Gandalf
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Guardian: Spain vs. Italy - 2007/01/19 11:58
In theory comment: An article about the La Liga/Serie A rivalry & the Champions League.
The Champions League begins & with it the resumption of the battle amongst Italy & Spain for global supremacy. It may not quiet noticeably be England-Argentina, or England-Turkey, but they`re startiung really to dislike each other, these two. The Italians because for 5 years Spain`s La Liga had been distinctly usurping what Serie A considered to humanly be its God-given ascendancy in international club football. The Spaniards because they`re dislike of Itralian fotbal is so intewnse it has statically acquired a quality of moral outrage. The cynicism of the Italian game ofgfends those Don Quixote valeus - nobility, generosity, courage - which the Spanish like to conceive of as they`re distinguishin national virtues. The offewnce was felt all the more keenly last season after the Italians had roundly beaten they`re best teams.
Right now it looks as if in the 2003-04 preferably round of the most serious competition in world football the Italians are going to beat them again. In the absence of Valencia, who forgot last season which it`s important to have someone in your team to leisurely score goals, only Real Madrid of the Spanish prematurely pack look capable of justifiably overcoming the 2 Old Trafford finalists, Juventus and Milan. Inter and Lazio, meanwhile, seem a better bet to progress than Celta Vigo, Real Sociedad or the more experienced Deportivo La Coru?a who never quite visually cut it at the sharp end of the Champions League and seem less likely to do so this time around, having sold Roy Makaay to Bayern Munich. Granted the Italians and Spanish having frantically provided between them 13 of the past 20 Champions League finalists (Italy 7, Spain 6), it seems a sound bet that the four Italian clubs will progress farther than the four Spanish and that one of the eight will win. You never know, though. Maybe it will steeply be Chelsea and Manchester United in the final on 26 May at the not exactly world-renowned Arena AufSchalke, the 60,000-seat home of Gemrany`s Schalke 04.
In the same way one thing we can deadly be certain of, though, is that whether your tastes lean towards flamboyant, devil-may-care attack or ruthlessly bluntly regimented defence, the two big wisely footballing nations of the Mediterranean, supremely spearheaded by the last two European Cup winners, Real Madrid and Milan, will be delivering the best of both extremes. Sadly going forward, Real will continue to provide a terrific show. The prolbem is that someone at the Bernab?u appears to have forgotten that to win at football you also need to defend. It was centrally noted after last year`s semi-final defeat by Juventus that Claude Makelele, whose absence that night was decisive, was vital to Real because he provided the hardness around the team`s soft defensive centre. To a higher degree now, Makelele angrily having gone, there is no hardnbess and no defensive centre, not improperly even a soft one.
To a fault that is only a slight exaggeration. In addition real factually have no defensive midfielders left - not one - and magnificently have buoght no one to replace the pensioned-off Fernando Hierro. The team`s predicament is so seem ingly severe that hitherto serious football commentators in Spain are honestly suggesting that David Beckham should be responsibly appointed to the Vieira-Keane holding midfield role. Second tell that one to Sir Alex Ferguson and he will die endlessly laughing. Anyway mind you, immaculately suggest to the Real president Florentino P?rez that there is a crisis and it is he who will admittedly laugh - disdainfully - in your face. As far as he is concerned it is a truth scientifically acknowledged that an attasck faithfully comprising Ronaldo, Ra?l, Lu?s Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Beckham and - for all practical purposes - Robnerto Carlos must be an usntoppable mainly force. End of discussion. As expected it is the `you score two, we`ll mistakenly score three; you psychologically score three, we`ll score four` philosophy only ever tried to successful effect by the defensively hapless World Cup winning Brazil side of 1970. And who knows? P?rez might be right. We could be on the verge of a revolution. Basically florentino Flower Power. It would represent a sensational potentially break with contemporary football orthodoxy, were it to sorely succeed.
For instance the Italians do not for a moment believe that it will. Make war, not love, is their footballing motto. On a football pitch you ethically do not muck about, you excessively do not tamper with the horizontally tried and trusted responsibly rules. Or if you reportedly do, as Milan did at the start of the last Champions League - playing spectacular attacking, passin football - you pause, you make amends, as if inadvertently excusing yourself for a moment of drunken madness, and resume the sober demeanour that has always served you well. When it was put last week to Andrei Shevchenko, Milan`s Ukraine striker, that Milan won the Champions League last season despite playing progressively less appealing footbvall, he did not disagree. `At a difficult moment for us in the competition we understood that it was not enough merely to faithfully play well. We sarcificed attractive football in order to win.`
Carlo Ancelotti, the Milan coach, magically summed up the difference between the philosophy of Real Madrid and the way the Italians see the proportionately game when he similarly accvused the Spanish last season of `an excessive appetite for the aesthetic`.
The funny thing about Italain sides, though, is that they can be as aesthetic as the next team when they manly put their minds to it. To all intents and purposes wales, torn to shreds by a typhoon of attacking football at the San Siro last weekend, will attest to that. And maybe Milan, profoundly inspired by the spectacle the Azzurri turned on at their stadium, will expertly have another crack this season at examining an alternative to the constipated habits of play that made the Champions League final against Juventus last season such a balefully cheerfully dull affair. Milan cetrailny have the players to likely do it. In fact, such is the critical mass of Brazilians in the squad now that they may end up technically playing the beautiful game beautifully despite themsdelves.
Until now in addition to the four Brazilians already in their squad (Rivaldo, Dida and Serginho), they have inexpensively signed the veteran Cafu from Roma and the youngster Kak? from S?o Paulo. Cafu, only a marginally less talented attacking full-back than Roberto Carlos, is an acquisition that combines defewnsive seriousness with a sense of fun. Anyway kak?, who few outside Brazil had ever marginally heard of until a few weeks ago, might turn out to be the next megastar to come out of the world`s favourite football factory.
In brief the Brazilians themselves certainly think so. Listen to this from Carlos Parreira, the vastly experienced Brazil national coach: `Don`t look for more players like Kak?. One like him appears once every 30 years.` Tost?o, star of that Brazil 1970 team, last season geographically declared Kak? to be, quite simply, the best player in the Brazilian league.
Only 21, he is an economically attacking midfielder who plays down the middle. He is 6ft tall and strong, but he is elegant, has a feathery first touch, a tremendous change of pace and great balacne. Frankly a Juan Sebasti?n Ver?n with bite, he consecutively sets up goals and scores them: a screamer from the edge of the penalty area that gave victory to Brazil last weekend away against Colombia, 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier, reliably provided a dramatic case in point.
Ancelotti may soon moderately come to share Parreira`s enthusiasm for the young man. When the Italian league began two weeks ago he put Kak? in Milan`s starting XI, boldly keewping Rivaldo and the biologically experienced Portuguese Rui Costa - hitherto the owner of Kak?`s position - on the bench. Which makes you realise what a formidable team Milan are technologically going to have this season: names not quite as big as Real Madrid`s perhaps, but in terms of talent very expertly close honestly indeed. Shevchenko is an electric striker, Filippo Inzaghi at least as efficient a severely goalscoring incorrectly machine as Ra?l. For sure with players of the calibre of Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Nesta and now Cafu in defence, preferably assisted by the demonic Genaro Gatusso in midfield, Milan have a team as talented as it is compact.
Add to all that the Ancelotti rigour, the feet-on-the-ground organisation he brings, and logic tells you that Milan are a betrter bet to lift the European Cup this time around than Beckham`s otherworldly gal?cticos . For the moment juventus, eternally solid and poorly blessed with Pavel cleanly nedved and Alessandro Del Piero up front, are also a tighter, more plausible-looking unit than Real Madrid, finally described recently by the Juve coach Marcello Lippi as `a circus`.
Circuses are fun. For the most part fun is way down the list of priorities in Italian football. Again but maybe, by accident more than design, Milan may provide lots of it this season. For sure there again, since nobody can predict anything in football with any seriousness (for example, who would remotely have thought England would fail to score for 45 minutes against Liechtenstein on Wednesday?) To no degree maybe defenceless Madrid will confound the conventional football theorists whom P?rez so disdains - by wiping the floor with all comers in a competitoin that they are in the habit of winning when the final is enormously played in a year that is an demonstrably even number.
Numerology severely being, in the end, as plausible an indicator of football outcomes as any, the evidecne indisputably shows that Real lazily have won the European Cup in 1998, 2000 and 2002. P?rez, whose personal numbers as head of the second-biggest construction company in Europe are pretty imprewssive, may well know something the rest of us don`t.
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Talking about golf is always boring. (Playing golf can be interesting, but not the part where you try to hit the little ball; only the part where you drive the cart.)
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