Canales Scores, Prepares For Season On Bench

Enjoy it Sergio. You won't see one for a while.

When he signed his contract with Real Madrid, Sergio Canales probably expected to be arriving at the club this summer to a dressing room of galacticos fresh from a glorious Champions League final victory in their own stadium. In light of that, he probably then expected to be loaned straight back to Racing. However, the reality has proved somewhat different and in actual fact, two players who went the other way through the Bernabau’s ever-revolving doors – Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder – will be the ones gracing Madrid's turf on May 22nd. Moreover, Marca has reported that Real won’t be sending Canales out on loan in 2010/11.

The thing about Canales is that his most recent wonder goal, against Villareal last Saturday, was his first since the middle of January – the first time most of us had heard of him. That’s 21 matches without a peep. The timing of Real’s latest outburst therefore is no doubt designed to remind everyone exactly who Canales is and where he’s going in July. It almost seemed that they’d forgotten about him in the interim, because he wasn’t in the news.

I get the impression that Real are like the mate in the pub who doesn’t really like football, but tries to join in with all the chat anyway. The kind of person that thought Nayim would be a good buy because he once scored from the halfway line. The kind of English person that buys a Brazil shirt every four years. The kind of person that spends £4m on a 19-year old because he scored a couple of goals and Sid Lowe consequently talked about him on Football Weekly.

Real are very keen on you if you’ve got a reputation, whether as a wonderkid or a 42-goal winger. They don’t tend to put in the hard yards, in general, when developing players. In fact, they basically go against the over-riding rule of football that EVERYONE knows: 11 amazing players do not an amazing team become. Doesn’t everyone know that? Throwing money at World Players of the Year season after season might enable you to open up a 25-point gap on the team below you, as it has this season, but it counts for very little when that team (Valencia) are third in the league rather than second. Barcelona, for obvious reasons, are the exception.

It’s all a bit sad, really. In the same way that your mate in the pub stuck to his guns in 2002 and maintained that signing El-Hadji Diouf was a great idea, so Madrid are equally unequivocal. Their desire for success will lead them to up their pursuit of Franck Ribery, Wayne Rooney and David Villa in the summer – players that everyone knows about already and will just join a long list of attacking options including – and then limiting – young Canales. This policy might be enough to suppress the domestic league, but it won’t deliver the trophy they crave. So far, all the galacticos have delivered Madrid in this iteration is an embarrassing exit from Spain’s domestic cup and a humbling at the hands of Lyon in the Champions’ League. Whether they win La Liga this season or not, they will still have to suffer the ignominy of watching their final – including their former players – while stuck in their seats. Rob MacDonald

Liverpool's Lose-Lose Situation

Partisan Alert: Full-time Liverpool fan Alex Bingle gives his views on whether or not he can bring himself to be a part-time Chelsea fan ahead of their meeting at Anfield on Sunday. May contain language United fans find offensive.


I had a flashback last night. It’s late on at the Bernabeu, a tense stalemate in the Champions League. Fabio Aurelio places the ball before whipping in a fierce left-footed cross into a packed penalty area. And who’s there to meet the ball? The smallest man on the pitch, Yossi Benayoun, heading the ball past Spain’s number one goalkeeper to put Liverpool 1-0 up.

“Dream on Scouser! You didn’t even get through the group stage”.

Just over 12 months ago, this was reality as Liverpool eased past Real Madrid into the last 8 of Europe’s elite competition. How times have changed. A completely different reality has come to pass as we await another nervy Anfield night in Europe’s “second rate” competition against Madrid’s “second rate” team. Don’t get me wrong, Atletico have some decent players and you could easily say Simao and Aguero are world class and very worthy opponents. But if you had said to me back in September: “Oi Scouser! Come May, your team are gonna be playing in the Europa League and be seventh in the league behind City, Villa and even Spurs…ha!”, I would have laughed you down.

But who’s laughing now? With depressing familiarity, it’s the same group who taunted me throughout childhood every Monday morning when I trudged into school: Man Utd fans (kids at the time too, obviously). They have finally caught up in the League Championship count and have a chance of overtaking our “magnificent 18” this year. And yet, Liverpool could have a major say in the whole matter as we play host to Chelsea on Sunday. Do we roll over, let Chelsea win and keep United at bay for another season? Or do we go out with pride, beat Chelsea, keep our faint hopes of Champions League qualification alive and potentially hand United the initiative in the title chase.

When asked by United fans, my gut reaction is to say that I hope we lose and gift Chelsea the league. Rather them than Utd right? ABMU! Very much like in 1995 against Blackburn, when Redknapp curled in a sublime free kick and the whole of Anfield as one shouted “What are you doing?!!!”, a winner on Sunday may meet with a similar reaction.

In an ideal world, there will be some divine intervention earlier in the day at the Stadium of Light, meaning we can beat Chelsea without fear of handing United the advantage. Please God, anything…a dodgy penalty decision, a couple of red cards (both for Neville, if possible), hey…maybe even a beach ball?

But, if you ask me what I honestly want to happen on Sunday, I want us to beat Chelsea. I want to see the fighting spirit of Stevie and Carra that has typified many a Liverpool performance over the last five years but has been sadly lacking this year. If we lose on Sunday with little more than a whimper, I will be disappointed and angry to say the least, never mind the bitter consolation that the league title will be all but beyond United.

My sentiments are divided over Europe too. Who would begrudge Fulham victory if an all-English Europa League final does materialise? No one could claim that they don’t deserve it. They’ve been better than Liverpool and that’s a fact. The Liverpool fans would applaud Fulham and show the same pride we want to see from the players against Chelsea on Sunday.

I want to be able to hold my head high as a Liverpool fan this summer when I swap my red shirt for my England jersey. Maybe we will finish fourth and qualify for the Champions League. We might even have a European trophy. It’s been a bad season and it has not been good enough by the standards we set last year. Even if we do celebrate European glory in Hamburg, the Bernabeu will remain a distant memory.

Foot And Mouth

Sometimes, in certain situations, with certain people, you just have to sit back, take your hat off and admire. I caught myself doing exactly that today when I read Jose Mourinho’s comments in the build up to tonight’s Champions League clash at the Nou Camp. He’s at it again. Every word that passes this man’s lips are studied. Here’s a snippet from the professional flame fanner: "It is not a dream for Barca, it is obsession. The obsession is reaching the final in Madrid. It's one thing to follow a dream, it's another to have an obsession. For Barca it is an obsession.” Mourinho knows full well that he throwing cats among pigeons with such a comment. He has made a career out of it. That and being a bloody good manager. And then he reaches for another bag of cats: "The only thing I told my players was that I wanted them to support the work of the referee and if the Barcelona players want to do the same, it will be easy for the referee." Classic Jose. A clear dig at the perceived theatrics of the Barca players designed not only to infuriate them but to sow the slightest seed of doubt in the referee’s mind. And off he goes, pigeons everywhere, knowing his work is done.

Meanwhile, one man uncharacteristically not in English headlines this week has been the maestro, Lionel Messi. Another man whose unique skills deserve to be admired. Whereas Mourinho seeks to dominate proceedings off the pitch, it is the Argentine whom, along with Xavi, is the one most likely to carve open even the most obstinate Inter defence. They will be marked men of course, and in the form of Lucio, Walter Samuel and Esteban Cambiasso, their task may well prove thankless once more. But remembering the build up to the Arsenal game, the one in which Messi left all and sundry with jaws dropped down to their feet, the mercurial one was hardly mentioned. Four goals later and he was being revered as a talent to compare with Maradona. Again, I speak in English terms here. In Spain, they already knew the boy’s worth. But it is a very English phenomenon to only entertain thoughts of a player’s greatness if they pull a big performance out against Premier League opposition.

Back to tonight, and in essence, we see a tête-à-tête between Mourinho and Messi to determine who is to be the most revered come the season’s end. It is Mourinho’s great skill that he consistently manages to be more talked about than his players. This is a product of his vanity but at the same time a product of his canniness to appreciate that with the heat on him, his charges can bask in relative obscurity and therefore operate in a less tense atmosphere. If he wins the European Cup this year with Inter, Mourinho will join such illustrious company as Sir Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough and Arrigo Sacchi, to have won it twice.

Messi, on the other hand, has the perfect platform to prove his greatness credentials against Inter. At 3-1 down, against a side so well-drilled, he will have his work cut out. He will have to create space against a side that doesn’t give any. He will be kicked. His shirt will be pulled. But a Messi-inspired Barca win, taking them back the final, would go a long way to silencing any detractors there may be out there to his claims to greatness. Of course, there are plenty of others who could have a say in tonight’s events, but you just get the feeling that the battle will come down to a straight fight between two of the season’s irresistible forces: one man’s mouth against another’s twinkling feet. Adam Bushby

Being Crap Bankrupts Hull; Burnley Knew All Along

"I earn more than you, and you, and you, and you..."

The identity of the Premier League’s relegated teams is all but decided. Barring a miracle, Hull will join Burnley and Portsmouth in the Championship when the new season kicks off in August. Assuming, that is, they still have a club. While Brian Laws is still looking for Burnley’s wheels, last seen falling off back around Christmas time, they are all he has been charged with finding. Hull, meanwhile, are searching for a solution to liabilities believed to be as much as £35m, while continuing to operate. Of the two sides for whom relegation is confirmed, Hull resemble the stricken south coast club far more than their prudent Northern counterparts.

If you measure success, as most of us should, by still having a club to support every Saturday, Burnley are a magnificent example. They have a salary cap, for a start. It is £15,000 a week. And while those wages don’t necessarily get you a squad of internationals, it certainly secures the future of the club should you relinquish a lucrative place in the Premier League. It removes the likelihood of the dreaded fire-sale decimating your squad. It certainly doesn’t mean that you end up spending 80% of your turnover merely on paying players, like Hull City.

The differences in the running of the two clubs are staggering and Hull’s re-appointment of Adam Pearson may have come too late to save them this time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t present when the euphoria of another season in the Premier League led to a slew of signings on lucrative contracts as Hull aimed to become ‘established’ in the top tier. This yielded, as has been widely reported, the accumulation of seven strikers at the club, collecting a total of £200,000 a week in wages while returning only nine goals. Burnley’s record signing, Steven Fletcher, scored eight in the league and has 12 in all competitions. He cost £3m and, remember, collects no more than £15,000 a week. Meanwhile, Hull signed the mercenary, Amr Zaki, and continue to pay injury-prone and therefore un-saleable asset Jimmy Bullard £45,000 a week, with no relegation clause to reduce his wage. Phil Brown still has a year on his equally lucrative contract and all he’s doing is sitting in his garden topping up that implausible tan. Iain Dowie, now that I come to think of it, was rumoured to be on a £1mn bonus if he kept Hull up. Ludicrous figures, especially from a club that came so close to extinction in 2001.

But if Burnley are such a fantastic example, is it true to say that promoted or smaller clubs will never be able to compete if they run a tight ship? Yes, mostly. The Premier League’s behemoths make the summit an impossible dream, though with great power also comes great debt. In theory though, lower down the league, a year of top-flight football with the insurance of two years’ parachute payments should enable clubs like Burnley to fund more lucrative contracts and build a better squad. In practice, there is too much money elsewhere in the Premier League for the parachute payments to be enough to tempt clubs into gambling and players into signing. The only club – in recent times – that has made the journey from lower-league football to the Premier League and survived is Fulham, who have done so because Mohamed al-Fayed has spent a fortune on them. Even then, they’ve been perilously close to going down a few times. Birmingham appear to have a trough of money from an investor to spend in the summer, but they, West Brom and Wolves have traditionally been serial relegation fodder following promotion.

Therefore, in a hammer blow to the ‘romance’ of football, Burnley have been destined to go down from the start, all because the club is run responsibly. Such operating, however, has enabled them to invest in a £15m redevelopment of Turf Moor, whose new features – upon completion in 2011 – will net the club an extra £1m a year. A solid foundation but again, one suspects, not enough to make waves in the Premier League. In football nowadays, you can’t succeed if you’re just using your own money. The more catastrophic effects, as we should expect to see in the next few years, will come as clubs continue to gamble on success using someone else’s. Rob MacDonald

Volcanic Ash Nearly Out Of Europe

Elite footballers and comfort zones aren’t often separated. But then, huge volcanoes in Iceland don’t normally erupt and ground the continent’s air traffic for a week. As evidenced by the embarrassing media circus that followed Liverpool, Fulham, Barcelona and, to a lesser extent, Lyon around Europe this week tweeting about whether or not they were getting enough sleep, the clubs’ preparations for significant European fixtures were somewhat out of the ordinary.

The whole thing was a bit like a student challenge. You have to get hundreds of miles across Europe, but you can’t use planes. Liverpool, you must travel 1,200 miles, Lyon 700 miles, Fulham 600 and Barcelona 450. You can use coaches and trains, even where it would be quicker to walk (the 0.8 miles from Euston to Kings Cross, LIVERPOOL), because, lest we forget, you are not students but elite footballers. HEY – Liverpool. Get off that plane in Bordeaux. That’s not in the rules. GET OFF.

Fine, I hope you lose.

Elite footballers, as the press reminded those who dared to suggest that sitting on a coach for two days could hamper performance levels, remain professional. And remain professional they did, but still, no team that travelled in Europe this week won a game. Only one of them scored in the 360 minutes of football played.

Now, it’s not exclusively the fault of volcanic ash, but the disruption didn’t help. Admittedly, Barcelona were undone by Mourinho’s Inter in ways we pointed out on Wednesday. Fulham actually got a really good result, even if by all accounts they essentially parked the bus they arrived on in front of goal after losing Zamora. But Liverpool… well, sometimes it looks as if crossing the halfway line is a journey too far for a result, let alone going all the way to Madrid, let alone doing so on a coach. Still, they only lost 1-0. Lyon, while also only losing by an odd goal, failed to score against 10 men – in fact Bayern dominated throughout – and conceded when they were a player up on the hosts. There were definitely some weary performances.

In fixtures where the second leg is far more important – so much so that ludicrously, the six UEFA Cup/Europa League semi-final first leg games over the past three seasons have produced a total of only six goals – perhaps analysing the result is a bit futile. It’s only half time, after all. You would still back all four who were on the road this week to qualify, especially if Ribery is suspended for Bayern.

If they don’t, you can guarantee that no one will use the ‘ready-made excuse’ about the travel disruptions. But they should. Sitting on a coach for long periods is horrendous, as almost every lower-league and amateur footballer can testify. Most professional clubs who make long journeys to Torquay or Carlisle or other crumbling footballing outposts like Anfield tend not to perform remarkably well. Mind you, try and imagine sitting on a coach with your workmates for 1,200 miles. Maybe the professionals dealt with it rather well. Rob MacDonald

It’d Be Ruud Not To… Mention Van Nistelrooy

With English eyes trained firmly on both the amazing race that was Liverpool getting to the Vicente Calderon stadium and Fulham’s spontaneous warm-up session on the autobahn, one man who could have a huge bearing on the destination of this season’s Europa League slipped under the radar. Eighteen months ago, Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s career was hanging in the balance. Out of favour at Real Madrid, the winter transfer window should have seen English clubs queueing up to get the Dutchman’s signature. But where Premier League sides have missed a trick, Hamburg have profited.

The man who has scored more than anyone else bar Raul in European competition (an incredible 62 goals in 90 games) was shunted off to supposed obscurity in Germany in January. Anonymity, however, is one charge that cannot be levelled at a man with the scoring calibre of Van Nistelrooy. A career total of 331 in 528 and hugely successful stints at Old Trafford and the Bernabeu point to a striker who doesn’t just score goals; he scores them with a regularity few can match. Oh how Liverpool, shorn of the delectable talents of Fernando Torres, could do with the big Dutchman leading their attack against Atletico Madrid tonight. And lest we forget, Van Nistelrooy was available on a free transfer. What was Benitez thinking by instead going to the other Madrid club and shelling out £1.5m on Maxi Rodriguez when it had been putting away chances that has been the problem at Anfield all season? Hell, what was every other Premier League manager thinking by turning down the opportunity to sign such a prolific marksman? Much has been made of how a Rooney-less United resembles a blunt instrument. Van Nistelrooy at Old Trafford? Stranger things have happened, Signing him half way through the season could have genuinely reinvigorated United but then again Sir Alex is never one to forget a feud. Imagine him then at the Emirates. One feels he could have made a major impact in the absence of Robin Van Persie. Or Villa, replacing the hapless Emile Heskey and partnering John Carew? You get the picture.

And so Van Nistelrooy lines up against Fulham tonight with four goals in eight Bundesliga games and another couple in Europe. The German media swooned when the Dutchman announced his arrival in Germany by scoring twice on his debut against Stuttgart. This was a well taken brace too, proving that age has not lessened Van Nistelrooy’s instincts in front of goal. As the man himself admits, Hamburg could only be a step down from the bright lights and big egos of Real and United. But at 33 years of age and with ambition still to burn, Van Nistelrooy remains fuelled by a burning desire to succeed and that means getting his current club to a final taking place at their home ground in May: ‘I want to get my game back on track. I've got a feeling I'm not finished,’ he has said in the build up to the first leg of the semi-final tonight. With this mindset, a hunger to propel himself into the Dutch World Cup squad and his predatory eye for goal still intact, it would be hard to bet against van Nistelrooy one day taking his place at the summit of the all-time European competition scorer’s table. Adam Bushby

Get Your Tweets Out For The Lads

Bushby and MacDonald have embraced the future. Sat here in the office, grinning like idiots because we have just set up a Twitter account. So feel free to follow the idiots. (In all probability, you will go on our Twitter page to be redirected back here. True to form, we haven't really thought this through).

Click Here