| Looking ahead to this evening's action Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm(ish), or if your usual copy has stopped arrivingDREAMS CAN COME TRUEAs a trembling, scurf-coated infant humorous tea-time football email, the Fiver was always taught to follow its dreams. Go out into the world and spread joy and laughter, provided this is consistent with ruthlessly serving your own material needs, The Fiver was often instructed through the security grille of its basement lodgings by its keepers, Masked Suburban Sadist Fiver and his companion Frau Rubber-Bodysuit Fiver. The Fiver was taught that the world is a beautiful place. You must go into it, and love everyone, not hate people. You must try to make everyone happy, and bring peace and contentment everywhere you go. And so the Fiver became a brittle, snide, self-defeating unpunctual football email that failed to be funny.All right, it's not much of a philosophy, but it was enough to create a strange bond of fellow-feeling with Valencia midfielder Alberto "Tino" Costa, who has today been talking in Spanish sport rag AS about his excitement at the thought of playing Manchester United in Big Cup this evening. Costa, who signed from Gallic also-rans Montpellier in the summer, has announced that tonight's match will represent the realisation of not one, two, or three, but four lifelong ambitions. "Now, I fulfil all of my dreams at once; to play with Valencia, to play at the Mestalla, to be in [Big Cup], and to face Manchester United. That's crazy!" he gibbered, adopting a spasm-of-soul-quaking-shock facial expression similar to that employed by John Travolta in Grease just after he sings the words "It's electrifying!" and then crumples to the floor at the sight of Olivia Newton-John's leather-trousered posterior."There is nothing bigger than playing against a power like Manchester United. I have fought a lot and waited so long for this moment," he added, perhaps overestimating the prospect of being repeatedly ankle-hacked by Darren Fletcher while an elderly red-faced man makes spittle-flecking interjections from the touchline.Speaking of which, Lord Ferg has prepared the ground for tonight's Tabloid Wayne-less excursion to a country where United have won only once in 18 attempts by pinning his hopes on knack's Michael Owen. "He's an outstanding footballer and I think he's improved since he's come to our club," Ferg enunciated into a cluster of microphones in front of one of those boards covered in adverts. "He's fit and his training performances have been terrific ever since he joined us." Which is nice, but he is also likely to be on the bench again, alongside the mysterious foundling Bebe. Michael Carrick could return. As could maybe, perhaps, who knows, Rio Ferdinand.Join Barney Ronay from 7.30pm for live MBM coverage of Valencia 1-0 Man Utd.QUOTE OF THE DAY"We believe that the system is revolutionary for Fifa and for professional football" – Fifa dinosaurs take a moment away from trying to scoop the reflection of the moon from the nearest puddle to reveal that the real magic behind its new Transfer Management System is the ability to submit transfers using electric instead of paper.SMOKING ROTOf all the crimes that Aaron Lennon has ever committed – from hacking into his lustrous eyebrows with an ill-advised tramline, narrowly missing the Fiver's shoes with a stream of spit at a trendy Leeds nightspot four years ago (not that we bear grudges or owt) – the one that gets the tabs' hackles raised most is the fact that he dared to smoke a cigar after England went out of the World Cup. No lesser sources than the Star and Sun have brought it up again today, despite the fact that the World Cup was more than three months ago. Seriously, Winston Churchill didn't get this amount of abuse when he lit up after England were knocked out of Europe in 1940 and he went on to finish a full 16 places above Michael Crawford in the 100 Greatest Britons.Still, the fact is that Lennon has been a little off colour of late. Luckily, 'Arry Redknapp has a few schemes to rehabilitate Lennon ahead of Spurs' Big Cup clash with Twente tonight. "Aaron is a quiet little lad but one game can turn it for him," said 'Arry. "He needs to get a bit of confidence. And maybe in training you work with him and you stick somebody at left-back who you're confident that he can get by," cunningly also destroying the confidence of whoever marks Lennon in training for the next 10 years.Not that Twente coach Michel Preud'homme thinks knack and Lennon's downturn in form will affect his opponents' ability. "Teams of the calibre of Tottenham have a squad that can absorb such shortfalls," said Preud'homme. "We hope to soak up the pressure from Tottenham and attack as much as possible ourselves." Attack their left-back, Michel. He'll be the one sobbing by the corner flag.Join Scott Murray from 7.30pm for live MBM coverage of Tottenham 2-2 FC Twente.NON-DRAMATIC CHANGE OF THE DAY27 September: "The manager is a strong man and has been through plenty during his career and will draw on those experiences. I don't think he will make any dramatic changes" - Lincoln City assistant Ian Pearce backs manager Chris Sutton to turn the Imps' season around.29 September: Chris Sutton and Ian Pearce resign.GET A 66 QUID HAT-TRICK OF FREE BETS WITH BLUE SQUAREClick here to find out more.FIVER LETTERS"Kudos to Nathan Alleyne (yesterday's Fiver letters) for posting the funnier parts of the Fiver as his Facebook status. If we all friend Nathan then we won't have to spend time every weekday wading through the unfunnier parts" - Annie Massey."Re: the debate on eating and table manners, and Australian Andrew Delaney's question: 'Didn't Mark Viduka teach you guys anything?' (yesterday's letters). Considering that obesity rates among adults in the north-east are the highest in England, I thought he had" - Jon Branaes."Re: Brazil playing an international friendly in the Ukrainian hotspot of Derby (yesterday's bits and bobs). Has anyone suggested to them that they may get an even larger crowd by playing in another city noted for having a large Ukrainian populace, like say, Kyiv? Or, if this is part of a plan to show Brazil playing teams in various cities noted for their large immigrant populations, can I expect to see them running out against England in Melbourne at anytime soon?" - Tim Grey.Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver now.BITS AND BOBSMarseille's head of security Guy Cazadamont claims he was ejected from Stamford Bridge during the 2-0 Big Cup defeat to Chelsea. "I have never experienced such a reception in a European competition," fumed Cazadamont. "I was grabbed round the waist and was eventually thrown out of the stadium. I was expecting something else since everything always went pretty well when we played in Liverpool, Bolton, Manchester or Newcastle."Arsene Wenger reckons that far from being a flap-handed joke of a man who lacks backbone and a decent pair of gloves, Lukasz Fabianski is really rather good. "I am confident he will come out as a great keeper, I have always said that," whooped Wenger.Wales skipper Craig Bellamy will miss the Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Switzerland next month with knee-knack.Eleven people have been arrested following some pwopah nawty biz-niz at last night's QPR v Millwall Championship game. A police spokesman confirmed the arrests were made for offences including possession of an offensive weapon, assault on police, affray and common assault, but that they had no knowledge of reports claiming one supporter was stabbed, Gumbo in ID-style, with a dart. Lucky that Guy Cazadamont didn't turn up there.Port Vale chairman Bill Bratt is appealing to the club's fans to stop breaking seats in Vale Park's Railway Stand on purpose. "This damage is taking place in an area housing our own supporters and we are asking our fans to report any incident of criminal damage they see," he sniffed.And quiet, shy and reserved Hearts owner Vladimir Romanov has offered a few choice words to the club's former captain and current Mr 10%, Gary Mackay, who recently criticised the Lithuanian's tenure at Tynecastle. "I am tired of fighting the mafia and will be pleased to step down for someone who has the strength and hope to defeat it more than I do," began Vlad. "Let the Great Saviour [Mackay] answer a question - has he ever bought a ticket for the game with his own money? I can understand his outrage. Perhaps due to the fact we have assembled a good management team he currently does not have a chance to steal players from Hearts or shove his players to the club - as parasites living at the expense of clubs begin to smell."STILL WANT MORE?Our team of nerds trawl the ocean of trivial football facts that swim around their heads to tell you which clubs have boats named after them in this week's Knowledge.Wayne Rooney may never again be the same man after being mauled by the foamy-mouthed red-tops, but he can still play football, reckons Paul Wilson.And Preston's thrilling 6-4 victory over Nasty Leeds was a rare magical night for North End's long-suffering fans, writes long-suffering's Tony Paley.SIGN UP TO THE FIVERWant your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up.'YOU BEEN HANGING OUT WITH THIS DUDE TOO LONG'Barney RonayTom Lutzguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Arsène Wenger confident Lukasz Fabianski will emerge as 'great goalkeeper' after heroics Arsène Wenger wants stand-in goalkeeper to make most of next chance as No 1 after helping Arsenal beat Partizan Belgrade. telegraph.co.uk |
Chelsea's Benayoun to miss next 6 months Chelsea says Yossi Benayoun will undergo surgery on his torn Achilles' tendon next week, ruling him out for six months. cbc.ca |
The Joy of Six: Great dribbles From the first-ever Varsity match to Paul Gascoigne, via Garrincha and Pele, here are half a dozen memorably mazy runsNB: The point of the Joy of Six is not to rank things, only to enjoy them1) Robert Walpole Sealy Vidal (OXFORD UNIVERSITY 1-0 Cambridge University, Varsity Match, 1874)Royal Engineers were heavily fancied to win the very first FA Cup final in 1872. In an era when most English footballers simply stuck their heads down and dribbled, Milan Baros style, the Engineers mixed their game up by – gasp – passing the ball too. (It all sounds very quaint, doesn't it, until you think about the modern English midfielder's skillset.) The Engineers' "combination" game having been influenced by the all-conquering Queen's Park side of the time, they were expected to swat aside the more one-dimensional Wanderers. But raw ball skills won the day, the only goal of the game being slotted home by Morton Betts after a long mazy run by one of his seven fellow forwards, Robert Walpole Sealy Vidal.So football's first-ever major trophy had been won by a top-drawer dribble. Vidal's run wouldn't be his only contribution to football folklore, though. He'd already played in the first unofficial international, a representative match for England against Scottish players, as a 16-year-old in 1870. In 1873, he was picked for England against Scotland in the second-ever proper international at Kennington Oval, The Sportsman reporting that "Mr RWS Vidal is a host in himself". By 1874, he'd become the only man to star in all three FA Cup finals, winning that year for a second time with Oxford University. At the tender age of 19, lightning fast and tricksy, he had earned himself the right to be known countrywide as "The King of Dribblers".It was later said that Vidal became the only man to ever score a hat-trick without another player touching the ball (in those days, the team that scored would restart the game). But this has never been proven, and is, in all probability, a myth. He did, however, score a confirmed belter in the first-ever Varsity match, just after winning the 1874 FA Cup with Oxford University. A pitch-long run culminating in a shot into the top corner, it went down in the record books as the fixture's virgin goal, and forever the fixture's finest, modernity totally incapable of dislodging legend. There's a first-hand recollection of it, too, even if it is Vidal's own, and one that proves he was more winger than out-and-out striker: "I can see today the corner I elected to shoot at, and even now I feel a shiver of apprehension as I see the ball going much higher than I meant and only passing under the tape by about three inches."Details of his feats might be as hazy as his runs were mazy – but there's enough recorded evidence to know the boy was a bit special. In the dusty tome Association Football And The Men Who Made It by Alfred Gibson and William Pickford (1905), Vidal is described as "one of the finest dribblers that ever played".2) Garrincha (BRAZIL 2-1 Spain, World Cup, 1962)The Little Bird's defining moment didn't come at a World Cup, though it did arrive while he was wearing a canary-yellow Brazil shirt. Before the 1958 tournament, A Seleção played a warm-up friendly against Fiorentina. La Viola had been runners-up in Serie A that season, losing European Cup finalists the year before, and Scudetto winners the season before that. A crack side. So, anyway, Garrincha sauntered past four of them, sashayed round the keeper, stood with the ball on the line in front of an open goal, and waited for someone to come back and attempt to stop him scoring. When a defender, face as purple as his shirt, finally took the bait and charged in, Garrincha simply evaded another desperate lunge, rolled the ball into the net, flicked it up, tucked it under his arm like a newspaper, and went strolling back to the centre circle while whistling a jaunty cocktail-jazz trill.Or was it his defining moment? Perhaps that really came during the first 60 seconds of the same year's World Cup group match against USSR. Garrincha made the clinical Soviets look like headless chickens, burning past his man down the right before crashing a shot against an uncharacteristically befuddled Lev Yashin's left-hand post, then setting up a chance for Pelé to hammer the ball against the bar. All in the opening minute. The blistering salvo represented Brazil's declaration of war on the entire world of football, as over the next 12 years the country made a wholly successful land-grab for the game's moral high-ground.Or perhaps Garrincha's moment came when it really mattered, his bandy legs delivering in the 1958 final after Brazil fell behind early on to the hosts, Sweden. Garrincha responded by zipping up the right wing, dropping his shoulder as the crowd dropped their jaws, turning the afterburners on to set up Vavá to score two identikit goals that turned the match. Or perhaps it arrived all those times in a Botafogo shirt when he left the ball where it stood, enticing a hapless defender to scamper after him instead? (And you can't call that trick a dummy. It's not just a dummy; he might not have the ball with him, but he's still dribbling someone senseless.)Or it could be … well, we could be here all day, so you can choose what you like, really. Because the bottom line is uncontestable: Garrincha was the greatest dribbler ever. So we're going to select this moment in a must-win World Cup group game against Spain in 1962, a run that came to naught. But what a run: Garrincha flicks the ball past the hapless Sigfrid Grà cia and spins off in a dainty pirouette, before making it all the way down the pitch to the by-line. The keeper claims the cross, but so what? What's particularly joyous about this, what makes it so special, is Grà cia's reaction: heels skidding in the turf to a soundtrack of brakes being slammed on, cartoon stars and (yes) little birds spinning around his dazed head, then a futile chase back, a token effort by a man who knows he's not seeing his wallet again, a farmer whose last tree has been scrumped clean of apples by those pesky kids.It was a full and systematic dignity strip, right down to the engine, humiliation the likes of which hadn't been visited upon a player since Ferenc Puskas sent Billy Wright skittering off to the wrong fire back at Wembley in 1953. So it was with a pleasing symmetry that Puskas, by now a naturalised Spaniard, was standing elsewhere on the pitch admiring this fresh outrage unfold, in what would be his last-ever international.3) Pelé (BRAZIL 2-0 Mexico, World Cup, 1962)Garrincha's pal wasn't too shabby either, mind. The Little Bird would be the star man of Brazil's 1962 World Cup win, but it was Pelé who set that campaign up and running with this stupendous effort. Bursts of speed, nutmegs, split-microsecond changes of direction, hip shaking that would earn him an 11 from Craig on Strictly Come Dancing, a 50-50 challenge that makes Roy Keane look like Rodney Marsh, and an unerring lash into the bottom corner: this was immense.In a straight line between the point where Pelé took receipt of the ball and the goal, there were seven Mexicans trying to stop him scoring (if you include the keeper, and there's no reason not to). They all may as well have stayed in the hotel. Each man is summarily dispatched, one way or another, at the rate of one a second. The King's famous circumvention of the Uruguayan keeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz in the 1970 semi-final might stand as his most imaginative, most iconic, most outrageous – but this burst of genius saw the ball go in.4) Helmut Rahn (WEST GERMANY 1-0 Yugoslavia, World Cup, 1958)There's been many a great World Cup dribble: Roberto Baggio's insouciant hike through half of Czechoslovakia in 1990; Archie Gemmill's rat-a-tat tiptoe against Holland in 1978; Pierre Njanka brightening up France 98; and of course that goal by Maradona. And this one.Problem is, a slight edge is taken off them all now through over-familiarity; most of the visceral pleasure of a great dribble lies in its sheer unpredictability. Which is totally unfair, but that's the way things work. The efforts of West Germany's Helmut Rahn at the 1958 finals, though, aren't so well remembered. Which is a hell of a shame, and great news, all at once.Rahn's most famous goal might be the low, raking winner in the 1954 final, but his 1958 dribbles are better: an exquisite shoulder-drop and perfectly placed thrash in the third-place play-off against France, and the piece de resistance, the beating of three men, all at chuff-tight range, followed by a needle-threading poke to win the quarter-final against Yugoslavia. Of course, once you've worn out YouTube playing the Yugoslavia goal in particular again and again, our point will no longer stand. But still.5) Jim Baxter (England 2-3 SCOTLAND, Home Championship, 1967)The Scots may have invented the passing game back in the 1870s, but they wouldn't forget how to dribble for another 110 years or so. Their roll call of fancy ball players is damn impressive. The Wembley Wizards of 1928: Hughie Gallacher, Alex James, and especially the tiny Rangers winger Alan Morton, who set up three goals in that famous 5-1 win over England. Willie Waddell, the Deedle dawdling down Ibrox's right, the Scottish league's first great post-war player. Celtic hero and sometime sailor Jimmy Johnstone, a peculiar mix of Garrincha-esque innocence and street-fightin' belligerence. Eddie Gray, perhaps Scotland's most skilful player of all, cut down by injury. The aforementioned Gemmill.For the greatest Scottish dribble of all, it's probably a toss-up between Gemmill's run against Holland, or Gray's kitten-paw-on-mouse-tail teasing of Burnley. But the quintessential moment was from a man who was more about passing than dribbling: Jim Baxter's famous keepie-uppies down Wembley's left wing in 1967. The run constitutes a dribble all right – it's ball skills on the move, what more do you want? – and it's one that defines Scottish football totally: exquisite skill, panache, the flourishing of a V-sign millimetres from yon opponent's nose. But most importantly, when Baxter finally offloads the ball to a team-mate, it's quickly lost. England efficiently stream straight up the other end – and score. Stylish, saucy and ultimately self-defeating: that's Scottish football (and perhaps the whole concept of dribbling itself) in a glorious nutshell.6) Paul Gascoigne (RANGERS 3-1 Aberdeen, 1996)Spurs have had some fantastic dribblers down the years: Ricky Villa, David Ginola, Jimmy Greaves. (And if you think Greavsie spent the 60s just hanging around the goal like a man waiting to order a pair of ciders with whisky chasers, think again.) But Paul Gascoigne was arguably the glory-glory club's greatest. Plenty of players have had an FA Cup final named after them, but nobody else has his fingerprints over the whole run, as that goal against Portsmouth and this display against Oxford United show.And yet Gazza's best individual performance came not when plying his trade at White Hart Lane, but instead at the home of Morton, Waddell and Brian Laudrup. At Ibrox in 1996, he scored a hat-trick to secure an eighth title in a row for Rangers against Aberdeen – and his own first league winners' medal. According to Sportscene legend Archie Macpherson, the hat-trick "was one of the most accomplished I have ever witnessed. His 40-yard run for his second is arguably one of the best solo goals ever scored in the Scottish game." Given what Scotland's dribblers had brought to the table during the previous 120 years of fancy-dannery, it had to be an Englishman who topped them all.Thanks to Cris Freddi, author of this, a book you really should buy.Scott Murrayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson brushes off Wayne Rooney fall-out issue Wayne Rooney injury debate "water off duck's back" to Man Utd manager after striker appeared to challenge his authority. telegraph.co.uk |