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Posts Tagged ‘Hungary’

• Italian met Russian FA last week
• Deal could more than double his net income

The Russian Football Union has made an approach to Fabio Capello about leaving England after the World Cup in South Africa and taking up a new and highly lucrative position as coach of their national team.

The new head of Russia’s Football Union, Sergei Fursenko, flew to London to pursue Capello last week. He held informal talks with the England manager at Stamford Bridge last Saturday, meeting him during Chelsea’s 4-2 home defeat to Manchester City.

According to the Sovietsky Sport newspaper, Fursenko is keen for Capello to replace Guus Hiddink, who is taking over as the national coach of Turkey. The Dutchman’s contract with Russia expires this June – with Russia now determined to find a “big name” world-class coach to replace him.

Capello is one of between five and eight candidates currently under consideration, it is understood. The England manager responded politely to the Russian approach last weekend in London, the newspaper reported, but made it clear that any negotiations would have to be carried out via his agent.

It also claimed that Russia would be able to offer Capello more than his present England salary. Although Capello is earning £6m a year from the FA, the sum is taxed at 50% – unlike in Russia where Hiddink receives €7m (£6.3m) a year tax free.

Although Capello spoke in conditional terms last week about his continued involvement with England after the World Cup, the Football Association is certain he will stay on. In recent weeks he has spoken warmly of his experience here and his spokesman said of the link with Russia: “Fabio is under contract until 2012.”

Russian observers believe that Capello is growing frustrated with the media coverage of his players’ private lives, and that his reputation as a disciplinarian is just what the Russian squad needs following damaging allegations of indiscipline during their unhappy World Cup qualifying campaign.

The RFU has several other candidates on its list, among them the Italian national coach, Marcello Lippi, and Luciano Spalletti, the former Roma coach who is now manager of Zenit St Petersburg. Hiddink’s last game as national team manager took place on Wednesday with Russia drawing 1-1 against Hungary.

For full story go to here

All the plastic ball-by-plastic ball action as Europe’s national sides learned their fate in Warsaw

Preview: Poland and Ukraine are the hosts for Euro 2012 and today, representatives of the 53 member associations who’ll be duking it out Royal Rumble style to qualify for the finals, which kick off on 8 June 2012, will gather in Warsaw to learn their fate.

Today’s draw takes place in the Polish capital’s Palace of Culture and Science and will feature 51 plastic balls (Poland and Ukraine qualify automatically as hosts, but holders Spain must qualify the hard way) being swirled, plucked and cracked open by a dizzying array of tanned and well fed men in fetching blazers.

There are 14 berths at Euro 2012 up for grabs and nine groups will be formed in today’s qualifying draw: six groups of six teams and three of five. The seedings are formed on the basis of the Uefa national team coefficient ranking system, with holders Spain automatically top seeded. Each group will contain one side from the first five pots and six of them will also feature a team from Pot 6.

The nine group winners and the best runner-up qualify directly for the final tournament. The eight remaining runners-up will contest two-legged play-offs to decide who gets the four remaining places. You can see who’s in which pot below, where I’ve highlighted the five home nations. England are in Pot One, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland are in Pot Three and Wales are in Pot Four.

Pot One: Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, England, Croatia, Portugal, France, Russia

Pot Two: Greece, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey, Denmark, Slovakia, Romania

Pot Three: Israel, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Pot Four: Slovenia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Belarus, Belgium, Wales, FYR Macedonia, Cyprus

Pot Five: Montenegro, Albania, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Iceland, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein

Pot Six: Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Malta, Faroe Islands, Andorra, San Marino

The draw hasn’t started yet, but on Eurosport they’re broadcasting a pre-recorded interview with Uefa president Michel Platini. He says that today’s preview is a “bit of a preamble” and that they don’t want to “outshine the World Cup”. He says there’s been problems with the infrastructures in some of the smaller cities set to host games during 2012: hotels, airport runways, stadia etc and so on. He says he hopes that Euro 2012 will be a different type of event to those staged in countries such as Germany.

An email: “I am genuinely puzzled that Slovenia, who have qualified for the World Cup, are in Pot Four along with Macedonia, Wales and other luminaries, and below Pot Three, where none of the participants have qualified for anything for a good long time,” writes Richard Woods. “Russia, who lost out to them, are in Pot One. Do co-efficients simply take no notice of real and meaningful competitive results, or am I just grumpy this morning?”

11am: We’re about to begin. Marsha and Piotr are our hosts for today. If their forced “banter” is anything to go by, I presume they’re Poland’s equivalent of Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly. Marsha is wearing a black dsress with very puffed-up shoulders. It may well be a nod to tonight’s Super Bowl.

11.03am: Poland prime minister Donald Tusk is introduced. He says that “Poland and Ukraine are the first winners of this elimination”, possibly misreading the word ‘competition’ on the autocue.

11.05am: Only five minutes in and we’re already on to our first montage of the morning, soundtracked by Chopin and celebrating – I think – 50 years of the European Championships.

11.07am: On Sky Sports News, they’re discussing Fabio Capello’s decision to strip John Terry of the England captaincy. Ray Houghton, who’s in punditing for the Uefa draw alongside Terry Venables and John Hartson, among others, doesn’t think it matters who the captain is. I’m inclined to agree with him.

11.10am: Sky cut to Bryan Swanson in the media centre at the Palace of Culture and Science, which is – unsurprisingly – full of people like Bryan Swanson.

11.12am: Piotr and Marsha introduce Poland legend Zbigniew “Ziggy” Boniek and his Ukrainian equivalent Andriy Shevchenko, who’ll be assisting with the draw. A couple of very longwinded interviews involving multiple translations ensues. Suffice to say, they are both looking forward to Euro 2012. Cue: another montage, showing what fans who travel to Poland and Ukraine can expect to see. A lot of building sites, is my guess. Perhaps I’m being too cynical.

11.17am: “Can you confirm that it has been agreed in advance that Ireland will be drawn in the same group as France?” asks Kevin Dardis. “That this will be the ‘replay’ some people were screaming for? And that Brian Kerr’s Faroe Islands will also be in the group? And Cyprus (as usual).”

11.18am: I can report that Poland and Ukraine both look very nice places – I’ve never been to either, so I’m only going on what they’re showing in the montage, which features a lot of Lovely Girls.

11.20am: Piotr and Marsha introduce the second pair of tournament ambassadors who’ll be helping with the draw: former international footballers Poland’s Andres Szarmach and Ukraine’s Oleg Blokhin. They too are very much looking forward to Euro 2012. Enough fannying around – let’s get on with the draw.

11.22am: Uefa big cheese Gianni Infantino takes to the stage and introduces a little primer for explaining the procedure: the lowest seeded teams will be coming out first.

Group A: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan

Group B: Russia, Slovakia, Republic of Ireland, Macedonia, Armenia, Andorra

Group C: Italy, Serbia, Northern Ireland, Slovenia, Estonia, Faroe Islands

Group D: France, Romania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Belarus, Albania, Luxembourg

Group E: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Moldova, San Marino

Group F: Croatia, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Georgia, Malta

Group G: England, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Wales, Montenegro

Group H: Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Cyprus, Iceland

Group I: Spain, Czech Republic, Scotland, Lithuania, Liechtenstein

11.28am: With the lowest ranked teams out, now we move on to the next pot. The tension here is … non-existent. Armenia get drawn out first, but go into Group B because official Uefa diktats forbid them from being in in the same group as Azerbaijan or Russia.

11.32am: Things are hotting up in Warsaw. No, really. We’re on to the third pot now.

11.35pm: We move on to the next pot, containing Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Rep of Ireland.

11.38am: The Republic of Ireland get Macedonia … again. Bah!

11.42am: So, just the Big Boys left to come out …

11.46pm: So England get Wales, which could make for a couple of interesting matches in Cardiff and Wembley.

11.48am: I’m examining those groups in a bid to come up with a Group of Death, but I’m jiggered if I can find one. Group H, with Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Cyprus and Iceland is probably the toughest, but none of them look too difficult.

11.54am: On Sky Sports News, Terry Venables is talking some seriously incomprehenisble gibberish through his grey goatee about the merits of groups with six teams over groups with five teams. He sounds very, very confused.

11.56am: Sky pundit and former Wales international John Hartson is predictably enthused by the prospect of his country playing England. He doesn’t think England will too worried at having to play Wales.

11.58am: Sky pundit and former Scotland manager Craig Brown has “got to concede that Spain are probably the favourites” to win Group I, where they are joined by the Czech Republic, Scotland, Lithuania and Liechtenstein. Probably the favourites? Probably?

12pm: Ray Houghton is delighted with the Republic of Ireland’s draw. He thinks Russia, Slovakia, Macedonia, Armenia and Andorra are all beatable and reckons there’s no reason why Ireland shouldn’t top the group “and that’s not something we’ve said too often in the past”.

12.02pm: Sky’s Norn Ironish correspondent Lawrie Sanchez looks glum and thinks his country’s chances of finishing in the top two of their group with Italy, Serbia, Estonia, Slovenia and the Faroe Islands are slim. However, he adds, there are some good destinations in Group C to suit any lads organising stag parties.

For full story go to here

Click on the auto-refresh doo-hickey for all the latest action after 10.45am. Send your emails to barry.glendenning@guardian.co.uk

Preview: Poland and Ukraine are the hosts for Euro 2012 and today, representatives of the 53 member associations who’ll be duking it out Royal Rumble style to qualify for the finals, which kick off on 8 June, will gather in Warsaw to learn their fate.

Today’s draw takes place in the Polish capital’s Palace of Culture and Science and will feature 51 plastic balls (Poland and Ukraine qualify automatically as hosts, but holders Spain must qualify the hard way) being swirled, plucked and cracked open by a dizzying array of tanned and well fed men in fetching blazers.

There are 14 berths at Euro 2012 up for grabs and nine groups will be formed in today’s qualifying draw: six groups of six teams and three of five. The seedings are formed on the basis of the Uefa national team coefficient ranking system, with holders Spain automatically top seeded. Each group will contain one side from the first five pots and six of them will also feature a team from Pot 6.

The nine group winners and the best runner-up qualify directly for the final tournament. The eight remaining runners-up will contest two-legged play-offs to decide who gets the four remaining places. You can see who’s in which pot below, where I’ve highlighted the five home nations. England are in Pot One, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland are in Pot Three and Wales are in Pot Four.

Pot One: Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, England, Croatia, Portugal, France, Russia

Pot Two: Greece, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey, Denmark, Slovakia, Romania

Pot Three: Israel, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Pot Four: Slovenia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Belarus, Belgium, Wales, FYR Macedonia, Cyprus

Pot Five: Montenegro, Albania, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Iceland, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein

Pot Six: Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Malta, Faroe Islands, Andorra, San Marino

For full story go to here

Stylish goalkeeper whose England career included a disastrous defeat to Hungary

Had his international career as England’s goalkeeper stopped at the beginning of the 1953-54 season, Gil Merrick, who has died aged 88, would doubtless be remembered as the stylish, commanding player so long admired between the posts for Birmingham City. Alas, he was destined to run into the Hungarians, conceding six goals at Wembley in November 1953 – according to the England manager, Walter Winterbottom, Merrick “had a nightmare” – and another seven in Budapest, the following May. Still, Merrick remained as England’s keeper when the party flew on to the World Cup finals in Switzerland in 1954, where another uneasy game – conceding four goals against Uruguay in the quarter-final – proved to be the final cap he would win.

Born in Sparkhill, Birmingham, Merrick supported the city team, rather than Aston Villa, as a boy and he signed as a professional with them in August 1939. He spent the second world war in the army. Returning to Birmingham City, he helped them to win the Second Division championship in the 1947-48 season and was again in goal when, having been relegated, they won it in 1954-55.

In 1956 – the year that Birmingham City finished sixth in the First Division – he figured in their FA Cup final team, which lost 3-1 to Manchester City at Wembley, the match in which his opposite number, Bert Trautmann, continued to play despite breaking a bone in his neck. Merrick made 485 league appearances for Birmingham City until 1960, when he retired as a player and went into management.

Standing 6ft 1ins tall, weighing more than 13 stone, and elegantly moustached, Merrick was an imposing figure. He took his goalkeeping very seriously, making a careful study of his potential opponents. “If I studied a player’s run-up and action,” he would reflect, after saving a fierce right-footed shot from Portsmouth’s Duggie Reid, “in kicking the ball, rather than waiting for the ball in flight and depending on quickness of the eye to make a save, I should have a better chance of going the right way.”

The first of Merrick’s 23 England caps came in 1951 at Wembley. He could scarcely be saddled with all the blame for England’s later debacle against Hungary, their first ever defeat on home soil by a team from outside the British Isles. Defensive weaknesses had been evident some weeks earlier in the same stadium, when a patchwork Rest of Europe team scored four times and deserved better than a 4-4 draw. Two of their goals were scored by a player Merrick particularly admired, the powerful Hungarian exile Ladislao Kubala.

From almost the outset of the game against Hungary, Merrick was something of a sitting duck. His defence was totally baffled by the deep-lying Hungarian centre-forward, Nándor Hidegkuti. Barely 90 seconds of the game had elapsed when Hidegkuti, with a clever feint, caused the English centre-half Harry Johnston – who failed to get to grips with him throughout the match – to leave a space in the defensive line, through which he crashed a fierce right-footer past Merrick.

A flood of goals followed. “That was something special, no doubt about that,” Merrick would recall. “Everybody was so very fast. I think the first was a shambles. We never knew who to mark. Harry Johnston, as we walked off 4-2 down [at half-time], said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I haven’t had a kick’, and he hadn’t, because Hidegkuti had moved back 20 yards and left Harry marking nobody. In some ways it was a privilege to play against them. I don’t think there was a better side to teach us how to play football. We’d never seen anything like it. We never had a ghost of a chance at all… The two wingers could catch pigeons. Poor Alf [Ramsey, the right-back] didn’t know which way to turn, because the little left-winger was going by him like a train.”

Seven more goals whizzed past Merrick in Budapest, but with Billy Wright moving from wing-half to centre-half, the defence tightened up in the World Cup in Switzerland, until in the quarter-finals the opposition was Uruguay, holders of the trophy, the 7-0 conquerors of Scotland in the first stages. Merrick, thought one commentator, “had lost his nerve completely after the two Hungarian defeats. England’s new backs, Ron Staniforth and Roger Byrne, had not had time to build up any understanding with their goalkeeper or with each other.”

In Basle, it was 1-1 when England fell behind to a goal by Uruguay’s famous roving centre-half and captain, Obdulio Varela. “The agility of Beara [Yugoslavia's keeper] or Grosics [Hungary's],” considered the commentator, “might have saved that goal.” Uruguay’s third goal saw Merrick widely criticised – too slow, it was reported, to get down to a shot by Juan Schiaffino.

Dropped by England, Merrick would play for another six years for Birmingham City. Before he retired, he published an autobiography, somewhat challengingly titled, I See It All. He managed Birmingham City from 1960 to 1964, becoming runners-up in the Fairs Cup in 1960-61 and leading the side to win the 1963 League Cup over Aston Villa. Although they were never greatly successful in the First Division under Merrick, the club at least escaped relegation.

In the 70s, he would have a spell managing non-league Bromsgrove Rovers, but his name will always be associated with Birmingham City. Last year, the Railway stand at St Andrew’s was renamed in his honour.

He is survived by his wife, Ivy, a daughter, Jill, and a son, Neil, from a previous marriage.

• Gilbert Harold ‘Gil’ Merrick, footballer, born 26 January 1922; died 3 February 2010

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For the FA, this is not a history that can be kicked into touch and replaced with teaching five-year-olds how to juggle a grape

This week Trevor Brooking announced that the FA’s academy of the teenaged backheel at Burton-on-Trent is a step closer to opening its doors. In the process he also took the chance to air an FA-approved version of English football’s great neck-flushing un-Gok-Wan-able source of personal shame, declaring that: “The long-ball game has got to become a thing of the past.”

We’ve heard a lot of this from Sir Trevor, who, in office, has turned out to be a fretful, wincing man who looks like he sometimes mutters to himself in private and makes a frustrated “gnnnnyhng” noise and swats the stapler off his desk before going to brood in his special brown orthopaedic chair and listen to Fabio laughing next door.

Brooking’s gripe is a regurgitation of English football’s central anxiety: fear of the hoof. There is by now an accepted history of how we got here. For its first hundred years English football remained complacently the same, a bog-soaked medicine-ball-wallop played by vitamin-deficient men who died young, often by falling into a loom. Meanwhile, abroad the game “evolved”, notably in Hungary and Austria where banished Englishman Jimmy Hogan invented being able to control the ball properly. In 1953 England were spanked by Hungary at Wembley, causing a big realisation. Something had to be done. But what?

Fuddled, the FA brought in hair-oiled bogeyman Charles Reep, who had a book with statistics that proved the long ball was the answer: our balsa-wood and string solution to a half-century of sullen decline. So under Charles Hughes, reviled coaching guru of the 1970s, the FA went on to teach the very long ball Brooking now impugns.

I’ve got Hughes’s coaching textbook. You’d expect it to be full of bilious incantations about moustachioed men with accents you can’t place. But it’s actually earnest and likeable, written with a kindly tracksuited intensity. It’s even got – hang on – Trevor Brooking in it! There he is, the filthy collaborator: actually teaching people, with photos, how to hoof the ball long (I refer Sir Trevor to page 53, figure 6d: “The ball is delivered into space in the right full‑back position to Brooking”).

But let’s not gloat. Trevor’s own presence at the heart of what he seeks to condemn illustrates the inescapable circularity in our shared long-ball heritage. This is not a history that can be simply dropped and replaced with teaching five-year-olds how to juggle a grape. The fact is we find the long ball stirring. We seek it out, ancestrally and instinctively. We smell it on the rain. Forget the Premier League academies and the chimera of modernism. Those frowning teenage skinheads you see representing the home nations in the Victory Shield on Sky Sports are still tall boys who like to send long, to get rid and to generally trample all over Sir Trevor’s six-step mini-futsal golf ball keepie-uppie programme.

Plus, there is our role in the wider world. If English players tend towards the high pass and the muscular barge this does still have a vital function. With England in the mix we know anyone who wants to win a World Cup must, at the very least, be able to defend the floated, flickable semi-hoof. This is our role: basic training. Go off and play your “attractive football” in your semi-finals, but only after we’ve established that this is still a contact sport and we’re all keeping it non-basketball real.

What are the alternatives anyway? There is still plenty to be found that is cheerless in a homogenised 11‑man pinball purged of sweat-soaked northern European blundering. I quite like, and also feel oddly irritated by, the scampering, self-righteous Velcro-touch gnomes of Barcelona. But is the future really exclusively theirs?

At the Burton-on-Trent unveiling Brooking found support from Stuart Pearce who said: “We need to get in a situation where we have no more excuses.” Is that right? At least our English failure has a face (in Soccer Tactics and Skills, pub. 1980, it has Trevor Brooking’s face). It’s a grand old excuse, an irreversibly embedded culture of hoof, an excuse with a pedigree and narrative arc all its own: our own dark and secret place where we can fret and frown and shiver and say “gnnnnyhng”. Blame the weather. Blame angry swearing dad. Blame an innate Anglo-Saxon impatience. The long ball is truly the enemy inside.

For full story go to here

England’s lack of a natural left-winger is often seen to be their weakness, but Fabio Capello has turned it into an advantage

The Platonic fallacy is that England, we keep being told – and the criticism was particularly in vogue after the defeat to Brazil in Qatar, as though a defeat for a side missing 16 potential members of next summer’s World Cup squad invalidated two years of progress under Fabio Capello – do not have width on their left side.

They don’t, and it doesn’t matter. When Capello protests against such designations as 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1, it is presumably these tiresome arguments he is looking to avoid. Formations are useful, but crude, tools to give a general idea of shape, more relevant to those of us describing the game than those playing it. They are not Platonic ideals to which sides should attempt to live up. To insist that a side playing what we, for instance, call 4-2-3-1, must have a winger on each side is to allow the cart to drive the horse.

England in the World Cup qualifiers found a highly effective way of playing, so effective that they scored six more goals in European qualifying than any other nation (and before anybody argues they had an easy group, remember that no other European group featured three teams who had played at the 2006 World Cup; and that no side had ever beaten Croatia in a competitive fixture in Zagreb until Capello’s England went there and shattered their self-belief with a 4-1 win). Just because that way of playing doesn’t conveniently fit any default template does not diminish it; in fact, if anything, it may give it greater validity by making it harder to combat.

The Scottish way of asymmetry has always been part of the game. The earliest extant description of a formation describes how England lined up against Scotland in the first international in 1872. According to notes made by Charles Alcock, the secretary of the FA, England’s team was made up of a “goal”, a “three-quarter back”, a “half-back”, a “fly-kick”, four players listed simply as “middle”, two as “left side” and one as “right side”, which sounds like a lop-sided 1-2-7.

The 1-2-7 seems to have been standard, but we have no way of knowing whether it was usual to overload the left. It may be simply that those were the players available to make the long journey from London to Glasgow. Or the shape may reflect the early style of play. Football at the time – at least until Scotland showcased passing in that match – was based on head-down dribbling, with the occasional long ball to clear the lines (hence the “fly-kick”). Assuming a preponderance of right-footers, it may be that they were more effective cutting in from the left towards goal, and it similarly is logical to assume that the natural trajectory for a right-footed fly-kick would be to send the ball on a diagonal towards the left side.

Either way, Scotland held England 0-0, their concern over England’s weight advantage leading them to adopt a 2-2-6 and pass the ball to keep it away from their larger opponents. That style slowly spread, and as 2-2-6 became 2-3-5, symmetry ruled, at least in terms of how newspapers presented formations. That changed with the alteration of the offside law in 1925 so that only two defensive players rather than three were needed to play a forward onside, as teams began to withdraw their centre-half into the back-line to give added defensive solidity.

It soon became apparent that that left a side short in midfield, and so, at Arsenal, Charlie Buchan, an inside-right, dropped deep to provide cover; that unbalanced the team, though, and in time the inside-left also dropped, creating the symmetrical 3-2-2-3 or W-M.

The Brazilian re-emergence

The W-M gradually spread through Europe, but it was after it had been exported to Brazil that asymmetry became formalised in a formation for the first time. It was taken across the Atlantic in 1937 by Dori Kurschner, a Jewish former Hungary international fleeing anti-Semitism in his homeland. He became coach of Flamengo, but lasted only a year as players, fans and journalists derided his supposedly defensive approach. Kurschner had replaced Flávio Costa, who stayed on as his assistant, and undermined his boss at every turn, taking advantage of his lack of Portuguese and mocking the new system.

When Kurschner was sacked, Costa was reappointed. By then, he had become a convert to the W-M, but having spent 12 months sneering at it, he couldn’t admit as much. Instead he came up with what he insisted was a new formation, the diagonal, in which the central square of the W-M was tipped to become a rhombus, with one of the wing-halves slightly deeper than the other, and one of the inside-forwards slightly advanced.

There were those, such as the Portugal coach Cândido de Oliveria, who dismissed the diagonal as nothing more than a repackaging of the W-M, but perhaps it is fairer to say that Costa formalised an unspoken process that was inherent in the W-M. One inside-forward would always be more creative than the other; one half-back more defensive.

At Arsenal in the 1930s, as their former centre-half Bernard Joy explains in Soccer Tactics, the left-half Wilf Copping played deep, with the right-half Jack Crayston given more freedom. When the Wolves and England captain of the late 40s and early 50s, Billy Wright, who could also operate as a centre-half, played as a half-back, did he not play deeper than Billy Crook or Jimmy Dickinson?

Similarly, it was usual – perhaps giving credence to theories linking left-sidedness with creativity – for the inside-left to be more attacking than the inside-right, which is why the No10 rather than the No8 became lionised as the playmaker.

Costa also, whether consciously or not, began the evolution to 4-2-4, his defensive half-back eventually became a second centre-back, and the advanced inside-forward a second striker. Symmetry, briefly, returned, as Brazil won the World Cup in 1958, but by 1962, as others aped their 4-2-4 system, Brazil had moved on, using Mario Zagallo as a shuttling winger-cum-wide-midfielder on the left while Garrincha played as a more orthodox winger on the right: 4-2-4 had become an asymmetric 4-3-3.

Only when Alf Ramsey and Viktor Maslov did away with wingers altogether in the mid-60s did symmetry return, but for another two decades it was still common in those nations where a back-four was usual for one of the wide midfielders to be more attacking than the other. An extreme example came at Newcastle in the early 1980s as they played a 4-3-2 plus Chris Waddle operating on whichever flank he felt featured the weaker full-back.

Intriguingly, away at Chelsea this season, Manchester United played with what was essentially a midfield diamond, with Wayne Rooney as a lone central forward and Antonio Valencia wide on the right, a conscious asymmetry presumably designed to pen Ashley Cole back, a system more defensive in nature but essentially similar to that used by Brazil (and strangely similar to the way Argentina played in the 1966 World Cup, where Luis Artime was the lone centre-forward, and Oscar Más an isolated left-winger). The possibilities of asymmetry are still being explored in the modern game.

The Italian embrace

As the W-M was superseded, football tended to follow one of two paths: there was the Russo-Brazilian, flat back-four model; or there was the Swiss-Italian libero model. Catenaccio abandoned symmetry early.

Helenio Herrera’s Internazionale featured, in Giacinto Facchetti, a marauding left-back, who was accommodated by having the nominal right-back, Tarcisio Burgnich, tuck in to become a de facto right-sided centre-back. The space he left at right-back was then covered by Jair, the right-winger, chugging back when necessary to cover as a tornante – a returner. The tornante itself can be seen as a development of something that had been characteristic of football in Argentina since the late 1940s and River Plate’s La Máquina side.

River’s left-winger, Félix Loustau, became known as ventilador-wing (fan-wing) because his back-tracking gave air to the midfield. The centre-half and left-half could then shuffle right, which in turn allowed the nominal right-half Norberto Yácono to take on a man-marking role, tailing the opponent’s most creative player (typically the inside-left), secure in the knowledge he would not be leaving a hole on the right side of midfield. The issue was less symmetry than balance.

Gradually Inter’s system became formalised and developed into il gioco all’Italiano. “It was effective for a while,” said Ludovico Maradei, a former chief football writer of La Gazzetta dello Sport, “and, by the late 1970s and early 1980s everybody in Italy was playing it. But that became its undoing. Everybody had the same system and it was rigidly reflected in the numbers players wore. The No9 was the centre-forward, 11 was the second striker who always attacked from the left, 7 the tornante on the right, 4 the deep-lying central midfielder, 10 the more attacking central midfielder and 8 the link-man, usually on the centre left, leaving space for 3, the left-back, to push on. Everyone marked man-to-man so it was all very predictable. 2 on 11, 3 on 7, 4 on 10, 5 on 9, 6 was the sweeper, 7 on 3, 8 on 8, 10 on 4, 9 on 5 and 11 on 2.”

In other words, asymmetries matched, every system mapping neatly on to the one it was pitted against. The problem came when it met an incongruent asymmetry, as was exposed in Juventus’s defeat to Hamburg in the 1983 European Cup final. Hamburg played with two forwards: a figurehead in Horst Hrubesch, with the Dane Lars Bastrup usually playing off him to the left. That suited Giovanni Trapattoni’s Juventus, because it meant Bastrup could be marked by the right-back Claudio Gentile, while the left-back Antonio Cabrini would be free to attack.

Realising that, the Hamburg coach Ernst Happel switched Bastrup to the right, putting him up against Cabrini. Trapattoni, sticking with the man-to-man system, moved Gentile across to the left to mark Bastrup.

That, of course, left a hole on the right, which Marco Tardelli was supposed to drop back from midfield and fill. In practice, though, Tardelli was both neutered as an attacking force and failed adequately to cover the gap, through which Felix Magath ran to score the only goal of the game.

And that, really, is the advantage of asymmetry; it presents sides with unfamiliar and unpredictable problems. It also takes account of players’ individual characteristics. There is something very reductive about the English convention of simply referring to players by position, so that players as dissimilar as Ronaldinho and Steve Stone can both be described as wingers. Other cultures – or certainly those of Italy and Argentina – seem to have a far richer vocabulary with which to describe players, which in turn perhaps leads to greater tactical sophistication as it becomes immediately obvious that setting up a team is not about drilling 10 round holes and hammering pegs into them whatever their shape.

Perhaps that is why it took an Italian to set England up in a coherent way. Capello is not hindered by the dogma that players must play in their best positions, because he does not see players simply as positions (at times it almost feels as though England is stuck in the early 1950s and the days of a selection committee who couldn’t conceive of anything beyond a W-M and mechanically voted on who the best left-winger was, who the best left-half was, and gave next to no thought to how they might actually work together).

The thought that Steven Gerrard must play in his natural position through the middle (as though you could somehow pack him and Wayne Rooney into the same space and somehow make twice the impact) isn’t a distraction because Gerrard to him is less a central midfielder than a bundle of attributes. Playing him to the left of Rooney allows him into cut in on to his stronger right foot, often arriving late into the penalty area and making him difficult to pick up. Given Rooney has a natural leftward drift, that creates an intriguing interplay that is difficult for defenders to counter.

Attacking width on that flank is provided by Ashley Cole who, as he proved against Arsenal on Sunday, is once again one of the most potent attacking full-backs in the world now that he has been let off the leash by Carlo Ancelotti. Add in Frank Lampard coming from a deeper left-centre position, and England have a diverse range of options from the left, with the more orthodox width of a Theo Walcott or Aaron Lennon on the right.

Perhaps you could quibble that it would be better if, rather than Glen Johnson, England had a more defensively minded right-back, given the lack of cover Walcott or Lennon will provide (although Johnson overlapping as Walcott cuts infield is an attractive prospect), and that in an ideal world Gareth Barry would be right-footed to complement Lampard and cover Johnson’s surges. And it would be nice if Emile Heskey, as well as creating space, which he does superbly, could hit a barn door – but those are the sort of flaws that are inevitable in international football, where squads are given not constructed.

England at last have a coherent model of play. That it is not symmetrical is irrelevant; far more important is that it is balanced.

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• England join Europe’s elite international teams in pot one
• Rep of Ireland and N Ireland joined by Scotland in pot three

England have been named among the top seeds for February’s European Championship qualifying draw, but Scotland are in the third band after slipping down the rankings.

Fabio Capello’s side won nine of their 10 qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup and they will again be the highest-ranked team in their group.

But Scotland’s dismal showing in their failed World Cup qualification campaign has led to a drop down to 26th in the European rankings, meaning they join the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in pot three, with Wales among the fourth seeds.

How the teams are seeded

Pot One Spain, Germany, Holland, Italy, England, Croatia, Portugal, France, Russia.

Pot Two Greece, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey, Denmark, Slovakia, Romania.

Pot Three Israel, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Pot Four Slovenia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Belarus, Belgium, Wales, FYR Macedonia, Cyprus.

Pot Five Montenegro, Albania, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Iceland, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein.

Pot Six Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Malta, Faroe Islands, Andorra, San Marino.

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• Rooney ‘played a few times against us and never won’
• Queiroz says Rooney was showing respect for Portugal

Cristiano Ronaldo believes his former Manchester United team-mate Wayne Rooney was joking when the England striker said he would be pleased if Portugal failed to qualify for the World Cup.

“I am sure he was joking,” the Portuguese forward said today. “He is a good friend of mine and he knows Portugal are a top team. He played a few times against us and never won. But I am sure he was joking as he has friends here [in the Portugal squad].”

Rooney yesterday said “it would be nice” if Portugal failed to qualify as the country knocked out England in their last two appearances in major tournaments, the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2004.

“When we didn’t qualify for Euro 2008, we [the United players] got a lot of stick [from Ronaldo],” Rooney said.

England have already qualified for next year’s finals in South Africa while Portugal are third in Group One and must win at least one of their remaining matches against Hungary and Malta, while hoping Sweden drop points, to reach the play-offs.

The Portugal coach Carlos Queiroz, who worked with both players at United, said Rooney was showing his respect for Portugal. “Knowing him, I know why he said that,” Queiroz said. “It’s because it shows his respect for Portuguese football and Ronaldo particularly.”

Rooney was sent off against Portugal in the 2006 World Cup quarter-final for stamping on Ricardo Carvalho in a match that triggered a media backlash against Ronaldo. Ronaldo had suggested to the referee that Rooney should be sent off and was seen to wink at his bench when the official did so.

Rooney said he had no doubt that he deserved to be sent off and made clear there were no hard feelings towards Ronaldo, saying the Portuguese had only improved since his move to Real Madrid. Portugal play Hungary in Lisbon tomorrow and Malta in Guimaraes next Wednesday.

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• Fabio Capello’s side placed fifth in Uefa’s interim seedings
• Portugal and Serbia among the likely second seeds

England are virtually guaranteed a top seeding in the Euro 2012 qualification draw even though they did not reach the finals of the last tournament.

Uefa has released interim seedings for the draw, which will be held in Warsaw on 7 February. While there are still some matches to be played, England’s current position of fifth should ensure Fabio Capello’s men get a favourable seeding among the nine groups.

With six pools of six teams and three of five, only the group winners will be guaranteed a place in the finals alongside the co-hosts Poland and Ukraine, who England face in Dnipropetrovsk tomorrow. The best runner-up will also go through, with the eight others going into the play-offs.

Capello will not want to be paired with either Portugal – who may yet be eliminated from the World Cup – or Serbia, who currently head a group containing France, both of whom are potential second seeds. A potential ‘group of death’ for England could see them compete for the one automatic qualifying spot with Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, and the improving Slovenia. In geographical terms, a potential group including Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Georgia and Azerbaijan would hardly hold much appeal.

As it presently stands, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland will all be in pot three, while Wales will once again be up against it when they come out of pot four.

Uefa interim seedings

1 Spain

2 Germany

3 Netherlands

4 Italy

5 England

6 Russia

7 Croatia

8 France

9 Sweden

————

10 Portugal

11 Serbia

12 Czech Republic

13 Switzerland

14 Denmark

15 Greece

16 Turkey

17 Slovakia

18 Romania

————

19 Ukraine (qualified as hosts)

20 Poland (qualified as hosts)

21 Israel

22 Republic of Ireland

23 Bulgaria

24 Finland

25 Norway

26 Bosnia-Herzegovina

27 Scotland

28 Northern Ireland

29 Austria

————

30 Latvia

31 Hungary

32 Slovenia

33 Lithuania

34 Belarus

35 Wales

36 Belgium

37 FYR Macedonia

38 Albania

————

39 Cyprus

40 Estonia

41 Georgia

42 Moldova

43 Montenegro

44 Armenia

45 Iceland

46 Kazakhstan

47 Liechtenstein

————

48 Luxembourg

49 Azerbaijan

50 Malta

51 Faroe Islands

52 Andorra

53 San Marino

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Something is wrong when we’ve got to decide whether someone is the ninth, 13th or 21st best player in the world

It’s been an odd week for Wayne Rooney, a week in which he didn’t really do much, but people still talked about him a lot. Mainly, driven by Sir Alex Ferguson’s remark before the game against Wolfsburg that “Kaká, Ronaldo and Messi are the best three and I think Wayne can get to that level”, they talked about when we can expect him to stop mucking about just trying really hard and training brilliantly and running about all over the place and finally stride on to the confetti-strewn pedestal as, if not the best player in the world, then at least part of the current, formally-mandated Best Player In The World godhead.

The idea that you’ve always got to have a really clear notion of who is The Best Player In The World has become increasingly important. For what it’s worth, I think Rooney is currently the 11th best player, although I have absolutely no evidence to support this and I’m willing to accept that he might also be the ninth best player, or the 13th, or the 21st. Is he really better than Ryan Giggs? Or some Serbians you’ve only vaguely heard of but who turn out to be devastatingly adept at all the things that seem so difficult when an England player tries them and the TV commentator has to put on his throaty, concerned voice and say, “always struggling to reach that ball”?

It’s all very confusing. Perhaps there’s no real way of knowing where we stand outside of staging one of those evenings on Sky Sports where David Platt and Glenn Hoddle sit around a table in black tie talking solemnly about quick feet and having a picture in your head and using the word “top” a lot as in “Richard, we’re talking top, top players here, top, top, top players” while everyone nods sadly, as though, rather than talking about Frank Lampard, Graeme Souness has just delivered the funeral elegy for a heroic dead horse.

You can see why we might be interested in this kind of thing. Rooney is the best English player. He’s what they’ve got right now. England may have their quota of flailing centre-forwards and cartwheeling goalkeepers, but everyone likes to have one thing in their life that they can quietly imagine to be unanswerably excellent. I believe I have a world-class aptitude for catching objects that unexpectedly fall from a shelf or table, like a marble from a disturbed Kerplunk set, or an egg that wobbles out of an overly-stuffed fridge door. But there is still a part of me that suspects if catching dropped things was ever made into a competitive event the first World Championships would end up being a deeply traumatic experience, that the Chinese would turn out to be unfathomably advanced, that the Americans would be 9ft tall and in my face right from the start and I’d end up humiliated on the world stage, ping pong balls flying all over the place, and like England after that seminal 1953 thrashing by Hungary, tearfully shredding all I thought I knew about the world of catching dropped things.

Of course, this won’t happen to Rooney because he is the sixth or 14th or 11th best player in the world. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the preoccupation with a Best Player In The World global ranking system is the way it reflects something of what football is now. The Premier League is a frictionless, bar-coded kind of place, every item priced and stacked and consumer-rated. As the voice of JG Ballard said on Radio 4 this week: “Something is missing from the world we all inhabit. We’ve lost our faith in the far future and we’re living in a commodified world in which everything has a price tag.” He may have then gone on to add, “and to be fair Wazza’s got to pull his finger out if he’s going to make that step up from seventh to fourth in the world according to my fevered and ultimately futile urge to sift and label and rank” but they cut it off before we got there.

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