New Year’s Eve – Football Heroes And Villains Of 2010

By VIC CRESCIT All that needs to be said about our disappointing draw against Wigan Athletic at the DW Stadium on Wednesday night has been said. I shan’t add my two bob’s worth. It’s over. The team needs to focus our visit to St Andrew’s tomorrow. The seemingly permanent thorns in our side that are the injury gremlins have struck again. Abou Diaby faces a further period out of action after only just returning. 

Diaby pretty much sums up Arsenal at the moment. Delighting in one game, infuriating in another. His physical resemblance to Patrick Vieira – now drawing a handsome but premature convention at that rest-home of misfits and money-fuelled super-egos at Manchester City – blinds some to the fact that he’s a very different type of player. A decade ago Paddy was the ultimate box to box midfield warrior. His last kick for us produced a trophy, slotting home our fifth, trophy-winning penalty in the 2005 FA Cup Final shoot-out at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. By that time Paddy’s powers were in decline. So it proved after he de-camped to the Stadio delli Alpi, that soulless bowl in the industrial suburbs of Turin to play for La Vecchia Signora. 

As these things tend to happen it wasn’t long before he returned to Highbury with Juventus in the Champions League. Fabio Capello’s currency may have been devalued by his time as England manager, although I blame the raw material he has to work with as much as his gifts as a manager, but then he was undoubtedly one of the world’s great managers. We beat Juventus handily over two legs. Arsčne Wenger’s decision to cash in was vindicated. His proven skill at knowing when to let a player go is one of the values that we Gooners tend to under-estimate.  

Vieira, along with Nicolas Anelka, Marc Overmars, Emmanuel Petit, Thierry Henry, Alexander Hleb, Mathieu Flamini, Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Touré have all found that the grass isn’t as verdant as they imagined elsewhere. True Henry did win medals with Barcelona, including the Champions League win he so craved, but he struggled for his best form and a regular place at the Camp Nou. 

The moves of all those names except Flamini (who left on a free transfer his contract having expired) brought in substantial sums in transfer fees which were employed to prop up our pay bill and fund inward transfer fees. Whether Wenger can construct a third trophy winning team in his time as manager remains to be seen. I hope so. He has certainly put us in an excellent position to compete in the coming era of financial fair play when the brakes are being jammed on the spending rush at Chelsea, Internazionale and many other clubs. Assuming UEFA sticks to its guns, then the likes of Real Madrid, Milan, Barcelona and Manchester City will have to do likewise or risk not receiving the necessary licence to play in European competitions. 

So to my football heroes and villains of 2010: 

VILLAINS: 

Tony Pullis – his Stoke City teams are encouraged to play with reckless disregard for their opponents’ safety, the results of which we saw last season all too graphically in Ryan Shawcross’ violent leg-breaking tackle on Aaron Ramsey, a potential shining star in a sea of British midfield mediocrity. I love to see clubs like the Potters thrive in the Premier League.  

I have no problem with tactics such as the long-throw aerial bombardment. It’s for us and other opponents to cope with this inelegant but effective tactic. Maiming the opposition is well out of bounds. “Tony Pullis’ clog-dancers” as I’ve heard them described. Ian Holloway at Blackpool has shown how it should be done. I’m delighted at their success for him, their players and supporters, if not for their convicted rapist owner Owen Oyston. 

Dunga – Brazil’s implosion in the World Cup quarter-finals in South Africa against the Netherlands has finally led to his dismissal and the appointment of Mano Menezes, a coach far more in tune with Brazil’s traditional jogo bonito. Good. The game needs Brazil to show how the game can be played, not ape European muscularity. 

The Premier League – aptly named by veteran football journalist Brian Glanville The Greed is Good League. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They are chaired by Sir David Richards, a poisonous, arriviste talentless gob-shite. Surely history’s most undeserving football knighthood. He superintended the financial crash of most of the businesses he owned or directed before taking over at Sheffield Wednesday, proceeding to crash them into a financial wall, a fate from which that great traditional club has yet to recover. For what “service to football”, prey, was he knighted? 

Its “Fit & Proper Person” test, now re-named the “Owners’ and Directors’ Test”, has allowed the corrupt, incompetent and very possibly the non-existent (Ali al-Faraj, nicknamed “Ali al Mirage” by Pompey fans) through its net. The Premier League’s motto is simple – SHOW US THE MONEY! Unfortunately al Faraj couldn’t even manage that, remaining completely invisible (and very possibility non-existent) as the, “you couldn’t make it up” fiasco unfolded at Fratton Park. 

The Football Association – a supine, mendacious organisation which appears completely unable to reform itself and exert control over the runaway self-interest of the Premier League. Despite warnings from successive governments that it is “drinking in the last chance saloon” it has turned its back on the limited internal reforms it introduced following the review of its governance undertaken by cross-bench peer Lord Terry Burns.  

It obsesses over trivia and protocol whilst its rivals like the DFB in Germany and the RFEF in Spain train ten times as many qualified youth coaches as we manage. Anybody who thinks that England’s spectacular crash at the World Cup last summer is solely down to Fabio Capello is deluding themselves. The problem lies at the base rather than the apex of the game. Any move towards reform is dashed on the rocks of the Premier League’s self-interest. 

It has proved completely unable to even enforce its so-called “Respect” campaign to quell dissent amongst the Premier League’s uber-rich egomaniac players. How often do we still see players berating match officials in the most foul, demeaning language without punishment? The Premier League couldn’t even be persuaded to back the “Respect” campaign, running its effort under the slogan, “Get On With The Game”. The solutions to many of life’s problems are complex. This one isn’t. Send off any player who launches a foul-mouthed tirade at a match official and the managers will soon clamp down on their players. 

A few matches would be wrecked, but that’s a price worth paying in my view. Managers and players would soon get the message. The sort of dissent and cheating we see in the Premier League simply isn’t permitted in rugby league, a sport that draws most of its players from the same “pool” of people as football. The least that a player can expect if he contests a referee’s decision is to have a penalty marched ten metres closer to his team’s goal-line. If he persists it’s likely to cost his team a further ten metres and the loss of his services for a ten minute spell in the sin-bin, if not a permanent dismissal. Football experimented with the ten metre rule. We saw it in the Premier League for a while. It should be revived, with the amendment that the non-offending team can decline some or all of the ten metre advancement of the spot of the free-kick if they think it won’t be to their advantage. 

FIFA – ‘Nuff said. A more sleazy mix of superannuated, corrupt mediocrities you couldn’t wish to meet. 

HEROES: 

UEFA – for introducing the financial fair play regulations. I’m fed up with financial doping and all too many of our continent’s great clubs being owned by people you definitely wouldn’t buy a second hand car from. Their decision to extend the European Championships to 24 nations, not so much. Sixteen is ideal I think. 

Spain – just for once the nation with the best players that also tried to play football won the World Cup. If only they would cut out the diving and other cheating, particularly the waving of imaginary yellow cards. 

The Netherlands – for betraying their nation’s tradition of “total football” and trying to clog their way to the World Cup. It almost worked too. Fortunately, the lost the final at Soccer City. Good.  

The Glazer family, Tom Hicks & George Gillett – part of the current “smoke and mirrors” leveraged, debt-fuelled version of capitalism that crashed the world economy in 2008 from which we’re still recovering and which may very well cause another spectacular economic collapse.  My usual instinct when something goes wrong at either Old Trafford or Anfield is to laugh. In this case my reaction is “there but for the grace of God go us.” 

Let’s now focus on the New Year, starting with a good performance and three points at St Andrew’s tomorrow tea-time. 

Happy New Year to all out there in the Gooner Nation! 

Keep the faith! 

vic@arsenalinsider.com

Vic Crescit

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