Clash of champions

Why the Champions League is the best football tournament in the world

To the avid soccer fan today, it is clear that the pinnacle of the game is not the World Cup, but the Champions League. A major reason is that national teams are no longer what they used to be. We would struggle to find contemporary equals of the glorious 1970 World Cup winning Brazil side, or anyone to match the brilliance of the 1974 Holland team’s Total Football.

One of the reasons for this is the growing international composition of the top club sides. Earlier, international football had greater resonance because the best players of each country played in their own domestic league. An international game was more than a mere competition to win the tournament, it was the contest of supremacy between rival football cultures. Thus, the victory of Holland over England was also in a larger sense an assertion of the superior technical skill of the Dutch league.

The overwhelming international composition of the best clubs in Europe means that rivalries of the earlier kind are all but redundant. Arsenal is the most extreme example of this seismic shift over the last two decades. Despite being one of the top English clubs, it has only one English player who can claim to be part of the first team set-up.

It is the case with almost every marquee club side. The majority of South American international players are based in Europe. La Liga and Serie A are their favourite destinations. Messi is the most important player at Barcelona, and Kaka remains indispensable to the cause of AC Milan. Gone are the days when Pele played for Santos in the prime of his career. The Latin domestic leagues only serve as stepping stones to greater riches and glories in Europe.

From all this, it becomes easy to deduce that the 16 clubs that compete in the knockout stage of the Champions League tonight boast of the most dense concentration of footballing talent on the planet. It is why international football cannot match up. It is hard to find an international team that could boast of Ronaldinho, Kaka and Beckham (Milan), Messi, Henry, Xavi, Eto’o, Dani Alves (Barcelona) or Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov (United). Spain is the only national team at the moment that can match the organisation and fluidity of the best club teams. But it is revealing of the nature of club football that the maximum number of players in the Spanish national team come not from domestic giants Real Madrid or Barcelona, but English club Liverpool.

The decline of the national team is a direct result of the astounding growth of club football, both in terms of revenue and popularity. At any given time, it is likely that you will find more Manchester United fans than supporters of the Selecao. The biggest clubs are no longer bearers of simply regional aspirations, they are international corporate monoliths. The fervent support for Liverpool or Milan in corners of the Far East or other parts of the world is no longer seen as unusual or particularly striking.

With the best of resources and talent, it should not be any surprise that the premier competition between these sides often reaches levels rarely glimpsed in international competitions such as the World Cup. Of course, it also helps that club teams play more regularly than international teams. But the growing chasm between the Champions League and the World Cup is becoming more and more visible. Roy Keane had once said, “The Champions League has better football than the World Cup. The last great World Cup was in 1986, but every year in the Champions League you see better games with intense competition.”

The intense competition of the Champions League that Keane talked about finds evidence in the fact that no team has been able to successfully defend its title since its inception in 1992. Almost two decades on, nobody can really dispute its status as the best football competition in the world.

This appeared as an op-ed in The Daily Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.

The Only Special One

Heckled by the press after his Inter side lost the Milan derby, Mourinho replied,

They scored a goal and we didn’t. That is the story of this match.

Scolari may have brought some colour and character back to the Premier League, but Mourinho’s wiles in the Serie A show why there’s no one like him.

Pre-season

After three months of existentialist crisis, filled with wandering and things such as books and films, the new football season is a purveyor of meaning. In August, the theatre of the absurd ends. There is no more waiting for Godot.

Like battle-hungry warriors who have filled our days with hollow rhetoric, the start of the season signals the shift from word to action. For henceforth, words cannot exist in a vacuum – they must be validated by the spoils of war.

The beginning of the war calls for much celebration. The groups are organized – the hyenas are usually the ones who change affiliations. There is beer and rum. The stage is set, and profanity rules in the early exchanges of battle. As the season progresses, reality sinks in. Resigned to fate, everyone except the one or two contenders has mellowed down.

But before the beginning of every season, it is a pre-written script. Winds of radical change are anticipated to blow, hope and optimism rule the roost. Heartbreak and despair have not yet arrived.

Doomed romantics

In an excellent piece, Peter Roebuck writes about the opposition to the IPL -

Suggestions that the game will be permanently damaged by these exuberances are also unduly pessimistic. The trouble with traditionalists is that they present themselves as protectors of the game’s values but are actually doomed romantics. They lament the present state of affairs yet resist innovation.

In his semi-biblical prose, he continues -

But it is a mistake to overestimate the past. It was not such a fine place. Nor is it possible to pin cricket into a book, like a dead butterfly.

Ramachandra Guha and Mukul Kesavan – two cricket writers I admire – have been outspoken critics. What makes it baffling is that over the years they have also lamented the state of domestic cricket in India. In my years of watching the game at the stadium, I’ve always faced poor facilities, a constant state of chaos and apathy. Anything that seeks to change that and finally give some respect to the most neglected of creatures – the Indian cricket fan – cannot be a bad thing.

United’s date with destiny

There are certain moments in a team’s season when everything goes right. When all the diligently crafted plotlines lead to a dizzying climax, and you begin to entertain questions of destiny. Manchester United have the same aura of inevitability that their opponents in the semi-finals had two seasons ago.

2006 was Barca’s masterclass. Ronaldinho was at his peak, Eto’o was arguably the best striker in Europe and the world was waking up to the explosive, prodigious talent of Lionel Messi. Above all, it was a team that strove for victory, the sum of whose parts resulted in a near-invincible team.

Barca are now a team in tatters, maybe no longer a team. United have marched into the vacant space. Substitute the variables. Ronaldo is the best player in the world by a mile, and along with Rooney and Tevez, United’s trinity has the potential to terrorise any team. United also have an exquisitely solid defence. Ferdinand and Vidic instill the same sense of stability that Puyol and Marquez did in 2006 for Barca.

In short, Europe is United’s to lose. They have a near-full squad, there is optimism and confidence in the ranks. Nowhere is it more pronounced than on their website, where they have already earmarked May 21 – the date of the Champions League final – as a fixture.

Eric Cantona, a Red legend who wore the No.7 shirt, sees the ominous signs. He said, ‘Manchester United will win both trophies, I am sure of that. It will be tough, but United have everything right now – this will be their season.’

The great teams capitalise on moments of strength. At their peak, United must convert opportunity into glory. As a club, Manchester United’s perfect symphony was the ’99 Treble. A similar moment awaits them now.

Barcelona may be arguing with destiny. As always, it may turn out to be futile.

Keane on the title race

The former United captain and Sunderland manager comments on the title race -

Get your money on United, it’s their title without a shadow of a doubt. They won’t let it go now. They are like an animal – they sniff blood. I’m not saying the Liverpool game is going to be easy or even that United are going to win, but if you are talking about the title, the United players will be sleeping like babies.

Chelsea are playing catch-up, Arsenal had the opportunity to pull away and missed it, United are in pole position and they won’t let that go. No chance. I’ve been there with them and I know the feeling in the camp.

‘India have been dudded’

Excerpts from some reactions in the aftermath of the Sydney shocker.

Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald -

India have been dudded. No one with the slightest enthusiasm for cricket will take the least satisfaction from the victory secured by the local team in an SCG Test that entertained spectators, provided some excellent batting but left a sour taste in the mouth.

It was a match that will have been relished only by rabid nationalists and others for whom victory and vengeance are the sole reasons for playing sport. Truth to tell, the last day was as bad as the first. It was a rotten contest that singularly failed to elevate the spirit.

Mukul Kesavan, in another brilliant piece wrote -

This was a Test match where the excitement was manufactured by incompetent umpires making weird decisions: the Indians players must have felt like lab rats being chivvied by mad scientists.

He also had some advice for Steve Bucknor -

If Benson was incompetent, Bucknor was incompetent and perverse. The moment that summed up this match’s inexplicably bad umpiring was Bucknor’s decision not to refer Dhoni’s appeal for a stumping against Symonds to the third umpire. What was he thinking? Bucknor and the Indians have have a long history of friction and this last performance by him is unlikely to improve things. He is scheduled to stand in the Perth Test: I’d be very surprised if the Indians don’t formally petition the authorities to substitute him. If I was Bucknor, I’d withdraw and use the time to see an opthalmologist: his dismissal of Dravid in the second innings suggests that he’s seeing things.

Prem Panicker on his blog on Rediff called the umpiring ‘the most atrocious in living memory.’

Wasim Akram called the Aussies ‘crybabies and hypocrites‘ when they have been cricket’s worst sledgers.

One of the lingering memories, personally, would remain Sunil Gavaskar’s inflamed outburst in the commentary box after Ganguly’s dismissal.

What utter nonsense, he thundered.
Sorry, Mr Benson, you’ve got it all wrong.

The Challenge Down Under

The BCCI’s ridiculous scheduling of the cricketing season means that India have little match practice before the toughest challenge in world cricket. They play the Aussies in the Boxing Day Test just a week after arriving in Australia. Harsha Bhogle, in his column in The Indian Express, though sounded a few optimistic notes ahead of the first Test in Melbourne -

So how does one become optimistic about this tour? There is quality in this team, there is a great deal of experience and there is the lingering smell of victory in the air. Two bad sessions in South Africa undid a lot of good work but there were series wins in the West Indies, Bangladesh and England. Now Pakistan have been beaten comfortably at home and the atmosphere in the dressing room is cordial. Players are looking up to the captain who has made it clear that the pitch and such factors will not be used as excuses. And even though recent overseas wins have been fashioned by the bowlers, if the batsmen put runs on the board, India will be a different side.

Dean Jones also struck similar notes about how the Australian cricket lovers are hungry for a fight. I just hope that the BCCI’s insatiable hunger for revenue doesn’t end up ruining a potentially great contest.

Anfield’s title famine

This line, uttered by Jack Nicholson in The Departed, says all about Liverpool’s domestic woes -

No one gives it to you, you have to take it.

The Merseyside club could do with some focus and determination in the Premier League than doing their usual (and by now boring) annual pre-season vows about winning the league.

The greatest fast bowler I’ve seen

While going through Shane Warne’s list of the greatest players of all time, I got reminded of one of my childhood icons. When I had just started watching cricket, my fervent devotion to the Indian team ensured I did not have too many icons outside of it. Those who did well against us, or destroyed our mediocre team (I didn’t believe it then) had no chance.

It changed during the 1996 World Cup. India were playing the West Indies at Gwalior. It was a crucial group game and the Windies had been skittled out for a paltry 173. Sachin Tendulkar was beginning to assert the genuinity of his claim to being the world’s best. In my nine year old head, I expected the match to be a stroll in the park.

What I hadn’t reckoned with was a near seven-foot guy by the name of Curtly Ambrose. Within five overs, India were 15/2. Jadeja and Sidhu had been bowled, and their eyes showed they hadn’t a clue. Those two wicket-taking deliveries were the most terrifying snorters I’d ever seen on a cricket pitch, and they smashed the stumps with an almost brutal disgust.

India eventually won the game, but I’d become an Ambrose convert. I remember watching West Indies games as a kid, only to wait for him to bowl. Becoming an Ambrose fan also marked my first break from all-consuming fandom, it was also when I began to love the game as a contest. Where there would be hate for the opposition, there began to be respect and admiration, or sometimes just the acceptance of the inferiority of my own team. Ambrose made me look beyond patriotism.

I sometimes even celebrated when Ambrose took wickets against the Indian team, such was the extent of my admiration. He bowled alongside Courtney Walsh for most of his years, and I always believed he was the superior one. Statistics may put Walsh ahead, but then statistics never tell the truth anyway.

He never played 100 Test matches, falling short by two. But for me, he’s the greatest fast bowler I’ve seen playing, and I loved it as he scared the shit out of the terrified batsmen.

Postscript – Shane Warne’s list is a pretty controversial one. He puts Steve Waugh at number 26, calling him ‘a match-saver than a match-winner.’ There are some other eyebrow-raising judgements, but I think he’s spot-on when he compares McGrath and Ambrose.

‘It was very difficult to split Curtly and Glenn McGrath, but I think Curtly had that extra half-gear as well as being just as accurate and clinical. He could take your head off if he wanted, and he did have that nasty streak. I don’t remember him ever giving me a half-volley – or anybody else for that matter. He turned a game – and the series – in Perth in 1992-93 with a spell of seven wickets for one run.’

Sachin Tendulkar as many expected is number one, Warne calls him quite simply ‘a great player and a great man.’
At number two is Brian Lara, about him he says – At times I felt as though we could bowl 100mph or spin it 14 feet and he still would not get out.