Internet Commentator

Is it April Fools Day in South America?

In the southern hemisphere, it's spring. That's the only possible explanation I have for the news that Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, two of Argentina's best performers at the World cup and teammates at Corinthians in Brazil (not to mention two who would adorn Manchester United, Arsenal or even Chelsea) are set for Upton Park, apparently on a season long loan. Scratch that, it's a "permanent" deal. Yeah right. Until Chelsea assess how effective the pair are in the premiership. Look out for their transfers across London next summer, or even as early as January.

A straw worth clutching

It's been a miserable summer for United fans. Few of our players performed well at the World cup and one of those wants to leave. David Gill rashly promised to try and complete all transfer business before the tournament and yet, not a single player has arrived. Spurs are haggling over the sale of Michael Carrick, a gifted midfielder but one whose addition to the squad doesn't so much solve an existing problem - the absence of a defensive/box to box midfielder - as create a new one - although he is considered to be a defensive midfielder, he is more of a deep-lying playmaker who rarely tackles, a kind of Geordie Pirlo. "El Niño", Fernando Torres announces that he is to stay at Atletico for another year after months of feverish, although mostly Spanish, speculation that he was Old-Trafford-bound. Normally, I take speculation with a pinch of salt, especially from the likes of the Mirror, but with such slim pickings these days, I'm going to hope and pray that they've fluked onto the truth this time in claiming that United are negotating the transfer of Javier Mascherano. The Argentine, plying his trade at Corinthians in Brazil, was outstanding at Germany and has all the attributes United need in midfield: an excellent tackler, basically holds the midfield together to provide a platform for Riquelme, but he is also a skilful passer and shows great energy and commitment - an Heinze in the engine room - and is still only 22. This is a transfer I could get excited about.

Master of the Routes

Perusing the Architects' Journal earlier I note that Sol Campbell's new house - designed by architect Richard Reid - has garage space for "only" 5 from the erstwhile Arsenal defender's dozen strong collection of Routemaster buses. I can understand football players collecting cars, most tend to have at least one Range Rover, Mercedes Benz saloon and a Ferrari or Aston Martin for use depending on the occasion. But a fleet of identical buses?

Magyar T-Ho?

I had wondered how United's American goalkeeper Tim Howard (currently on loan to Everton) managed to retain his UK work visa seeing as he was no longer first choice for his club or country and as I understand the terms of such visas, it's necessary to play in 75% of club (and international?) games. According to a poster at United Rant's forum, he carries the passport of his mother's country: Hungary which as a fellow EU member, permits him work in the UK. Didn't know that.

Rankings realism

I see that FIFA has finally seen to adopt a new method for calculating its rankings which involves, among other things, adjusting for the strength of opposing teams and importance of match. As anyone but partisan Team USA fans would acknowledge, this inevitably downgrades teams from the CONCACAF region. I've argued that the rankings for the USA (and by implication Mexico) were artificially inflated due to the generally inferior opposition in that region and the number of games where nothing was at stake*. USA and Mexico now occupy the 16th and 18th slots respectively which is about right (incidentally, such partisans ought to feel free to point out to me that Honduras now outranks the Republic of Ireland!). The system still isn't perfect - England are surely flattered by 5th place - but at least it's moving in the right direction.

* In CONCACAF there are a series of qualifying groups which while it does make it a long slog means that there are plenty of meaningless fixtures towards the end of each group stage - a team might already have qualified, or be incapable of qualification to the next round. For comparison, the previous two group stage format for the Champions League featured many such games.

Gone-aldo

I found the aftermath of "Gonad-gate" to be depressing and yet utterly predictable. When England crash out of the World Cup or European Cup at the quarter-final stage, it has to be the fault of a Manchester United player. For Beckham in 1998, read Ronaldo in 2006. Never mind that the coach had chosen to omit the best-scoring English forward in the Premiership (Darren Bent) and a reasonably experienced second-string striker (Jermaine Defoe) in favour of a 17 year old who has yet to play in the Premiership and who was never seriously considered for action in Germany. Never mind that the manager tinkered endlessly with the formation and somehow contrived a team in which players who regularly excel for their clubs, looked extremely ordinary. If Frank Lampard had been an unknown from a lesser league, there's no way his performances at the tournament would have justified a big money move to Middlesbrough, never mind Chelsea. No, it has to be because testes-trodding Wayne Rooney was sent off immediately after his club"mate" complained to the referee. Incidentally: here's a nice bit of cognitive dissonance - one of the regular complaints about C-Ron is that he dives to try and win free-kicks, but this is apparent mainly because the ref generally fails to award the foul. If referees tend to be unpersuaded by the Portuguese winger's complaints, why is this complaint any different? It wasn't a particularly "friendly" thing to do to his fellow Red, but probably had no bearing at all on the ref's ruminations. For this, he has become persona non grata in the UK?

Sadly, it seems that he will go anyway. But it may well be the case that he had been set on a move before the summer anyway and intended to use the World Cup as a shop window for his talents. He has certainly burned his bridges with United fans. They may have been divided as to his actions in the quarter-final, but no United fan wants to hear their player moon for a move to another club. It may be taken as further evidence for United's decline - and if reinforcements aren't forthcoming this summer it will be - but in moving to Real Madrid, Ronaldo would not be moving up but sideways, or even slightly downwards. The "Galacticos" have been trophyless for longer than United and he would be joining a team which will include the player he was supposed to replace at Old Trafford somewhat of a fixture, albeit for marketing rather than footballing reasons, in his preferred slot and perhaps even his nemesis at United: Van Nistelrooy.

Referee deferred red

There doesn't seem to be nearly enough fuss about Graham Poll's blunder towards the end of the Croatia-Australia game last night. Josip Simunic was (correctly) shown a second yellow card but (incorrectly) allowed to remain on the pitch. It took a further offence after the final whistle for the English referee to brandish Simunic's third yellow card and finally show him the red. It was the most glaring of a series of errors and fussy decisions. The second yellow (and red this time) awarded Brett Emerton for a deliberate handball minutes after his first yellow seemed to owe more to a hamfisted attempt to even things up immediately after Simic's dismissal than a considered application of the rules. FIFA have apparently acknowledged that had Australia been knocked out, they would have grounds to request a replay. Yet it's arguably the case that Poll's handling of Simunic invalidates the entire match. If Australia would have had grounds for appeal, surely so do Croatia even if this particular incident appeared to favour them. After all the issue is whether the match was correctly refereed - and it apparently wasn't - not that the referee favoured one side over the other.

Brazil, take note

This is how you deal with Balkan battlers. Argentina's thrilling performance in demolishing Serbia & Montenegro 6-0 with a display of incisive, irresistible football, cohesive teamwork and individual brilliance surely makes them firm favourites for the trophy. What a contrast with the unexciting and unconvincing win over Croatia by a rather complacent Brazil. It will be very hard for many teams to live with this Argentine team, should they maintain this form. It is hard to see how Adriano, Ronaldo, Cafu and the rest, even with Kaka and Ronaldinho, can match the likes of Riquelme, Cambiasso, Mascherano, Messi and Tevez.

First round, impressions

The first round of this year's World cup tournament offers a little snapshot of the quality and form of competing teams. With the caveat that it's merely a single game for each team and form can go up as well as down, I have had occasion to modify my impression of some teams and confirm that of others. I can't say that I'm unduly surprised by the lacklustre performances of Brazil and France.

Brazil are one of the best teams in the world and have the most attractive footballing philosophy - watching centreback Lucio in the Croat penalty box the other night it occurred to me than their formation is not so much 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 as 0-0-10! But, such a team has high standards to live up to and I think that there are more than a few players in the first team who don't merit inclusion on current form. Ronaldo and Adriano were very poor against Croatia. Their attacking fullbacks, Cafu and Roberto Carlos are the wrong side of 30 and will surely take longer to return to their nominal positions in defence these days. Brazil offered Croatia plenty of chances and had they possessed a striker with a keener eye for goal they could quite easily have beaten Brazil. Brazil will concede goals to better teams. Unless the Brazil second team (yet to beat the first team in training) can offer more capable strikers than the pairing who faced Croatia - and Robinho hasn't exactly lived up to his billing - Brazil will have to rely more on Ronaldinho and Kaka to fulfil the latter half of their traditional promise - score one against us and we'll run up field and score two.

As for France, they were poor last time, returning home early from Japan/South Korea without scoring a goal, and look similarly uninspired this time around. They are in a relatively easy group and should be capable of beating South Korea and Togo, and yet theirs is an ageing team with a number of players who seem incapable of reproducing their club form for their country. Perhaps that is Domenech's fault, his bizarre Sven-like squad selection - choosing erratic Barthez over Coupet and alienating the latter, leaving European champion Giuly to go on a futile penguin hunt down under - hardly inspires confidence in his tactical nous.

Both England and Portugal were unimpressive in struggling to 1-0 wins over inferior opposition. I have considerably more confidence in "Big Phil" Scolari than I have in Sven "Boring" Eriksson so I'll reserve judgement on Portuguese prospects. England, on the other hand, are sure to qualify for the next round and will probably get through against the Group A runners up (possibly Ecuador?) but will surely be sent packing in the quarter finals by the Group C runners up, whoever that turns out to be.

The United States also proved disappointing against the Czech republic. Their team topped their group in qualifying, seeing off their rival Mexico and had a great run last time around, but were lifeless against the Czechs. They're not the worst side in the competition by any stretch but how they are ranked fifth in the world by FIFA is beyond me. It is perhaps a function of the generally inferior quality of the CONCACAF teams against whom they most frequently play. Nonetheless they have probably gone backwards since the last World cup. In the intervening period they have stuck with the same coach whose experience and record is limited to North American football. Their squad is mostly composed of home-based players with a few scattered among Dutch, German, and the English second tier. The only players they have in an elite league are Bocanegra and O'Brien from Fulham and Reyna from Man city. I'm sure this is likely to enrage American soccer enthusiasts who always over hype their country's prospects but, though I'm quite prepared to be fair to the US and welcomed their run at the last world cup, at the moment they just aren't good enough.

The Czechs showed their quality with that win, remaining doubts about their prospects relate to a number of the older players, particularly Poborsky who plys his trade in the Czech second tier. The Dutch are unfortunate to be in a difficult group. They will need to get past the Ivory Coast to get out of the group but if they do - and they stave off the inevitable implosion as long as possible - they should easily dispose of England in the quarterfinals. Another team which impressed was Spain with a 4-0 win over Ukraine. Spain are the traditional chokers - always great in qualifiers, poor at the tournament - who knows, maybe "this time it's different".

Argentina and Italy both excelled, contesting hard fought games against impressive African debutants, Ivory Coast and Ghana. Both squads have quality all over the pitch and plenty of strength in depth although Totti's injury is a blow to the latter. It's early days yet but this pair look like they could meet in the final.

Manc Francophiles

Just noticed something. Manchester United have more French internationals than Arsenal. The France world cup squad contains a solitary Gunner - one T. Henry esquire - and two Red devils - Mssrs Saha and Silvestre. Since the departure of Robert Pires, Arsenal's own squad contains three Frenchmen: Flamini, Clichy and Henry, the first two, so far as I can tell, uncapped. United's squad also has three, Saha, Silvestre and Evra all of which are full internationals, even if the latter two have exchanged places in the squad.