From Neil : pass,pass,pass
Myles,
Hey my friend, you say I am too harsh on Wenger.
This is an excerpt from an Oliver Bierhoff interview. While not condemning Wenger, he has a dig at the style of football.
“I trace it back to 2000, when we changed the system in Germany. It transformed the development centres of clubs.
“We said to the players that it was now all about fun, enjoyment and technique. Even the national team players tend to play another pass when they are in the final third.
“Players from my time would have just lashed the ball into goal. But it\’s in the psyche of the players now.
“I remember getting booed because I hit the bar twice instead of scoring. Today you get applause after a good move when you don\’t score.â€
This could have been written about Arsenal: fabulous moves, no goal.
Myles says:
I\’ve seen hundreds of games at Wembley, some as a fan but most as a journalist.
Terry Venables, an over-rated manager with one box of tricks, should have won that tournament and might have done if Graeme Le Saux had been fit.
I was there when we thrashed Holland 4-1 and also saw the thriller against Germany. And I was in the press box for the final, Germany v Czech Republic. Bierhoff came on as a sub and scored the equaliser and it went into extra time and then he scored the only golden goal of the tournament in the 95th minute.
Bierhoff’s winner remains the only golden goal I\’ve ever seen and it was unforgettable because, in the stadium, it was like a freeze-frame.
I\’d seen many reactions to dramatic goals but I\’d never seen everything stop, never seen every player freeze and collapse on the ground or just stand still. I had never seen a football match end that way, with so many players from both sides on lying on the pitch, so it seemed cinematic, like the freeze-frame of a battlefield.
Looking back, Oliver Bierhoff gave me that strange and beautiful moment.
If I ever write a football memoir, Wembley will need a chapter. I had a lot of fun there and, for me, that\’s what life is all about: the pursuit of enjoyment. Sure, you work, you get married, you reproduce, you have a lot of laughs bringing up a family, you love your friends, you get close to wonderful people as you bounce through life\’s ups and downs.
But if it\’s not fun, why bother? We\’re only here once and there is no heaven.
This nine-minute highlights video does not have an English commentary and doesn\’t show what I saw in that unique moment of finality. But it has some terrific action by players you\’ll remember well, including a penalty save by David Seaman.
The first tournament I blogged was France 98, so I didn\’t do Euro 96.
We did OK that summer, we had our moments. Gazza gave us a run for our money but he missed a sitter from six inches. We wrote the song and we recorded the hit but the dream ended with Jurgen Klinsmann singing our song from balcony in Stuttgart as he held up our trophy.
Football\’s coming home?
The reliable Germans thought that was fair enough.
For them, football had come home.