| Referee not pressured to fix Serie A matches Former soccer referee Pierluigi Collina has testified at an Italian match-fixing trial that he was not pressured to influencethe outcome of matches. cbc.ca |
Little Pea reinvigorates Sir Alex Ferguson's lust for life | Barney Ronay Manchester United's manager has a knack with overseas players and Chicharito is proving the old touch is still thereIt is a mark of football's capacity to renew and reinvent and frantically reupholster that the late winner scored by Javier 'Chicharito' Hernández at Valencia in midweek was all it took to transform Sir Alex Ferguson, in those few moments, from an increasingly frayed and troubled, red‑faced, spittle-flecking ancestral, touchline monolith into a reinvigorated, future-proofed, cannily cutting-edge, red-faced, spittle flecking, ancestral touchline monolith.There was a fresh flowering in his cheeks when he later discussed his wonderful, his own, Chicharito. "The way he took his chance, it was like shelling peas," Ferguson said, appearing, as he can on these occasions, jarringly sweet and doting. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fresh-faced, new-favourite-toy young player can have a reanimating effect on even the most beaten-down and spatchcocked dug-out grump. This already looks like a beautiful relationship in the offing – and one that Ferguson probably needs, too.It is important to remember that young, slippery, talented foreign players are still the most perplexing challenge for a manager. In our island-football culture players are still divided into two groups: normal and foreign.The foreigner must be addressed. He must be mastered. With ageing managers their nose for foreigners – the foreigner instinct – is often the first thing to go, like an old dog's sense of smell or the steering on a rust-peppered Rover estate.Many successful English managers were effectively killed off by the first great wave of foreigners. Howard Wilkinson, the last to win the league, never grasped the new world. Instead he found himself lassoed and bound, Gulliver-like, by the foreigners' tiny hands, quick feet and alien skill sets.Over time we learnt some basic rules. Russians are complex. A Portuguese may fade. Don't overpay for a Scandinavian. Your club's first Brazilian will be a disappointment. In fact, like port always being passed to the left, a Brazilian should only ever arrive from the West. Never go East: the fossil-fuel funded, post-Soviet Brazilian tends to age badly, glove-bound and tight‑chafed, wizened by winter.Foreigners have always been important for Ferguson who alone among top managers, straddles the pre- and post-foreigner eras.While other modern managers focus on massed coaching staffs as central to their dug-out identity – witness the many fluffers and groupies of José Mourinho's entourage – Ferguson is careless with his assistants. Mike Phelan already has the air of a faithful mid-period second wife, destined to Hoover and bake and look pinched and troubled in his apron, before obediently disappearing to live in a bungalow in Bridport.For Ferguson it is instead a mastery of the foreign, a refusal to be outflanked, that has been central to his professional thrust. Not that there haven't been some disasters. At times his forays into the foreign can even seem a little hobby-ish and derivative: the Makelele-cartoon Eric Djemba-Djemba, the Thierry Henry-ish stab with David Bellion. Paying £28m for Juan Sebastián Verón was like buying a big flash yellow motorbike that ends up just sitting in your front garden looking pointlessly sleek for a couple of years.During the recent scouting trip to Valencia it was hard to shake the image of Ferguson looking rather glazed and awkward in the stands beneath his gift-shop sombrero, like the assistant manager of a regional double-glazing firm peer-pressured into performing a stiff-backed limbo at a Sandals Jamaican beach party.But the hits have outweighed the misses and in many ways Ferguson has measured out his reign in an unbroken lineage of key foreigners. The first was Eric Cantona: the Scot's first Statement Foreigner, a show of regal pan-European modernity to be paraded Kong-like past the gasping crowds, flexing his furred biceps, magnificently devouring a banana. After which the baton of key foreigner arguably passed to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who seemed to say: foreigners? No big deal. We source them. We nurture them. They're a bit like us. Most recently Cristiano Ronaldo became the central figure as Ferguson's player pool took on a Latin and southern European shade, Bebé-ridden and Anderson‑inflected.The old polarity with Arsène Wenger still exists here. Even now Wenger retinas his aura as the master of all foreigners, curator of a frictionless poly‑lingual bazaar peopled by Syldavians, Etruscans, Wookiees, Smurfs. This is not without its ongoing ructions and resentments. The current Arsenal goalkeeper debate (it is a proper debate: on Thursday night Sky Sports News had a scrolling message that read, "Where do you stand on the Arsenal goalkeeper debate?" – so it must be) has been seized upon with barely disguised glee as a coded case of foreigner confusion.Even Wenger suffers, it seems, with his oddly excitable goalkeepers, these cartwheeling spiky-haired showmen with their air of frazzled defiance.Despite Wenger's fluency in this area, Ferguson's relationship with foreign players still feels somehow more urgent and personal. It seems significant that there has recently been a vacancy in the role of pet foreigner. Could Chicharito be the new project? He is certainly an appealing figure, an instant, fearless finisher, unusually limber in his leggy athleticism. They look good together, too, in an endearing, slipper-fetching, Wallace and Gromit-ish kind of way. Either way, in a season of tedious Rooney-blah and Glazer-wrangle, it is very nice to see Ferguson with a familiar spring in his step.Sir Alex FergusonManchester UnitedBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Roy Hodgson: 'No crisis' at Liverpool despite loss to Everton in derby • Roy Hodgson says Liverpool 'need to start winning'• David Moyes says Everton 'got their reward'The Liverpool manager, Roy Hodgson, was pleased with his players despite another disappointing result at Goodison Park, where they lost this afternoon's Merseyside derby 2-0 to Everton.He said: "The dream was we would come here on the back of new owners [New England Sports Ventures] and win the game but there is no point in attempting to analyse dreams. This would have been the ideal opportunity to turn things around on the back of the positive entry of the new owners and to get a result here would have been Utopia."We fell behind to a deflected block which fell kindly for [Tim] Cahill so I thought at half-time we were a bit unlucky to be a goal down because we had got back into the game well. In the second half we did everything the team could possibly do, we played well, created chances, we limited them to very few and put them on the back foot."Mikel Arteta scored Everton's second goal after 50 minutes.Hodgson said that Liverpool's star striker, the Spaniard Fernando Torres, was low on confidence.He said: "I don't think he is physically unfit, I think he showed that today. He did plenty of work and we don't have any injury problems with him. He got battered during the World Cup and mentally he is probably a bit low and he needs a goal or two to get it back. Certainly today I would have no qualms about his performance."Liverpool are in the Premier League relegation zone with one win in eight games but Hodgson is refusing to panic."I don't think it is a crisis. I thought the way we played today was not the level of a team in the bottom three but six points from eight games is a very poor return," he said. "We need to start winning to climb the table and until we do the word 'crisis' will continue to be bandied around."Asked if his side had been outplayed by Everton, Hodgson said: "That's very unfair. We suffered at the hands of an early onslaught which you invariably do at Goodison but towards the end of the first half we started to even things out."From what I saw I thought we dominated the second half totally. I thought the shape of the team was good today, the quality of our passing and movement was good. We didn't score goals and Everton did but I refuse to accept that we were in any way outplayed or any way inferior."I watched the performance and the second half was as good as I saw a Liverpool team play under my management, that is for sure."Liverpool have endured their worst start to a season since 1953, when they were relegated. They are 19th in the table.Asked if the top four was out of reach, Hodgson said: "There are 30 games to go, 90 points to play for, so we'd have to start doing something special, I suppose. But I don't know I would write that off necessarily."What it would take is a really good run on the spin but I thought there were signs in the game today that the quality of football was there. Who knows, we could get those four or five wins on the spin – that is what it is going to take."The Everton manager, David Moyes, was delighted with the win. "Their attitude was spot on and they got their reward," he said. "I thought we have played better in the majority of games than we did today but it was a derby and a different kind of game."Some of our performances [earlier in the season] were good but we did not get the result but today we did enough. We are getting away from the wrong end of the table. We are a good enough team to be at the top end."LiverpoolRoy HodgsonEvertonDavid Moyesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Liverpool takeover: Roy Hodgson's job is safe, says new owner John W Henry New owner John W Henry has assured under-pressure Roy Hodgson that his job at Anfield as manager is safe. telegraph.co.uk |
Rafael Benitez Uses Proverb to Criticise Liverpool's Purslow MILAN (Reuters) - Inter Milan coach Rafael Benitez used a Spanish proverb to attack Liverpool's previous owners and managing director Christian Purslow on Tuesday while springing a surprise in his squad to face Tottenham Hotspur. feeds.nytimes.com |