From The Guardian
Steven Gerrard is noted for the accuracy and power of his shooting, and he blasted a hole in Chelsea's armour-plating on the night Liverpool reached their second Champions League final in three seasons. 'Jose Mourinho has been a credit to English football,' Gerrard said. 'He makes us laugh.'
Upstairs at Anfield, at just the time Gerrard was speaking at pitch level, Mourinho was being gently ribbed by journalists over his ludicrous claim that Chelsea had been the only team trying to win, perhaps aware that his little-big-man persona had suddenly lurched from Napoleon Bonaparte to Charlie Chaplin. Sir Alex Ferguson had correctly admonished Mourinho earlier in the week for being disrespectful to opponents and unnecessarily personal about individuals, but in the long run Gerrard's comment will hit harder and hurt more. The one thing inspirational leaders cannot survive is comedy. As any former England manager will readily attest, you have had it once you become a figure of fun.
Just as goals change games, results alter reputations. Indeed, results make or break reputations. One disappointing note in all the tributes to Alan Ball last week was the suggestion by some that he was not actually a great player, just a driven individual who made up for his lack of natural talent by sheer hard work. What gives reporters the right to pontificate on these matters I do not know. We should judge footballers by their results, ditto with teams and managers.
Ball won a World Cup medal by playing the game of his life in the final at the age of 21. End of story. Permanently great. Those who would split his achievement into fractions, like skating judges awarding marks for technical ability and artistic merit, miss the point. The result is all that counts. Should Liverpool win a second European Cup in three years in Athens this month it will unquestionably put anything recently achieved by Manchester United or Chelsea in the shade.
Forget United's one appearance in the final in Ferguson's 20-odd years of trying, forget Chelsea's inability to advance past the semis, forget Fergie and Mourinho, and Arsene Wenger, too. Rafael Benitez suddenly looks like the best manager in England, if not Europe, and should he manage another against-the-odds victory in the final he will become the greatest of all managers. Because two European Cups in your first three seasons at a club is the sort of achievement that demands respect, no questions asked. Not even Bob Paisley's success was that dramatic, and he was not exactly new to Liverpool, nor operating in a foreign country, nor reaching European finals with players such as Djimi Traore and Bolo Zenden. And if Liverpool beat Milan again, and it remains a big if after the Italians' superb semi-final displays, it is going to look much more impressive in the record books than beating Monchengladbach, FC Brugge or Malmo. Yes, I know the last was Brian Clough.
Mourinho can moan all he likes, and he probably will, about Liverpool shirking in the league and saving their best for Europe. He has a point, for in their respective domestic leagues this year's Champions League finalists are a whopping combined total of 46 points off the pace. So perhaps the Champions League is not the most reliable guide to the best teams in Europe. Perhaps it is turning into a competition for specialists, something teams are beginning to concentrate on at the expense of their domestic form. But it does happen to be a trophy all the big teams want to win. Did Chelsea want to reach the final? Yes. Did they manage it? No. Will Liverpool fans enjoy being in a seventh European Cup final when Manchester United have managed two and all the London clubs between them have reached one? What do you think? History does not always record what we want it to record. History simply records who won and who lost.
And after the last two weeks of history, Benitez and Liverpool are the big winners, Mourinho and Chelsea the big losers, with United somewhere in between. Should United manage a league and Cup double it would go a long way to making up for their massive disappointment in Europe where, until the San Siro, they had been playing so well and simultaneously crank up the pressure on Chelsea. Mourinho has always been sackable, because that's the kind of regime under which he works, though should he finish the season with just the Carling Cup and a reputation as a sour loser Roman Abramovich would at least have some justification for ending the relationship. Mourinho has not played the Andriy Shevchenko situation particularly well, admittedly a tricky task when the player has been so underwhelming, and in the past couple of weeks managed to mislay his charm tablets and come up with some crass public pronouncements instead.
'What he said about Cristiano Ronaldo's background and class was out of order,' Ferguson said. 'We haven't fallen out, I quite enjoy the dialogue between us and I think Jose will still be around to continue it next season, but I just felt I had to respond to some of the stuff he was coming out with.'
The suspicion that the wheels are close to coming off at Chelsea was only heightened when the club gagged Mourinho this weekend. United did a press conference on Friday and have another one tomorrow. Chelsea did nothing at all, presumably on the basis that the best plan when in a hole is to stop digging. No manager, no players, not a peep. Liverpool just carried on with their normal arrangements as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Ferguson is not sure at this stage whether United's visit to Stamford Bridge on Wednesday will turn out to be the title decider. 'I'm not counting my chickens, I don't think that's a wise thing to do,' he explained. 'I always said there would be twists and turns in the run-in and there have been. I hope there are no more to come, but you never know. It could be we have to go to Chelsea and be decisive.'
One thing Ferguson and Mourinho will be able to agree upon, once they have patched up their differences over Ronaldo, is that the best way to reach a Champions League final is to lose interest in your domestic league at a fairly early stage. And try not to lose key personnel at the business end of the season. United's went to Milan with a patched-up defence, Chelsea played at Anfield without Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Ballack and Shevchenko. 'I'm fairly certain Chelsea bought Ballack and Shevchenko with the Champions League in mind, then neither of them played in the semi,' Ferguson said.
The United manager is full of praise for Benitez - 'Two Champions League finals in three years is a fantastic achievement' - though he finds his success explicable enough. Indeed, there is more than an echo of what Mourinho has been saying in Ferguson's assessment, though he manages to sound much more complimentary. If Mourinho needs a crash course in subtlety, he could do worse than to read on and learn from the master.
'Sometimes in athletics you see athletes prepare themselves for one tournament a year,' Ferguson said. 'I think Rafa made his mind up in January that he wasn't going to win the league and that Europe would have to be his target. Getting knocked out in the FA Cup early possibly helped as well. So he knew his target, and his preparation tactically has been very, very good. There's nothing wrong with that approach, it requires patience from everyone, from the board down to the fans, and it requires courage to do it. But this season Liverpool could see as early as September or October that they were not going to win the league, whereas we were in the melting pot.
'You can't turn opportunities down, we had to keep going for both. It should be a good Champions League final, though, because both teams will be 100 per cent fresh. No question about that, there will be no issues of tiredness. We didn't even bother to send anyone to watch AC Milan in their last two games, because in one they rested nine players and in the other six. Liverpool did the same thing last Saturday against Portsmouth. It doesn't bother me, it's part of the job. You hope you can handle what's in front of you, but we found Milan much fresher and better prepared than we were. If I'd had a few more players available I might have been able to freshen up my team too, unfortunately we've had some unusual injuries at a bad time and I've been having to use the same players. We were tired and we went out.'
Brilliant. But if neither Liverpool nor Milan will be tired in Athens, who is going to win? A fan who gatecrashed the post-match press conference at Anfield on Tuesday made the point that as long as the media keep writing Liverpool off, the team will keep proving them wrong. Hard but fair, perhaps, except this branch of the media tipped Liverpool for the title this season, only to be proved completely wrong well before Christmas. So you will understand if I go with Milan for the final. They were easily the best team in the last four and have a powerful desire to blot out the memory of Istanbul.
Fergie, as befits a cautious Scot and a diplomatic one, is sitting on the fence. 'Liverpool are hard to beat,' he said. 'They will set out to be hard to beat in the final. Milan have got fantastic quality and in Kaka and Seedorf they have a couple of special players, but there's two teams with different styles and it's a very difficult game to call. I wouldn't put a penny on it.
Steven Gerrard is noted for the accuracy and power of his shooting, and he blasted a hole in Chelsea's armour-plating on the night Liverpool reached their second Champions League final in three seasons. 'Jose Mourinho has been a credit to English football,' Gerrard said. 'He makes us laugh.'
Upstairs at Anfield, at just the time Gerrard was speaking at pitch level, Mourinho was being gently ribbed by journalists over his ludicrous claim that Chelsea had been the only team trying to win, perhaps aware that his little-big-man persona had suddenly lurched from Napoleon Bonaparte to Charlie Chaplin. Sir Alex Ferguson had correctly admonished Mourinho earlier in the week for being disrespectful to opponents and unnecessarily personal about individuals, but in the long run Gerrard's comment will hit harder and hurt more. The one thing inspirational leaders cannot survive is comedy. As any former England manager will readily attest, you have had it once you become a figure of fun.
Just as goals change games, results alter reputations. Indeed, results make or break reputations. One disappointing note in all the tributes to Alan Ball last week was the suggestion by some that he was not actually a great player, just a driven individual who made up for his lack of natural talent by sheer hard work. What gives reporters the right to pontificate on these matters I do not know. We should judge footballers by their results, ditto with teams and managers.
Ball won a World Cup medal by playing the game of his life in the final at the age of 21. End of story. Permanently great. Those who would split his achievement into fractions, like skating judges awarding marks for technical ability and artistic merit, miss the point. The result is all that counts. Should Liverpool win a second European Cup in three years in Athens this month it will unquestionably put anything recently achieved by Manchester United or Chelsea in the shade.
Forget United's one appearance in the final in Ferguson's 20-odd years of trying, forget Chelsea's inability to advance past the semis, forget Fergie and Mourinho, and Arsene Wenger, too. Rafael Benitez suddenly looks like the best manager in England, if not Europe, and should he manage another against-the-odds victory in the final he will become the greatest of all managers. Because two European Cups in your first three seasons at a club is the sort of achievement that demands respect, no questions asked. Not even Bob Paisley's success was that dramatic, and he was not exactly new to Liverpool, nor operating in a foreign country, nor reaching European finals with players such as Djimi Traore and Bolo Zenden. And if Liverpool beat Milan again, and it remains a big if after the Italians' superb semi-final displays, it is going to look much more impressive in the record books than beating Monchengladbach, FC Brugge or Malmo. Yes, I know the last was Brian Clough.
Mourinho can moan all he likes, and he probably will, about Liverpool shirking in the league and saving their best for Europe. He has a point, for in their respective domestic leagues this year's Champions League finalists are a whopping combined total of 46 points off the pace. So perhaps the Champions League is not the most reliable guide to the best teams in Europe. Perhaps it is turning into a competition for specialists, something teams are beginning to concentrate on at the expense of their domestic form. But it does happen to be a trophy all the big teams want to win. Did Chelsea want to reach the final? Yes. Did they manage it? No. Will Liverpool fans enjoy being in a seventh European Cup final when Manchester United have managed two and all the London clubs between them have reached one? What do you think? History does not always record what we want it to record. History simply records who won and who lost.
And after the last two weeks of history, Benitez and Liverpool are the big winners, Mourinho and Chelsea the big losers, with United somewhere in between. Should United manage a league and Cup double it would go a long way to making up for their massive disappointment in Europe where, until the San Siro, they had been playing so well and simultaneously crank up the pressure on Chelsea. Mourinho has always been sackable, because that's the kind of regime under which he works, though should he finish the season with just the Carling Cup and a reputation as a sour loser Roman Abramovich would at least have some justification for ending the relationship. Mourinho has not played the Andriy Shevchenko situation particularly well, admittedly a tricky task when the player has been so underwhelming, and in the past couple of weeks managed to mislay his charm tablets and come up with some crass public pronouncements instead.
'What he said about Cristiano Ronaldo's background and class was out of order,' Ferguson said. 'We haven't fallen out, I quite enjoy the dialogue between us and I think Jose will still be around to continue it next season, but I just felt I had to respond to some of the stuff he was coming out with.'
The suspicion that the wheels are close to coming off at Chelsea was only heightened when the club gagged Mourinho this weekend. United did a press conference on Friday and have another one tomorrow. Chelsea did nothing at all, presumably on the basis that the best plan when in a hole is to stop digging. No manager, no players, not a peep. Liverpool just carried on with their normal arrangements as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Ferguson is not sure at this stage whether United's visit to Stamford Bridge on Wednesday will turn out to be the title decider. 'I'm not counting my chickens, I don't think that's a wise thing to do,' he explained. 'I always said there would be twists and turns in the run-in and there have been. I hope there are no more to come, but you never know. It could be we have to go to Chelsea and be decisive.'
One thing Ferguson and Mourinho will be able to agree upon, once they have patched up their differences over Ronaldo, is that the best way to reach a Champions League final is to lose interest in your domestic league at a fairly early stage. And try not to lose key personnel at the business end of the season. United's went to Milan with a patched-up defence, Chelsea played at Anfield without Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Ballack and Shevchenko. 'I'm fairly certain Chelsea bought Ballack and Shevchenko with the Champions League in mind, then neither of them played in the semi,' Ferguson said.
The United manager is full of praise for Benitez - 'Two Champions League finals in three years is a fantastic achievement' - though he finds his success explicable enough. Indeed, there is more than an echo of what Mourinho has been saying in Ferguson's assessment, though he manages to sound much more complimentary. If Mourinho needs a crash course in subtlety, he could do worse than to read on and learn from the master.
'Sometimes in athletics you see athletes prepare themselves for one tournament a year,' Ferguson said. 'I think Rafa made his mind up in January that he wasn't going to win the league and that Europe would have to be his target. Getting knocked out in the FA Cup early possibly helped as well. So he knew his target, and his preparation tactically has been very, very good. There's nothing wrong with that approach, it requires patience from everyone, from the board down to the fans, and it requires courage to do it. But this season Liverpool could see as early as September or October that they were not going to win the league, whereas we were in the melting pot.
'You can't turn opportunities down, we had to keep going for both. It should be a good Champions League final, though, because both teams will be 100 per cent fresh. No question about that, there will be no issues of tiredness. We didn't even bother to send anyone to watch AC Milan in their last two games, because in one they rested nine players and in the other six. Liverpool did the same thing last Saturday against Portsmouth. It doesn't bother me, it's part of the job. You hope you can handle what's in front of you, but we found Milan much fresher and better prepared than we were. If I'd had a few more players available I might have been able to freshen up my team too, unfortunately we've had some unusual injuries at a bad time and I've been having to use the same players. We were tired and we went out.'
Brilliant. But if neither Liverpool nor Milan will be tired in Athens, who is going to win? A fan who gatecrashed the post-match press conference at Anfield on Tuesday made the point that as long as the media keep writing Liverpool off, the team will keep proving them wrong. Hard but fair, perhaps, except this branch of the media tipped Liverpool for the title this season, only to be proved completely wrong well before Christmas. So you will understand if I go with Milan for the final. They were easily the best team in the last four and have a powerful desire to blot out the memory of Istanbul.
Fergie, as befits a cautious Scot and a diplomatic one, is sitting on the fence. 'Liverpool are hard to beat,' he said. 'They will set out to be hard to beat in the final. Milan have got fantastic quality and in Kaka and Seedorf they have a couple of special players, but there's two teams with different styles and it's a very difficult game to call. I wouldn't put a penny on it.
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