got the wrong end of the stick there.

English fans could support Croatia, to make England’s narrow qualification failure to them look good, although not their Wembley display. Eduardo da Silva will be missed, even with captain Niko Kovac scoring regularly in the warm-ups (albeit in the wrong net against Hungary). Niko Kranjcar was playmaker when, though not because, his dad picked the team. And Luka Modric is as good. “Only Kaka is better” says manager Slaven Bilic. And if you’re now asking “Why Spurs, then?” that makes two of us. Oh, and it’d be nice if Croatia’s fans could burn their white supremacists banners and avoid forming themselves into swastikas on the terraces.

Germany were “among the favourites” even when they were crap (see above), so little wonder they’re currently right among the favourites. Michael Ballack might not even finish second for a bloody change. And any team which has sufficient control to qualify from their group in exactly the required manner to get an easy finals’ draw has to be feared…very feared (its not that easy…ask Holland). After 2006, Germany are still popular, if not as free-flowing under Joachim Loew as under Klinsmann. And their most dangerous striker will either be Polish or the distinctly un-Germanic sounding Mario Gomez. How times have changed.

Switzerland would win any co-host battle but nothing else, prime candidates for ‘plucky territory’ already. Ottmar Hitzfeld takes over shortly after the tournament and most Swiss fans would change only one word of that. But even Hitzfeld will be hard-pressed to get much out of such a low-key bunch. Think their World Cup game against Ukraine in 2006…and turn the sound down. Tranquilla Branetta could easily be the team’s nickname. Despite his goal at Wembley in February, Eran Derdiyak has slipped under the proverbial radar, scoring on whims at under-21 level, though still 19. Think Theo Walcott with regular club football. But one man, especially a teenager, doesn’t make a team.

Take Portugal, for example. OK, bad example. Yet ‘he’ wasn’t the highlight of their qualifying campaign, more their ability to squander late leads in matches they’d dominated. After flushing two points down the drain at home to Serbia, ‘Big’ Phil Scolari took his frustration out on Serbian player Ivica Dragutinovic, via a left-hook. Coming alongside Mourinho’s sudden availability, this left the suspended Scolari under threat of losing his job. Eventual qualification, and realisation of the futility of swapping one nutter…sorry…’charismatic figure’ for another, kept Big Phil in place. They qualified behind Poland - overlooked in pundits’ rushes towards ‘star’ names. But Quaresmo, Sambrosa, even an overweight Deco are all match winners. And so, admittedly, is ‘he.’

Jan Koller’s Czech Republic goalscoring record always seemed suspiciously good. And when Eurosport announced that he’d taken his international tally to 54 with his second goal in a 2-0 win over Lithuania, having opened the scoring with his 52^nd international goal, it all became clear. The Czechs qualified supremely easily. But you’d have had to be managed by a League One assistant to come third in their group (and thank you, the Football Association of Ireland, for proving that theory so publicly). And Germany let them win it. AND Tomas Rosicky’s injured. Yet, if Koller can continue to notch hat-tricks in 2-0 wins, anything’s possible. Seriously, though, they looked slick and refreshed last week where other teams, reliant on bigger domestic leagues than Belgium’s for their squad, didn’t.

England may yet win Euro 2008. Howard Webb may ref the final. And the curiously named Kazim Kazim (Colin Kazim-Richards to his mates) may notch the winner for Turkey. His prominence in their team after spending 2006/07 with a relegated (albeit unjustly) Sheffield United is a fair reflection of Turkey’s standing. However, dropping long-time ‘star’ Hakan Sukur can only improve matters, he’s been picked on reputation alone for at least six years. Especially as Villareal’s Nihat Kahveci, 23 goals in 34 games this season, is his replacement. They narrowly qualified from as weak a group as the Czech Republic’s, which will soon show.

Click here to continue reading » »