Posts Tagged ‘Millennium Stadium’
John Toshack to sound out Wales team over venue for England qualifier
• Millennium Stadium may be shunned in favour of smaller venue
• Toshack predicts nations will struggle to agree fixture dates
The Wales manager, John Toshack, will consult his players before deciding whether to play their home Euro 2012 qualifier with England in the Millennium Stadium or a smaller and more intimidating ground.
Wales are in the same group as Fabio Capello’s side in addition to Switzerland, Montenegro and Bulgaria. Holding the match at the Millennium Stadium, with its capacity of nearly 75,000, would mean more revenue and less headaches in terms of security.
Toshack, however, admits other options to consider are the new Cardiff City Stadium (capacity 27,000) and Swansea’s Liberty complex (22,000) where they host Sweden in a friendly on 3 March.
Toshack said: “Things have changed a bit recently for us. We have got two other stadiums now. We were well pleased with the treatment we got from the Cardiff people when we played Scotland there recently.
“Swansea have a new stadium as well and we have been treated well there and play Sweden there shortly. You have to consider the atmosphere factor as well. It is early days yet. We have a fixture meeting on 15 March when it will be decided what dates we play but you don’t have to announce the venue until 90 days before a fixture.
“I will be interested to get the players’ views on that subject as well so we have got a little bit of time to decide.”
Toshack concedes England will be favourites to qualify but believes the battle for second spot is wide open. “Looking at our group, I think it is the most wide open of all of them. England will be clear favourites but I think the other four nations are all in contention.
“Between the four of us there is not a great deal to choose at all. It is difficult for anyone to predict the positions the teams will finish in. There are no ‘gimme’ fixtures for anyone. England are favourites but none of the teams are superpowers.”
Toshack locked horns with Capello just once when rival managers in Spain during the 1990s, but believes he can lead England to a successful World Cup.
“I sat next to Capello on the plane on the way over for the draw yesterday and we had a good two and a half hour conversation. On the way back he sat at the back, I sat at the front and we never said a word.
“Seriously, I am sure there will be an awful lot of interest in the game and I can see them having a good World Cup as well. Hopefully they will come back with 10 injuries and we can pick them off in September. You never know. For our players, the prospect of playing England at Wembley is a terrific incentive. If our young players get more game time in, and progress as we think they are capable of, it will be great.”
Toshack’s main concern is that Wales have more luck with injuries than in their World Cup qualifying campaign. “When you look at us and England, we have 11 players who play in the Premier League and two of them are goalkeepers. You can see the difficulties we have with four or five injuries. We need a bit of good fortune on the injury front which we never had the last time around.
“If we make mistakes or pick the wrong team, or concede late on, that’s down to us, but we would just hope to have our best players available.”
Toshack believes it will be more difficult for teams to come to an agreement over when to stage fixtures given the new guidelines which allow weekend games to be played on Friday or Saturday and all midweek fixtures on Tuesdays.
“I can see that being difficult this time around for all the groups. I can see a lot of these meetings to decide the fixtures being thrown out and it all going to Uefa to decide. A lot of countries are not accustomed to playing on Friday evening and won’t want Saturday-Tuesday either.
“In this country, our players are accustomed to playing Saturday-Tuesdays so I can see fixture meetings this time around having a lot of problems and not being easy to come to an agreement.”
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Ben Foster receives Sir Alex Ferguson’s endorsement as England’s No1
• United’s manager challenges Foster to take Van der Sar’s spot
• Consistency key following season blighted by injury
If, as Sir Alex Ferguson and everyone else at Old Trafford believes, Ben Foster’s season will end keeping goal for England in South Africa, it was not an auspicious beginning.
A routine back-pass from Darron Gibson was not controlled, Foster was dispossessed by Malaysia’s best player, Amri Yahyah, who was presented with an empty net. The 85,000 in the Bukit Jalil Stadium exploded, there was another cascade of flashbulbs from the stands and, even though it may only have been a friendly, Foster took the familiar stance of a humiliated goalkeeper, hands on hips, talking to no one in particular. It will take more, much more, for Ferguson to lose faith and in a 2–0 win over a Malaysia XI yesterday there was a more familiar clean sheet. “This was Ben’s first game for four months. He dislocated a finger at the end of last season and we had to operate,” said the United manager. “I have said it before and I will say it again, there is no question in my mind that he will be England’s goalkeeper. There is nobody better. I am absolutely convinced of that.
“But he has two challenges. One is to take the position of Edwin van der Sar, who as everybody accepts, is one of the great goalkeepers of all time.” The other, Ferguson accepted, was in the hands of fate. “We have to hope and pray that he stays free of injury and consistency will be everything for the boy.” For someone who has suffered a cruciate ligament injury and missed eight weeks of last season with a twisted ankle, this is not an idle prayer.
Very rarely does any England manager, especially one as fastidious as Fabio Capello, select anyone who is not first choice for their clubs. There was a time, around December 2007, when it seemed Van der Sar’s days were done. There had been mistakes and the Dutchman began publicly questioning his own form and longevity. Then came the rediscovery of his touch that ended in his saving Nicolas Anelka’s penalty to win the European Cup for Manchester United in Moscow. Ferguson remarked that Van der Sar was so confident he actually broke out into a smile as he dived across.
“It is a big 12 months for me,” Foster said today. “I have just got to kick on and start playing a few matches. Of course the World Cup is a big motivation for me. You don’t get many chances to play in a World Cup and I feel that provided I can play some games for Manchester United, I have a realistic chance of going.”
Should Foster, now 26, make it to South Africa, it will mark the end of one of the more remarkable journeys in modern football. In the days when young players are cosseted in academies, there will not be many internationals who can boast spells at Stafford Rangers, Tiverton Town and Kidderminster Harriers on their CVs.
There are not many who would listen on their iPods to descriptions of where opponents would place a penalty that gave him a critical edge as Manchester United engaged in the shoot-out with Tottenham that decided an otherwise dreadful Carling Cup final.
Foster’s path to Old Trafford began in the 2005 LDV Vans Trophy final, where Foster, officially on Stoke’s books, though he had yet to play for them, was turning out for Wrexham against Southend at the Millennium Stadium.
“I remember it as massively important because three or four months before I don’t think I had played in a competitive league match,” Foster recalled. “It was a good time to perform because halfway through that game the cameraman, who was filming for the big screen at the Millennium Stadium, zoomed in on Alex Ferguson’s face and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, he’s watching is he’.
“He was obviously there to see his son Darren [who was then playing for Wrexham] and he got man of the match and I was devastated because it had gone to extra time, we’d won 2-0 and I thought I’d done enough.”
Ferguson certainly thought so and paid Stoke £1m for Foster’s services and immediately loaned him out to Watford. Again he ended the season in Cardiff, as part of the side that demolished Leeds 3–0 in the 2006 play-off final. Ferguson may call him the best goalkeeper in England but his then manager, Aidy Boothroyd, stated he had the potential to be the best in the world. This season those statements will be put to the test.
