By Myles Palmer
QUITE AN EVENTFUL DAY, Monday was.
Real Madrid coach Camacho was without the injured Figo and Zidane on Saturday, but he still dropped Raul and Beckham, the untouchables.
He started Owen to show us how mediocre Owen is, brought Beckham on for Juanfran in 55, and then brought Morientes on for Owen in 65.
Ronaldo looked haggard, sweaty, like a prisoner during a brutal interrogation, as they lost 1-0 at Espanyol.
Monday, Camacho tells Perez to stuff the job.
It’s not working, he says, and it will never work, a chilling comment for the construction billionaire to swallow.
Camacho must have told Perez : I’ll come back, if I’m in charge.
He came back and found Perez was in charge.
AT 3.30 PM I GET HOME from the gym and find that Brian Clough has died.
A brilliant bully, a genius who COULD have managed today’s millionaires, the Genghis Khan of the East Midlands, the greatest dictator of them all.
Upcoming biographies, libelling the newly-dead, will tell us how corrupt Cloughie was, I would imagine.
I thought of Brian Clough as an outrageous iconoclast, a truly compelling personality, our Cassius Clay : funny, crazy, different, needing tons and tons of love.
One night at West Ham I saw Stuart Pearce make two mistakes-and Cloughie took him off.
Relating this to Rob Hughes today, Rob told me of a game at Palace where Forest were a goal up with 15 minutes to go, and Cloughie had used the one sub he was allowed, and Roy Keane swore at the referee-and Cloughie took him off and clipped him round the ear as he left the field !
Clough insisted afterwards that,”I’m the only one who can swear at the ref.”
I will never, never, never forget his ITV interview after a staggering 3-3 first leg draw against Cologne at the City Ground (Okudera-Jap sub sinks Forest), when Mr Charisma looked into the camera and reached down deep into our quaking hearts, and said, “I hope nobody is going to be STUPID enough to write us off. We only need one.”
Forest went to Cologne and beat them 1-0.
The nasal whine of Brian Clough’s voice, the gleam in his eye, the impossibly passionate conviction of his delivery, his heavy emphasis on STUPID, will live with me forever.
Forest won two European Cups, and his Derby were cheated out of another they were capable of winning.
Brian Clough was a flawed great man.
Maybe he was the Jose Mourinho of 1978.
GOONERS WHO SAW Man United 2 Liverpool 1 will soon forget about the small disaster of conceding twice from set-pieces against Bolton.
With Rio back, with Silvestre heading two goals, Man United looked like the Red Devils of old : wingers, momentum, width, crosses, balls into the box, ruthlessness, headers, shots, a viciously competitive Manchester machine cranking up through the gears, firing on all six cylinders.
Don’t know who kicked Gerrard on the foot, but he went off in 39 when the score was 1-0.
Do you believe in karma?
We saw instant karma when O’Shea trod sadistically on Luis Garcia’s achilles in 48 and then scored an own goal in 56, when Carragher’s header hit him and dribbled over the line for 1-1.
Scholes and Kewell stunk the place out.
XABI ALONSO gave a masterclass of modern pivot play.
He was a free-floating creative anchorman, a Spanish drum machine who set the tempo, just as Paulo Sosa used to do for Portugal and Juventus, knocking off volleyed passes to wide positions, covering every blade, and almost making it2-2 with a tremendous floating drive from the halfway line, which Roy Carroll got back to and parried down from just under the bar.
Xabi Alonso is the player England need.
Ronaldo is elemental now.
The fancy dan has become a dynamo, a powerhouse, a hurricane, a constant threat.
OK, it’s only one performance.
And just as one great game does not make a great player, one great
performance does not make a great team.
BUT IT SHOWS THEY CAN STILL DO IT – we didn’t know whether
Man United could still play like this.
Silvestre has been garbage all year, for France and United.
Tonight, with Rio back, he was awesome.
YES, THIS SEASON will be interesting.
Could be the best title race ever.
Arsenal have the best squad and best manager, Chelsea are very hard to beat, Souness will improve Newcastle in the short term, and Benitez is bringing smiles back to Merseyside.
September 20th 2004.