By Myles Palmer
AS ANOTHER heatwave starts in England, another pre-season is ending.
Loads of games live on the box.
Beckham looked nervous but made a sensible debut.
Arsenal will need to improve by 200% to beat Man United on Sunday.
And Ajax were far better than Liverpool in the Amsterdam tournament.
Too much football this weekend. Most of it was dull, as you would expect with experimental teams in early August.
On Friday, Ajax v Liverpool showed tidy passers failing to break down a defensive team.
Diouf v Trabelsi was a good tussle, which Trabelsi won.
Diouf still likes to kick the ball past his marker, then wrestle him to the ground.
Kewell on the right was slippery, but could not feed Owen.
Dudek made a great late save from a Sonck header.
It finished 0-0.
INTER looked useful, stuffing Galatasaray 3-0.
Saturday lunchtime brought China Dragons v Real Madrid.
Beckham stood between Figo and Zidane as they all shook hands with diginitaries and guests.
He looked nervous. He looked very nervous.
I’ve never seen David Beckham look so apprehensive before any game, even a World Cup game.
Anybody would be nervous: your first game for your new club,and the club is Real Madrid.
And after a televised,sponsored medical, media frenzy,Beckham-mania in Beijing.
Becks played steadily, energetically, did nothing too flash,nothing too audacious.He was solid.
He grafted, hit two crossfield passes, had one free-kick parried,hit another a foot past the post.
RONALDO is a big fat pudding.
He was comical. Hopelessly off the pace.
At Real, the sponsors pick the attack.
The coach picks the defence and the bench.
So if Ronnie is ambulant, he starts.
After 42, Ronaldo did something right and a goal came.
He stabbed the ball between a defender’s legs to Figo, who scored at the far post.
In a month or two Beckham will reveal his true self to the
Spanish football public.
They will see a a great grafter and great quarterback, a player who can’t design a game, but who can design a game’s decisive moments.
Figo , Zidane and Ronaldo were replaced after 65 with the score still 1-0.
I had backed Madrid to win by three goals or more.
After 73, Beckham went off.
Then Morientes scored twice and Portillo made it 4-0.
President Perez thinks the players could be fitter and better organised in defence.
New coach Carlos Queiroz is good on conditioning and defensive drills.
KOLO TOURE played centreback at Celtic.
Radical, Arsene !
Last season Toure showed as much positional sense as a gerbil.
In the first half the team didn’t look like Arsenal.
But Aliadiere was terrific : quick, creative, stylish, got some passes in.
Unfortunately, he was getting the ball on the halfway line. He needs to get it 30 yards out, or in the box.
Jeffers had a nightmare. I was amazed by how bad he was.Neverseen him play worse.
The first goal came when Neil Lennon chipped in, Sylla headed over Campbell, and Liam Miller was allowed to chest the ball,then head it, then hook an overhead shot past Lehman.
How far out was Miller?
Seven yards.
Blaming Jens Lehmann for not saving a shot from seven yards is unfair, in my view.
Lehmann got a hand to to it.I thought he did well to get a hand to it.
Lehmann will be a marvellous keeper for Arsenal. In 5 weeks time he would probably save the same shot.
Most teams concede goals like this in pre-season.
Then they tighten up.We all know that.
But the goal worried me.
Toure, a powerhouse ball-chaser, went AWOL. And the other three were defending too deep.
Arsenal now have a keeper who will come and punch balls like that. So they should defend further out.
The same shot from 12 yards, Lehman would have saved it.
The same shot from 16 yards, he would have caught it.
It was a stupid goal, a sucker goal. They allowed Miller to get too close. But give Miller some credit for improvising.
A small, nimble guy, Miller hooked the ball neatly before Ashley Cole could reach it.
If Miller had let the ball bounce he would have been tackled. And he knew that.
Immediately after the goal, Arsene put Cygan on for Toure.He might have done that anyway.
Second half, it looked more like Arsenal, with Vieira, Edu, van Bronckhorst and Kanu.
Kanu broke on the right and crossed and the ball came back to him off Valgaeren.He poked it in from two yards.
VERDICT : A disappointing game, two bad goals.
I thought: They won’t beat Rangers or Man United playing like this.
Arsenal have a lot of improving to do before Everton on the 16th.
LIVERPOOL were well beaten by Galatasaray, although it was only 2-1.
Watching Ajax v Inter was like a different sport: it was interesting, stimulating, enjoyable.
Trabelsi was the best player in the tournament.
He looked good against Arsenal last season.
Trabelsi is the African Cafu : quick, positive, poised, tenacious, good final ball.
He was marking his former colleague Andy van Der Meyde for half the game.
Inter coach Hector Cuper gets stick he doesn’t deserve.
First half, they were OK.
Zanetti is phenomenal and his link with new boy Luciano will be productive.
Pienaar fired the first goal past Toldo, Rafael van der Vaart hit the second, and sub Wamberto made it 3-0 to clinch the tournament.
Ajax are young, organised, intelligent, make good runs off each other all day long.
They stay true to their distinctive tradition, their tidy collective style.
It’s the most highly-evolved style I’ve seen since Dynamo Kiev at Wembley.
I LIKE AJAX A LOT.
Ronald Koeman might be one of the great coaches of this millennium.
On Saturday evening, while I was watching the Arsenal game, I had a phone call from musician pal Lee Kosmin.
He said his bass player’s uncle had given them three tickets for the Mound Stand at Lords.
“It’s a fantastic view, I’ve only been in the Nursery End before.I noticed that a guy next to me was reading some printed sheets and it said : By Myles Palmer. It was from your website.So I said : I know Myles, he used to manage me. And the guy said : I always read his stuff. I’ve got his book about Arsene Wenger.”
Proves you can go to cricket, you can see a record score by an overseas player at Lords (Graeme Smith,259) but you can’t get away from football.
I told Lee that these odd things happen occasionally in London.
I had something similar a few years ago.
“One night I was coming home from a gig at the Borderline. I was on the tube and I sat down next to a youth who was reading a magazine. He was about 19 or 20. I saw that it was 90 Minutes, a football weekly in which I had interviewed a player.
“So I was wondering if the kid would get off the train before he got to my article. And I was wondering if I should say anything.Some stops go by, and then he started to read my piece.
“I couldn’t help myself – it’s very unhip, I hated myself for being so unhip – but I had to say something.
I said, “Do you like my article?”
“What?” he said.
“I wrote that article.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did – test me on it!”
We had a little chat, a laugh or two, and he got off at Finchley Road.
Lee said his band Crooked Usage recently played at Highbury.
Mezzanine Suite, Clock End, the England Supporters Club annual dinner.
“They’ve re-booked us for next year – at Aston Villa!”
August 4th 2003.