By Myles Palmer
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Scotland 1 Holland 0
Russia 0 Wales 0
England 2 Denmark 3
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My Scottish brother Paddy came round to watch the Holland game, so I felt Scottish on Saturday.
I’m not a Scot, but my Mum was, and my brothers were born in Dundee, and I’ve lived in Edinburgh and Stirling, and spent a lot of time with Scottish musicians and Scottish football fans, and I’ve have written a lot for Scottish newspapers.
So this Euro 2004 play-off reminded me of going to Hearts and Falkirk and Dunfermline and driving through a blizzard to Motherwell on New Year’s Day and taking the kids to see Stirling Albion and kickabouts in the High School in summer and watching the 1974 World Cup in a flat in Chelsea with the Average White Band and writing witty previews of the Scotland-England games and thinking for years, regretfully, that the great game, which seemed to be woven permanently into the fabric of Scottish life, has been in steep and terminal decline up there.
AND YET : delighted to see Paul Dickov throwing himself into 50-50s against the giant Jaap Stam.I know Paul and love his spirit.
So when Darren Fletcher backheels and McFadden blasts the only goal of the game I remember Rod Stewart talking about childbirth.
When one of his kids was born, Rod said, “It was like watching Scotland score. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s fantastic.”
MARK VAN BOMMEL is recovering from a hernia op. Van der Vaart was only on the bench.
And Dick Advocaat started Kluivert, proving that he is as big a plonker as Kluivert, who always lets you down in big games.
Kluivert was so bad that he gave me hope.
And Advocaat was so bad that I have hopes for Amsterdam on Wednesday night.
He took Davids off and put Van der Vaart on IN MIDFIELD!
He brought the nation’s most creative half-striker on in central midfield when they were 1-0 down ! What an idiot!
I was scared when Jackie McNamara clattered Overmars in the box, as he ran away from the goal, but Paddy laughed it off as “an obvious dive.”
Watching Advocaat take off Gio to put Cocu at left back was like watching the captain re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
He already had no midfield! Only Davids ! And he took him off !
A 24-carat plonker !
Ajax-football is shape-football and youth football.
It needs total awareness and sharp running by young legs, players able to give each other passing options all day long.
It is a weird system in which width denudes midfield if you are not super-tidy in your passing and super-energetic in your running.
I would have taken Kluivert off after 7 minutes !
RUSSIA tried to walk the ball into the net against Wales, so it was a goalless draw.
Is the second leg in Cardiff the biggest game Wales have played since 1958?
WAYNE ROONEY had four days in bed with flu, but got up to score the first goal and make the second – and he also hit the post.
The kid is struggling to compute everything that has happened to him in the last year.It would be hard for any teenager.
But Rooney feels at home on a football field.
After four minutes, he played a pass forward to Heskey and when the ball broke off a defender he spurted forward to blast it in off the underside from 14 yards.
The goal was thunderous, It was thrilling.It was the bulldog genius doing his thing. He is a force of nature. He is volcanic.
In the first minute of the game I was watching Rooney and thinking : HE KNOWS WHAT TO DO !
All these years Ive been watching Roger Hunt and Tony Woodcock and Andy Cole and they made the game look like hard work, and often they didn’t know what to do, but this kid always knows what to do.
And that quality is born into Wayne Rooney. As I said when I first wrote about him here, footballers are made by their Mums and Dads.
So it is suddenly 1-0 and then three minutes later Martin Jorgensen makes it 1-1 and then within 42 seconds Rooney draws two defenders to him and takes both out with a disguised left-foot pass into Joe Cole’s run.
The ball has stopped rolling by the time Joe reaches it.
He is in space, the ball is made to measure for him, he does not have to stretch or check his stride, it’s not put on a plate for him, its put on a tee for him – and Joe sidefoots it sweetly into the corner of the net for 2-1 after 8 minutes and 20 seconds.
Joe Cole SHOULD score that type of goal. If Rooney is outside the box, Joe should run past him into the box because he knows the kid will see him and give him passes like that.
THEN MATTHEW UPSON concedes a penalty for Jorgensen to make it 2-2.
When Sven plays the diamond, Ashley Cole gets no protection. Both goals came down his side.
After 56, Rooney hit the post with a wondershot from a narrow angle.
After 81, Denmark scored the winner after sloppy play by substitutes Jenas and Robinson.
Jenas had room to kick the ball but chose to make a weak header.
Having made a weak header he stood and watched Jorgensen blast a hard straight shot which Robinson spills for Jon-Dahl Tomasson to snap up the winner.
Last season Jenas looked like an English Michael Ballack, a world class talent in the making.
He has lost it. Why?
BECKHAM was not himself.Going through the motions, cheesed off with the FA, worried about his back injury.
There’s loads more to say about Sven and England, but it can wait for another time.
17th November 2003.