By Myles Palmer
ADAM CROZIER hired Sven but pissed off the blazers, so they kicked him out.
Crozier did some good things and the organisation he left was more modern.
New FA chief Mark Palios is now throwing his weight around and we have the bizarre spectacle of Sol Campbell’s hearing following today’s Rio Ferdinand ban.
Ferdinand says he failed to submit himself to a drug test at Carrington on 23 September because he was moving house that day and left training in a hurry.
He forgot.
He tested negative 36 hours later.
We will never know if Rio would have tested positive or negative on the day UK Sport tested the other three Man United players.
That is wholly hypothetical now. We will never know.
What is wrong is the FA procedure.
It has sabotaged what little hope England had of winning their biggest game of the year.
Just as Sol should have been charged long ago for the Djemba-Djemba retaliation in the Community Shield way back on August 10th, so should Rio Ferdinand’s non-compliance have been sorted well before Istanbul, or left till next week.
Some of my journalist colleagues think that to name Rio now, and de-select him, before his case is heard, is ridiculous.
Others believe that the FA had a duty to name him and drop him.
Did the FA stall and then find that drug-testers UK Sport were threatening to name Rio, realising that he already had one foot on the plane?
Either way, Mark Palios seems determined to make a name for himself.
HE IS DOING IT VERY CLUMSILY.
I’m writing this half an hour after being told that two Leeds footballers have been arrested on a new rape charge, nothing to do with the notorious Grosvenor House incidents.
MANY PEOPLE resent footballers for earning too much money for doing too little.
The tabloids feed on that resentment, trivialising the game and slaughtering the players wherever possible.
And I usually think : they’re only footballers.
Many can’t do anything except kick a ball, many are dimwits and muppets, but we still expect 100% good behaviour from them.Why?
If you earned £45,000 a week, like Kieron Dyer, could you handle it?
I’m told that 300 Newcastle groupies follow the team around. It’s a party city.
Young athletes are being chased by 300-400 groupies every week of the year.
Having said all that, the Grosvenor Hotel case is a massive test for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Find out what happened! Bring charges! Or dismiss the whole squalid episode!
Get it right quickly! Don’t make a pig’s breakfast out of this one.
ISTANBUL is more than a football match.
There are 40 nations playing games on Saturday but all eyes are on Turkey v England
Italian ref Pierluigi Collina said in his recent autobiography that David Beckham is his favourite player.
Should he write a book while still reffing internationals?
Collina is not a poser, or a pedant, so he may be able to keep 22 players on the field on Saturday.
IT WILL BE the end of the line for England if our hooligans start a riot in the city.
The airport is in the east of Istanbul and the Sukru Saracoglu stadium is in the west and 7,000 police will protect the stadium and the city from the 300 travelling hooligans.
The Bosphorus can only be crossed by ferry and by one road bridge and nobody without a ticket will get within two miles of the game.
RETIRING UEFA boss Lennart Johansson will kick England out of 2004 because he does not want to inflict our thugs on a country as gentle as Portugal.
On the field, Turkey are strong.
The World Cup was made for them, as they are half-Asian, and they finished third, taking Brazil all the way in both games.
Turkey have never scored against England, but that will change on Saturday night.
They now have a cosmopolitan confidence.
They have benefited from German coaches Jupp Derwall and Sepp Piontek, whose assistant Fatih Terim later took Turkey to Euro 96 and led Galatasaray to the UEFA Cup Final in 2000, where they beat Arsenal on penalties.
Many of their stars play abroad. Ours don’t.
Playmaker Tugay plays for Blackburn, as did Hakan Sukur last season.
Hakan Sukur is their Shearer, a legendary No 9, a tough old pro, deadly in the air.
The Alpay who plays for Turkey find a level he never achieves for Aston Villa.
Basturk creates for Leverkusen in the Bundesliga and was outstanding in the Champions League Final against Real Madrid in Glasgow.
Emre is a Caucasian Edgar Davids, a tricky warrior.
Fortunately, Emre does not score goals.
Nihat is one of my favourite strikers, so brave, so explosive, so determined, a goalmaker and goalsnatcher supreme, truly a world class player, a little genius who will not be at Real Sociedad for much longer.
Nihat is pure quality and he could take Gary Neville and John Terry apart.
By my reckoning, England cannot beat Turkey.
Only the event can beat Turkey, the size of the task, the blinding glare of the huge prize for the winners: automatic qualification for Euro 2004.
The Turks need to win, so they will go for it and score first.
Sven will tell his quarterbacks, Gerrard and Beckham, to whack it long for Heskey and Rooney.
If England get three free-kicks, Beckham should score against Rustu, who has been injured and is not playing for Barcelona.
I’m guessing the line-ups of course, and that is never easy on a Friday night,let alone a Tuesday.
October 7th 2003.