Posts Tagged ‘Uefa Cup’

Middlesbrough sack manager Southgate

• Manager is shown door two hours after home win
• ‘Time is right for a change’ with Boro a point from the top

Middlesbrough last night sacked Gareth Southgate in a shock move that the club chairman, Steve Gibson, admitted was “the hardest decision I’ve had to make in football”. It came straight after Southgate oversaw Boro’s 2-0 home victory against Derby County that left them fourth in the Coca-Cola Championship, a point behind the leaders.

The timing of Middlesbrough’s move was especially curious given that Gibson had stood by Southgate as Middlesbrough were relegated from the Premier League last season. The club hit another low point in September when they lost 5-0 at home to West Bromwich Albion. But Gibson added: “The time is right for change and that change has had to be made.”

“Gareth has given Middlesbrough Football Club magnificent service as a skipper and, in very difficult circumstances, as manager,” said Gibson. “I appointed Gareth in a situation that was greatly unfavourable to him. He deserves another opportunity once he has had the chance to rest and refresh himself.”

The former Boro captain, who led the team to a Carling Cup victory in 2004, played his last game in the 2006 Uefa Cup final and was appointed manager shortly afterwards, replacing Steve McClaren.

The former Crystal Palace manager Alan Smith, described as a “football consultant” and who had only been hired in July, has also been sacked.

There had been speculation that Southgate’s time at the Riverside could be up after the drubbing by West Brom was followed by home defeats to Leicester and Watford.

Boro ended that sequence last night when Adam Johnson’s double secured a 2-0 victory over Derby County which had appeared to have given the manager breathing space.

Asked after the game about the consequences of another home defeat, Southgate said: “There would obviously been more speculation and we would have been probably four or five places lower, which would have made life very difficult, I am sure, for all of us.

“I have had lots of games like that since I have been manager here where you wonder about the consequences of defeat, but we were very positive in the way we approached everything.

“We thought about how we could win the game. We didn’t really consider the possibility of defeat, but you know all the while a fourth home defeat on the bounce would have been very difficult for people to accept.

“None of us wanted to go through that and we didn’t want to put our supporters through that more than anything. We want them to see us winning at home and as the season goes on, we have got to make sure we do it regularly if we want to go up.”

The victory was played out in front of just 17,459 spectators, less than half of the Riverside’s official capacity and reportedly the lowest-ever attendance for a league game at the stadium.

Gibson sprang a major surprise when he appointed his then club captain as manager in the wake of McClaren’s departure for the England job during the summer of 2006.

Having fought for special dispensation from the Premier League to give Southgate the job without him holding the required Uefa Pro Licence, the chairman handed him a five-year contract and charged him with the task of revitalising the squad in challenging financial conditions on Teesside.

The new manager guided his side to a 12th-place finish in his first season at the helm and 13th a year later. But last season proved far more challenging and ultimately unsuccessful as Boro slipped out of the top flight having won just seven of their 38 league games and scored just 28 goals.

Uefa investigates 40 games for suspected match-fixing

• Eastern European teams are the focus of Uefa investigation
• No English or major European names thought to be involved

Forty Champions League and Uefa Cup games are under investigation for suspected match-fixing, European football’s governing body revealed today.

All of the cases, 15 of which took place in the last two years and the rest within the last four to five years, concerned early qualifying rounds and most involved clubs from eastern Europe. Although Uefa said it would not make public the identity of the clubs under suspicion unless it amassed enough evidence to charge them, it is not believed that any English clubs or big European names are involved.

Peter Limacher, the head of disciplinary services at Uefa, said: “Right now it’s mainly eastern Europe clubs being investigated. They know they are not going to be involved later in the tournament and they are going out, so decide, ‘Let’s make a profit.’

“In the cases we have seen it’s really the deliberate planned fix of the games, the whole games. First the result at half-time, then after 90 minutes. It might take some time [to convict] but, in cases where we can work together with the police, that might be possible.”

In each case, Uefa was alerted when bookmakers reported suspicious betting patterns. William Gaillard, senior advisor to Uefa’s president, Michel Platini, said that most cases involved clubs where players did not earn much and so were tempted to fix results.

In March Uefa announced a wide-ranging crackdown on corruption. It promised to work with national associations to fund a monitoring programme across 29,000 fixtures in the top two divisions of all 53 member countries as well as its own competitions.

Platini has made the fight against corruption a key priority of his presidency, telling Uefa’s inaugural betting and integrity workshop in August that fixing matches “takes away their raison d’être, deprives them of the magic of competition and is ultimately killing football”.

Its new Betting Fraud Detection System, a sophisticated piece of monitoring software operated by a team of anti-corruption officers, has been in operation since the beginning of the season.

As happened in cricket in the wake of high-profile match-fixing scandals in the 1990s, Uefa also resolved to improve education programmes in order to advise young players on what to do if they were approached by fixers or middlemen.

The issue is high on the agenda of all sports administrators, with the rapid explosion in online gambling, the rise of powerful betting syndicates in the Far East and the vast range of bets now on offer all heightening the risk.

Snooker, cricket and tennis have all faced high profile allegations of match fixing in recent years, causing some governing bodies to lobby for bookmakers to fund new anti-corruption units to help police their sports on a global level.

Uefa announced last month that three Macedonian clubs were being investigated after banning the former champion FK Pobeda from European competitions for eight years.

One fixture under suspicion is FK Milano’s 12-2 aggregate defeat in July by Croatia’s Slaven Koprivnika in the second qualifying round of the Europa League, the new format for the UEFA Cup.In 2006, Greek club Egaleo FC were fined £30,000 for “violation of the principles of loyalty, integrity and sportsmanship” and “creating favourable conditions for illegal betting practices” after they fielded a weakened team in the first leg of an Intertoto Cup match.

England players are ‘too honest’ to dive

• Virtuousness hurts us, says England’s captain
• ‘Players should be more cynical when fouled’

John Terry believes England players are too honest to dive, sometimes to their own detriment. In the build-up to next Wednesday’s World Cup qualifier the England captain said it was clear that the Croatia striker Eduardo da Silva dived to earn a penalty for Arsenal against Celtic and that diving to win penalties is not in the English mentality.

“I can speak about the England lads and I think it is something we don’t do,” said Terry. “I think we’re too honest, sometimes even in the Premier League you see the English lads get a bit of contact and stay on their feet and try and score from the chance they have been given.

“I think sometimes that honesty goes against us. I think sometimes as a country we’re too honest. I think the Eduardo one was a dive and we can all see that and it is disappointing to see because Arsenal are a quality side and I don’t think they want to be portrayed like that.”

While the 28-year-old was reluctant “to single out the foreign players”, he said he realised after his first games in Europe with Chelsea that their English players should be more cynical to ensure they receive free-kicks when fouled.

“As Chelsea first came into the Champions League and the Uefa Cup I think we had to adapt, because in the last minute of games we were giving away silly fouls that weren’t [fouls]. I think we have to adapt to the game and if the rules are there and the referees are giving them fouls we have to play along with that as well.

“I think that is how we play, if there is a foul or a touch and you’re through on goal you go down. If you stay on your feet and [the referee] realises you don’t get a full contact on the shot after that, it is for the referee to decide.”

Although Terry said Eduardo’s two-match ban imposed by Uefa was harsh, his implication that England players are more honest than their Croatian counterparts is sure to anger their Group Six opponents. In the wake of Luka Modric’s broken leg the Croatia Football Federation’s president, Vlatko Markovic, this week accused Premier League players of targeting his country’s leading internationals, a charge Terry emphatically denies.

“If players are thinking [of intentionally injuring players] in the back of their mind going into a game then they shouldn’t be playing football,” said Terry, speaking before tomorrow’s Wembley friendly with Slovenia, where the victorious England Ashes team will be the FA’s guests of honour.

“Certainly that is not the position. Players and English players that I know and have come across go out there to win the game and try and do everything possible to win the game.”

The England manager, Fabio Capello, agreed with his captain that diving is not a problem in the English game. “I saw a lot of games in England, I saw not too many divers. This is a problem between Arsenal and Uefa, I don’t understand why it is being given such coverage,” he said. “I prefer sporting players, no divers.”

Sir Alex Ferguson sided with the governing body, saying Uefa’s decision to ban Eduardo for two Champions League matches was the correct one as it was important to communicate to players that diving would not be tolerated.

“It was a high-profile game and something has to be done,” Ferguson said. “Something should be done and we hope the message gets across. I don’t think any coach is proud of it when players simulate to get decisions. A coach can’t be proud if his team have won that way. Nobody can be proud. A player can’t be proud one hour afterwards when he sits with his brothers and sisters and father and mother.”

Falling from grace

Wayne Rooney

Sparked a food fight when he dived around a challenge from Arsenal’s Sol Campbell at Old Trafford in 2004

John Terry

Accused of simulation by Mark Hughes after going down under a challenge from Blackburn’s Andre Ooijer in 2006

David Beckham

Booked for diving when Real Madrid played Real Betis in September 2006

Steven Gerrard

Has been accused of diving by fans of teams as varied as Milan, Sheffield United, Jamaica and Andorra

Espanyol captain dies of heart failure

• Dani Jarque dies after collapsing in Italian hotel
• ‘The players are destroyed. One minute he was there, the next he’s gone’

Dani Jarque, the captain of Espanyol, has died from heart failure while on a pre-season tour of Italy, the Primera Liga club have announced.

The 26-year-old defender had trained on Saturday morning but collapsed in his hotel room in Coverciano while talking to his girlfriend on the phone in the early evening, Spanish media reports said. “The Espanyol player died due to a systolic heart failure,” the club said in a statement.

“[Club doctor] Doctor Cervera tried CPR on the player and used a defibrillator but said it was not possible to resuscitate. Within minutes, the first emergency ambulances arrived from Florence, and tried their defibrillators but again were unable to resuscitate.”

Medical services tried to revive Jarque for an hour before pronouncing the player dead, the club said.

“Espanyol are distraught and wish to put themselves at the complete disposal of our captain’s family,” the club added. Their director German de la Cruz told radio station RAC1: “It’s inexplicable. It’s horrific. We are returning to Barcelona on Sunday but we can’t come back with the coffin because they have to do an autopsy to confirm the cause of death.

“The players are destroyed. One minute he was there with them, and the next he’s gone. It’s terrible.”

The club had been due to play friendlies against Bologna and on their Italian tour. Last Sunday he led his team in a 3-0 victory against Liverpool, in the inaugural match at Espanyol’s new ground, the Estadio Cornellá-El Prat.

Jarque came up through the youth ranks at Espanyol, helping them win the Copa del Rey in 2006 and to reach the Uefa Cup final in 2007, and had just been made captain of the club for the new season.

Jarque’s death comes nearly two years after that of Sevilla midfielder Antonio Puerta, who died on 28 August 2007, three days after collapsing during a Primera Liga match against Getafe.

Back where he began, he is a man reborn

The revitalised club from the Argentinian provinces take on Cruzeiro of Brazil tonight in the first leg of the Copa Libertadores final

Estudiantes de La Plata have made it to the final of the Copa Libertadores for the first time in 39 years, and will face the Brazilian side Cruzeiro. This achievement is rendered all the more symbolic because back then the small club from La Plata – ie not from Buenos Aires – became the first in Argentina to truly command international attention for their victories on the pitch. “Our objective at the start of the season was to get to 15 July [the date of the second leg],” Juan Sebastián Verón tells me from the team camp on the eve of tonight’s first leg. “Now, it’s just one more step”.

Verón – aka La Brujita, now 34 – the captain and absolute leader of this squad. Having picked up cups, trophies and medals all over Europe, the player at one time regarded as “best midfielder in the world” returned to his father’s club, to his own first club, in 2006 and promptly led the rhythm section to win the Apertura – the Argentinian league. At the time his father, an emblematic figure in the infamous Estudiantes teams of the late 60s and early 70s, told me: “What’s happening here is reminiscent of my time in that Argentina has been dominated by the big Buenos Aires clubs – and suddenly Estudiantes breaks that mould, challenges their supremacy.”

Having crowned themselves with domestic glory, Estudiantes went on to the final of the Copa Sudamericana (a Uefa Cup equivalent), their appetite for international glory whetted. “It’s not that we said, ‘We’re going after the Libertadores as a sole priority,’” Verón commented about this season, “but it’s obviously an incredibly prestigious cup and one that in a way built the history of the club.”

When Estudiantes won the Copa Libertadores in 1968, 1969 and 1970, they put Argentina on the world map. The then manager, Osvaldo Zubeldía, was a committed strategist for whom winning was all that mattered. Their matches were often violent and ended with fewer players on the pitch than started. Lovers of the lyrical, beautiful game accused them of being “anti-football”. But in a nation of devotees of the ball, without question they represented the first series of important trophies in the association’s cabinet.

Zubeldía was also a tactical innovator – he scoured the world and, aided by film footage, would practise set pieces, train his squad to play offside, and rehearse corner-kicks endlessly.

It is perhaps the curse of mankind, what Borges might describe as the Doctrine of Cycles, that history repeats itself and we are all doomed to relive the same set of experiences in an Eternal Return. Argentina’s football tradition might have remained moulded by Zubeldía’s pragmatic resultism were it not for the emergence of César Luis Menotti, who with another small club from Buenos Aires – Huracán – shifted this notion of football away from the bitter territorial battle and introduced short passes, ball on the ground, possession ballet as a means to victory.

Menotti’s Huracán won, and Huracán have not known glory days such as those of the early 70s until this season when Angel Cappa, a Menottista to the bone, stunned the nation, reaching second place in the Clausura league (the other half of Argentina’s split league season).

“In order to lose a final you have to get to the final,” Verón tells me, aware that for Estudiantes history has been made no matter what happens over the next two matches. Verón’s role in the last few years cannot be overlooked. He returned to the club a mature player who has rarely not been involved in winning.

“Maybe my first season at Sampdoria. And with Chelsea,” he says when asked if he has ever not tasted glory. “I feel very proud of having lived and participated in important titles. Here, in England and in Italy. It’s no mean feat. It’s not easy to arrive at a team and win. A lot of things have to happen.”

In Estudiantes’ case it seems the main thing that happened was the arrival of Verón – he has become involved in financing some of the facilities and infrastructure for the academy, has a say in the squad and even, as close observers will have noted, asks for changes from the pitch. “They’ve all been challenges. I arrived here in 2006 and felt it was similar to what happened when I got to Lazio. After decades – I think something like 22 years – without winning anything, we won. I think it’s about belief and desire.

“We’ve had amazing players here at Estudiantes over the past few seasons. [José] Sosa, who moved on to Bayern, Mariano Pavone, who is now at Betis, Marcos Angelieri who is now injured but ready to move to Europe. Once you have good players, you need a dose of good luck and the rest is getting into everyone’s head the concept that a good squad can achieve anything.”

Verón’s new Estudiantes has had a string of young managers parade through the club. The current one, Alejandro (aka Alex) Sabella, had never managed before – his experience was mostly as assistant to Daniel Passarella – although his own style as a player was a more traditional short-passing No10. Sabella’s lyricism was nurtured by a stint at Sheffield United followed by Leeds in the early 80s but he drew the line at joining Second Division Sunderland and cut his stay in England.

“I think Alejandro has given us back some of that sense of sacrifice we needed as a team, as a group,” Verón says. “When a new manager arrives the expectations grow, and in this case an important mood was developed, a sense of sacrifice.”

In spite of Brazilian protests regarding tonight’s venue – Argentina has a high incidence of swine flu deaths and Cruzeiro wanted the game moved in fear of the pandemic – Estudiantes will play in La Plata’s shared stadium.

Here, they have not conceded a single goal during the Libertadores campaign. The laurels for this mammoth statistic belong to the young goalkeeper Mariano Andújar, Maradona’s current favourite for the national squad and a graduate of the Huracán academy.

The semi-final against Nacional from Uruguay had little football on display, but then Verón had been injured for the second leg and without him the team struggles. Tonight the Little Witch will start and command his subjects from on the field. Will the football be beautiful or pragmatic? Does it matter? One of the heroes of yesteryear’s Estudiantes, Oscar Pagnanini, told me some time ago: “People want to be entertained by football, and a very good way to entertain them is to bring the trophies home.”

Nobody in Argentina who was watching football 30 years ago is immune to the legacy of the two most influential schools of football in the nation. Huracán are unanimously regarded as having played the best football this season, but by Cappa’s own admission one of the only two times they struggled was against Estudiantes. Could it be that it falls upon Zubeldía’s heirs to regain international prestige? Luckily we do not have to belong to a single tradition: we can aspire to them all.

The lineups

Estudiantes (4-4-2) Mariano Andújar; Christian Cellay, Rolando Schiavi, Leandro Desábato, Germán Ré; Enzo Pérez, Rodrigo Braña, Juan Sebastián Verón, Leandro Benítez; Gastón Fernández, Mauro Boselli.

Cruzeiro (4-4-2) Fabio; Jonathan, Thiago Heleno, Leonardo Silva, Gerson Magrao; Fabinho, Marquinhos Parana, Ramires, Wagner; Kléber, Wellington Paulista or Thiago Ribeiro.