What price loyalty?
There has been a lot of discussion over the last seven days about loyalty in sport, notably in football, but also within both codes of rugby. A whole host of incidents have occurred that demonstrate the varying degrees of player to club loyalty in team sports.
It came to a head this weekend with the supposed comments of Tottenham Hotspurs’ French fullback Pascal Chimbonda, who according to The Sun newspaper declared; "Kevin Keegan has approached me and they've offered me more money. I am definitely leaving Spurs. It's all about the money. I don't care about the (Carling Cup) final, I don't care about the cup."
Chimbonda is hardly the pin-up boy for the one-club player having handed in a transfer request to then Wigan manager Paul Jewell, dressed in his playing kit, having minutes earlier helped Wigan maintain their Premier League status on the last day of the season against Arsenal in 2006.
In the usual merry-go-round of the transfer window he is not alone. His compatriot Lassana Diarra left Arsenal for Portsmouth and announced that he was only there until a bigger club came in for him. Having been at Chelsea and Arsenal already one can only guess who this bigger club will be.
It is interesting that Chimbonda wants to go to Newcastle, hardly the bastion of loyalty themselves, just ask Sam Allardyce, Glenn Roeder and Sir Bobby Robson, who were booted out the minute results took a down turn.
As a club they of course are not alone. Who’d want to be incharge of Liverpool with owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett breathing down your neck. Rafa Benitez can ask where the loyalty that existed for years between club and employees has gone, not least when the American pair are happy to go off and chat with Jurgen Klinnsman when they don’t get an immediate return on the summer spending. Where to, Benitez must wonder, went the loyalty of the Moores family, who ran the club for years but openly courted new owners who would finance the new stadium.
Which brings us back to Tottenham It has been funny to read the mutterings of Spurs fans on the web, after all they were up in arms last September when chairman Daniel Levy and director of football, Damien Cobilli were photographed courting then Sevilla manager Juande Ramos behind then Spurs manager, Martin Jol’s back. Who too can blame Chimbonda for feeling a little insecure about his place when the club have just bought 17 year-old Chris Gunter from Cardiff and have been openly courting Ranger’s Scottish international Alan Hutton.
It is not just football where the question of loyalty is cropping up in conversation. Steve Borthwick the Bath captain recently announced that he would be leaving the west country in the summer for the charms of Watford where he will play for Saracens. The cry went up, ‘where’s the loyalty to the club who nurtured him from youth, who made him an international?’ At the same time Jonny Wilkinson was being held up as the last remaining one club man after signing a two-year deal with Newcastle, who did for him what Bath did for Borthwick.
What though did Borthwick owe Bath after ten years service? At 28 years of age he has the right to chose his next step and who knows what the background to the situation is. Likewise Wilkinson, though with England’s golden boy scratch beneath the surface and all is not what it appears. At 28 he has played very little European Cup rugby and the two years he has signed means he has enough time to see if the potential at Newcastle puts them at Europe’s top table, but still leave him enough time to join a bigger English or French club who can allow him the opportunity to fill that gap on his cv.
In the 13-man code Paul Cooke allowed his loyalty to his childhood heroes Hull Kingston Rovers to overshadow his contract with city rivals Hull FC. As such, after breaking said contract he is now sitting out the first six weeks of the Super League season, childhood ties running deeper than his name on the contract.
Back in the good old days things weren’t always what they appeared either. Sir Tom Finney, who is a saint at Preston North End for his years of service wanted to leave in the late fifties. Palermo offered him far more than he was earning under the maximum wage, but he was unable to break free of the shackles imposed by the retain and transfer system that left players as club presidents’ serfs. Even Bobby Moore, West Ham’s favourite son nearly missed his greatest hour as he wasn’t registered with a club after the end of his contract at Upton Park. It needed club manager Ron Greenwood to come to the England team hotel so that Moore could sign the contract that allowed him to be registered for the 1966 World Cup. It is also a well known fact that until he left the club in 1973 his relationship with Greenwood was in pieces as he wouldn’t sanction a move to Tottenham. But ask any West Ham fan and this will have little baring on their view of Moore.
In truth the idea of loyalty in sport is restricted to the fans. Sure there are still instances of one club players out there, but look more closely and it is obvious that they are restricted to the teams who can challenge for honours and pay the highest wages. Would Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes have stuck around Mancheter United if they weren’t challenging for honours every year or rewarding them handsomely? Likewise Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher at Liverpool or John Terry at Chelsea.
Whilst supporters want the players to love the club as much as they do, I’d rather have someone like Chimbonda or Diarra who admits to only looking out for number one, rather than kiss the badge and then jump ship, at least you know where you stand with them. Hopefully the desire to earn the biggest crust will at least push them to peform to the maximum when they are playing and why would a French-African have anything but professional feelings for Portsmouth? Sport is business and supporters need to realise this. So long as professional pride exists, then in most cases that is the best that can be expected.
Farewell to a modern great:
It will be with great reluctance that Cricket Australia says goodbye to wicketkeeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist. The current test match with India will be his last and as befits his glittering career it looks likely to be a win and he will finish completely at the end of the one-day season.
His statistics paint a pretty impressive picture; he has scored 5,556 test runs, scored 17 centuries, took 377 catches and 37 stumpings since his test debut in 1999. In the 2006 Perth Ashes test he scored the second fastest test centruty off 57 balls, one shy of Sir Viv Richards’ record. He has won three World Cups in 1999, 2003 and 2007, with his innings in last year’s final crucial, hitting 149 from 104 balls to help beat Sri Lanka.
The statistics do not tell the full story. Aside from his wonderful ability he was a breath of fresh air in a sport that is becoming ever more cynical. He was one of the few players who would walk whether the umpire had given him out or not. Likewise if didn’t make a catch he would own up to it. Furthermore his swashbuckling approach to cricket completely changed the face of test matches, his one-day approach to scoring meaning that run rates went up, allowing Australia to further dominate and forced the rest of the sport to follow suit. It is no surprise that England targetted him during the 2005 Ashes series and the fact he failed to perform meant that for once he was on the losing side.
When Gilchrist became Australia’s wicketkeeper he was taking over from someone the country felt was irreplacable in Ian Healy. Now it is Gilchrist that is seen as irreplacable, which means that the annointed heir, Brad Haddin has a massive pair of shoes, and gloves, to fill.
JI 28/01/08
domenica 27 gennaio 2008
domenica 20 gennaio 2008
Notes from a sporting week – 21/01/08
Goodbye to G14:
With the entire hullabaloo emanating from northeast England this week one football story was given very little airtime. The G14 group of 18 European clubs, which features the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid and AC Milan, this week agreed to disband following talks with FIFA and UEFA bosses, Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini. Instead the clubs will form part of a European Club Association that will include one club from each of UEFA’s 53 member associations and have 100 members overall.
Both sides will argue that they have won the battle and both have points where they can feel that they have ended up with the better of the agreement. From the clubs point of view it is the fact that both FIFA and UEFA have agreed to their demands for player compensation when their players are on international duty. It was hard not to sympathise with the clubs even when they were at their most selfish about the whole issue. After all it is their players who are used for free in internationals, even forced in some cases by FIFA. This was the case recently when they ordered Everton’s South African midfielder Stephen Pienaar to stop dallying and get himself over to Ghana to link up with his team-mates, even if it meant missing the Toffees’ Carling cup semi-final second leg with Chelsea.
This very issue was at the heart of the groups’ existence and the fact that Germany’s association (DFB) paid the clubs when they used their players and that England paid Newcastle United compensation when Michael Owen was injured on international duty, showed that FIFA and UEFA were being thoroughly stubborn about the whole matter. All the more so considering the rich west European associations are more than capable of paying the clubs, whilst the poorer South American and African nations will in all likelihood see the money taken out of their championship appearance fees. The football clubs also had reason to have their noses out of joint just by looking at other sports, such as cricket and rugby union, who are duty bound to pay clubs for international call-ups.
At the heart of the argument was the potential embarrassment that FIFA and UEFA faced if they lost the Abdelmajid Oulmers case. Belgian club Charleroi were planning on taking FIFA to the European Court of Justice after Oulmers was injured in a friendly for Morocco that FIFA had ordered the Belgian club to release him for. The G14 clubs lined up firmly behind Charleroi, paid for legal advice, as they knew they were on for a winner should the judge rule in their favour. The new agreement means that the case has now been dropped.
Of the two associations UEFA had more to worry about from the G14’s existence than FIFA, who were at the heart of the compensation argument as the European clubs have players from each of FIFA’s confederations. For UEFA the threat of the breakaway super league has now totally dissipated and following their earlier agreement to alter the format of the Champions League qualification process to make the competition more inclusive of the whole continent, Platini can feel pleased that his plans to make UEFA more inclusive of the smaller nations are moving ahead.
Whilst the G14 was limited to clubs in the bigger western European nations, the new Club Association will include a team spokesperson from each country. So whilst G14 was the big clubs worrying over their slice of the pie, now there will be teams from places such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan pointing out that even a tiny piece of the pie would serve them well.
Overall then UEFA can probably come out the talks happiest. FIFA and the bigger associations will lose little sleep over dipping into their sizeable funds to cover costs when players are with their country and the clubs, whilst the big clubs will be looking forward to pouring that extra money into youth development (yeah, right). However, all FIFA and G14 were arguing over was money, what UEFA stood for in the discussions was a view of the sport, that it shouldn’t be about just a rich few west of Vienna, that the strength of the continent’s sport was in the smaller clubs having their rights recognised. In a small period of time Michel Platini has worked wonders embracing, yet altering the big clubs and associations’ viewpoints. He has a few more years till the next UEFA presidential election and so will make interesting viewing to see where he attacks next.
Bladerunner’s hopes dashed:
Not the best week for Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who was told by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that he would not be allowed to run in this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing. The reason given was that after a number of tests on his blades, it turns out that they do give him an advantage over able-bodied runners, allowing him to use 25% less energy to run at the same speed as his full able-bodied counterparts. The use of the blades also contravenes the IAAF’s rules on using technical aids.
The 21 year-old South African, whose legs were amputated below the knee at 11 months of age, is now planning to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. In 2007 he ran in the ‘b’ race at Rome’s Golden Gala, finishing second with 46.90 and two days later was disqualified for running out of his lane at the Sheffield Grand Prix. This year he was planning on running a number of races ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing.
There has been a lot of whaling and gnashing of teeth in the press, talking about how a brave young man has been deprived a fair and just chance of following his dream. However, to do so is wrong. By proving that the blades do give him an advantage there could be no more argument over him competing with able-bodied athletes, as there would be for any other athlete.
The judgement against him also needs to be seen from a future perspective. If Pistorius was allowed to use the blades now, imagine what technological developments will have taken place in one, two or four years when all eyes will be on the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics? If the precedent had been set that he could use blades that give him a 25% advantage over the rest of the field, why not something that gives him a 50, 75 or 100% advantage?
What the IAAF’s ruling has indicated is that if Pistorius wants to run, then it needs to be on a completely level playing field. Ultimately, that is probably all he wants.
JI 21/01/08
With the entire hullabaloo emanating from northeast England this week one football story was given very little airtime. The G14 group of 18 European clubs, which features the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid and AC Milan, this week agreed to disband following talks with FIFA and UEFA bosses, Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini. Instead the clubs will form part of a European Club Association that will include one club from each of UEFA’s 53 member associations and have 100 members overall.
Both sides will argue that they have won the battle and both have points where they can feel that they have ended up with the better of the agreement. From the clubs point of view it is the fact that both FIFA and UEFA have agreed to their demands for player compensation when their players are on international duty. It was hard not to sympathise with the clubs even when they were at their most selfish about the whole issue. After all it is their players who are used for free in internationals, even forced in some cases by FIFA. This was the case recently when they ordered Everton’s South African midfielder Stephen Pienaar to stop dallying and get himself over to Ghana to link up with his team-mates, even if it meant missing the Toffees’ Carling cup semi-final second leg with Chelsea.
This very issue was at the heart of the groups’ existence and the fact that Germany’s association (DFB) paid the clubs when they used their players and that England paid Newcastle United compensation when Michael Owen was injured on international duty, showed that FIFA and UEFA were being thoroughly stubborn about the whole matter. All the more so considering the rich west European associations are more than capable of paying the clubs, whilst the poorer South American and African nations will in all likelihood see the money taken out of their championship appearance fees. The football clubs also had reason to have their noses out of joint just by looking at other sports, such as cricket and rugby union, who are duty bound to pay clubs for international call-ups.
At the heart of the argument was the potential embarrassment that FIFA and UEFA faced if they lost the Abdelmajid Oulmers case. Belgian club Charleroi were planning on taking FIFA to the European Court of Justice after Oulmers was injured in a friendly for Morocco that FIFA had ordered the Belgian club to release him for. The G14 clubs lined up firmly behind Charleroi, paid for legal advice, as they knew they were on for a winner should the judge rule in their favour. The new agreement means that the case has now been dropped.
Of the two associations UEFA had more to worry about from the G14’s existence than FIFA, who were at the heart of the compensation argument as the European clubs have players from each of FIFA’s confederations. For UEFA the threat of the breakaway super league has now totally dissipated and following their earlier agreement to alter the format of the Champions League qualification process to make the competition more inclusive of the whole continent, Platini can feel pleased that his plans to make UEFA more inclusive of the smaller nations are moving ahead.
Whilst the G14 was limited to clubs in the bigger western European nations, the new Club Association will include a team spokesperson from each country. So whilst G14 was the big clubs worrying over their slice of the pie, now there will be teams from places such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan pointing out that even a tiny piece of the pie would serve them well.
Overall then UEFA can probably come out the talks happiest. FIFA and the bigger associations will lose little sleep over dipping into their sizeable funds to cover costs when players are with their country and the clubs, whilst the big clubs will be looking forward to pouring that extra money into youth development (yeah, right). However, all FIFA and G14 were arguing over was money, what UEFA stood for in the discussions was a view of the sport, that it shouldn’t be about just a rich few west of Vienna, that the strength of the continent’s sport was in the smaller clubs having their rights recognised. In a small period of time Michel Platini has worked wonders embracing, yet altering the big clubs and associations’ viewpoints. He has a few more years till the next UEFA presidential election and so will make interesting viewing to see where he attacks next.
Bladerunner’s hopes dashed:
Not the best week for Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who was told by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that he would not be allowed to run in this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing. The reason given was that after a number of tests on his blades, it turns out that they do give him an advantage over able-bodied runners, allowing him to use 25% less energy to run at the same speed as his full able-bodied counterparts. The use of the blades also contravenes the IAAF’s rules on using technical aids.
The 21 year-old South African, whose legs were amputated below the knee at 11 months of age, is now planning to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. In 2007 he ran in the ‘b’ race at Rome’s Golden Gala, finishing second with 46.90 and two days later was disqualified for running out of his lane at the Sheffield Grand Prix. This year he was planning on running a number of races ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing.
There has been a lot of whaling and gnashing of teeth in the press, talking about how a brave young man has been deprived a fair and just chance of following his dream. However, to do so is wrong. By proving that the blades do give him an advantage there could be no more argument over him competing with able-bodied athletes, as there would be for any other athlete.
The judgement against him also needs to be seen from a future perspective. If Pistorius was allowed to use the blades now, imagine what technological developments will have taken place in one, two or four years when all eyes will be on the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics? If the precedent had been set that he could use blades that give him a 25% advantage over the rest of the field, why not something that gives him a 50, 75 or 100% advantage?
What the IAAF’s ruling has indicated is that if Pistorius wants to run, then it needs to be on a completely level playing field. Ultimately, that is probably all he wants.
JI 21/01/08
domenica 13 gennaio 2008
Notes from a sporting week – 14/01/08
Hot air off the Tyne:
Well the sorry saga of Sam Allardyce’s reign at Newcastle United reached its logical conclusion when chairman Mike Ashley showed him the door following the 0-0 draw with Stoke City in the FA Cup third round. With a replay to be played the timing of the axing seems odd, but not in the context of the January transfer window. Ashley may have money to spend on the magpies, but evidently he doesn’t trust Allardyce with one penny of it.
It’s pretty harsh seeing as he has only been in the job since the summer and even more so considering that the team are currently 11th place and 13 points behind the UEFA Cup places, a hardly perillous position to be in. Harry Redknapp has already turned down the job, content with life on the south coast at Portsmouth and Mark Hughes at Blackburn is favourite to take over.
At the centre of it is Allardyce who went to St James’ Park with high hopes of using his scientific approach to coaching as a way of throwing off years of mediocrity. His use of sports science was intended to push Newcastle up the table and fulfil their much-talked about promise. All that seems to have happened is that they have negotiated a sloppy start to the season to reach the relative safety of the middle of the table.
Where then did Allardyce differ from anyone else? Certainly not a lot from Keegan or his successor, Kenny Dalglish, who took the team to second in the table, nor Sir Bobby Robson who established them in the top five, before his mild-mannered approach was elbowed aside for the granite fisted Souness. He went the same way as his predecessors, which also included Ruud Gullit who started the ball rolling at Chelsea with the FA Cup back in 1997. As for Glenn Roeder, having taken West Ham down he was fighting a losing battle from the start. In short he did nothing spectacular, but nothing too wrong either.
Of course there is no team like Newcastle for elevated opinions of their hopes and expectations, let alone the empty rhetoric of how they are a big club blah, blah, blah. Sure they have a large fans base, a fine 52,000 capacity stadium slap bang in the centre of town, but they haven’t won a sausage since the Fairs Cup in 1969. Since then Stoke City, Oxford United, Sunderland, Middlesborough and even West Ham United have lifted some form of silverware. Yet it is all we ever hear from the ‘toon army’, that most passionate of populations that fled the clubs in droves whilst in the old second division, until Kevin Keegan returned and ran amok with Sir John Hall’s chequebook.
For a while now Alan Shearer’s name has been bandied about as a potential candidate to succeed Allardyce, as it was for the England job. Again, why should be beyond most people as despite working towards his coaching badges he seems far too comfortable as a pundit for the BBC and has shown no desire to go into management. It would also be an utter joke if he did, as like the England job if he truly wanted to become a manager then he should work his way up from the lower leagues in the manner of someone such as Martin O’Neill. Sure, the Newcastle fans would love it and one suspects that they won’t be sated until he has been in charge for a while, whether a success or failure, but it would help matters if he came out and said he wanted the job or not, rather than act all coy and put out a message that he doesn’t want it ‘through people close to him’.
One also has to question what sort of chairman Mike Ashley is. His ‘man of the people routine’, in which he sits with the fans, wears the jerseys to matches and, despite owning a private jet, prefers to travel on the supporters coach, is beginning to wear thin. What must other director think, let alone the manager? How can they trust someone who is surrounded by the baying mob, a self-styled Caesar who takes himself away from the senate? And we all know what the senate did to Caesar.
Quite where Newcastle go from now is like sticking a pin in a map. Mark Hughes would be a good choice of manager as he would realise the club’s limitations, but go about it in a quiet, undemonstrative manner that wouldn’t put the supporters’ backs up. His teams generally play a decent quality of football and he has done well with Wales and now Blackburn.
The first thing whoever takes over should do is sit down with goalkeeper Shay Given and ask him who he wants in central defence as having performed heroics behind the likes of Jean Alain Boumsong and Titus Bramble he certainly deserves something more solid. One things for certain though is that Ashley needs to make the correct choice of manager and stick with it if his team are to finally win the trophy that we are continually told the club and its fans deserves. Then we may finally hear the end of the Newcastle myth.
2008: Year of Liu?
At the start of 2007 the host of a radio programme asked her guests to guess the name of the athlete who she believed would make the year their own. The person in question was Dan Carter, who was imperious as New Zealand’s fly half and appeared set to make 2007 his crowning glory with success at the Rugby World Cup. Alas we all know it ended anything like that, with Carter nursing a strained calf muscle on the bench at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, whilst his teammates floundered to a loss to France with a performance that was crying out for his poise and control.
With the Beijing Olympic Games on the horizon the person looking forward with the year in the palm of their hand is undoubtedly Liu Xiang. The Chinese hurdler, gold medallist in Athens, world champion and world record holder already has massive expectations on his shoulders and they will only increase as the games get nearer.
The fact that he is such a dominant athlete in his event means that the expectations around him would be high, but China has already made him their face of the games and comparisons have been drawn to what he is going through and what Australia’s Cathy Freeman went through in the build up to the Sydney Olympics. However, whereas Freeman was able to base herself in London throughout the northern hemisphere summer, Liu will be based at home far more, though he will be coming to Europe for the Grand Prix meetings in the summer before the Olympics start.
How he copes with these pressures will make or break his year and possibly his career. If he is successful then no doubt he will be feted by his countrymen and be set up for life, as well as becoming regarded as one of the greatest hurdlers of all time, alongside Ed Moses at the top of the pile. If he doesn’t it will be a very interesting time for him as he seeks to rebuild his career and a massive anti-climax for those watching.
Luckily for Liu he knows what it is to miss a gold having only taken silver at the 2005 World Championships. Since then he has used that disappointment to drive him on and with it add the world record in 2006 and the world title in 2007. He will need to double this if he is to defend his crown come August this year, otherwise his crowning glory, which very few athletes have the opportunity to go for, will have passed him by in the worst of circumstances.
JI 14/01/08
Well the sorry saga of Sam Allardyce’s reign at Newcastle United reached its logical conclusion when chairman Mike Ashley showed him the door following the 0-0 draw with Stoke City in the FA Cup third round. With a replay to be played the timing of the axing seems odd, but not in the context of the January transfer window. Ashley may have money to spend on the magpies, but evidently he doesn’t trust Allardyce with one penny of it.
It’s pretty harsh seeing as he has only been in the job since the summer and even more so considering that the team are currently 11th place and 13 points behind the UEFA Cup places, a hardly perillous position to be in. Harry Redknapp has already turned down the job, content with life on the south coast at Portsmouth and Mark Hughes at Blackburn is favourite to take over.
At the centre of it is Allardyce who went to St James’ Park with high hopes of using his scientific approach to coaching as a way of throwing off years of mediocrity. His use of sports science was intended to push Newcastle up the table and fulfil their much-talked about promise. All that seems to have happened is that they have negotiated a sloppy start to the season to reach the relative safety of the middle of the table.
Where then did Allardyce differ from anyone else? Certainly not a lot from Keegan or his successor, Kenny Dalglish, who took the team to second in the table, nor Sir Bobby Robson who established them in the top five, before his mild-mannered approach was elbowed aside for the granite fisted Souness. He went the same way as his predecessors, which also included Ruud Gullit who started the ball rolling at Chelsea with the FA Cup back in 1997. As for Glenn Roeder, having taken West Ham down he was fighting a losing battle from the start. In short he did nothing spectacular, but nothing too wrong either.
Of course there is no team like Newcastle for elevated opinions of their hopes and expectations, let alone the empty rhetoric of how they are a big club blah, blah, blah. Sure they have a large fans base, a fine 52,000 capacity stadium slap bang in the centre of town, but they haven’t won a sausage since the Fairs Cup in 1969. Since then Stoke City, Oxford United, Sunderland, Middlesborough and even West Ham United have lifted some form of silverware. Yet it is all we ever hear from the ‘toon army’, that most passionate of populations that fled the clubs in droves whilst in the old second division, until Kevin Keegan returned and ran amok with Sir John Hall’s chequebook.
For a while now Alan Shearer’s name has been bandied about as a potential candidate to succeed Allardyce, as it was for the England job. Again, why should be beyond most people as despite working towards his coaching badges he seems far too comfortable as a pundit for the BBC and has shown no desire to go into management. It would also be an utter joke if he did, as like the England job if he truly wanted to become a manager then he should work his way up from the lower leagues in the manner of someone such as Martin O’Neill. Sure, the Newcastle fans would love it and one suspects that they won’t be sated until he has been in charge for a while, whether a success or failure, but it would help matters if he came out and said he wanted the job or not, rather than act all coy and put out a message that he doesn’t want it ‘through people close to him’.
One also has to question what sort of chairman Mike Ashley is. His ‘man of the people routine’, in which he sits with the fans, wears the jerseys to matches and, despite owning a private jet, prefers to travel on the supporters coach, is beginning to wear thin. What must other director think, let alone the manager? How can they trust someone who is surrounded by the baying mob, a self-styled Caesar who takes himself away from the senate? And we all know what the senate did to Caesar.
Quite where Newcastle go from now is like sticking a pin in a map. Mark Hughes would be a good choice of manager as he would realise the club’s limitations, but go about it in a quiet, undemonstrative manner that wouldn’t put the supporters’ backs up. His teams generally play a decent quality of football and he has done well with Wales and now Blackburn.
The first thing whoever takes over should do is sit down with goalkeeper Shay Given and ask him who he wants in central defence as having performed heroics behind the likes of Jean Alain Boumsong and Titus Bramble he certainly deserves something more solid. One things for certain though is that Ashley needs to make the correct choice of manager and stick with it if his team are to finally win the trophy that we are continually told the club and its fans deserves. Then we may finally hear the end of the Newcastle myth.
2008: Year of Liu?
At the start of 2007 the host of a radio programme asked her guests to guess the name of the athlete who she believed would make the year their own. The person in question was Dan Carter, who was imperious as New Zealand’s fly half and appeared set to make 2007 his crowning glory with success at the Rugby World Cup. Alas we all know it ended anything like that, with Carter nursing a strained calf muscle on the bench at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, whilst his teammates floundered to a loss to France with a performance that was crying out for his poise and control.
With the Beijing Olympic Games on the horizon the person looking forward with the year in the palm of their hand is undoubtedly Liu Xiang. The Chinese hurdler, gold medallist in Athens, world champion and world record holder already has massive expectations on his shoulders and they will only increase as the games get nearer.
The fact that he is such a dominant athlete in his event means that the expectations around him would be high, but China has already made him their face of the games and comparisons have been drawn to what he is going through and what Australia’s Cathy Freeman went through in the build up to the Sydney Olympics. However, whereas Freeman was able to base herself in London throughout the northern hemisphere summer, Liu will be based at home far more, though he will be coming to Europe for the Grand Prix meetings in the summer before the Olympics start.
How he copes with these pressures will make or break his year and possibly his career. If he is successful then no doubt he will be feted by his countrymen and be set up for life, as well as becoming regarded as one of the greatest hurdlers of all time, alongside Ed Moses at the top of the pile. If he doesn’t it will be a very interesting time for him as he seeks to rebuild his career and a massive anti-climax for those watching.
Luckily for Liu he knows what it is to miss a gold having only taken silver at the 2005 World Championships. Since then he has used that disappointment to drive him on and with it add the world record in 2006 and the world title in 2007. He will need to double this if he is to defend his crown come August this year, otherwise his crowning glory, which very few athletes have the opportunity to go for, will have passed him by in the worst of circumstances.
JI 14/01/08
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