ΤσάΜΠιονς ΛίΝκ (sic) και λοιπές Ευρω διοργανώσεις

Clough in his own words
Brian Clough
Clough was a larger-than-life figure and will be missed
Legendary former Nottingham Forest and Derby County boss Brian Clough passed away on Monday aged 69.

He was well-loved and respected, not least for his straight talking and sense of humour.

In tribute to the tremendous character that was Cloughie, here are some reminders of "Old Big Ead's" forthright opinions and wit.

"I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one" - On his own success.

"If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there" - On the importance of passing the ball to feet.

"I only ever hit Roy the once. He got up so I couldn't have hit him very hard" - On dealing with Roy Keane.

"We talk about it for 20 minutes and then we decide I was right" - On dealing with players who disagree with him.

"At last England have appointed a manager who speaks English better than the players" - On the appointment of Sven-Goran Eriksson.

"I'm sure the England selectors thought if they took me on and gave me the job, I'd want to run the show. They were shrewd because that's exactly what I would have done" - On not getting the England manager's job.

"Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes" - On England's exit from Euro 2000.

"The Derby players have seen more of his balls than the one they're meant to be playing with" - On a streaker who once interrupted a Derby County-Manchester United match.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson
In a champion's league: Cloughie 2-1 Ferguson

"Manchester United in Brazil? I hope they all get bloody diarrhoea" - On Manchester United's decision to opt out of the FA Cup to play in the World Club Championship in 2000.

"For all his horses, knighthoods and championships, he hasn't got two of what I've got. And I don't mean balls" - Referring to Sir Alex Ferguson's failure to win two successive European Cups.

"I can't even spell spaghetti never mind talk Italian. How could I tell an Italian to get the ball? He might grab mine" - On the influx of foreign players.

"I like my women to be feminine, not sliding into tackles and covered in mud" - On women and football.

"Anybody who can do anything in Leicester but make a jumper has got to be a genius" - His tribute to Martin O'Neill, who used to manage Leicester City.

"That Seaman is a handsome young man but he spends too much time looking in his mirror rather than at the ball. You can't keep goal with hair like that" - On the pony-tailed former England goalkeeper David Seaman.

"If a chairman sacks the manager he initially appointed, he should go as well" - Saying that too many managers lose their jobs.

"I thought it was my next-door neighbour because I think she felt that if I got something like that I would have to move" - Guessing who nominated him for a knighthood.

"Who the hell wants 14 pairs of shoes when you go on holiday? I haven't had 14 pairs in my life" - On the contents of Victoria Beckham's missing luggage.

"He should guide Posh in the direction of a singing coach because she's nowhere near as good at her job as her husband" - Advice for David Beckham.

"Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive" - After the liver transplant which saved his life.

"I want no epitaphs of profound history and all that type of thing. I contributed. I would hope they would say that, and I would hope somebody liked me." - On being remembered

marx marvelous έγραψε:Ενας ειναι ο ημιθεος ρε. Ενας ειναι ο Κολοσσος.
Τελεια και παυλα!

elsoto έγραψε:

marx marvelous έγραψε:Ενας ειναι ο ημιθεος ρε. Ενας ειναι ο Κολοσσος.
Τελεια και παυλα!

Δέλλα είσαι γκάβλα

marx marvelous έγραψε:Ενας ειναι ο ημιθεος ρε. Ενας ειναι ο Κολοσσος.
Τελεια και παυλα!

Predator έγραψε:

marx marvelous έγραψε:Ενας ειναι ο ημιθεος ρε. Ενας ειναι ο Κολοσσος.
Τελεια και παυλα!

Σιγά μην είναι και ο Κετσπάγια...

marx marvelous έγραψε:

Predator έγραψε:

marx marvelous έγραψε:Ενας ειναι ο ημιθεος ρε. Ενας ειναι ο Κολοσσος.
Τελεια και παυλα!

Σιγά μην είναι και ο Κετσπάγια...

Κι αυτος ΕΝΑΣ ειναι.

A night of pure slapstick at the Calderón

Atlético fans are used to being entertained by their players - but against Getafe referee Carlos Clos Gómez stole the show by dishing out a La Liga record 18 cards
Sid Lowe
December 10, 2007 3:11 PM

They are La Liga's unsung heroes, bravely battling against the odds, peering out through the wind and the rain and a pair of binoculars in a desperate bid to keep you up to date with every little detail of every little game. Somewhere in every Spanish stadium there lurks a mysterious creature armed with a mobile phone, a team sheet and a growing headache, who does the most thankless journalistic job of all: the running commentary.

It is his - yes, it is always a he - job to phone a bloke in an office somewhere and tell him the teams. It is his job to ring up and tell him when the game starts, when the game stops, when someone scores, when someone is subbed, and when someone gets a card. Sometimes, depending how much of a sadist the boss is, it's his job to tell him when there's a corner, a throw-in or a shot - even though he's miles up, it's bloody noisy, he can't see the numbers, and there isn't a telly in sight. There he is, screaming down the line like a geeky Dom Jolly: "Hello? Hello?! Yes, Athletic Bilbao-Real Madrid. Minute 12. Yellow card for Ustariz Aldekoaotalora Atarloa. Eh? No, no: A-l-d-e-erm-hang-on-k-o ... the No4. Four. Four! No, for Athletic. Yellow. Yeah, twelve. Bye."

No wonder mistakes have been made - one genius managed to give the wrong final score and wondered why the "losing" coach wasn't suicidal afterwards - but most weeks, the running commentary is bang on. Trouble is, this week was not most weeks.

For the army of running commentators, it started easily enough. A snooze in Pamplona, where Osasuna and Valencia sent fans into a coma; an early winner for Rock God and new Betis boss Paco Chaparro in Vila-Real; a surprisingly incident-free Athletic-Madrid at San Mamés, where Ruud Van Nistelrooy hit the only goal; and a quick call to report Álvaro Negredo's fabulous flick-up free kick; "goal, No9, minute 75," as Almería beat Valladolid. Then things got harder for the stat compilers. In Santander, there were two red cards and four goals as Racing climbed into a European place. In Zaragoza there were six goals, two in the last five minutes, as Zaragoza drew 3-3 with Espanyol. And, as the final whistle went and the final call was made at the Romareda, all hell was about to break loose in Madrid.

It was the "derby of the south [of Madrid]", Atlético Madrid versus Getafe, and it promised to be fantastic: Spain's two most in-form teams at the Vicente Calderón, where fans have stopped absent-mindedly gazing up at the Royal Palace or scratching their heads while they wonder if there is some connection between the clubs of ill-repute advertised on the scoreboard and the two-page spread on erectile dysfunction in the match day programme, to focus on the pitch at last. Where two years of drudgery have been forgotten in a tidal wave of goals, the last three games all finishing 4-3 (or 3-4, pedants).. Where week after week it's just fantastic fun.

And this week was no exception, Atlético's fans floating back to Pirámides metro shooting wide-eyed, colossal grins, like a sea of Zippys. Not because they'd seen another 4-3, a thumping victory or a great goal. Not even because Kun Aguero had celebrated his award as the world's best U-21 with another dazzling display. The Argentinian was poor, Atlético won just 1-0 - the lowest scoreline this season - and Diego Forlán's goal, while neat, was no blinder. But Atléti's fans didn't care. And they didn't care because once again it had been seriously silly fun, another record-breaking night at the Calderón.

The madness really began in the 50th minute. Aguero raced down the right. Getafe keeper Roberto Abbondanzieri came to meet him and as Kun went past his countryman, he was attacked by a particularly vicious divot (divot - (golf) the cavity left when a piece of turf is cut from the ground by the club head in making a stroke; "it was a good drive but the ball ended up in a divot"). Referee Carlos Clos Gómez, perfectly positioned just over a mile away, pointed to the spot only to see his linesman frantically waving like a tearful Victorian sweetheart sprinting along the platform. The penalty was withdrawn, a card came out and so did the phone: "Minute 50, yellow card. Kun Aguero. Atlético, No10." Suddenly, the game exploded - and so did the stat compiler's head, eyes frantically darting around in a futile bid to see it all, appealing in vain for a little help. Who was that? What happened there? Has he given a card?

The answer was everyone, everything and oh yes. Perea punched Belenguer. Maniche tried to maim Cata. Granero pushed a ball-boy. Pato started on the subs. Aguirre started on Pato. The goalkeeping coach kept the ball. Maxi got taken out. And so did just about everyone else. Getafe missed endless chances. And a full-back went in goal. It was quality slapstick, every tackle leaving fans wincing and laughing in equal measures, while in the middle of it all, Clos Gómez started dishing out cards like a croupier on crack. In less than half an hour, 12 cards came out; in less than 12 minutes, so did six red ones - and amazingly none were for Cosmin Contra, the rebel who picked a fight with a carload of coppers back in Romania. Aguero, Licht, and Abbondanzieri walked before José Antonio Reyes whipped out his scythe and followed them. Atlético's goalkeeping coach awaited them in an uncomfortably-packed early bath and Aguirre's No2 went the same way after, as the ref's official report put it, "making observations".

In total, 18 cards were dished out, a new La Liga record, and when Manu de Moral got the final one in the 94th minute, everyone at the Calderón roared their approval, chanting: "We want more! We want more!" Well, almost everyone. The man with the phone on his ear, confused expression on his face and tears on his cheeks just wanted it to be all over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UthpRa5CDkU[i]

marx marvelous έγραψε:Που εχει μπαλα σημερα, στο Μανωλακι?

marx marvelous έγραψε:Που εχει μπαλα σημερα, στο Μανωλακι?

How haunted club paid ultimate tribute to ghosts of Old Trafford


A tough, single-minded focus on success was United's way of coping with disaster, writes David Conn

Saturday February 2, 2008
The Guardian

Looking back now, from the perspective of 50 years since the eight Manchester United players and 15 other people died in the slush and horror off the runway at Munich, it can seem surprising that the whole nation was so deeply moved by the disaster. The country had, after all, not long emerged from six years of war in which millions had been killed, lives and homes devastated. Yet when the news came on Thursday, February 6, 1958, the clocks did not stop just at Old Trafford. People who lived in Manchester then have always recalled the ashen silence that settled over the city. Across Britain, even around Europe, sorrow struck.
Yet that, in a way, explains the very attraction of the "Busby Babes". Young and brilliantly talented, the football they played was helping to transport a nation away from thoughts of war into a more colourful, hopeful future. Most of them had been the best schoolboy players around the country, shrewdly recruited by Matt Busby in his first management job, then coached to professional polish by his assistant, Jimmy Murphy. The Babes had filled United's first team since Busby famously played seven of them in a First Division match at Huddersfield Town in October 1953, sweeping away United's stalwarts, who had been through the war, returned to football and won for Busby his first League Championship in 1952.
Roger Byrne, who became United's captain, had already been in the team for two years, while the centre-half Mark Jones had played regularly since 1950. They were joined by what became a production line of youth: Duncan Edwards, the unfeasibly powerful teenager from Dudley, striker Dennis Viollet, centre-half Jackie Blanchflower and full-back Bill Foulkes, still a part-time miner. Busby bought, too, centre-forward Tommy Taylor, a record signing from Barnsley. Eddie Colman was a shimmying, wise-cracking Salford wing-half, there was slick Irish inside-forward Liam "Billy" Whelan, a teenage Bobby Charlton and David Pegg, a striker who in every black and white photograph of that lost era seems always to be smiling.
Forever overshadowed by the crash, some of the details of how good and thrilling United were can be forgotten. When the Babes matured to win their first Football League Championship in 1956, the players' average age was 23. Only Taylor, Ray Wood, the goalkeeper signed from Darlington, and Johnny Berry, the little winger from Birmingham City, had cost Busby a fee. The following season they won the title again and looked set to dominate English football for a generation.
That year they accepted an invitation to play in the new European Champions Cup, against the wishes of the Football League, which argued teams would not arrive back from Europe in time to play on Saturdays. Chelsea, league champions in 1955, had agreed not to enter but United refused to turn down the glamour and challenge of European competition and defiantly played, reaching the semi-final where they lost to Real Madrid .
In 1957-58 United entered again. Murphy later lamented the "hectic scramble" of flying all over Europe, the "mad dash" to be back in time for league matches. On February 1 1958, the Saturday before their quarter-final second leg away to Red Star Belgrade, the Babes delivered what would be their final performance in England, a 5-4 victory over Arsenal at Highbury.
The disaster five days later has been gone over thousands of times, in its inexorable, heartbreaking detail. United drew 3-3 in freezing Belgrade, qualifying for the semi-final 5-4 on aggregate. They had to be back to play Wolves on the Saturday, and flew the following morning, landing at Munich to refuel. It was snowing. The pilot, Captain James Thain, and co-pilot, Captain Kenneth Rayment, abandoned two take-off attempts, then took engineering advice about how to counter the engine's boost-surging problem. Thain was afterwards subjected to four official inquiries before, 11 years later, ultimately being cleared of blame. At the time ice on an aeroplane's wings was a known hazard - there was none - but the dragging effect of slush on a runway, which caused the crash, was not recognised.
On their third take-off attempt the pilots drove the plane down the runway but it lost speed, could not get airborne and careered off the end of the runway at 157 miles per hour, smashing into a house. Of the 44 people on board, 21 were killed instantly. Edwards, still regarded by many as the best English footballer ever, died later from his injuries in hospital. Captain Rayment, too, died later.
Harry Gregg, the goalkeeper who had joined United from Doncaster Rovers only two months earlier, was a hero, although he has always demurred from that description, saying he went back into the burning wreckage out of instinct, to pull a crying baby, Venona Lukic, to safety.
"I could not comprehend the scene of utter devastation," he said in his 2002 autobiography, Harry's Game. Gregg saw team-mates dead, Albert Scanlon and Wood with terrible injuries. He dragged Viollet and Charlton out of the plane by their trouser waistbands and tried to use his tie as a tourniquet for his old Ireland schoolboys mate Jackie Blanchflower, whose right arm was almost severed. Gregg found Busby lying conscious on the ground and did not think he looked too bad, until he saw his foot was pointing round the wrong way.
It was the loss of blessed youth that so grieved the world. Byrne, Pegg, Taylor, Edwards, Colman, Whelan, Jones and the reserve full-back Geoff Bent, all died along with 15 others.
That Manchester United rebuilt from this wreckage, to win the European Cup 10 years later, is lore, arguably English football's greatest story. Murphy had not travelled to Belgrade because he was managing Wales and, when he visited the injured in the Munich hospital, Busby groaned to him: "Keep the flag flying, Jimmy."
Tireless in his grief, Murphy harried the club into continuing. The Football League allowed the Wolves game to be postponed, as did the Football Association, for a week, a Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday. On that day, February 19, 1958, Old Trafford was overwhelmed by fans showing solidarity, thousands milling about outside. Carved into United's history is the teamsheet left blank in the programme because, up to the last minute, Murphy had not known who would play. Finally a team of youngsters and two experienced signings, Ernie Taylor and Stan Crowther, were joined, 13 days on from all that horror, by Foulkes and Gregg.

From ethos to obsession

The front of the programme carried a rallying call from the chairman, Harold Hardman: "An unprecedented blow to British football has touched the hearts of millions," he wrote. "The road back may be long and hard but, with the memory of those who died at Munich, of their stirring achievements and wonderful sportsmanship ever with us, Manchester United will rise again."
That spirit captured the night, the 60,000 crowd roaring United's patched-together team to win 3-0. Driven on by Murphy, United reached the 1958 FA Cup final - although, as the survivor Scanlon points out, with measured reality, they lost most of their subsequent league matches.
Busby took months to recover and Sandy, his son, recalls that he needed persuading to return to football at all. Years later Busby admitted he felt personally guilty, having taken his boys flying all over Europe to their ultimate deaths, tormented by the idea that he could have ordered the pilot not to fly.
"My mother said to him: 'I don't think that the boys who have gone would want you to finish. They would want you to go on,'" Sandy says. "My dad took time thinking about it and decided to carry on." Busby had his wife and two children to support, a living to make. When he finally came home, Sandy recalls: "He was still very ill. I used to help him with dressing and getting into bed."
Busby's first public appearance afterwards was, pale and limping, at Wembley for the FA Cup final against Bolton. Foulkes, who had played without a break since returning from Munich, always recalled his astonishment at seeing him there, walking painfully round the track.
United lost, 2-0, so there was no instant fairytale. When Busby returned to work it was a hard slog back. Blanchflower's and Berry's injuries were so severe they never played again. Scanlon was deemed no longer good enough and soon sold to Newcastle. Wood was also quickly moved on, to Huddersfield. Of the survivors, Gregg and Foulkes were joined by Charlton and Viollet, who overcame head injuries to play on until 1962, when Busby sold him to Stoke. Kenny Morgans, the Welsh winger who had been left for dead in the plane for hours, lost his love for football and was transferred to Swansea City.
Ghosts inhabited Old Trafford, which rang with the missing sound of players' laughter. Noel Cantwell, signed from West Ham in 1960 and captain when United won the FA Cup in 1963, the first stage of recovery, talked later of feeling like "an intruder" at a haunted club. Yet around United nobody talked of the crash or the dead players. Sandy Busby says his father, despite his guilt, did not discuss his feelings about the tragedy: "He never talked about that, never." The ethos, the obsession as Busby would later describe it, was to drive United on to trophies.
When Busby and United did finally claim their holy grail, the European Cup, beating Benfica 4-1 at Wembley in 1968, the victory was hailed in Britain, Europe and around the world for what it was: a phenomenal recovery. This, Busby's third great team, in an astonishing managerial career that lasted from just after the second world war to the 1970s, is remembered for the swagger of George Best, Denis Law and Charlton, but they were tough, too. In an era no single club dominated, United won the League twice, in 1965 and 1967.
For Busby, for Foulkes and Charlton, it had been a mission, to pay tribute to the players who died. When they lifted the European Cup, they were shattered - exhausted rather than elated.
Best talked of that later as the start of his frustrations; at 22 he had felt this was a beginning but realised that for others it was closure. United declined rapidly and Busby's first retirement, the following year, became a byword for failing to manage succession. In 1974 United were relegated by the backheel of Law, who had moved across Manchester to City.
The fans sang "Glory, glory Man United" through the 1970s and 1980s but genuine success was not reclaimed until United won the Premier League in 1993, under Alex Ferguson, the working-class Scot whose management carries so many echoes of Busby's. David Gill, the chief executive, recognises the huge impact the crash had in growing Manchester United's massive support. "I won't say it 'made' the club but it was so important," he said. "Much of what you see at the club today has been born out of that tragedy."

Brutal business of football

United's reclaiming of football glory, allied to the financial fortunes made on the back of it, themselves contributed to the gradual emergence of another, bleaker telling of the Munich aftermath. In 1997 Uefa, European football's governing body, invited the surviving United players to the Champions League final in Munich as official guests, out of respect for what Uefa described as their enormous contribution to European football. When the players gathered, they talked, more openly than ever before, and several felt that Uefa's recognition made a stark contrast to a chilly relationship with United over the years.
The flip side of the Babes' image as one happy family is that football in the 1950s was still a brutal business. Players were limited to a maximum wage and could not move without their club's permission. Gregg, transferred by Busby to Stoke City in 1966, reflected on the insiders' motto, which contrasts so completely with fans' feelings about the game. "There is," he said, "no sentiment in football."
Some tougher details have since become accepted. The two survivors unable to play again, Blanchflower and Berry, were living in club houses and they were quickly told by United to leave so that other, fit, players could move in. Neil Berry, Johnny's son, remembers Munich, when he was nine years old, as a "time of indescribable pain and grief" for him and his family. It was not, he says, a question of money. They received an insurance payout from United sufficient for his father to buy a house and set up a business when they moved back south, to Farnham. Neil had to cope emotionally with his father returning a changed man, with horrific injuries, moving home and school, and he believes that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder himself many years later, after his own first daughter was born in 1979.
In his moving book about his father, Johnny, The Forgotten Babe, Neil, now a successful headteacher, wrote about how his family was left to cope:
"On reflection it would have been nice to have had some kind of ongoing support from the officials of Manchester United, not necessarily financial, but as Dad always said: 'You're only as good as your last game.' He had played his and the regime at the time did not want to know of his circumstances and preferred that he just vanished."
The survivors and families of those who died, several with young children to bring up without fathers, were given some compensation, according to the law, from insurance, British European Airways' legal settlement and Manchester's Lord Mayor's Appeal Fund, to which the public contributed. After that, although Munich has forever after been mentioned, commemorated annually, it seems the club largely left alone those, with shattered lives, who could not be part of the football effort.
After Wood and the former players approached Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, a committee was formed and in 1998, on the disaster's 40th anniversary, Manchester United did hold a benefit match for the Munich survivors and victims' families. Even then some, including Gregg, criticised the club for using the occasion as a farewell to Eric Cantona. The match raised more than £1m from ticket sales - a help but not a fortune when divided among the players or their nearest dependants. Gill has said he hopes the club has made some recompense: "We had the benefit game and the proceeds were used to help survivors and victims. I wasn't around at the time when the decisions were taken."
United are trying very hard to make a fitting tribute to Munich this year. The current team was shown a specially produced DVD of the lost Babes and the crash, to ensure that today's gilded stars fully understand their history. Ferguson reported that his team watched it in solemn silence and were moved by it. This Wednesday, February 6, the club is holding a service at 3:04pm, 50 years to the minute since the plane crashed, which will lead to the opening of a new permanent exhibition. It will depict the birth of the Babes, the disaster, then how United rebuilt afterwards, culminating in the 1968 European Cup final win.
It was the most savage, appalling disaster to befall a British football team and what Manchester United did afterwards transformed the club into a legend. It was an almost miraculous football achievement, a story of determination, recovery and redemption. Real life, it turns out, was tragically more difficult.

Spain suffer as ringmaster Aragonés whips up a soccer circus

If the ridiculous maelstrom that surrounds Luis Aragonés doesn't end soon, even victories like last night's won't help to improve Spain's situation
Sid Lowe
February 7, 2008 12:53 PM

Here's the good news: Spain won. In fact, Spain didn't just win. They won in a proper match against a proper team. Against France, a genuine contender for next summer's European Championships, the country that knocked them out of the last World Cup at the now traditional Spanish drop-off point of the quarter-finals; the country that knocked them out of the 2000 European Championships thanks to a Raúl penalty that flew wildly over the bar; 200 years after the start of the War of Independence. No wonder the cover of this morning's AS declared: "Revenge is served."

Spain won against a proper team at Málaga's packed La Rosaleda stadium, finished at last. They wore a hideous yellowy kit and it didn't bring them bad luck. The game was the perfect homage to Marca's 70th birthday, providing the ideal opportunity to pat themselves on the back, stamp their logo on the match ball, and hobnob with Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) figures, local government nobodies, and players past and present. For the editor to grin in delight as Federation president Ángel María Villar temporarily put down his drink to hand over a Spain shirt with "Marca, 70" on the back and for columnist Roberto Gómez to delightedly stuff his face on the pre-match banquet which, he helpfully informed the world, "was based on meat".

And no one was insensitive enough to wheel out a reproduction of Marca's first ever cover. The one that dedicates a fascist salute to Spain's sportsmen.

Out on the pitch, Iker Casillas performed another miracle, denying Thierry Henry in a one-on-one. Joan Capdevila's goal 11 minutes from time not only gave Spain a 1-0 victory but also suggested that their long and often embarrassing search for a left-back - one that's taken in Raúl Bravo, for goodness' sake - is properly over. Three months of complete inactivity following his sacking at Valencia hasn't yet destroyed David Albelda, who played reasonably well, declaring afterwards: "I feel like a footballer once again". Pablo Ibáñez managed not to make any hideous mistakes. And Andres Iniesta performed brilliantly for Spain - he it was, yet again, who created the goal.

Better still, Spain won without even playing that well. In the aftermath of the last World Cup, Aragonés banged on about "chicken sexers" and not having a "special signal" with which to communicate with his players from the bench. He also complained that Spain did not know how to compete, to grind out results, to win when they're not performing - supposedly the mark of champions. Last night suggested that maybe they've learnt. "Winning on nights like this gives teams real strength," insisted AS editor Alfredo Relaño, while Marca's headline shouted: "Viva la garra!" (roughly, long live our fighting spirit!).

Trouble is, here's the bad news. Inevitably, the solve-everything attempt to put words on the Spanish national anthem was a complete and utter failure. Fernando Torres got injured, Ángel got injured and Bojan Krikic couldn't become the youngest ever debutant for Spain after suffering a dizzy spell. It was only a friendly and, as one columnist put it, "Spain already have two friendly world championships in their trophy cabinet". And it wasn't that Spain didn't play very well exactly, it was that they were awful. That the optimism of those exceptional wins against Sweden and Denmark has gone, Santiago Segurola claiming that the game was "an invitation to become depressed". There was, he wrote, "not one thing to feel optimistic about. Spain won but left too much suspicion behind. [Capdevila's goal] was not enough to forget everything that went before."

Worse still, as Tomas Guasch put it, "the build-up to Spain matches is more exciting than the games themselves these days". And the build-up is more exciting because every Spain match provides another excuse for a fall-out, a baseless campaign and a spate of insults, for lunatic Luis Aragonés to make more bizarre decisions - like calling up Álvaro Arbeloa, a man who had been injured for 10 days. For lunatic Luis Aragonés to cause another scene, for the Federation to allow him to with their incompetent bumbling; and for the press to encourage him to with its constant crusading on behalf of Raúl - who hasn't exactly presented a watertight case for inclusion and whose cause isn't helped by his cheerleaders. (All they do is make Aragonés more determined not to pick him).

When Aragonés arrived at Málaga's gleaming new train station on Tuesday, fans were ready for him, chanting Raúl's name, while banners at the Rosaleda demanded his inclusion in the squad - and Aragonés's resignation. The crusade has got to Aragonés so much that in midweek he attacked a radio interviewer for being a "coward" and a "liar" over the issue.

The situation hasn't been helped by the Federation. Villar (himself under pressure with elections looming) privately told President Tourettes that Raúl is the best player in Spain and President Tourettes inevitably told the press that Villar had told him that Raúl is the best player in Spain. Meanwhile, the fact that the RFEF's sporting director Fernando Hierro is Raúl's best mate hardly helps.

At no time has Aragonés felt defended by the Federation. After one dinner this week, he made the barbed revelation that he had not even spoken to Hierro. "It was," he said, "a big table and Hierro was at the other end." Privately, Aragonés feels that there are those who want Raúl in the squad and are trying to encourage him to pack up and leave to path the way for the former captain's inclusion. He believes that there are many on the RFEF board who never really wanted him in the first place but just gave in to the pro-Aragonés media campaign (something about which the press is suspiciously quiet now). And he believes that there are those who even if they did want him then now want him out - and fast. He's right too.

When names of his potential successor started emerging this week, along with the hints that the new man would be presented before he walks away at the end of the European Championships, Aragonés really did his nut, insisting that the RFEF "should just sack me now". There are less than six months to the European Championships, Spain have an incredibly talented side and ultimately qualified easily but it's hard to see them winning the tournament if the ridiculous circus that surrounds Aragonés does not end and if every single game the selección plays simply serves to make things worse. Carry on like this and the Federation might just listen to Aragonés. For once.