| Levein promises to change his gameplan • Levein turns deaf ear to media criticism of tactics• Bardsley set for debut in place of injured HuttonCraig Levein has confirmed his side will employ a "different game plan" for tomorrow's Euro 2012 qualifier with Spain at Hampden Park. But the Scotland manager made no apology for the striker-less tactics employed in last Friday's 1-0 defeat by the Czech Republic in Prague."You're assuming I have read any papers, which I haven't," Levein said when asked whether he had been stung by the criticism. "I am very positive about this match. In fact I'm excited and looking forward to it, and the players are too."The former Dundee United manager added: "Here's how it works: I got the job and the job is to try and qualify for the Euros. I'll do that the way I think is right. If it causes a little bit of a stooshie and some of you press guys get upset, then so what?"That's not my concern. I've got a group of players who I believe I can work with and who everybody who watched against the Czech Republic realised they put everything they had into the match. For me, that's a great starting point and we move on."The Sunderland full-back Phil Bardsley is poised to make his Scotland debut against Spain after Levein confirmed Alan Hutton was a major doubt. Hutton has been struggling with a groin problem and was one of several players to sit out training on Sunday. English-born Bardsley, 25, was called into the squad last week after pledging his allegiance to Scotland despite previously rejecting overtures from his Glaswegian father's nation.Levein will assess the fitness of his other injury doubts in training before naming his team for the Hampden clash tonight. The West Bromwich Albion midfielder Graham Dorrans has a hamstring problem while Steven Whittaker is still struggling with a calf knock. Lee McCulloch, who was suspended for Friday's 1-0 defeat against the Czech Republic, will train today but is still a doubt with a hip problem, however the captain Darren Fletcher has fully recovered from a knock. "I'll have a better idea after training who is going to be available," the Scotland manager said.Levein would not reveal whether Kenny Miller would return after the striker was dropped to accommodate Levein's much-criticised 4-6-0 formation in Prague. But he did confirm that Gary Caldwell would not start after the Wigan Athletic player managed 75 minutes on Friday on his first appearance since undergoing two hip operations in the summer. "He has recovered quite well," Levein said. "I'll wait until after training to see if he can be included on the bench."ScotlandCraig Leveinguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Alan Hansen: Manchester United captain Rio Ferdinand must put club before England This period of his career is make-or-break, not just for England, but for everything. telegraph.co.uk |
Clueless Köln are in meltdown His side rock bottom and a victim of Mainz's success, Zvonimir Soldo got the axe. But the buck shouldn't stop with himThere was no way the manager was getting fired, even if he lost the match, a retired TV commentator with fabled inside knowledge of FC Köln board machinations intimated to reporters at half-time. Forty-five minutes and the sixth defeat of the campaign later, the glum sporting director Michael Meier told everyone that "today, it's better to say nothing". The coach took training the next morning, smiled a sanguine smile on the TV talk show Doppelpass ("speculation is part of the business, managers always have to have their bags ready"), then retired to his hotel room to watch football.There had been talk that he would be allowed a final stand in a meeting with the president Wolfgang Overath at the club headquarters, the Geißbockheim, but then they decided to decide matters without him. News of his imminent departure did the rounds, followed by denials, followed by more rumours and more backtracking. "Even Köln's [tabloid] moles are not reliable any more," spox.com complained. The hotel room phone did ring, though, at 4pm. Meier did not offer any reasons, he only told the former Stuttgart midfielder what he already knew. A thin, limp statement appeared on the website. "Following an extensive analysis, co-operation has ended," it said. There were no words of thanks, no best wishes, no pretence of decency. As botched endings go, Christopher Nolan's The Prestige had nothing on the dismissal of Zvonimir Soldo.You could say the club had no choice and the board nowhere else to go. Köln are bottom of the table after Saturday's 2-1 defeat at Hannover. They have a cup game against TSV 1860 Munich tomorrow that cannot be lost if the season is to mean more than one long relegation fight. And the drab performance at the AWD-Arena did suggest that Soldo, 42, was running out of ideas. Players told the local tabloid Kölner Express that his half-time speech, at 2-0 down, consisted of little more than shouting at players for wearing the wrong kind of footwear and the most depressing of platitudes: "If we can get back to 2-1, there will be everything to play for," he said.Stating the obvious was evidently his thing. The Croatian, who excelled as a holding midfielder for a decade at Stuttgart, was the last classic Bundesliga manager in the Bundesliga, a man who believes football is essentially about man-management, making the players run and keeping things simple. Lukas Podolski, not necessarily Germany's deepest thinker himself, recently remarked that Soldo "presumed too much"; polite code for tactics were not really his thing. Soldo's game plan essentially boiled down to sit deep and hope for the best at the other end. It worked last season, when Köln frustrated the hell out of the opposition and scrapped to safety.He was realistic enough about his team's potential to adopt the same strategy this year but the typically self-delusional board set more glamorous targets. "The bare minimum is to be ahead of Gladbach, and we want to attack Bayer Leverkusen," Meier said in the summer. "We don't want anything to do with relegation."Soldo knew they were clueless but he never lost his cool. He still cut a relaxed, genial if slightly hapless figure yesterday. When the Doppelpass anchorman patronised him with praise – "You will have won many friends in the public with your appearance today" – Soldo warily replied that he would have preferred to have won a few more games. To an extent, he has been a victim of Mainz 05's success, too. The heroics of Thomas Tuchel and his boys have contrasted sharply with the terrible football of wealthier, much bigger Köln, whose supporters are essentially a forgiving lot, happy to celebrate the team and themselves with little reason. But even they could no longer stand for action on the pitch more awful and unspeakably crappy than anything Hennes, the live goat and club mascot, could muster."Soldo out – and Meier, too," they shouted on Saturday. They know it is not the manager's fault. Meier, the man who bankrupted Dortmund in the 90s, has overseen the assembly of the league's most exotic bunch of unruly egomaniacs, lazy has-beens and overpaid miscreants. Every international week has seen countless arguments, players going awol or straight postal. The benched goalkeeper Faryd Mondragon took megalomania to its logical conclusion on Wednesday when he compared his plight to that of another professional saviour. "I feel as if I have a knife in my back," the Colombian said at the club's official press conference. "Jesus Christ was deceived and betrayed, too."Podolski, who was meant to be Köln's messiah, has belatedly realised that the club have "no concept" beyond putting all their chips on the No10 – him. Meier's capricious moves in the transfer market have left the club with a debt of €21m (about £18.7m). The ultimate culprit is Overath, of course, a local legend who has been able to hide his total incompetence behind his dignified appearance. Süddeutsche Zeitung called the 67-year-old World Cup winner a "president impersonator", an assessment that is both incredibly harsh and true. Overath will surely have to let Meier go soon before they turn on him. "Meier has made mistakes, one or two buys weren't good," the president said on Saturday, laying the groundwork for more drastic measures.In the meantime, Köln did what any self-respecting Bundesliga club would have done in their position: they jumped on the latest bandwagon and followed the Tuchel-induced trend of promoting youth coaches. Frank Schaefer, the manager of the Under-23 team, will sit on the bench tomorrow, on a trial basis. "Signing a big manager would have smacked of panic," Overath said. Yes, really. That's what he said.Talking points• Mainz were nearly swept aside by Bayer Leverkusen in 20 thunderous opening minutes but Thomas Tuchel's boy band rode out the (pharmaceutical) storm to win the match with a classic sucker punch. Samil Alagui and the Leverkusen-bound substitute Andre Schürrle combined perfectly to set up another substitute, Andreas Ivanschitz. The Austrian's strike on 70 minutes stole the points for the visitors and saw them leapfrog Dortmund to sit top of the table again. "After losing to Hamburg, people felt we might be broken," general manager Christian Heidel said. "But we already had 21 points, so there was no break." The win sets up next Sunday's meeting with Dortmund perfectly. "It'll be hype squared," Heidel said.• In Dortmund, meanwhile, there was anger squared on the touchline. Both managers were deeply upset with the erratic performance of the referee Wolfgang Stark in the aftermath of Borussia's 1-1 draw with Hoffenheim. The Bavarian was overofficious when he insisted Nuri Sahin retake his penalty – the Turkish midfielder missed, didn't see another blatant penalty for the home side and completely messed up in the last minute of added time when he falsely awarded a Antonio Da Silva free-kick that led to the equaliser. "It feels like a win," Kloppo said. "It doesn't feel like a point won," TSG boss Ralf Rangnick mused. They agreed that Stark had had a shocker, though. "As far as injustice goes, this was unbeatable," Klopp said. "If I were to voice all my anger, they'd ban me for life."• Beauty is a function of symmetry, says the Arsenal-loving, tough-tackling mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. If he's right, Louis van Gaal's Bayern Munich are easily the most attractive team in the world right now. Their record after nine games reads W3 D3 L3, with eight goals scored and eight against. On Friday night, they were careful not to spoil these lovely numbers by playing out an occasionally entertaining, occasionally dull 0-0 in Hamburg's Imtech-AOL-HSHNordbank-UweSeelerHisWife-Arena. Jonathan Pitroipa hit a post late on to spare the southerners another round of crisis talks. Instead, the spin coming out of Saebenerstrasse is that "Bayern are beginning to roll", according to Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. Down a cliff perhaps, if they lose to Werder in the cup tomorrow night.• "We don't have enough points, not enough goals and concede too many goals," Steve McClaren said after Wolfsburg's 2-1 defeat at Nürnberg. The Volkswagen-owned team still don't play with any sort of cohesion and on top of that they have developed a nasty habit of making costly mistakes at precisely the wrong time. Dieter Hoeness had to strain his vocal chords again in a long dressing-room monologue. "Ever since they won the league, they have a mentality problem, they are too phlegmatic," the sporting director said. "There is no debate about the manager," he added. Watch this space though.Results Hamburg 0-0 Bayern, Dortmund 1-1 Hoffenheim, Freiburg 2-1 Kaiserslautern, Hannover 2-1 Köln, Nürnberg 1-2 Wolfsburg, Frankfurt 0-0 Schalke, Gladbach 1-4 Bremen, Leverkusen 0-1 Mainz, Stuttgart 2-0 St Pauli.Latest Bundesliga tableBundesligaCologneEuropean footballRaphael Honigsteinguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn relishes winning streak following defeat of Aston Villa Sunderland 1 Aston Villa 0Sunderland moved up to the giddy heights of seventh place thanks to Richard Dunne's own-goal. telegraph.co.uk |
United Buy Stiles' World Cup Medal For $297, 700 LONDON (Reuters) - Nobby Stiles' 1966 World Cup winner's medal was bought at auction by his former club Manchester United for 188,200 pounds on Wednesday. feeds.nytimes.com |