Manchester United will hope to come up smelling of roses

Real Madrid - Manchester United: they don't come much bigger than this

Oh, how I love the smell of the city prior to hosting a Champions League clash of mammoth proportions.

OK so it is only the last 16 but I have not been this excited about a Champions League tie in years. Maybe not since the final in 2009. Sure, Manchester United made the final again in 2011 but noone truly believed they would prevail against Barcelona that night and those fears were realised as Messi, Iniesta, Xavi et al pummelled the Red Devils.

Tonight, however, represents a possible step towards redemption and a tantalising prospect at a fourth European Cup. Of course, there would still be the Catalan obstacle but this United side are significantly better than the one well beaten two years ago at Wembley. In addition, the belief that a victory over Madrid would provide could help them go on to lift the cup with the big ears once more.

As for the game itself, a nil nil would represent a good result to take back to Manchester, despite all the fears that a lack of an away goal would provide. More often than not, the away team ends up going through after such a result, though the memories of Monaco '98 and Madrid in 2000, where United ended up with a goalless draw, still bring back a feeling of dread as United crashed out.

However, given the porous defences on show a nil nil draw is about as likely as an imminent end to the financial crisis here in Spain.

2-1 to Los Blancos is this observer's prediction, which would still give Sir Alex Ferguson something to cling onto ahead of the return at Old Trafford next month.

Ferguson's line up is even harder to predict than the score but here goes. De Gea, Rafael Rio Evans Evra, Jones Carrick Cleverley, Valencia Van Persie Rooney.

This is not the most attacking of line ups which is the norm for United in Europe against heavyweight opposition. This formation could even morph into a 4-4-2 with Tom Cleverley and Phil Jones moving out to the wide midfield slots. The clearest advantage to this line up would be, effectively, three players being available to help quell the threat of Cristiano Ronaldo (Jones and Cleverley abley abetted by Valencia). Furthermore, Rooney maybe designated with the job of pressurising Alonso, when in possession, in a way not too dissimilar to the job Mario Goetze unselfishly performed in Dortmund's impressive results against Real.

The trouble is, these tactics will neglect the threat offered by Karim Benzema, Mesut Ozil and Angel di Maria. Furthermore, they will inevitably negate any attacking threat that United have of their own, though the possibility of pinching a goal always remain when matchwinners like Robin van Persie and Rooney himself remain on the pitch.

No doubt Jose Mourinho will have some tricks up his sleeve but it is the selction of his opposite number that is of greater intrigue.

Such negative tactics or not, nothing can quell the sense of anticipation I have in the pit of my stomach right now.

From the index to his captain having sex: the stumble and fall of Fabio Capello

It is almost two years to the day since the now ex-England boss Fabio Capello's decline began with the ill-fated 'Capello index'. This was a weird notion where points would be awarded for the overall performance of each player, then even more bizarrely making that information public.

It is as if ever since that day things just seemed to have gone from bad to worse for the former Real Madrid boss.

He was a hugely successful manager with a CV as glowing as you could possibly want, titles in Spain and Italy, not to mention a Champions League winner. He had spells with something not too dissimilar to a who's who of European football (Roma, AC Milan, Juventus and Madrid).

For the first two years it looked like the English Football Association had finally found their man. A proven winner who was continuing that rich vein of form for his new employers.

England qualified for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with consummate ease and Don Fabio could do no wrong. Then came the index and it all began to unravel just prior to FIFA's showpiece event.

Bad preparation

After the index, there was the decision to play England at altitude in their friendlies prior to the last World Cup, as well as base them at a training camp in Rustenburg 1500 metres above sea level in South Africa and not giving the players sufficient rest from the rigours of a Premier League season.

Graeme Souness was highly critical of such preparation. He told  The Sun: "Your body is demanding oxygen.

Your brain is telling your kidneys 'I need more EPO' which is a growth hormone which helps you produce more red blood cells, which enables you to push more oxygen through your body.

"So, for three or four weeks that's happening, so you're going down and down and down. After that, you start to recover."

The players looked laboured throughout the debacle in South Africa and Capello has to take some repsonsibility for that.

The wrong squad in South Africa

There was immense surprise and disappointment at the decision to omit Theo Walcott from his squad for the 2010 World Cup. Then news filtered through that he wanted to take Owen Hargreaves who had not started a game for nearly two years. Sir Alex Ferguson ridiculed the idea of taking his non-playing crippled midfieler. Capello eventually plumped for Gareth Barry, who also looked well short of fitness having not played for the last two months of the season.

The wrong goalkeeper

Then we had the lamentable situation regarding the number one jersey in South Africa. It was clear to all and sundry that the most talented goalkeeper in the squad was Joe Hart. Capello claimed he lacked experience, but it was the manager's fault for that lack of game time for not picking him prior to the tournament, particularly in the friendly against Ghana three months before the World Cup began.

The wrong formation

We had one decent striker going into that World Cup - Wayne Rooney (albeit his performances never lived up to expectations). The best thing to have done would be to have played Rooney up front with Steven Gerrard in support. From Gary Lineker to Michael Owen, it was clear to all the experts the way to go but our £6 million a year head coach could not spot it.

Capello claimed that English players only new how to play 4-4-2. The 65 year-old clearly hadn't watched much football in recent years as he would have seen English clubs dominate the Champions League with just one up top in something that could be described as anything but 4-4-2. Furthermore, Rooney had performed remarkable feats as the lone frontman, and Gerrard had had a similarly successful season playing as an attacking midfielder (behind Torres).

Captain not so fantastic

What I just do not get with this whole John Terry business is it was Capello who was angry with JT after his now infamous press conference in South Africa, undermining the Italian with his comments about standing up to the coaching staff.

It was also Capello who stripped Terry of the captaincy for a far less serious issue (sleeping with the ex-girlfriend of a former team-mate) than we are currently dealing with.

Then we see the Italian gifting him back the armband soon after the World Cup, and now apparently resigning as he did not want to see the Chelsea centre-half lose the captaincy once more.

Just to add to the confusion, Capello has always stated his amusement at the English fascination with the whole importance of who the captain is.

Finally on this whole JT story: why on earth has the trial been postponed until July anyway? Ron Gourlay, Chelsea's chief executive, informed the judge it would be impossible for all the necessary witnesses to appear in court due to work commitments. First of all that's rubbish. And even if it were true, completely irrelevant. You cannot skip a court appearance due to such frivolous reasons.

Anyway, I digress, Fabio's reputation, at least in England, is in tatters and the guy who accused him of 'killing' Gerrard a couple of years ago for playing the Liverpool man out of position has a stock that could not be any higher. Maybe Paul Gascoigne calling him 'Sir' Harry earlier this evening on Sky Sports was not so ill-placed afterall.

Brits Abroad

With the first anniversary of the Wayne Rooney saga on the horizon was it really conceivable that the boy from Croxteth really could have ended up plying his trade away from these shores?


Culture vulture: Rooney's refuelling away from the pitch 

"Una mas cerveza y uno vino tinto, por favor," he uttered to the bar person, according to the Guardian back in 2003.
This was not an expert linguist flexing his oral muscles but a footballer. A Scouser, no less.
Steve McManaman moved to Real Madrid and acclimatised well and, though not fluent, managed to reach a decent level in Spanish.


McManaman was the first British player to win the Champions League twice, both with Real, and, according to much of the mass media a few months ago, Wayne Rooney was destined to follow in the footsteps of his fellow Liverpudlian by making the bold move to La Liga.

The Manchester United striker was linked with a record-breaking transfer to Barcelona. This rumour followed Christiano Ronaldo's plea in the Sun to "come and join me" at Real Madrid just one year before.
So, was the England international really set to make the ambitious move abroad? Could you really have imagined him lapping up the delicacies that another European country has to offer?
Some may have found this hard to believe. They are more accustomed to seeing Rooney as a typical English tourist in the Catalan capital, wandering down La Rambla wearing a vest and shorts, donning a lobster coloured tan, rather than enjoying the local tapas and learning the language.

If he had made the move he would not have been the first to do so. That accolade belongs to Herbert Kilpin, who played for FC Torinese in 1891, then for Mediolanum Milano from 1898 to 1900 and Milan from 1900-07.

Kilpin's defining moment, though, came in a wine shop in Tuscany at the end of the 19th century when, along with two friends, he founded the Milan Cricket and Football club. They have since taken on the more familiar guise of AC Milan and they have the English flag of Saint George in the club emblem.

Paul Gascoigne, to whom Rooney is so often compared due to having the same innate ability aligned with a natural tendency to court off the field controversies, did make the move abroad and he enjoyed a modicum of success, the highlight being when he scored the winner for Lazio in the Rome derby.


Gazza-tta dello Sport: James Richardson speaks fondly of Gazza

Gazza, as he was affectionately known, was something of a phenomenon to the Italian public. James Richardson, who presented Football Italia on Channel 4 throughout the 1990s, explains: "The Gazza thing was extraordinary. He was even talked about in parliament. It was like an alien had arrived on earth. He was a completely different kind of person to what they (the Italians) were used to. Maybe because he was more the image they had of a football supporter, yet he was a player, and I think that was why he was so popular with the supporters."
And it was not just fans of the club he played for that loved him. "I remember being in his car in Rome," Richardson continued. "And fans on scooters were banging on the window saying 'Hey Gazza, hey Gazza' and they were Roma fans. For Roma fans to salute a Lazio player just doesn't happen."

Richardson, who now presents the Football Weekly podcast for the Guardian, was keen to emphasise that Gascoigne had a good time in the Italian capital. He said: "I think he enjoyed himself. It was a very mad lifestyle that he had because of his celebrity, because he was who he was - a bit of a fish out of water in some ways. He made a lot of friends, though."

Italian friends? "Yes, some at the club and his minder, Gianni. People were quite loyal to him because he's a guy who inspires a lot of loyalty and sympathy because he's a very warm, open guy. At the time we thought 'ok, he's not the most practical but that's why we love him'."

Richardson got on well with the ex-Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United midfielder. "I used to film with him on a Thursday and sometimes we would go out afterwards."

Gazza was surprisingly cultured and the bilingual journalist was taken aback. Richardson added: "I remember the first time I heard him speak Italian. I was shocked. He eschewed things like grammar but his vocabulary was quite good."

There are on the field differences between Italian and British football that not every ex-pat can get used to. Richardson illustrates perfectly the difference in footballing ethos between the two countries when he told an interesting anecdote regarding an un-named British export to the peninsular. He said: "There was one player who played a game in the south of Italy and he was astonished when, before the game kicked off, everyone agreed, including the opponents, that a draw would be the result of the game. The opposing captain came in to the dressing room, prior to kick off, to confirm that it was ok (a draw) and everyone agreed, except said footballer who said he wanted to play for the win. 45 minutes later he was substituted due to his ambitious play, i.e. overlapping a winger and taking players on."
John Charles proved to be the perfect export where he plundered goal after goal for Juventus in the sixties, assisting the Turin-based club to three Serie A titles.

When asked who he believed made the biggest impact Richardson said: "Paul Ince and David Platt were two that really stood out."

Platt is not a surprise to be amongst Richardson's choices given that he played for three different clubs - Bari, Juventus and Sampdoria - throughout the nineties, scoring goals aplenty from midfield. In addition, he accumulated a whopping £17.4m worth of transfer fees whilst in Italy and he managed to learn the language which.

Plumping for Ince is somewhat more of a surprise given that, prior to moving from Manchester United to Inter Milan for £7 million, the move appeared risky on the Italian outfit's part due to Ince's combative nature, combined with the strict, no-nonsense refereeing on the peninsular.

However, Ince adapted well but, of course, it has not always been plain sailing for our footballers abroad. Take Darius Vassell's plight when moving to Turkish outfit Ankaragucu in 2009. Around 3,000 fans greeted his arrival by dancing and singing at the capital city's airport.

Things soon turned sour for the former Manchester City forward when the club encountered financial difficulties. Subsequently, the Ankara based club were unable to foot the bill for the player's hotel. However, it is not known if Vassell was consigned to the streets or not.

Beanz Meanz Heinz: Ian Rush refutes suggestions he had baked beans shipped out to him in Turin

Ian Rush had his problems on the field following a multi-million pound move to Italian side Juventus in the mid-eighties. The move proved unsuccessful for the Welshman as he failed to find the back of the net as frequently as he had done for Liverpool. Rush allegedly complained that his Italian experience was "like living in a foreign country".

Rush denies ever making that comment, though. He said: "People who say that I said that are lying. It was Kenny Dalglish who said that when he was asked by the press what it was like for me in Italy. Kenny was joking and the press twisted it as if it was me."

It has been reported that the former Welsh international striker had baked beans shipped out to him as he went in search of home comforts but he says that could not be further from the truth. "One of the things I liked most was the food in Italy. It was fantastic."

So where did it all go wrong? "I didn’t like the style of play. It didn’t suit me. The football was very negative compared to what I was used to at Liverpool. It’s only when you leave a club like Liverpool you realise the grass is not always greener."

David Platt, who James Richardson spoke highly of, had a very different experience to Rush during his time in Italy. Platt succeeded where many of his British predecessors failed — he managed to learn the language. This would appear to be a crucial aspect to any footballer’s life when living abroad.

Gary Lineker sampled life in Spain with Barcelona and then Japan with Nagoya Grampus Eight. He felt it was imperative to learn the lingo.

Lineker told the website cilt.org.uk: "My wife and I learnt Spanish and Japanese when I played at Barcelona and Nagoya. We spent hours and hours in tuition – yet we could have learnt either language at school. Modern languages prepare you for modern life."


The Match of the Day presenter added: "I've really enjoyed learning Spanish and Japanese. Getting to grips with a new language can be great fun and you learn so much about other people and what makes them tick. Immersing yourself in the culture is critical to making it work abroad."


Former Scotland manager, Craig Brown, was in agreement. He oversaw the international careers of Paul Lambert, who enjoyed Champions League success with Borussia Dortmund, and John Collins, who starred for Monaco.
Brown said to the same website: "Paul Lambert and John Collins learned the required German and French languages very quickly. As a consequence, their children are bilingual and the players settled easily into their environments."

Germany appears to be a happy hunting ground for our footballers as Lambert (Dortmund), Tony Woodcock (FC Cologne and Fortuna Cologne) and Kevin Keegan (SV Hamburg) have illustrated.

Claus Melchior, co-founder of German fanzine Der Toedliche Pass, enthused: "Lambert was quite popular and is still revered in Dortmund, I believe."

And he offered an interesting side effect of Keegan’s three years at SV Hamburg: "Kevin is also still a very popular first name and I think Keegan started that trend."

Then there is the case of David Beckham, who moved to Real Madrid from Manchester United in the summer of 2003.

Arguably England’s most famous footballer ever, ‘Becks’ endured mixed fortunes during his spells with Real Madrid, LA Galaxy and AC Milan but, whilst in Spain, ‘Los Madridistas’ were appreciative of his efforts as he helped them win La Liga in his final year at the club.

Having Real and AC on your CV is an admirable achievement no matter who you are.

Whether Rooney will join this select band of footballers who ply their trade on the continent is unlikely but what is apparent is that if you make the effort to familiarise yourself with your surroundings, you can definitely reap the benefits and improve as a footballer. Perhaps England, as well as Rooney, would prosper from such a career move.