Post by QPR Report on Jul 27, 2009 15:45:16 GMT
BRIAN GLANVILLE/World Soccer
WELSH WIZARDS
22/07/09
Hartson and Hughes. Lately and sadly in such different straits. John Hartson, ex Wales, Celtic, West Ham and Arsenal centre forward, cruelly assailed by multiple Cancers. Mark Hughes, once an effective Wales centre forward himself, later manager of a Welsh team which had Hartson as its fulcrum spending endless Abu Dhabi millions as manager of Manchester City.
Hartson, only 34 when his illness afflicted him, was essential to the tactics of Mark Hughes’ Welsh team, a team which some seven years ago had a brief but brilliant period of glory, emphatically beating Italy in Cardiff far more thoroughly than the 2-1 score might indicate, winning handsomely in Helsinki, both games in a European Championship qualifying group.
Myself, I am not a great enthusiast for the 5-4-1 system which has become so prevalent now, but if you are going to have it, then your ideal spearhead is a man like Hartson. Six foot tall, 13 stone, a striker eminently capable of bringing down the long balls booted up to him, and holding on to them long enough for support to arrive and be fed. Just as adept at flicking the ball on with that blond head, with which he scored so many spectacular goals. Hughes himself was adept at playing for Manchester United with his back to the goal, shrewdly laying the ball off for his colleagues. I never though Alex Ferguson treated him with the appreciation he deserved, he was far too frequently dropped.
When he and Gary Lineker joined Barcelona in 1986, Gary flourished, Mark languished. Where Gary and his wife assiduously learned Spanish, Mark remained implacably monoglot. But things looked up when he left the Nou Camp for Bayern Munich and later of course when he did so well with Chelsea.
You do wonder, at this moment, whether at Manchester City he has with al those Abu Dhabi millions over egged the pudding. How many of those hugely priced strikers can he play at any one time? And the latest costly capture, Emmanuel Adebayor, though now proclaiming how delighted he is to be playing for City, is a noticeably disruptive figure who fell out of feeling at Monaco and has now been so brusquely and briskly despatched from Arsenal by Arsene Wenger, who clearly couldn’t wait to get rid of him.
He joins the highly gifted but temperamental Robinho, the exuberant Carlos Tevez, and the formidable, when fit, Roque Santa Cruz. But there is also, don‘t forget Craig Bellamy, who with Hartson could give such fire to the Wales attack, who cost City what any other owners would call a fortune and would hardly take kindly to being superfluous to requirements. Ominously, the cold and canny bookmakers have seemingly made Hughes the second likeliest Premiership manager to lose his job this season.
When manager of Wales, one was never wholly convinced by Hughes’ strategies. Thus when, in that same European qualifying group, Wales had to play a crucial match in Belgrade against a Serbia team recently traumatised by losing at home to little Azerbaijan, and with Hartson absent, he picked as centre forward Nathan Blake. A player utterly different in physique and style who could never fruitfully be left alone to do the kind of things which the absent Hartson did. Nor did he. Far too often, balls played up to him were simply lost, but the real charge against Hughes that evening was that his tactics were so fatefully negative. This, surely, was a demoralised Serbian side ripe for the plucking, but keeping off the quick little Robert Earnshaw till so late in the game – when he played havoc with the left flank Serbian defence and had a shot kicked off the line – Wales let Serbia back into the match and they scored the only goal from a set piece, and the kind of high ball to which that Welsh defence was frequently vulnerable.
Signing all those attacking stars, Hughes has let one of the most promising players on his staff, the tall 19-year-old, striker, Sturridge, son of another accomplished striker, go to Chelsea, where one hopes he will get his chance. Casting out home grown talent, however, is a dubious policy for City and at the other end of the scale, they seemed happy enough to jettison their resilient Irish international Richard Dunne, still not yet 30, in favour of the younger Jagielka. Money talks, money isn’t everything. Which of these apothegms should we believe? In City’s case, the new season should tell us.
***************
No curing Capello of his sustained bout of Beckhamitis. Now he has told David Beckham that, should he wish to play for England in the World Cup next year, he must join a European team.
But Beckham, in case Capello has conveniently forgotten, is still under contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Though I suppose, in so far as he missed no fewer than 17 of their games this season while playing for Milan, that this might be easily forgotten. No wonder that Landon Donovan, his fellow Galaxy forward, who recently distinguished himself for USA in the Confederations Cup, observed in a recently published book that Beckham has hardly been committed to the Galaxy. Who have been foolish enough to pay him a fortune.
Beckham has made a pretty feeble reply to this criticism, but the statistics speak all too plainly for themselves. It was never going to be anything for the Galaxy but a bad bargain. Meanwhile, it is still hard to understand why Landon Donovan hasn’t broken through in Europe. Not least when, a fluent Spanish speaker though an American, he had played a great deal of his early soccer among Latin-Americans.
Yet, though he can plainly flourish at the highest international levels, his two spells in Germany with Bayer Leverkusen have been strangely abortive. He went there first as a teenager, but it didn’t happen. Later, he returned as a fully-fledged international, but again, he was sent home. I cannot believe Donovan is incapable of functioning in a major European League.
Interestingly, his fellow forward and scorer in South Africa, Clint Dempsey, was recently reported as wanting to leave Fulham , which I feel would be a mistake, Fulham being the sort of middle order club where he can flourish. As his fellow American Brian McBride recently and impressively did. But is Donovan any less talented than they? Were I am English club of middle order, I’d pursue him.
***************
www.worldsoccer.com/glanville/
WELSH WIZARDS
22/07/09
Hartson and Hughes. Lately and sadly in such different straits. John Hartson, ex Wales, Celtic, West Ham and Arsenal centre forward, cruelly assailed by multiple Cancers. Mark Hughes, once an effective Wales centre forward himself, later manager of a Welsh team which had Hartson as its fulcrum spending endless Abu Dhabi millions as manager of Manchester City.
Hartson, only 34 when his illness afflicted him, was essential to the tactics of Mark Hughes’ Welsh team, a team which some seven years ago had a brief but brilliant period of glory, emphatically beating Italy in Cardiff far more thoroughly than the 2-1 score might indicate, winning handsomely in Helsinki, both games in a European Championship qualifying group.
Myself, I am not a great enthusiast for the 5-4-1 system which has become so prevalent now, but if you are going to have it, then your ideal spearhead is a man like Hartson. Six foot tall, 13 stone, a striker eminently capable of bringing down the long balls booted up to him, and holding on to them long enough for support to arrive and be fed. Just as adept at flicking the ball on with that blond head, with which he scored so many spectacular goals. Hughes himself was adept at playing for Manchester United with his back to the goal, shrewdly laying the ball off for his colleagues. I never though Alex Ferguson treated him with the appreciation he deserved, he was far too frequently dropped.
When he and Gary Lineker joined Barcelona in 1986, Gary flourished, Mark languished. Where Gary and his wife assiduously learned Spanish, Mark remained implacably monoglot. But things looked up when he left the Nou Camp for Bayern Munich and later of course when he did so well with Chelsea.
You do wonder, at this moment, whether at Manchester City he has with al those Abu Dhabi millions over egged the pudding. How many of those hugely priced strikers can he play at any one time? And the latest costly capture, Emmanuel Adebayor, though now proclaiming how delighted he is to be playing for City, is a noticeably disruptive figure who fell out of feeling at Monaco and has now been so brusquely and briskly despatched from Arsenal by Arsene Wenger, who clearly couldn’t wait to get rid of him.
He joins the highly gifted but temperamental Robinho, the exuberant Carlos Tevez, and the formidable, when fit, Roque Santa Cruz. But there is also, don‘t forget Craig Bellamy, who with Hartson could give such fire to the Wales attack, who cost City what any other owners would call a fortune and would hardly take kindly to being superfluous to requirements. Ominously, the cold and canny bookmakers have seemingly made Hughes the second likeliest Premiership manager to lose his job this season.
When manager of Wales, one was never wholly convinced by Hughes’ strategies. Thus when, in that same European qualifying group, Wales had to play a crucial match in Belgrade against a Serbia team recently traumatised by losing at home to little Azerbaijan, and with Hartson absent, he picked as centre forward Nathan Blake. A player utterly different in physique and style who could never fruitfully be left alone to do the kind of things which the absent Hartson did. Nor did he. Far too often, balls played up to him were simply lost, but the real charge against Hughes that evening was that his tactics were so fatefully negative. This, surely, was a demoralised Serbian side ripe for the plucking, but keeping off the quick little Robert Earnshaw till so late in the game – when he played havoc with the left flank Serbian defence and had a shot kicked off the line – Wales let Serbia back into the match and they scored the only goal from a set piece, and the kind of high ball to which that Welsh defence was frequently vulnerable.
Signing all those attacking stars, Hughes has let one of the most promising players on his staff, the tall 19-year-old, striker, Sturridge, son of another accomplished striker, go to Chelsea, where one hopes he will get his chance. Casting out home grown talent, however, is a dubious policy for City and at the other end of the scale, they seemed happy enough to jettison their resilient Irish international Richard Dunne, still not yet 30, in favour of the younger Jagielka. Money talks, money isn’t everything. Which of these apothegms should we believe? In City’s case, the new season should tell us.
***************
No curing Capello of his sustained bout of Beckhamitis. Now he has told David Beckham that, should he wish to play for England in the World Cup next year, he must join a European team.
But Beckham, in case Capello has conveniently forgotten, is still under contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Though I suppose, in so far as he missed no fewer than 17 of their games this season while playing for Milan, that this might be easily forgotten. No wonder that Landon Donovan, his fellow Galaxy forward, who recently distinguished himself for USA in the Confederations Cup, observed in a recently published book that Beckham has hardly been committed to the Galaxy. Who have been foolish enough to pay him a fortune.
Beckham has made a pretty feeble reply to this criticism, but the statistics speak all too plainly for themselves. It was never going to be anything for the Galaxy but a bad bargain. Meanwhile, it is still hard to understand why Landon Donovan hasn’t broken through in Europe. Not least when, a fluent Spanish speaker though an American, he had played a great deal of his early soccer among Latin-Americans.
Yet, though he can plainly flourish at the highest international levels, his two spells in Germany with Bayer Leverkusen have been strangely abortive. He went there first as a teenager, but it didn’t happen. Later, he returned as a fully-fledged international, but again, he was sent home. I cannot believe Donovan is incapable of functioning in a major European League.
Interestingly, his fellow forward and scorer in South Africa, Clint Dempsey, was recently reported as wanting to leave Fulham , which I feel would be a mistake, Fulham being the sort of middle order club where he can flourish. As his fellow American Brian McBride recently and impressively did. But is Donovan any less talented than they? Were I am English club of middle order, I’d pursue him.
***************
www.worldsoccer.com/glanville/
