No-one at the party

BARELY three months ago Croatia and England went head-tohead in a packed stadium in Moscow in a World Cup semi-final. Last week they faced off again in an empty 8,000-seater stadium in Rijeka and the contrast was there for all to see — not least in atmosphere, as in there was no atmosphere.

The resulting spectacle, if that’s the right word, was a blot on the game and it would still have been a blot if the score had been 4-4 rather than the actual 0-0 scoreline.

The reason for the empty stadium was that Croatia were serving the second of their twomatch closed-door punishment from Uefa because some numpties thought it a good idea to carve a swastika into the Zagreb pitch before a World Cup qualifier. All of which is fine, but why should the away team be disadvantaged as well? Surely a fairer sanction would have been to simply reverse the fixture or, failing that, play in a neutral country with no gate receipts going to the Croats?

An American TV executive once seriously reasoned that American football had no need for spectators because they “detract from the action”. He was quickly shut down for this ridiculous notion, but if one good thing comes out of this empty stadiums rubbish I would hope it is that the powers that be realise that footie without punters is unthinkable. Then hopefully they and the TV companies will treat them better with regard to scheduling, ticket pricing and the like — though I’m not holding my breath on that.

Throwback

One of the joys of Sixties football was the good oldfashioned sliding tackle; done properly it was a thing of beauty, done badly it was, depending on your perspective, either a thing of beauty or a dirty, disgusting foul. Whether it was the former or the latter, there is no way a sliding tackle launched either from the side or from slightly behind could be executed without cleaning out your opponent in the follow-through — unless the player involved was George Best, in which case he just rode the tackle and carried on down the wing leaving the tackler behind in a somewhat sheepish heap.

Sergio Ramos may be a lot of things but he isn’t a Spanish George Best, which is why when Eric Dier gloriously cleaned him out in his own area after 11 minutes in Seville on Monday night the scene was set for a surprising England win. In the context of a 90-minutes-plus football match one tackle really shouldn’t be so influential, but when Dier launched his wonderfully reckless, needless and crazy yet fair challenge it felt like a statement had been made. This wasn’t a “reducer”, where an opponent is targeted early doors because of his skill set, this was Spain’s ultimate hard man being gloriously put in his place. It was great to see and made me think of my all-time favourite slide tackler Cyril Knowles who would surely have approved the actions of his fellow Lilywhite.

Arrogance personified

It was barely noticed by the national press but a few days ago there was a little soirée held in London where Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, railing against attempts by Uefa to democratise the game, said clubs like his really shouldn’t be forced to mix with “the great unwashed”. He then went on to say that clubs should accept “their natural position” in football.

Coming from the man who only entered the game when his boss Roman Abramovich bought a Chelsea club that was about to go bankrupt for the second time in 19 years, this was all a bit rich.

Does he think that Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa are among the great unwashed? Does he include Ajax and Benfica in that category? All four of these clubs were winning Europe’s premier club competition when Chelsea were see-sawing regularly between the first and second divisions, while playing in a stadium that can be best described as a dump. Does he really think that they shouldn’t aspire to the heights they once occupied and that Chelsea at the time could only dream of? If so, he is symptomatic of what’s wrong in today’s game.

This week’s games

Premier League — today: 2.30pm Chelsea v United; 5pm Bournemouth v Southampton, Cardiff v Fulham, Citeh v Burnley, Newcastle v Brighton, West Ham v Spurs, Wolves v Watford; 7.30pm Huddersfield v Liverpool. Tomorrow: 6pm Everton v Palace. Monday: 10pm Arsenal v Leicester.

Champions League — Tuesday: 10pm Shakhtar v Citeh, United v Juventus. Wednesday: 7.55pm PSV v Spurs; 10pm Liverpool v Red Star. Europa League — Thursday: 7.55pm Red Bull Leipzig v Celtic, Sporting Lisbon v Arsenal; 10pm Chelsea v BATE Borisov, Rangers v Spartak Moscow.

Selected Championship — today: 2pm Blackburn v Leeds; 7.30pm Derby v Sheffield United. Wednesday: 10pm West Brom v Derby. Friday: 9.45pm QPR v Villa.

Formula One

USA Grand Prix — tomorrow: 9.10pm. In what would be an anti-climactic ending the world title may well be decided in Austin tomorrow with three races still to go. At the start of the summer we were looking at a tight title race, with Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel having a clear advantage over Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton. Some brilliant Hamilton drives later, allied to poor decision-making by Ferrari and their number one driver, sees the Briton winning the lot if he finishes first and Vettel lower than second, or he finishes the race with eight points more than the German.

Will he do it? Four wins in Texas over the last five outings suggest that he can, and who am I to argue?

And finally

Last week I asked who famously scored seven goals in a cup tie and ended up on the losing side. It was of course Denis Law, who netted six times for Manchester City at Luton in the 1960-61 FA Cup fourth round when the game was abandoned after 69 minutes due to a waterlogged pitch with Citeh leading 6-2. When the rescheduled game was played Law again got on the score sheet but the Hatters won 3-1. Steve Langbridge was once again first with the correct answer.

This week: in last week’s international friendly Wolves’ Helder Costa scored for Portugal on his national team debut at Hampden Park against Scotland. In doing so he emulated the feat of which other Wolves player who also scored on his national debut at Hampden?

Regarding last week’s question about which teams in British professional football have names which start and end with the same letters, a certain Rangers fan from Lapta via Coatbridge informed me that I had missed out East Fife and East Stirlingshire from the list. Indeed I had, and fair play to him for spotting this, but I would suggest the fact that they are not fully professional led to their non-inclusion.

The same goes for Brendan Murphy who informed me that “ye’ll naw be able tae set foot in tha kingdom again” for missing out East Fife. I refer Brendan to the above and would like him to know that I have umpteen cousins in and around Dunfermline (coincidentally also called Murphy) who I feel sure would welcome me there any time.