Spurs Player Busting A Gut

It was amusing to read in recent days of Spurs manager Juande Ramos' shock, upon meeting his new charges three months ago, at finding that he would be managing a male, twentysomething version of the Roly Polys. Apparently the players' fondness for previous manager Martin Jol extended to developing rotund physiques a lot like the Dutchman's.

It seems that a key part of Ramos' epic adventure to 11th place in the Premier League and a Carling Cup final place has involved putting the podgy Spurs players through a version of RTE's Operation Transformation, only with the consolation of having Gus Poyet manning the scales instead of Slobberin' Gerry Ryan.

Ramos' instigation of a strict new dietary regime saw the cream buns banned from the training ground canteen, with immediate benefits. Tom Huddlestone has been the most high profile Weight Watcher doing the Ramos Diet, but the overall effect of improved diet on the squad helped them to their five-goal thrashing of Wengers Waifs in last week's Carling semi-final.

All well and good, but did it really need a foreign manager with the customary battalion of sports scientists and nutrionary boffins to tell the burger-munching Spurs lads that laying off the lard might help their form?

As an amply upholstered, firmly ensconced member of the sedentary class, I always presumed that footballers, being, well, athletes, would have had the avoidance of snack boxes and suchlike as a veritable mantra.

Yes, I understood that previous generations of players refuelled after training sessions with a balanced meal of lager and crisps. But that was the past. We forgive our forebears their mistakes borne of ignorance: slavery, feeding porter to babies, boiling down homosexuals to make glue. But surely the footballers of today know fully and well that a Mars a day doesn't actually make you work, rest and play.

See, because I reckoned that footballers were denying themselves all manner of cream-laden, deep-fried, cheesey, beery pleasures in conscientious devotion to their profession, I turned a blind eye to many of their infamous extra-curricular trangressions.

It's hardly surprising, I reasoned, that these young men, rigourously adhering to a monastic aversion to most common vices, might, as a consolatory treat, find themselves occasionally in the midst of a logistically complex and barely consensual act of sexual depravity. With lifestyles, I contended, that required repeated refusal to yield to the sensual delights of the larder and the keg, how surprising was it that the poor souls might relent to the odd offer of a tri-partite episode of casual rumpy.

But, as Juande Ramos found out when he fetched up in North London, it seems that footballers have been having their cake and eating it.

Roman Calls The Tune

Taken from us in the dead of night, was Jose. Just like that. The health hadn't been the best of late, but it was still a shock when it came.

Hard to imagine life without him, isn't it? A principal character in the Premier League soap opera has been killed off. I can see the compilation of his best moments now, from the extraordinary cameo appearance in Porto's victory over Manchester United in the 2004 Champions League last 16 to last week's 'egg metaphor' press conference. Maybe soundtracked by I Know Him So Well, Elaine Page and Barbara Dickson's classic 1985 version, of course.

Plenty other central characters could be following Mourinho into the footballing equivalent of Holby City. Mourinho's greatest achievement at Chelsea, aside from the tangibles of two Premiership titles, one FA Cup and a Carling Cup, was the team spirit and loyalty he engendered at Stamford Bridge: he created a heart in a club where such a thing shouldn't have existed.

Aside from John Terry and Frank Lampard - the former recently announced himself, Lampard and Mourinho to be the three-pronged fork of righteous justice that would lead Chelsea to global domination - Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Michael Essien and Claude Makalele are all reportedly not best pleased at the way Mourinho's constructive dismissal was carried out.

It certainly appears to be a watershed for the club. Whether the Wormtongue presence of Avram Grant represents a long-term alternative as manager, the Israeli faces an enormous challenge in marshalling Mourinho's loyal footsoldiers under his command.

The duration of his stewardship, of course, will be precisely as long as Roman Abramovich's patience lasts. The Sacked Managers Union that represent most of the football punditry industry will line up squarely in support of Mourinho at this point. The outrageousness of a chairman and club owner dictating how a manager should do his job will be stated and underlined at length.

But the idea that any sort of normal moral compass applies in the world of Abramovich and Chelsea is utterly redundant. In the world that the Russian oligarch has created around Stamford Bridge, there is no right or wrong way. There is only Roman's way. It is a mini-moral universe in which Abramovich's word is the Truth.

And anyone who enters that world, lives by that word.

So if Abramovich felt that he - the creator and intelligent designer of this world - was unsatisfied that his hundreds of millions had failed to produce what he desired, the elusive winning-with-style conundrum, then Jose's fate was sealed. In short, Roman saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. But not great.

The ultimate irony in Mourinho's departure is that the man who portrayed himself as the quasi-supernatural 'Special One', was undone in a perfect enactment of the Christian theology that even the greatest man is subservient to the superior being.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Shakh-ing Night For Celtic

2-0, and as Shakhtar Donetsk manager Mircea Lucescu said, it could have been six. Everyone knows the statistic: fourteen Champions League away trips, no wins, just the one draw.

Looked at like that it reads like a formality, these pastings Celtic routinely endure on their travels. Like it's just part of a script, an intricate footballing protocol that features rousing home performance on one page, depressing away capitulations on the other.

Belief in the inevitability of it is backed up by the respective chequebook stubs of Celtic and Shakhtar. Celtic's summer business was constituted by the £8.1 million spend on midfielders Scott Brown and Massimo Donati, and the strikers Scott McDonald and Chris Killen. Shakhtar spent £35 million, largely on strikers Cristiano Lucarelli and Nery Castillo. Go figure.

But there is nothing inevitable in sport, as several of the Celtic players from last night would tell you from their experience seven days previously in Stade de France. Alex McLeish's Scottish side defeated France thanks to a courageous defensive performance, one borne of a collective understanding of what would be required to get a result against France.

Gordon Strachan's Celtic last night, on the other hand, were set up in a manner that seemed to ignore their previous struggles away from home and presume that they should take on the lucratively assembled Shakhtar side toe-to-toe. Ten minutes in with a 4-4-2 formation that left their rearguard flooded, and another awayday nightmare was in progress. Paul Hartley's redeployment to the same holding job he performed against France for his country came too late to do anything other than limit the damage.

There is also nothing inevitable about the sort of individual error that gifted Donetsk their opener. Stephen McManus, the defensive rock on which Scotland's resistance was built last week, gaffed the ball to the feet of Donetsk's creative lynchpin Fernandinho, and the game was up right there.

So whether it was destiny or decision, it was yet another harsh 'lesson' for Celtic. Still, if the standard Champions League curriculum is followed, AC Milan will be swept aside in a night of high emotion at Parkhead in two weeks time.

It's inevitable, isn't it?

Football - Fifteen Years On

When football was invented in 1992 by a brave, visionary group of television executives, none of them could possibly have foreseen the juncture at which we now find ourselves, on the cusp of the sixteenth season of what those founding fathers lovingly called 'the Premiership'.

Looking back on those days is like watching footage of the Wright Brothers first successful flight: how did this unlikely contraption, firstly, stay airborne, and then, eventually, soar?

Back in 1992 most of the early footballers were actually British or Irish, and all the clubs were owned by British people - sounds ridiculous, I know, but check the record books if you don't believe me.

Quite how the humble but ambitious TV men persuaded millions to watch what must have been horrifyingly unsophisticated football, practised by podgy, ale-quaffing Brits rather than lithe, pasta-slurping foreigners is unfathomable now.

But here we are, 15 years later, and this thing called football is better than ever. We know this because the TV people (now called Sky) are paying £1.314 billion of lovely cash to show it to us, and other TV people called Setanta are paying £392 million to show us even more of it, and people from foreign places (where the footballers come from) are paying £625 million to show it to other people from foreign places (presumably so they can learn how to be footballers when they grow up).

Some people - you can't please everyone! - don't like how great football is now. They think it's a bad thing that, say, Pol Pot, could, of an afternoon, after a morning spent pottering around massacring a few hundred thousand bourgeois intellectuals, fetch up with his life savings and buy himself an Everton or a Derby County.

A bad thing? They wouldn't be saying that when Pol Pot's investment secures a tidy little £16 million deal with add-ons for Steed Malbranque!

Some people - honestly, I know, but we live in a democracy, what can you do? - don't like how all the lovely footballers get all the lovely cash. Duh, hello? Have you seen Footballers Cribs? How could you possibly expect Robbie Savage to maintain that wonderful home on anything less than £40,000 a week?

Could Sheree Murphy have had that 360 degree mirror in her downstairs toilet on an Emmerdale salary, without Harry Kewell chipping in with the few quid for housekeeping?

Some of these people - were Pol Pot's methods so wrong? - even think that the TV people put too much football on, which is ridiculous, given that a) as we know, the TV people invented football, you cricket-loving pinkos, so they can do what they like!.....and b) have you seen the telly lately? It's rubbish! Even Big Brother is crap this year. And it's either that or bloody CSI! More football please!

Yes indeed, fifteen years on from the birth of football, and what a fine young adolescent it has become! Not surly, irresponsible, strange-smelling, pock-marked with unsightly boils, vaguely repulsive and utterly self-centred like many other adolescents at all.

Oh no, not at all.

TSA SPL Preview: It Takes Two

When is a two-horse race not a two-horse race? When it's a one-horse race.

Ask anyone on this dirty old planet who has even the most fleeting acquaintance with football matters about the SPL, and your reply will, in every case, include the words "Celtic" and "Rangers", and perhaps also "Mickey" and "Mouse".

But while, in broad historical terms, the notion of the two-team cartel is reinforced by the record books, the last couple of decades have seen, in general, monopoly rather than duopoly.

From the late 1980s until the late 1990s, Rangers utterly dominated Scottish football, their eminence powered by the liberal chequebook of owner and chairman David Murray. Celtic, along with all other rivals, were cowed into distant inferiority by the Ibrox club's financial clout.

Then, as Murray's efforts to extend his team's success to the European theatre petered out with the dwindling of his financial largesse, the club now known as Celtic plc found the on-field general to match footballing success to their stronger financial situation, when Martin O'Neill became manager in the summer of 2000.

The title count in the years since has been 5-2 in Celtic's favour, with the two Rangers successes being nailbiting, last day finishes; the first while their rivals were distracted by a UEFA Cup campaign that saw them reach the final, the second in O'Neill's final days as manager, when his aging team threw the title away in the dying moments of their final game against Motherwell.

Celtic's triumphs, on the other hand, have been by 15, 18, 17, 17 (from Hearts in second in 2005-06) and 12 points respectively, and in each of those seasons the champions were 'pulling up' before the finish, foregoing meaningless points that would have meant even bigger margins of victory, often in favour of experimentation with young players.

So, will the 2007-08 season, which starts on Saturday with Rangers' lunchtime visit to Inverness (Celtic unfurl the league flag against Kilmarnock on Sunday afternoon), see the SPL return to close combat between the Glasgow big two, or will Celtic's domination continue with another canter to the title?

In purely financial terms, the Parkhead club look to be operating with much superior weaponry than their old enemy. Celtic outbid Rangers for the signing of Scott Brown, the £4.4 million Gordon Strachan's side paid being far in excess of the fee Rangers by which had hoped to secure the highly rated youngster.

Scott McDonald arrived at Celtic from Motherwell after also being a target for Rangers, joining Chris Killen, the New Zealander recruited from Hibs. Massimo Donati's signature from AC Milan has thus far concluded Strachan's summer business, although many expect further movement in the remaining month of the summer transfer window, with full-backs especially seen as a priority.

Rangers have also been extremely active, even if Walter Smith's budget has not matched those he enjoyed in his first spell as manager. The new men may not be of the calibre of Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne, but the likes of Carlos Cuellar (£2.4 million from Osasuna), Lee McCulloch (£2.25 million from Wigan Athletic), Stephen Whittaker (£2 million from Hibs), as well as free transfers DaMarcus Beasley (PSV Eindhoven), Jean Claude Darcheville (Bordeaux) and Roy Carroll (West Ham) demonstrate that, at the very least, the Ibrox faithful will have the novelty of new faces to enjoy.

Most observer expect Rangers' challenge to be immeasurably more competitive this season. Walter Smith's return inspired a retrieval of self-respect from the second half of a season which had brought only embarassment and internal strife under the stewardship of Paul Le Guen.

Smith's wealth of experience and keen understanding of the Scottish game should ensure Rangers will be a stronger force at home this season, even if the manager's record in Europe during his first period in charge does little to promise a badly-needed, revenue-generating Champions League run.

As far the rest, the hope inspired by Vladimir Romanov's initial arrival in Scottish football that Hearts might become a genuine third force has long been dissipated in a firestorm of managerial rows, player revolts and peculiar transfer dealings. Aberdeen, third last season, will be happy to repeat the feat having lost captain Russell Anderson to Sunderland, while Hibs have been victims of their own successful youth policy, Brown and Whittaker joining the long list of Easter Road talent who have left for bigger things.

This season, it seems, those running Scottish football would be perfectly happy to have the much maligned two-horse race back in place, rather than the procession it often, actually, is.

Stick With It Son

It's been getting very heavy around here lately, all the scandal and the vice.

So here's a little light relief. According to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, nostalgia is "a feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain."

What, no mention of Bagpuss and Spacehoppers?

Anyway, some bloke called Craig Cullen has detonated a bomb in the Hoover Dam of reason and modernity, unleashing a raging torrent of footballing nostalgia, by creating a website which has the entire, completed Panini sticker albums for 1983-84 and 1984-85 seasons, or Football '84 and Football '85 as the understated titles went.

Presumably Craig discovered booze and women sometime during the summer of '86, for the collections which represent the peak of my own sticker career, Football '86 and Football 87, are sadly not included.

While Football '86 was a collection which saw my brother and I finding our feet in the sticker collecting game, by the time Football '87 game round we were at our glorious peak. We swapped doubles and trebles with hard-nosed savvy of Marrakesh bazaar traders; we could sense the presence of precious foil stickers in unopened packs at the newsagent; we could summon the most heart-rending guilt-trips to persuade our parents to stretch to another few packs - food for the baby sisters could wait.

We finished Football '87 by sending off for the final 16 stickers. Neither of us would accomplish anything so profoundly perfect again.

Anyway, check out the '84 and '85 vintages here, including helpful search engines for mullets, taches and perms.

Boum Shakes The Game

It's Tuesday, it must be Bent Football Day on TSA. This week, however, is different. Usually we impoverished commentators must be content to parade around the Sodom and Gomorrah of professional football shouting "Repent!" as the harlots within laugh in our faces.

Now, thanks to the fearless Untouchables of the City of London Police economic crime squad, the long arm of the law picks up a placard inscribed "Ye Shall be Smited", and joins the struggle.

The raids on Newcastle United, Portsmouth and Rangers yesterday are still the subject of cautious reportage, the clubs "extending every co-operation to police" and commenting no further, other than in the case of Newcastle's new owner Mike Ashley, who insisted that the club itself was not part of the investigation.

The stench of corruption in football has been gathering over the past 18 months or so, including, but not starting from, Sven Goran Eriksson's revelation to the News of the World's 'Fake Sheikh' that he had been offered 'bungs', former Luton manager Mike Newell's similar claims, the BBC'S Panorama documentary on the subject and the recent Lord Stevens 'Quest' report into transfer irregularities. Yesterday's actions by the police would suggest that the odour has at last become unbearable.

Of the 17 transfers that Lord Stevens felt unable to "sign off" on, two of them involved the three clubs raided yesterday: Jean-Alain Boumsong's move from Rangers to Newcastle, and Amady Faye's from Portsmouth to St.James's Park, both in January 2005. While Faye's transfer does not appear particularly unusual (he cost Newcastle about £2 million, having been bought by Portsmouth for £1.5 million two years previously, and there were other clubs interested in the player), Boumsong's did raise some eyebrows.

Both players were among Graham Souness's first purchases as Newcastle manager, having taken over from the sacked Bobby Robson in September 2004. Boumsong had moved from Auxerre to Rangers on a free transfer in the summer of 2004, in a deal negotiated by French-based agent Willie McKay.

The transfer appeared to be a major coup for the Scottish club, as, according to Boumsong's own claims, he had been the subject of inquiries from the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Inter Milan.

Shortly prior to his signature for Rangers, McKay had explained the highly-rated defender's decision to plump for the backwater of the SPL in preference to the major European leagues in which he was supposed to have suitors. "Everyone is surprised he is going to Rangers, but I'll tell you why he is," said Mackay. "You have to know the Cameroon people like I do, having worked with the likes of Marc-Vivien Foe and Rigobert Song."

"Jean-Alain was born in Cameroon, he wants security, his contract is up in the summer and he wants to know where he is going to play. He wants to play in Europe. He has looked at what Henrik Larsson has done at Celtic and knows he can earn respect in Scotland. More and more, the top players know if they go to a Chelsea or a Liverpool, they will be in a rotation system. At Rangers he knows he will be king."

After positing this less than convincing theory, McKay also explained the benefits of the deal to Rangers: "If Rangers give him a five-year-contract at£45,000 a week it is going to cost them around £4m in wages for the first two years - and he won't be there for the third because he will be sold on for £8m."

The only flaw in McKay's prescience was in how quickly this scenario would materialise. Just months after joining Rangers, Newcastle's £8 million offer for the player's services was accepted.
Surprise at the size of the fee was exacerbated by the fact that Newcastle were the only bidders in this particular auction, and its timing was perfect for a club in Rangers' financial straits. The player's performances for Newcastle would soon further perplex Magpies fans wondering at the value for money the player represented.

The Stevens inquiry's comments on the transfer were as follows: "There remains inconsistencies in evidence provided by Graeme Souness - a former manager of the club - and Kenneth Shepherd (son of Freddie Shepherd, Newcastle United's former chairman) - apparently acting in an undefined role but not as a club official - as to their respective roles in transfer negotiations." On McKay: "The inquiry is still awaiting clarification from agent Willie McKay".

With the arrival of the Her Majesty's finest at Ibrox and St.James's yesterday, it seems that a the questions arising from this strange deal could soon be answered.


Note: Clarification was also sought by Quest from McKay with regard to the transfers of Benjani Mwaruwari and Aliou Cisse to Portsmouth, two of the other transfers on which Stevens was unable to 'sign off'.

McKay responded thusly: "I'm shocked at the way my full co-operation with the inquiry has been presented in this report. I have not paid any bungs or made any unlawful payments to anyone."

The enquiry later clarified the comments on Souness: "We wish to make it clear that inconsistencies did not exist within the evidence given by Graeme Souness to Quest concerning his role in transfers covered by the Inquiry during his time as manager of Newcastle United FC and neither the Premier League nor do Quest have any concerns in this regard."

The Boumsong deal was not the first time Souness had purchased players from the club at which he began his managerial career. Mark Walters joined Souness at Liverpool from Rangers in 1991, but more recently, in 2001 Tugay was signed for £1.3 million, then in 2003 he paid Rangers £1.4 million for Lorenzo Amoruso and £7.5 million for Barry Ferguson while Blackburn manager.

Viva La Boca

Last August during TSA's perambulations around South America, we stopped in on La Bombonera in Buenos Aires, home, of course, of Boca Juniors. Unfortunately the visit was as well timed as a Paul Scholes tackle, given that the new season was over a week away, so we didn't get to see the ground in its full matchday pomp, when, it is said, the crumbly old stands shake with the force of the supporters enthusiasm.

The season that followed was a successful one for Boca, winning the 2006 'Clausura' title, which is the half of the domestic league played in the latter part of the year and which determines progression to the Copa Libertadores. Boca have reached the final of that tournament (the South American equivalent of the Champions League) and look in a good position to win it for a sixth time, having defeated Gremio of Brazil 3-0 in last night's first leg at La Bombonera.

As you can see, one Juan Roman Riquelme is proving as influential as ever in his on-loan return to his former club.

TSA Report: SC Freiburg 2-0 TuS Koblenz

Volker Finke doesn't want the flowers. The coach of SC Freiburg has just watched his team miss out on promotion to the Bundesliga 1; but that's not why he doesn't want any flowers. The man who is attempting to present Finke and his trusted assistant Achim Sarstedt with valedictory blooms, club president Achim Stocker, heads a board which has brought to an end Finke's extraordinary 16-year stewardship of this small club in southern Germany.

The expression on Finke's face seems to suggest where Stocker should place his flowers.

As venues for bitter internecine conflict go, Freiburg in picturesque Baden-Wurttemburg (a few stops on the super-smooth ICE train south of Baden-Baden, where the English World Cup squad plotted their masterplan last June) is not the first place that would spring to mind.

Lying like a restful dog at the feet of the Black Forest, this university town ticks all the boxes in the bucolic central European template. Mediaeval cathedral flanked by bustling market square? Check. Winding, pedestrianised cobbled streets? Check. Earnest students scurrying amid dandering tourists, fed and watered by the best of biergartens? Check.

Far, also, from the traditional hotbeds of German football, the industrial sprawl of the Ruhr Valley and the southern automobile-producing cities of Munich and Stuttgart. It is, for example, Vfb Stuttgart (home of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche) and Schalke 04 (from the grim coalmining town of Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr) who had contested the previous day's conclusion to the Bundesliga 1 title, Stuttgart's victory being watched in Freiburg by a packed house in O'Kelly's Irish Pub, in a corner of which about a dozen tourists, expats and foreign students joined us in watching the FA Cup final.

Volker Finke's achievement in dragging little Freiburg up amongst the big powers in German football, therefore, was not just to win football matches, but to implant football culture outside of any of its usual habitats. Just two seasons after Finke and Sarstedt taking over in 1991, Freiburg were promoted to the top division for the first time. After surviving their first season in the top flight, they went on to finish in third place in the 1994-95 season, playing a well-admired passing game and bringing UEFA Cup football to the Dreisamstadion.

This was a feat repeated in 2000-01, the club having in the meantime endured the first of three relegations from 1.Bundesliga in Finke's time. The first two of these, in 1997 and 2002, were compensated for by immediate return to the top flight. However, demotion in 2005 was followed by a tantalising fourth place finish the following season, one spot behind the promotion places.

When the 2006-07 season opened poorly, to the extent that relegation to the Regionalliga became a possibility, the club's board adjudged it to be harbinger of the end of Finke's reign, and it was announced following a 4-0 home loss to Karlsruhe that this season would be his last.
Immediately, however, Freiburg embarked on a 13 game unbeaten run, winning 11, to bring about the previously improbable chance of Finke's final season being marked by his fourth promotion.

Despite defeating TuS Koblenz 2-0 on Sunday, Freiburg once again finished fourth, thanks to third place Duisburg's 3-0 victory over Rot-Weiss Essen, and Hansa Rostock's securing of second with a 3-1 win against Unterhaching.

Freiburg tied up the win by early in the second-half against barely interested visitors; the home side's inspiration came from 21-year-old Jonathan Pitroipa from Burkina Faso, a quick and mesmeric attacker, and Alexander Iashvili, a wily, creative Georgian of the type which seems patented in the Caucasus. The latter did manage to miss a late penalty, failing to add to Sascha Riether and Karim Matmour's earlier strikes, a fact that would prove academic as the results from elsewhere came through.

In some ways, not winning promotion allowed the occasion the status of fond farewell, rather than becoming the celebration that might have drowned out the coach's departure. Judging by his reaction to the flowers proffered his way, Finke's exit did not sit easily with the man himself. Indeed, his bearing had something of the indignance of the powerful usurped, like a Nixon, Ceaucescu or Haughey even; as if to say, how dare they?

Although the feeling among the support was understandably positive toward the coach with whom the club had achieved so much, there were, apparently, elements who did not disagree with the coup. And although the vast majority professed their adoration and gratitude - many thousands held banners saying "Danke Volker" and "Wir Sind Finke" (We are Finke) - the mood did not develop into a demonstration in favour of his retention.

The tone was, in fact, reminiscient of Brian Clough's parting at Nottingham Forest. Both enjoyed massively successful eras in which unfashionable, provincial clubs had punched vastly in excess of their weights, to the extent that they themselves had become synonymous and unmistakeably identified with their teams.

Both bowed out on disappointing notes, and while Finke's departure having just missed out on promotion did not carry the bitter taste of Clough's post-relegation farewell, the sense of the inevitability of the parting, and of the passage of time, was similar.

That is one perspective. Another might be that, like Alan Curbishley's time at Charlton Athletic, a team's success under the stewardship of one man had been so prolonged as to convince those within the club that this very success was now their prerogative, rather than the continued gift of their talented manager. The responsibility for ensuring this is not the case rests now with Robin Dutt, erstwhile of Stuttgart Kickers, and Finke's replacement.

"Wir Sind Finke" was indeed a fitting slogan for the occasion. Germany's longest-serving manager was gone, but the achievements of the club in his time meant, as the slogan suggests, that he will always be inextricably linked to the team from the sleepy town in the shadow of the Black Forest.

Bundesliga 1 - Freiburg ist Dabei!

TSA will be departing tomorrow morning to report on the most eagerly awaited club game in European football this weekend....that's right, it's the Bundesliga 2 meeting of SC Freiburg and TuS Koblenz this Sunday!


Freiburg are one of four teams battling for promotion from German football's second tier, and Sunday's final round of fixtures promises to provide much transistor radio-based tension.
With Karlsruher SC already guaranteed promotion, Hansa Rostock (59 pts), MSV Duisburg and Freiburg (both 57 pts), and Greuther Furth (54 pts) are the contenders for the remaining two places. Of those three, only Greuther Furth play a team in the top half of the table - the leaders, Karlsruhe - but while Rostock and Duisburg's opponents (Rot-Weiss Essen and SpVgg Unterhaching...excuse me, frog in my throat) are fighting the drop, 12th place Koblenz are safe.


Freiburg, in the south-western Baden-Wurttemberg region, was one of the corners of der Vaterland we didn't make it to during last summer's World Cup odyssey, but I have it on impeccable authority that the best of German hospitality awaits. Indeed, it will be nice to see Germany - and German football - in its normal attire, stripped of the FIFA party clothes of last June.


We did spend a night in Koblenz, and if motivation is needed at all to cheer on the Freiburgers on Sunday, a quick recollection of our hotel in that town should do the trick. A gloomy 1970s affair, decorated in beige formica and plastic, it felt like something from a Len Deighton spy novel. How many unfortunate spooks met their demise at the other end of a silenced Luger in this place, I thought, turning over in the narrow, lumpy bed?


I have high hopes for Freiburg, on the other hand, seeing as how it is the largest city to have a mayor from the Bundnis '90/Die Grunen party, a groovy sounding amalgamation of civil rights groups and Greens. It's also the hometown of German national team coach Joachim Loew, the eager Robin to Jurgen Klinsmann's shirt-sleeved Batman during last season's heady World Cup run by the home side. On the other hand, another native was Nazi eugenicist Hans Guenther, a proponent of an unpleasant sounding idea called "biological nationalism." Hmmm.


Barring any heated debates on the merits of selective sterilisation, a fine time is anticipated, hopefully capped by a beer and bratwurst promotion party at the Badenova-Stadion on Sunday.

The TSA Premiership Awards

It's another gala night at the Borris-in-Ossory Hilton for the TSA Premiership Awards in association with Johnnie Onion Rings (FIFA's official corn snack partner). See the glittering procession of guests, the great and the good....here's David May....is that Stig Inge Bjornebye? Look, getting out of the limo, it's Nelson Vivas! Fingers crossed for Linvoy Primus too!

Without further ado....

The Oddjob Award for Best Evil Henchman
Once again, none did his master's bidding quite so well as Richard Keys this year. The furry fella imparts the information that the Premiership is the best league in the world with dogmatic certainty, his eyes blazing like an Islamic fundamentalist looking forward to all those virgins.

The highlight? During the prematch studio chuntering a few weeks back, David Platt made reference to his transfer to Italy in 1991. "Back then Italy was the place to be," said the man who looks like an off-camera magician is just about to make egg appear out of his mouth, "although of course now the Premiership is on a par."

"B-b-b-better, don't you mean, surely?" blurted Keys nearly freaking out at the sacrilege of it.

"Good work Richard," came the Aussie growl in his earpiece, perhaps.

The Dog & Duck Award for Best Sunday League Player
Michael Ball of Manchester City, whose stamp on Christiano Ronaldo, while attracting the scorn and condemnation of the cosseted Premiership community, drew breathless admiration from park football hatchet men everywhere. The timing, the audacity...beautiful.

The McGyver Award For Making Something Out of Nothing
Steve Coppell's newly promoted Reading were hotly fancied to return from whence they came, having made few improvements to the squad which had won the Championship last season.

Fools, didn't they know that, in order to be a proper Premiership club, you must engage superagent Pini Zahavi to source for you £20m worth of surly Venezuelan strikers, injury-prone veteran Italian defenders and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink? What did they think they were playing at with these Sidwells and Shoreys and Doyles and such? Oh.

The Niall Quinn Award for Making Robbie Keane Look Good
Dimitar Berbatov was one of the big successes of the season, a magnificient talent whose form is sure to elicit some hefty tests of Tottenham's contention that they are not a 'selling club' come the transfer bazaar.

As well as dazzling in his own right with his control, vision and poise, he formed a profitable partnership with Ireland's own Robbie Keane. Keane is much like a sheepdog (with roughly the same footballing intelligence). Left to his own devices he might drive your flock over a cliff. But under the control of a wise farmer, he can be whistled and yelped at sufficiently to get even the most stubborn ewe into the, er, thing with the fences around it.

Much like Sunderland's magic carpet-riding chairman in his latter days as Ireland's beanpole get-out, Berbatov's expert reading of the game meant that the Bulgarian had brains enough for both of Tottenham's strikers.

The Drunken Uncle at a Wedding Award for Bad Celebrating
Alex Ferguson had plenty to celebrate this year, his team achieving what he regards as his greatest Premiership title victory. However, his reaction to most of his team's goals is familiar to anyone who has ever been embarassed by an aged relative's dancing. Two little fist pumps, then a skip forward, and another one and - oh dear, I think you'd better have a sit down.

Compare that to his dynamic celebration of Steve Bruce's winner against Sheffield Wednesday in that crucial victory on the run-in to 1993 title, and then tell me his powers aren't waning.

Best Gatecrashers
Any viewing of a Watford or Sheffield United game brought to mind those moments at parties when everyone realises that the two tramps playing air guitar to Bohemian Rhapsody are not actually "friends of John's" at all: "How the hell did they get in here?"

The Neville Chamberlain Award for Services to International Relations.
Carlos Tevez arrived at West Ham, along with Javier Mascherano, to a mildly perplexed but generally positive reaction. Then everything went pear-shaped for the Hammers. Why? Because of the two Argie blokes they just signed innit? Everyfing was awwwight before they went and came 'ere, with their foreign ways!

Thankfully Tevez did not understand a word of what the Alf Garnetts were saying, and soon became the driving force behind the Hammers revival (the small matter of the complete illegality of his registration notwithstanding), dragging the club to safety despite 'im being foreign an' all.

The Life of Brian Award for Mistaken Messiah
Aston Villa fans thought they'd probably be looking forward to the Champions League around now. Maybe not the title just yet, that would come. Martin O'Neill you know - he's a messiah isn't he? If he got Leicester into Europe, and Celtic to a UEFA Cup final, then surely Villa could expect the loaves and fishes pretty sharpish.

Then came that point in the season when it was noted that O'Neill had only garnered a single point more than dear old, unlamented David O'Leary. Seems even Martin O'Neill can't turn Villa around just like that. He's not a miracle-worker after all.

The Bobby Ewing Award for Comeback of the Season
Paul Scholes struggles with injury, including a worrisome eye problem, seemed to spell the demise of one of the modern English game's foremost attacking midfielders. The sight, then, of the ginger magician quietly orchestrating Manchester United's sweetest movements as if he'd never been away was pleasing to all but the most rancidly prejudiced anti-Unitedista.

He even contributed an update to The Bradford Volley, with an even more spectacular effort against Aston Villa. And he still can't tackle.

Keane Leaps Toward Glory

If you ever happen to find yourself taking part in a 'Quantum Leap'-type project, which involves you randomly travelling through the last 15 years of time (presumably to stop a child from falling down a well or somesuch), there is one failsafe way both to prevent your identity as a time-voyager from the future being discovered, and to ascertain the moment of time into which you have leapt.

When confronted by a past-ling, just say "Roy Keane, eh?", and shake your head in a way that suggests both admiration and staggerment. Then sit back and await the response to calibrate your point on the space-time continuum.

"Incredible. What a great player/arsehole/thug/legend/psycho/genius/knobhead! I can't believe he scored that great goal/got locked up in the cells/got sent off for that brutal tackle/single-handedly led his team to the European Cup final/wrote that in his book/left his country in the lurch/stood up against the incompetence of the FAI/said that about his team-mates/got Sunderland promoted. Incredible."

Back here in the future, we remain as astonished by the man from Mayfield as our primitive forebears, with their chunky mobile phones and Liam Gallagher sideburns. His retirement from professional football at the end of last season seemed like the death of a major historical figure.

Like a demised Viking warrior, we lit his pyre and floated his longboat off towards Valhalla.

But one presumes that our Norse cousins of yore did not foresee the afterlife as a place of frolicking in the park with the kids and walking Trigger. And Sweyn Forkbeard and Erik the Red are surely not spending eternity analysing pillage on the Battle of the Day pundits sofa or giggling with Sue Barkersdottir on Question of Carnage.

So the hereafter for Roy Keane is back to before, and he re-dons his pointy helmet and returns to the Premiership killing fields. Leaping forward in time again (Oh boy!) to the heyday of that other Europe-conquering midfield general, Napoleon, it's easy to see the comparison between Keane's return to the imperial court of the Premiership and the diminutive French continent-devourer's comeback from his own exile.

Landing on the coast of southern France, having high-tailed it from the island of Elba seeking a return to top flight action, Napoleon advanced on Paris, attracting the support of disgruntled provincials and demobbed ex-soldiers.

When confronted by the men of his sucessor, Louis XVIII, in Grenoble, he dismounted his horse and approached them. "Soldiers of the Fifth [regiment], you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now". The soldiers, after presumably looking towards their boots and mumbling for a bit, shouted "Vive L'Empereur!" and joined the crazy Corsican on his quest.

Keane too has roused a hitherto disconsolate rabble from the sticks and is marching tens of thousands strong towards the seats of power. Plainly, those who have crossed his path, be they vanquished foes or his own rejuvenated forces have recognised the face of the old emperor.

At Waterloo, as the eminent Swedish historians Ulvaeus & Andersson noted in their eponymous, seminal work from 1974, Napoleon did surrender. While the Napster only had to contend with the Duke of Wellington and Prussia's Generalfeldmarschal von Blücher in that tricky Belgian away tie, Keane faces 19 other generals all desperate to run a blade through him, including the old warmongrel himself, Alex Ferguson, and that dashing blade of roisterer, Jose Mourinho.

Of course, the early months of Keane's managerial career have provided ample evidence to even the most sceptical of observers that glittering success awaits. It does not require a quantum leap, or even much of one of the imagination to envisage Keane making a significant mark on proceedings at the very top of the game over the forthcoming years.

Who knows, maybe, in time, Ferguson will echo about Keane the opinion of Wellington on Napoleon; when asked who he thought the greatest of all generals, he answered "In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon."

TSA Report: Ireland v Wales

At some point during Saturday's mind-numbing afternoon at Croke Park, a mild commotion broke out up in the chilly top-left corner of Hill 16. Two spectators were refusing to sit and a steward was attempting to address the breach of stadium procedure. Howeer, the fans in question were not erect through uncontrollable excitement at the events on the pitch, nor were they engaging in an act of civil disobedience.

In fact, the two gentlemen were unable to sit because the seat corresponding to the number on their expensively purchased ticket did not, well, actually exist. Forced to take in the remainder of the Group D Euro 2008 qualifier with their rear ends perched on the icy concrete of the famous terrace, their good humour at the indignity was admirable.

For the rest of us, luxuriating on plastic, the incident seemed plum in keeping with the spirit of ineptitude abroad on the field.

Having missed out on the gluttonous feasts of history and resonance that the recent rugby internationals at Jones' Road were portrayed as, yesterday's first soccer international felt very much like nibbling stale scraps from posterity's table. Not entirely the fault of the team, of course; the sense of the bandwagon having blown town was inevitable given how the public imagination had steeped itself in the oval-ball hullaballoo of recent months.

But, much as I believed the case might be, where Ireland's rugby team had the force of personality to eventually inhabit the vast arena comfortably, their soccer equivalents looked like small boys wearing their Daddy's trousers.

But again, that's not entirely their fault. Where Six Nations rugby represents, if not the pinnacle of the sport, at least one of its higher echelons, the general quality of international football has long been negligible, especially when practiced by the two extremely limited teams who lined up under the Hogan Stand on Saturday.

But enough of the extenuating circumstances. There was far more to the limpness of Saturday's occasion that is not excusable. Ireland's inability to deal convincingly with such poor opponents was not surprising to anyone who has watched them recently, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating.

Most maddening of all was that classic warning sign of a manager bereft of tactical understanding: personnel being played out of position. For some reason, bad football managers often think putting a right-footed player on the left will outfox the opposition in some way, when in fact it is generally the player himself who ends up looking bamboozled.

Steve Finnan is a highly capable right-back for one of the Premiership's top sides, a Champions League winner who provides a useful threat when getting forward. Selected at left-back by Stephen Staunton on Saturday, he looked like a new-born foal who'd been asked to run the Grand National.

John O'Shea took Finnan's position, despite the fact that the Manchester United player has played left-back on many occasions for club and country. Stephen Ireland occupied unfamiliar turf on the right-side of midfield; Damien Duff was nominally a forward player, although he did drop off into wide positions to more useful effect.

More critical, however, than the eccentricity of the team selection, was Ireland's inability to dominate Wales from central midfield. Where you'd expect this part of the field to be a fiery battleground for supremacy in an international football match, on Saturday the struggle in the middle third resembled two punch-drunk heavyweights plodding through a bottom-of-the-bill prize-fight.

While both Lee Carsley and Jonathan Douglas are combative enough, and lack nothing in commitment, neither has the ability to control the game and provide forward impetus for their team. When Ireland's defenders had the ball at their feet, rarely did they find one of their central midfield colleagues demanding it be played to them, so that they may advance possession into the opposing half in a meaningful way.

Consequently, Irish defenders repeatedly 'knocked' balls vaguely in the direction of the strikers, and the sense of cluelessness quickly set-in. In fairness, Ireland are not over-endowed with options in this area, but the appointment of a ball-playing central-midfielder is urgent.

During the second half the crowd performed an extended Mexican Wave. Where normally I would grumble at the appearance of this tiresome phenomenon, it was hard to argue with the spectators providing themselves some alternative entertainment. Indeed, Stephen Ireland's tidy finish aside, the impeccably well-executed wave was one of the few accomplished sights of the day.

I'm pretty sure the two guys without seats joined in as well.

Stanworld: The General

The great general surveyed the battlefield. It was quiet now, but for the laughs and shouts of his loyal troops, running drills in anticipation of Saturday's skirmish. By then the noise would be deafening. Full of fans waving flags and going mad, as he perceptively informed the ranks of the press corps.

What fine men they were, he thought, looking on as his players gambolled on the Croke Park turf, and how they loved him! Robbie, his lion-hearted captain whom he had watched grow from precocious boy to leader of men. Dunney, barrel-chested and brave; Shay, the inscrutable lieutenant in goal; little Duffer, so eager, so keen. He knew these men would march with him unto the gravest peril, should he give the order; even unto Macedonia.

And how he would need them now. San Marino had been a pyrrhic victory, a bloody struggle for inches of no-man's land. According to some observers, the great generals of the past would have routed the guerilla forces on that Italian hillside, crushing the rebel bands without mercy. He cared not for the mythology of the past, however, for how his predecessors had been deified. Like Big Jack, who did great work for Bord Failte with the fishing and all.

But he sensed the forces ranged against him from inside to be as threatening as those crossing the Irish Sea to confront him in open combat. "How dare they?! How dare they?!" he thundered again and again when contemplating the insiduous plotting he suspected all around him. Et tu, Mick Byrne?

Don’t be ridiculous. No, he was safe in here, with his men and the backroom staff. Honest, happy faces, loyal to the last. Here he felt strong. Let the public chatter in their taverns and places of business, let them foment discord. Too rich, idle and fat for their own good, he sniffed, as John O'Shea stretched nearby.

They'd been spoiled in the past, that was the problem. They'd grown used to the plunder of victory. But there were no easy battles in international warfare anymore. Cyprus, who once capitulated at the merest grimace from Keano, now attacked with impudence.

His mind wandered to Saturday. He thought of Sun Tzu and The Art of War. "So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose." For Sun Tzu there was no such thing as a potential banana skin.

If it was true that knowing both yourself and your enemies would lead to victory, what of the Welsh, that dragon-worshipping tribe his beloved men would face on Saturday? "They know us," he thought, "we know them, we know us, and they know them, so...." His head began to hurt.

He remembered another line from Sun Tzu, as the lads began to filter back towards the dressing rooms: "A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective." He laughed to himself. This was the central tenet of his generalship, and he fulfilled its instruction to the utmost.

On Saturday they would see exactly how competent he was.

Young Man, There's No Need To Feel Down

Darren O'Dea is actually 20 years old. He turned 20 four weeks ago. And to think they gave me an award for this!

Anyway, the boy (or man I suppose now) is a bit special, that I do know for sure. After the final whistle of the 90 minutes last night, as the players gathered their breaths and the coaches talked pep, O'Dea lay on the San Siro turf getting his legs rubbed. For all the stress visible on his face he could have been a kid lying in a city park on a sunny Sunday afternoon, missing just a can of lager by his side.

He was probably just about the best of a very fine bunch of Celtic players last night. Over the course of the two legs, Milan were clearly the stronger team, but as PSV Eindhoven demonstrated last night, winning through two-legged European ties is not necessarily about being the better team.

Right up until the 120th minute of last night's tie, Celtic were just a goal away from preventing AC Milan reaching the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time in five years. Had the Austrian referee awarded either of Celtic's strong penalty claims, who would have bet against them preventing Milan from acquiring the two goals they would then have needed, especially with Artur Boruc in such majestic form?

Boruc, Lee Naylor, Aiden McGeady, Paul Telfer, Stephen McManus and Evander Sno were all magnificient for a Celtic, but O'Dea was awesome. Not simply in a 'for one so young' way, but his reading of the game, decisiveness and timing were perfection. Over to you , Mr.Staunton.

In the end though this performance garnered nothing but platitudes about bravery and heroism. However, it promised much for Gordon Strachan's team. The club's recent thrift has left them in a position to invest in quality come the summer, and while they will still be paupers in comparison to even the strugglers in next season's cash-gorged Premiership, the experience of last night bodes well.

Who knows, perhaps an away win in Europe's premier competition mightn't be out of the question.

United Don't Have All the Answers, But Still Pass the Test

Title credentials checklist

Name: Manchester United

Question 1: Do you win when playing badly? Tick.

Question 2: Has fortune favoured you of late? Tick.

Question 3: Do you have a good balance of experience and youth? Tick.

Question 4: Do have a reliable goalkeeper and a solid defence? Tick.

Question 5: Do you carry a scoring threat from a number of sources? Tick

Question 6: Do have a dominating presence in central midfield? Erm.

Question 7: Have you produced one defining performance which unequivocably demonstrates your superiority over your closest rivals? Hmmmm......

Previously around these parts we have tended to regard this season's incarnation of Manchester United with a bit of scepticism, seeing the way they brutally bully the lesser teams in the Premiership while tending towards diffidence when meeting their peers.

Aside from the defeat of Liverpool at Old Trafford earlier in the season, they have failed to fully dominate Arsenal and Chelsea when they have met them and on Saturday Liverpool had the better of them everywhere but the scoreline.

Of course, points won against the other big boys are no more valuable than those garnered from Vicarage Road or Bramall Lane. Fair enough, United have clinically mined their points from the bountiful seam of mediocrity elsewhere in the Premiership, and their nine point over Chelsea is reflective of a job, so far, exceptionally well done.

But why the troubling inability to say, with finality, that they are the best team in the league?

United's hypothesis goes like this: although their midfield lacks the destructive strength of the those other clubs, particularly Chelsea and Liverpool, it is generally up to the task of mastery, or at least parity, over those of the less well-endowed clubs. Then, equipped with a devastating array of attacking talent and an athletic, well balanced defensive unit, they can maximise their offensive potential while fending off at the back most that the also-rans can throw at them.

United have looked unconvincing this season when faced with teams that dominate their flimsier midfield totally, leaving them little real opportunity to generate a head of steam in attack. These are the games in which Cristiano Ronaldo looks like a headless chicken, rather than the bird of prey he normally resembles and Wayne Rooney exudes frustration, rather than the devastating audacity he normally exhibits.

Liverpool have long been able to grip the central areas vice-like, Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso and Momo Sissoko embodying an uncompromising mix of guile, strength and intelligence. But unlike United, Rafa Benitez has been, as yet, unable to concoct the right attacking alchemy, showing only in flashes - like with Gerrard's goal against Sheffield United nine days ago - the sort of fluid choreography with which United have dispatched so many teams this season.

Perhaps the meeting with Chelsea on 15 April will provide the opportunity for that one, irrefutable demonstration of superiority for United before they claim a title that would mean as much, if not more, to Alex Ferguson than any of his others. More likely he will approach that game with a similar caution to how he did last Saturday's.

He will be leaving Question 6 above to be answered in the transfer market during the summer, and, if the Premiership trophy does return to Old Trafford in May, will not care in the slightest if he hasn't satisfied question 7 either.

Champions League It's a Knockout - Part Two

This evening's contenders represent the juicier octet of this round's last sixteen, and, given the events of the last few days and weeks, Barcelona v Liverpool is of particular interest.

As recently as Sunday morning, it appeared that Liverpool had chanced upon an inconceivably good moment to take on the European champions; certainly the tie appeared more winnable than win the draw was made in November. The row involving Samuel Eto'o, Franck Rijkaard and Ronaldinho was divisive and probably went to the heart of the club, with Barca president Juan Laporta and vice-president Sandro Rosell (an Eto'o partisan) reportedly at odds also.

Despite the fact that they once again lead the Primera Liga, Barca have toiled this season in comparison with last, the injury enforced absence of Eto'o and Lionel Messi hampering their famed devastating attacking play. Eto'o's return from injury should have cheered them, instead the Cameroonian's jealousy toward Ronaldinho's special status leaves Barca looking shaken.

Not as shaken, however, as John Arne Riise must have been if the allegations concerning Craig Bellamy's prowess with a fairway wood are true. There has been much retraction and obfuscation since the revelations from Liverpool's training camp came out, but the picture presented is hardly one of ideal preparations for the test in the Camp Nou tonight.

Jose Mourinho's Chelsea are one of those teams (like AC Milan, perhaps) for whom the Champions League is all this season, completing as it would the Portuguese's record of winning league and Champions League in two different countries. They can expect a torrid test against an improving Porto, only now recovering from the post-Jose hangover. If the league looks like slipping away, Chelsea will focus even more strongly on Europe.

Inter Milan are the opposite. For them, the challenge of winning the league title outright - they received it by default following last season's match fixing scandal - is the central goal of this season. They look as if they are on their way to doing that, and a Valencia side coming off a win on Sunday night over Barcelona could take advantage of any lack of focus in this tie. Valencia still boast real quality in the much-coveted likes of David Villa, Joaquin and David Albelda, and 'El Raton' - Roberto Ayala - at the back, they could be last four material if any of the bigger guns take their eyes off the ball.

Lyon - the early front runners and much-fancied to finally make a Champions League breakthrough - have has a rough winter. They've struggled a little of late in the league (albeit they are still on course for yet another Ligue 1 title) and swapped John Carew for Milan Baros up front during the January window, hardly the transfer business of future European champions. Roma will provide just the test to reveal if Lyon have really progressed from the serial flatterers-to-deceive, Francesco Totti is having a good season for them as they toddle along in Inter's wake at home. Both of these sides look like they might have a quarter or a semi-final in them at a stretch, but probably little more.

Champions League Knockout Under Starters Orders - Part One

It could be you (if you're a European footballing superpower)! The Champions League heaves itself back into our attentions this evening, taking on the might of Desperate Housewives for televisual dominance, and this year it's a lottery. The likely winner of the 2006/07 tournament appears completely open, to the extent that UEFA may hire Dale Winton to present the trophy.

There are two main reasons for the lack of obvious winners ths year.

Firstly, most of the thoroughbreds are limping around the parade ring somewhat. Secondly, recent seasons have shown us (Porto and Monaco being finalists in 2003/04, Liverpool winning in 2004/05 and Villareal's incredible run to the semifinals last season) that there is value to be found in the outsiders.

An example of each of these contrasting steeds takes the field at Parkhead tonight, as discussed yesterday. However in this case the 100/1 shot (Celtic) is probably too far off the pace, and, despite having course and distance, the thoroughbred (AC Milan) is carrying too much weight.

(The horse metaphor will now be mercifully put down).

Similarly with the fixture which sees Manchester United take on one of their conquerors in last season's ignominious campaign, Lille.

The tiny French club didn't make it out of their group last year, but in going one better this year achieved arguably the performance of the round. That is, aside from the fact that they emerged from the Group of Dross, edging out serial group stage fodder Anderlecht and AEK Athens to follow Milan through.

You'd think United would be considered a raging hot favourite, given them being top of the greatest league in the world and all. But at some point (not in this round, where they will dispatch Lille like they were a gallic Watford) they will have to play a good team, a pesky irritation indeed, especially for the team that have won only once in four games against those closest to them in the league. Suspicions about their mettle remain.

PSV Eindhoven are wily campaigners, regulars in the latter stages and only failing to reach the final in 2005 on away goals against Milan. Arsenal should have their measure though, as they have done in previous group stage encounters.

The Gunners could be ones to watch again this year. Cesc Fabregas, the man who choreographed their run to the final last time is a year older and Gilberto Silva emerged as a real leader in Thierry Henry's absence earlier in the season. And will those couple of weeks off in November and December mean we'll see a fresh and ferocious Henry come spring?

And finally today (resurrecting the horse metaphor) there's Red Rum (Real Madrid) and Arkle (Bayern Munich). But are they destined for the winners enclosure or the glue factory?

A glance at their respective domestic league tables and behind the scenes of both behemoths shows them toiling badly. Both clubs are fourth, Bayern a massive 12 points behind Schalke and 5 precarious points from their customary Champions League berth. They have also just sacked their manager (Felix Magath).

In a far from vintage year in the Primera Liga Real Madrid are only four points behind leaders Barcelona, despite managing to lose seven games. They have been forced to deny rumours that manager Fabio Capello had offered his resignation following a string of dire results, and ignominy of ignominies, been forced to recall bloated lounge entertainer David Beckham to the team.

Given that Capello was supposed to put the 'real' into Real, and steel them from show ponies into classic winners, it looks rather like that their horse has bolted.

Wednesday night's eight nags and stallions tomorrow. And no more of the horse metaphor.

Celts Get Back to Work

Since the Champions League group stages ended on 6 December, Celtic have been enjoying a winter break. But the players haven't been on any golfing trips to Dubai, or getting away for a few days with the wife and kids. Indeed, during this sabbatical, the furthest they got from wintery Glasgow was even less balmy Inverness.

Oh and they had some league games to play out as well, a couple of cup ties too. But considering that Celtic went 10 points clear at the top of the SPL on 29th October, the business of serious domestic football at Parkhead ceased quite some time ago.

Tomorrow night, however, the holiday is over. AC Milan arrive at Parkhead and the ground will reawaken from hibernation with a jolt that a richter scale could measure.

The importance of football matches is usually classified using that simplest of adjectives: bigness. As in, this game is bigger than that one; this is the biggest game in our history; it's a big game for us at Rochdale on Saturday. For Celtic, undoubtedly, tomorrow night is Big.

With the myopic historians of the UEFA Champions League deciding that the last 16 in Europe's premier competition did not exist before 1992, Celtic's progression to this stage is considered a first for the club (despite regular appearances in the latter stages of the old European Cup in the 1960s and 70s).

The fact that Celtic have all but copper-fastened another league title at home adds to the importance of the Champions League in their attentions, given that Gordon Strachan's team have been able to keep one eye on Milan since the draw was made.

However, rather than spend their canter to the league title rehearsing for the Big Night, Strachan has been ostensibly taking each domestic game on its own merits, picking teams to win three points rather than to bed-in for Milan.

In defence Celtic are likely to have to select 19-year-old Irishman Darren O'Dea alongside Stephen McManus, with the more experienced likes of Gary Caldwell and Bobo Balde injured.

However, since Balde was stretchered off against Dundee United on Boxing Day, Strachan has only chosen tomorrow night's likely centre-half pairing on two occasions - the 1-1 draw at Motherwell on 30 December and the 4-1 victory over Livingston in the Scottish Cup. Even those two selections were brought about by necessity, the former being prior to Stephen Pressley's recruitment as cover, the latter after the deposed Hearts skipper had sustained an injury.

Not that Strachan hasn't been thinking about Milan though. Indeed the Celtic boss almost thought he had cracked how to conquer the Italians. "I thought 'great, fantastic' but the problem was we needed 13 Celtic players on the pitch to do it. And Uefa are making us play with 11," he admitted last week.

The Italians' reputation and standing automatically commands respect. But Celtic could have picked worse times to test their mettle against the Serie A giants. Leaving aside the 8 point deduction for their role in last year's match fixing scandal, this has not been a vintage year for the Rossoneri.

Adding those points to their current total would leave them in fourth with 41 points, 22 behind leaders Inter and far from the almost permanent residence in the top two that they enjoyed in recent seasons. The loss of Andrij Shevchenko has left them rather toothless up front and their total of 32 goals in 23 games (four of which came in yesterday's win over Siena) is the main reason for their unspectacular station, points deduction apart.

What better way to resolve toothlessness than by recruiting Ronaldo, he of the Bugs Bunny choppers (but oh, were it only carrots that the rotund Brazilian chomped those famous incisors on!). However, like the less vaunted Pressley and Paul Hartley, Celtic's transfer window recruits, Ronaldo is ineligible for the Champions League.

Judging by the concentrated caution which characterised Celtic's victory over Manchester United, and the patient, narrow game favoured by AC, the tie could be decided by two of the best dead ball practitioners in the business: Celtic's Shunsuke Nakamura and AC's Andrea Pirlo. Both have perfected the taking of free-kicks to the point where goals are delivered almost on demand from any distance within 30 yards of goal.

Nakamura's winner against United started Celtic's winter of ease, given that it insured second stage qualification and that he team barely turned up in Copenhagen for the final group stage match.

If he can pick up from where he left off tomorrow night, Celtic's winter break will have done them the power of good.

Thierry Henry and the Art of Petulance

Now there are very few footballers who've given us more pleasure than the man known round norf Laahndan way as Terry 'Enry. A paragon of style, an exemplar of fluid grace, a capo de tutti capi of cool. An utterly modern footballer, in that he could not have existed, in British football at least, in any previous generation, yet he epitomises an intelligence and class apart from most of his current fellow professionals.

But, my God, he's turning into Naomi Campbell, isn't he?

It could be to do with an advancing self-importance, brought about by years of the type of gushing praise contained in the first paragraph above. Or it could be the insiduous manifestation of suppressed frustration at his own decision to stay at Arsenal last summer and spurn the chance to become a Catalactico at Barcelona (in this scenario he would be much like the daughter in a Tom Murphy play, forced to stay at home to look after an ailing but indestructible mother, lamenting the withering of the flower of her youth).

Whatever, it seems these days that Thierry Henry attracts attention as often for petted-lip displays of petulance as for demonstrations of his sublime talents.

It started back at that Champions League final against Barcelona, when his post-match interview sounded more like the words of a trash-talking professional wrestling star than an erstwhile proponent of insouciant class.

Then there was the sulky huffiness to which he responded to his pre-Christmas 'rest', enforced on him by his manager (and redoubtable matriarch in the aforementioned Tom Murphy metaphor) Arsene Wenger. Reportedly, last December, Henry flounced out of training in response to Wenger's diagnosis of his fitness, specifically to being told that he would not play in the north London derby on December 2nd.

When the two publicly made up, it appeared that Henry had accepted that Wenger knew what was good for him. "I must stop for at least a month for the pain to go away, but I did not squabble with Arsene," he said, before adding "yes, I did get angry about it because I cannot help out my team on the pitch. It's something I find hard to accept."

Then last Sunday Henry was criticised for goading Wigan goalkeeper Chris Kirkland following Arsenal's 81st minute equaliser, having been incensed by Kirkland's perceived time-wasting earlier in the match.

So is Mr.Va-Va-Voom turning into a Grumpy Old Man?

Of course with the artist comes the artistic temperament. After the alleged row with Wenger in December a French Sunday newspaper quoted an unnamed French international as saying that Henry was "an enormous bighead who cannot take criticism". Unlike Naomi Campbell, however, who belives erroneously that being an overpaid clothes-hanger earns the right to spectacular strops, Henry's talent buys patience.

It bought him months of agonizing over his future in that deeply uncertain period until his ultimate decision to stay at Arsenal. Arsene Wenger is a well-known pragmatic, reknowned for bringing the appliance of science into an English game more used to the lager and fry-up method of match preparation. He refuses to give contracts of longer than a year to players over 30, exhibiting an Orwellian ruthlessness to the geriatric community borne of an immunity to sentiment.

Yet he clearly gave Henry as long as was necessary to come to his decision, and was open-hearted throughout about his wish for the striker to stay. Not for Wenger any negotiating table brinkmanship, or Benitez-style lack of affection. Whether the spirit or atmosphere inside the club was damaged at this time or not, for Henry, anything was possible.

So a little self-importance in the light of this veneration is unsurprising. And the use of the term 'spoilt' is unfair too: that would tend to suggest that there was something about the player that had been damaged. Sure, like many players who participated in the World Cup last year, he has been, at times, a little flat this season.

Yet, as his recent goal against Blackburn (a typically sweeping counter-attack, a combination with Cesc Fabregas and a magnificent looping shot into the top corner from the edge of the box) suggests, the artist remains in control of his genius.

Perhaps the little spat with Wenger in December was his manager's way of reasserting authority after the concessions to Henry's ego of the previous season, before he had committed his future to the club.

Still, Wenger knows that where his star turn is concerned, a little petulance is a part of the package he is more than happy to tolerate.