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Pulis – Beattie talks private

Sid Lowe gives his verdict on El Clásico

The first clásico to be shown on the silver screen lived up to its billing, but Madrid were made to pay for some poor finishing

This time, Iker Casillas wasn’t wearing his Iker Casillas face, the one that says “you call that a defence?!” This time, his defence was a defence. He was, though, wearing the face of an idiot. Up the tunnel and through the plywood door, chapel to the left, dressing room to the right, Dani Alves was wearing the face of a grinning simpleton, all glazed expression and cheeky smiles. Xabi Alonso was wearing the face of the disappointed, dough-eyed and sad, Pepe was wearing the face of Stanley Ipkiss, and Cristiano Ronaldo was wearing the shiny but not particularly happy face of someone who applies too much lotion. It was hard to see what kind of face Carles Puyol was wearing but he was probably smiling behind all that hair.

Manuel Pellegrini, meanwhile, was wearing what the Spanish describe as a face of circumstances, skin dragged down as if an invisible weight hung from his chin. His side had just produced their best league performance in the biggest match – an intense, high-tempo display in the clásico. One in which he insisted: “we were better than them in just about everything”, in which Kaká showed flashes of his class, Alonso and Lass Diarra smothered Barça’s midfield, and Ronaldo looked dangerous; in which almost everyone played well, in fact. But still they had lost 1-0, despite playing almost half an hour with an extra man. Still they’d lost top spot; still Barcelona had secured their best ever start. Only two coaches had reached week 12 unbeaten before – Bobby Robson and Terry Venables.

Because while Madrid had been “better at just about everything” – and that’s highly debatable – one thing they weren’t better at was finishing. Because when Cristiano Ronaldo stepped into the spotlight, he fluffed his lines, AS’s cover showing his easy first-half chance alongside the headline: “there went the win.” Because Barça-baiting Tomás Guasch insisted: “if he had scored, Madrid would have won”, but if Barça-baiting Tomás Guasch’s tía had cojones she’d be his tío. And because while Marca’s cover declared that it “tasted like victory”, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter isn’t actually butter. Not even when you throw in complaints about the ref – Marca accusing him of missing a penalty on Ronaldo and AS’s mad Madridista Tomás Roncero attacking him for allowing Barcelona’s goal despite it being “nearly offside.”

Because, in short, while Madrid took home plenty of positives, the bottom line, grumbled Casillas, is that Real Madrid lost. “I don’t care about playing well,” the keeper said, pulling on his George W Bush mask. “I leave here wearing an idiot’s face.” As for Barcelona president Joan Laporta, he was wearing the face of a very smug man indeed. “That,” he declared, “is why we signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic.” That being what one paper described as a “homicidal zambombazo” – the wonderful side-footed volley that won the game.

It was a telling remark, revealing of the pressure on Laporta. When Barcelona swapped Ibrahimovic for Eto’o, most people thought they were completely off their heads. They’d sold the man who had scored more La Liga goals over the last five years than anyone else. They’d given Inter the man who always does it when it matters, the man who twice hit the opening goal in the European Cup final, and taken the man that never does – the striker Arrigo Sacchi described as “strong against the weak and weak against the strong.”

Ibrahimovic didn’t suit Barcelona’s style – something that seemed confirmed when they pursued David Villa first. And although Eto’o is a difficult character even Guardiola’s infamous remark that there was a lack of “feeling” between him and the Cameroonian didn’t convince. “He doesn’t need to have feeling with me,” Eto’o responded, “I’m not Penelope Cruz.” Last season, they won the treble together, after all, and Ibrahimovic is hardly the most accommodating character either. As if all that wasn’t ridiculous enough, Barcelona had driven a huge truckload of used €500 notes round to Inter’s house too. It didn’t make sense.

Only it did. Sort of. There was a financial and contractual imperative too; the board pushed for Eto’o to go as well. More, even, than Guardiola did. Forget the truck of cash, Barcelona considered the deal a straight swap. Eto’o’s contract was due for renewal. He wanted €10m net, a four-year deal, and no longer qualified for the 23% tax band. From Barcelona’s point of view, his salary would suddenly leap to €14.5m a year; more than €20m extra over the duration. Then there was the signing on fee, at around €10m. Barcelona didn’t see Eto’o’s departure in terms of a loss so much as an act of good housekeeping, enabling them to secure Ibrahimovic below €50, the limit they’d set and the price at which they baulked over Villa. They’d offloaded a problem too.

Besides, height and presence has long been an obsession for Barcelona and, having lost out on Villa, Guardiola wanted a tactical plan B – something Marca’s Roberto Palomar accused Pellegrini of lacking when Madrid had to chase the game last night A big fan of Patrick Kluivert as a player, someone who privately speaks highly of Peter Crouch, Guardiola wanted an inverted pivot – someone to offer a more direct option, bring over people into play and score goals. Ibrahimovic did so; fabulous footwork provided assists against Zaragoza and Getafe, five goals in the opening five games was the best start in Barça’s history.

But there were doubts. Barcelona appeared slower, more ponderous with him; there was less of that asphyxiating pressure, less of the pathological will to win with which Eto’o drove his team-mates on. He had missed a great chance against Inter, hit the post against Rubin Kazan and last week Barcelona produced their best display this season in destroying Inter without him. Last night, the doubts were blown away; last night, Ibrahimovic became a hero. The winning goal in the biggest game on earth, the bitterest rivalry, the most expensive match ever played. A gloriously precise volley. Five minutes after coming on. When injured. “Who says he doesn’t do it in the big games?” cheered Sport. “Viva Ibrahimovic!” shouted El Mundo Deportivo. Zlatan, said Guardiola, “was marvellous.”

Modest, too. For now, at least. Maybe he’s finally found a team he considers worthy of his talents; maybe he’s just the new boy still on best behaviour. Speaking in Italian with the occasional English word thrown in, Ibrahimovic insisted that “the credit for the goal goes to Alves.” He had a point. His first two crosses travelled a combined distance of 769 miles, but it was Alves who delivered the inch perfect ball for Ibrahimovic’s volley, just as he’d provided the second against Inter, he slipped an impossible pass into Leo Messi only for the Argentinian to blow it, and in the 89th minute, one up against their biggest rivals, when everyone else was bricking it, football’s Sonic the Hedgehog was still steaming up the wing like a hyperactive kid.

Not that Alves was alone. While Ibrahimovic is splashed across the cover of every single paper, it was Barcelona’s back four that really shone. Ibrahimovic’s goal came from Gerard Piqué tackling Ronaldo yet again, striding up the pitch, laying it off and continuing into the area, leaving the Swede free. And Eric Abidal, Barcelona’s usually ignored left-back, almost finished their best move. Above all, though, last night Barcelona’s defenders did something most people thought Barcelona’s defenders couldn’t do. Defend. And none more so than Carles Puyol.

The 31-year-old feared that, like Eto’o, his days at Camp Nou were numbered but signed a new deal on the cheap and produced the display of his life, launching into lunatic, last gasp tackles to deny certain goals. Not once. Not twice. But three times. He was simply immense. Last night’s clásico was the first ever match to be shown on the silver screen and boasted the greatest cast in history, a collection of superheroes to rival the best cinemas with the stickiest floors. Six candidates for the Ballón d’Or, the last three Fifa World Players, over €350 worth of signings. And yet the star was the man who plays with his hair in his eyes and his heart on his sleeve. Superman’s fine but sometimes what you really need is Captain Caveman.

Results: Sporting 1-0 Villarreal, Valencia 1-1 Mallorca, Sevilla 2-2 Malaga, Valladolid 3-3 Tenerife, Getafe 5-1 Xérez, Racing 0-1 Deportivo, Almería 1-4 Athletic, Zaragoza 0-1 Osasuna, Barcelona 1-0 Real Madrid, Atlético 4-0 Espanyol

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Liverpool 2-2 Manchester City

So, does a draw at Anfield still count as a good result? Seven away teams managed it last season, after all, and although Mark Hughes argued beforehand that a sixth successive draw might not be a calamity in this most daunting of venues, that was before he knew his side would come back from a goal down to be in a winning position 12 minutes from time.

To say Manchester City gave away their advantage cheaply is an understatement. For such an expensively assembled team, they displayed the experience and professionalism of schoolboys in allowing Liverpool to score straight from the restart, less than a minute after City had taken the lead. “We were in a winning position again and we let it slip through not defending correctly,” Hughes said. “That’s a frustration for us at present; mistakes at key moments are costing us dearly. The players in the dressing room are quite disappointed – it feels like a chance missed.”

Goalscorer Stephen Ireland could vouch for that. “By the end of the season it might look a good result, but, right now, we feel a bit robbed,” the Irish midfielder said. “We are drawing more games than we would like, but we still feel we are making progress. Last season, we were losing these games.”

City were not robbed; they were just victims of their own generosity. The only crime that took place on Merseyside was an opening to the much-vaunted Battle for Fourth Place that was slower than a week in jail. The first half was unbelievably uneventful, notable only for a couple of early injuries to Liverpool players and a consequent six minutes of stoppage time that no one really wanted. Entertainment appeared in prospect when Shay Given had to fly to his left to keep out a Martin Skrtel header from a free-kick in the fifth minute, yet that was pretty much the excitement over for the first period. Daniel Agger suffered a facial injury in a clash of heads with Kolo Touré and had to be replaced by Sotirios Kyrgiakos, then Yossi Benayoun came off the bench when Ryan Babel was unable to shake off the effects of a two-footed tackle by Nigel de Jong.

Shaun Wright-Phillips wasted a decent chance for City from the edge of the area, Steven Gerrard shot over at the other end and David Ngog was not quite slick enough to take advantage of a wonderful pass from Javier Mascherano.

Mercifully, the game livened up in the second half, when Liverpool took the lead. City brought everyone back to defend a Gerrard free-kick on the left and it fell to Emmanuel Adebayor to deal with a cross expertly dinked in to the near post. He couldn’t manage it, allowing Skrtel to stretch out a leg in front of him to deflect the ball past Given for his first Liverpool goal.

The defender’s joy was short-lived, however, because, 20 minutes from the end, he conceded the corner from which City equalised and then failed to pick up Adebayor from Craig Bellamy’s cross, allowing the former Arsenal striker to score with a free header from close to the penalty spot.

Bringing on the impressive Carlos Tevez for a subdued Gareth Barry had given the visitors more attacking shape and, once back on terms, they looked confident enough to score more. City seemed to have sewn up the points when Tevez and Wright-Phillips combined cleverly to enable Ireland to score with the neatest of close-range finishes seven minutes later, but were pegged back immediately when Ngog’s cross deflected off Joleon Lescott to leave Benayoun with a tap-in.

Too many of Hughes’s players had switched to walking pace after going ahead and, though there were opportunities to clear before Benayoun struck, City never managed to win back the ball between the two scores. They had threatened to finish the stronger team, yet ended up conceding a succession of corners and defending in depth.

“You cannot be pleased with a draw at home, but we kept going right to the end and had a couple of chances to win the game in the last few minutes,” Rafa Benítez said. “I have to be happy with the character we showed after losing so many players with injuries. Glen Johnson was ruled out in the morning, then we lost Daniel Agger and Ryan Babel. We were still pushing hard at the end, despite all the problems, and I cannot ask for much more than that.”

Ireland are trying to get me into trouble, says Diarra

• ‘The Irish have tried to get at us in the papers,’ says Diarra
• Win in France would be ‘best result ever’, says Damien Duff

Lassana Diarra has sought to take the high ground in the simmering row that erupted at the end of Saturday’s World Cup play-off first leg against the Republic of Ireland by suggesting it is the Republic of Ireland’s players who have acted provocatively.

The France midfielder enraged his counterpart Keith Andrews after the final whistle in Dublin, his team having won 1-0 thanks to Nicolas Anelka’s deflected shot, by making a comment described as an “insult to the Irish people”.

Diarra is believed to have belittled Ireland’s chances of qualification, with the kicker of a couple of expletives, and his words stoked a brief bout of pushing and shoving involving players from both teams. Ireland need no added motivation in Paris tomorrow to make it to the finals in South Africa next summer but the row has ratcheted up the tension.

Diarra, though, has accused Andrews of trying to get him into trouble and he has echoed the feeling in the France squad that Ireland are using the newspapers as a medium to unsettle them. Nothing, however, will blur French focus.

“What happened does so a lot when you get some irritation in a game,” said Diarra, Real Madrid’s former Chelsea, Arsenal and Portsmouth midfielder. “You get some players who are looking to get you into trouble. I don’t know what happened. The Irish had lost 1-0 and they were not happy so it had to be our fault.

“I did not take the lead. It lasted about 30 seconds and then I returned quietly to the dressing room. The Irish have tried to get at us in the newspapers, looking for stories, but I don’t see why I should talk about the Irish people.”

“I saw the brawl,” said the France defender Patrice Evra, “and I went across to John O’Shea and asked him to get his players to calm down, but there is no argument to be had. The return leg will be passionate whether they try to stoke it up or not. The Irish had lost and their pride was wounded.”

Eric Abidal, who will not play in the second leg because of injury, had highlighted what he felt was a different kind of Irish provocation before the first leg. Abidal suggested that Ireland’s players would look for cheap free-kicks around the penalty area to exploit their strength and France’s weakness on set pieces.

“They are provocative, malicious,” said the Barcelona full-back. “But the French are clever. They will try to tease us so that ankles touch to provoke a foul but that is part of football. We need to avoid falling into the trap.”

In the event Ireland won few dangerous free-kicks and only a handful of corners, although from one O’Shea almost found a way past the France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. France heeded Abidal’s warning to tread carefully. Ireland’s desire, though, to test France from high balls continues to burn and it will again be a major sub-plot of the game. France did look vulnerable to the direct approach at Croke Park.

“It is there for everyone to see,” said the Ireland winger Damien Duff. “France did have an awful lot of the possession but, when we got in about them, we created things and I think we can do it again. There will be plenty of Irish fans in Paris to cheer us on.”

Duff typified Ireland’s commitment with a crunching first-minute tackle on Bacary Sagna that, if out of character, helped to set the tone for his team. As Ireland seek arguably the biggest result of their history, Duff acknowledged that collective discipline, the bedrock of the progress under Giovanni Trapattoni, must endure, no matter the emotion of the occasion.

“We kept our shape at Croke Park, which is what we do an awful lot of work on,” he said. “I suppose that is why we are in the play-offs. We have obviously given ourselves an uphill task but, if we can nick an away goal, it is game on. We have taken an awful lot of positives out of Saturday and we think we can go there and do it. If we could, it would be, without doubt, the best ever result by an Irish side.”

Angry Carsley lays into Ngog’s ‘embarrassing case of cheating’

• ‘Maybe it was not a penalty,’ admits Benítez after dive
• ‘I was nowhere near him. It’s a joke,’ bemoans Carsley

The Liverpool striker David Ngog was accused of indulging in “an embarrassing case of cheating” last night as a controversial penalty salvaged a draw against Birmingham City but left Rafael Benítez’s team seventh in the Premier League and 11 points behind leaders, Chelsea.

Liverpool were dominant but trailing 2-1 with 20 minutes remaining when the former Paris St Germain forward dived over a challenge from Lee Carsley and the referee, Peter Walton, pointed to the spot. Steven Gerrard, making his first appearance in five matches following an adductor problem, duly converted but Ngog’s theatrics prompted a furious response from Birmingham and Benítez admitted the award was dubious having spoken to the 20-year-old in the dressing room.

“I was absolutely nowhere near him. It’s a joke,” said Carsley, the former Everton midfielder. “I know I didn’t touch him and I said to the referee to book me or send me off. That would have made me feel better. I’m sure he has got a family but, if I went home having done that, I’d be embarrassed. You are supposed to be teaching your kids an example and this is just an embarrassing case of cheating. But the lad has taken a chance and got his team a point, so I’m sure they’ll be patting him on the back.”

• Liverpool 2-2 Birmingham: Kevin McCarra’s full report
• Andy Hunter: Liverpool remain alarmingly fragile
• Simon Burnton’s minute-by-minute report
• Read Evan Fanning’s minute-by-minute report
• Download the latest Football Weekly podcast

Ngog, in for the injured Fernando Torres, had given Liverpool a merited lead until Christian Benítez’s and Cameron Jerome’s first league goal of the season transformed the contest. The home side put Joe Hart’s goal under relentless pressure in the second half but beat the Birmingham goalkeeper thanks only to the game’s incendiary incident.

“He is a top referee,” said Alex McLeish, the City manager, “but he didn’t get that one right and I’m sure when he looks at it again he’ll see that Ngog dived. It was a terrific dive. Sometimes there is a debate over a penalty when there is contact but there was none here. It was not even close to being a penalty.”

Liverpool have now won only once in nine matches and their injury problems continued last night with both Albert Riera and Yossi Benayoun suffering hamstring injuries. The international break gives Liverpool respite on the injury front, with Torres to receive intensive treatment on a hernia over the next fortnight, but the result brought fresh frustration for Benítez.

“We have to be disappointed with a draw at home,” said the Liverpool manager. “The performance of the team was pretty good for me. We had plenty of possession, a lot of attempts and showed character until the end. Everyone in the stadium thought we would get a third goal but we just couldn’t do it.

“It was a pity to score with a penalty that maybe wasn’t a penalty. It is not fair sometimes but we have had a lot of things go against us this season and we deserved more from this game. It turned out to be positive for us. We attacked and attacked and we deserved to win but maybe it wasn’t a penalty.”

Benítez revealed he had questioned Ngog on the legitimacy of the penalty award. “I asked him about the penalty and he said maybe it wasn’t. I haven’t seen a replay but I spoke to him about it,” he said. The Liverpool manager also suspected Benayoun and Riera had torn their hamstrings, although a full diagnosis will be made today. He added: “Riera has the same problem and so does Yossi now. Also [Daniel] Agger felt something in his back. It is not serious but he felt it again.”

“Fernando had no confidence and so we started his treatment yesterday. We are not talking about an operation. He has to work with the physios and we will treat him properly. He will spend two or three weeks working with the physios and we will see how he reacts every day.”