EPL Talk » Spain

Why Can’t David Healy Score In The Premiership

Paul Bestall — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:52:58 +0000

If you were your country’s top scorer with a healthy 35 goals in 73 appearances, chances are you’d be an established top league player in most countries in Europe. Add to that record a career that has seen you start out at Manchester United and take in spells at Leeds United, Sunderland and Fulham, you’d expect a pretty good record. Yet, if that player was David Healy, you’d be scratching your head.

Here’s a man who scored a hat trick against Spain in September 2006. In fact, during qualifying matches for the 2008 European Championships, Healy bagged an incredible 13 goals in 12 games, making him the top scorer in qualifying for the tournament. Yet in the last 18 months he’s scored just 2 Premier League goals in 20 matches and his time at Sunderland has seen him struggle to maintain a place in the starting line up.

His time under Roy Keane never really took off and when Keane walked out after spending the best part of £100 million to make a team worse, his replacement, Ricky Sbragia preferred pragmatism to striking options and played with only Kenwyne Jones up front. As he’s just turned 30, is it too late for him to force himself into Steve Bruce’s plans? With Darren Bent joining over the summer, Healy has yet to play any Premiership football so far this season.

Healy has almost had the reversal of some players careers, in that he is so prolific at international level, but so inconsistent at domestic level. How is it that someone can score 35 goals against sides such as Sweden, Spain and Denmark, yet struggle to score more than 15 goals in a league season? He’s managed that feat only once, in 2003-04 when he was at Preston and currently has scored a total of 90 goals in English domestic football.

He’s the only player to score a hat trick twice for Northern Ireland; even George Best never managed that, but only scored one in league football. I doubt I can remember a striker with such a strange record in the modern era. When he joined Fulham in 2007, it was supposedly the move that would finally see Healy establish himself as a top flight striker but he only scored 4 Premier League goals for the Cottagers. He hit two in his first two league appearances, so then hit 2 in another 28 games.

How is it possible? I don’t understand it at all. When you look at someone who was the complete opposite, Ian Wright, who was so prolific at league level but only scored 9 goals for England in 31 games. Or even Andrew Cole, with just one international goal to his name in 15 games but 289 throughout his domestic career.

Healy has the talent, his international record cannot be a continual series of flukes spread over a series of years. If anything, the early part of his international career could be written off, as Northern Ireland struggled to win any game for nearly16 matches and two years between 2002 and 2004. His international career is currently going through a similar spell, with only 1 goal in his last 12 appearances. No doubt a hangover from his domestic struggles but Healy is an international footballing enigma.

The question is can he finally find the right relationship with Steve Bruce at Sunderland to finally ignite the touch paper under his career? Northern Ireland’s fans will be hoping he can find his form as soon as possible.Unfortunately they need him to be in form right now, but the next match could see him end his bad run and if he ever needed to do it, now is the time.

Wednesday night sees them entertain the group leaders Slovakia and a win will put Northern Ireland top of the group and just one game away from a return to the World Cup for the first time since 1986 and wouldn’t that be a phenomenal achievement.

Do We Ask Too Much Of Our International Sides?

Ethan Armstrong — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:13:28 +0000

Yesterday, I asked the question of implementing live video review in football. Today’s question is: are our expectations too high for international football? I enjoyed your responses to yesterday’s article. Please weigh in with your feelings on international football in the comment section below.

It is easy to hold one’s international side to an unfair ideal. On the international scene we want to see the same quality and resolve of the most successful league sides. And why not? A country’s top players are called up and collected, pulled from their various posts in the world to come together and represent their country as the best and brightest in footballing talent. Why shouldn’t England, the Netherlands and Spain have the same success, the same overstuffed trophy cabinets of Manchester United, AFC Ajax and Real Madrid?

These three countries have long been strong figures on the world stage and they’ve fielded some of the world’s best players. But success has often been elusive.

England have boasted the quality of Beckham, Shilton, Lineker, Owen, Barnes, Gascoigne, Shearer, Keegan, etc, yet they haven’t won the World Cup since 1966. They’ve never won the Euro. Doubly frustrating since England was the birthplace of the game as we know it today.

The Netherlands gave us Total Football (cue heavenly music). They seduced the world with Cruyff’s flowing grace and bottomless imagination, and his heirs—the likes of van Basten, Kluivert, Bergkamp, van Nistelrooy, Robben—have carried his ideals onward. Today, they have some of the best attacking players in the world. They won the Euro in 1988, but they’ve never won the World Cup.

These are two of the most confounding examples. But any national team can struggle to live up to the quality of the sum of its parts. Reigning World Cup champs Italy, have stumbled since 2006. They still burst with quality. But age has compromised their vitality. They had to sneak into Euro 2008 before bowing out to Spain on penalty kicks. They didn’t make it from the group stage of the Confederations Cup, losing to both Brazil and Egypt.

Spain may be the best team in the world now, but pre-2008 they were famous for promising starts before getting knocked out by the quarter-finals in the Euro and World Cup alike.

One problem is the international side can never build the deep chemistry of the top league club. They simply don’t have the time. Practices are limited and matches are squeezed into the gaps in league campaigns. If the league side is a player’s day job, his national team is the regional conference. He meets up with the top men from the other top companies, but how much can they really get done when they don’t work together every week? They practice when they can. They play friendlies to hone that competitive edge. But all the while the team is changing shape as different players hit their stride at the day job (or get injured onsite) the call-ups shift and the face of the team changes greatly in a short amount of time. Meanwhile the national manager haggles with league managers over who he can have, who he should rest, who he should sub off in the 60th minute. How does he get anything done with such parameters?

The other big issue is context. There is a huge disparity between the nature of league and international campaigns. A winning league club gets to bury the odd loss in a heap of good results in a long season. But since major international campaigns are built on group stages and knock-out fixtures, the best national team can be derailed by a loss or two. Spain tied Brazil’s 35-match unbeaten streak, but one loss to the US yesterday saw them knocked from the Confederations Cup. Similarly, the Dutch had an unbelievable record in the qualifying and group stages of the Euro, but Russia knocked them out 3-1 in the quarter-finals.

Ultimately, success on the international stage is built atop a foundation of skill and depth. But in the end what it really takes to capture the big prizes is a bit of magic. Spain are not the best team in the world because their players are better than Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney, Robben, Sneijder, van der Vaart, etc.. These are all world-class players as well. No, what pushed Spain over the edge into greatest team-dom was that they found that necessary spark at all the right times. From Iker Casillas’s gravity defying saves to that instant when Torres broke through and broke German hearts with his single goal, Spain had enough magic moments to transform international side into club team. If you’d told me they played together everyday, I would have believed it in the summer of 2008. They started a fire that kept them going for 35 unbeaten matches. Despite loss to the US, they may well be able to keep the thing lit through 2010.

Overall, I think we set the bar of expectation higher than most international sides can handle. Given the circumstances working against them. But we are not about to lower it. We’d rather wait, praying our side can someday vault over our soaring hopes.

Spain once made up the Triumvirate of Fruitless Promise along with England and the Dutch. But in 2008 they finally broke through to find success. The Three Lions and the Oranje will just have to keep trying and waiting for their own spark to flare up. That intersection where all the elements of skill, drive and luck come together at once. The miraculous goal goes in. The belief-defying save is made. That small bit of magic lifts the side at the perfect moment to see them sprint along the thin margin of error and claim all the glory.

Of course, as an American, I’m just hoping the USA can lose more beautifully to Brazil in the final on Sunday—barring a South African upset today, which I’d take—than they did in the group stage. If they want to defy belief agian that’s fine too. But I’m not sure how many miracles they’ll be allowed in one competition.

Now that I’ve gotten started on the Dutch, my thinking wanders to the influence Ajax and the Oranje had in the 1970s (and beyond). Tomorrow’s question: What Does The Dream of Total Football Mean Today?

Spain’s EPL Stars Shut Out In South Africa

Brian Louie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:30:50 +0000

Wednesday’s Confederations Cup semifinal between the United States and Spain had David v. Goliath written all over it. Coasting to the semis with three wins out of three, it looked like Spain was about to teach the US a lesson in tiki-taka.

With the US advancing to the semis after shipping six goals to Italy and Brazil, the drawbacks of a two group, eight team tournament were pretty clear. How a side that was blown out in two games and won one deserved to go through may not seem right, but hey it’s group play, and it’s not like Italy and Egypt did themselves any favors.

For European champions Spain, with the flash of Liverpool’s Fernando Torres and Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas, and a partial spine of Barcelona in Xavi, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol, this should’ve been their 16th straight victory, and a record-setting 37-match unbeaten streak.

Instead, the US rendered Spain impotent, thanks to stellar netminding from Everton’s Tim Howard. The scoring came courtesy of Fulham’s Clint Dempsey, and Villareal’s loaned-out striker, Jozy Altidore.

How a squad could look so horrible against an aging Italy and look so good against a pretty side like Spain isn’t that surprising. Anyone who’s watched Arsenal fail to finish against a mid-table team will tell you that even the least technical and lumbering of sides can win if they’re organized and take advantage of mistakes.

And Spain’s mistakes cost them. Altidore’s goal in the 27th minute showed how strong the youngster is, but also made Joan Capdevila look like a limpid rag doll. Dempsey’s goal in the 74th made the Spanish backline look comical, from Pique’s deflection of Landon Donovan’s cross off his heel, to Sergio Ramos’ touch to setup the Fulham striker for the US’s second goal.

The big names like Torres and Fabregas were shut down by the lesser-known names like Dempsey and Howard, and it’s hard not think of Fabregas’ Gunners if you saw Spain today. So fluid and dominant in posession, La Roja look like Barcelona, with a few Premier League stars and a couple of Merengues at the back (and of course the Davids: Silva and Villa). But, like Arsenal, they lacked that final ball, and mistakes in defense hurt them dearly.

What can you take from this upset? Perhaps not much; though the US will ride a wave of euphoria until next summer’s World Cup, but whether or not the they can achieve results from the same tactics in a bigger and deeper tournament remains to be seen. For Spain, it’s merely a blip. It may put Vicente del Bosque in the papers a bit more for the wrong reasons, but with Italy on the wrong side of the hill, Spain still is the team to beat in Europe. It does however, show what you can do against the top-ranked team in the world if you can contain Xavi.

While there’s really nothing else to watch between seasons, the Confederations Cup’s perceived relevance is artificial at best. New Zealand and South Africa’s inclusion, as representatives of Oceania and the host of the 2010 World Cup, respectively, does little to set pulses racing. But the prospect of the United States possibly facing Brazil in a final may be enough to get Americans into football and away from sah-ker. That is, if South Africa don’t pull off an upset of their own on Thursday.

Spain 0 – 2 United States [FIFA]

Chelsea’s Punishment Shows UEFA Is Toothless

Paul Bestall — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:00:30 +0000

Now I’m certainly not going to start defending Chelsea’s players or the reactions of certain fans after the final whistle back on May 6th. Yes, the referee had a nightmare, yes Chelsea should have had two penalties at least and yes to some people it was easy to understand the reactions of some of the players after Tom Henning Ovrebo’s performance that night.It doesn’t excuse the behaviour of the players and fans after the game at all.

What I am astounded at is UEFA fining Chelsea £85,000 for failure to control their players and fans. Not because I disagree with it, but because UEFA continually ignore the issue of racism at football matches and issue a stream of pathetic, pointless little fines to teams who allow they’re fans to pollute football with their backward mentality towards non-white players. When you look at Chelsea’s punishment and then consider it in the scheme of failure to control players and fans, you’ll see what I mean.

In UEFA’s little world, racism isn’t an issue that warrants serious attention. They pretend it doesn’t happen and we’re all one big happy footballing family. Two years ago, England Under 21’s were fined £2000 for failure to control thier players after taking exception to Serbia’s players and fans who had racially abused the black members of the England Under 21 team throughout and after their European Championship match in 2007. Serbia were fined £16,500 and allowed to continue in the competition. This is UEFA’s zero tolerance approach to racism, paltry fines and allowing racist idiots to continue to perform.

In 2004, England’s black players were heckled throughout the 90 minutes of a “friendly” against Spain in Madrid at the Bernabeu Stadium. The Spanish FA were fined the crippling amount of £44,500 from a game that generated 4 million pounds. 1% of the revenue that match created for the Spanish F.A . Once again, UEFA showed zero tolerance. That’ll show them won’t it?

Of course some Croatia fans infamously formed a human swastika in 2006 during a game against Italy but were only fined £10,000 even though it was the third racist incident by their fans in 4 years. Once again, UEFA showed zero tolerance.

It astounds me that the UEFA continue to punish clubs and players so leniently and then wonder why incidents still happen in certain countries. When a club receives a bigger fine for showing petulance and anger towards a match official than teams that unfurl racist, anti-muslim or anti-semitic slogans and banners at games then it shows how scared to tackle the issue they really are.

Of course Chelsea didn’t do themselves any favours by their behaviour that night, but does it justify a fine of such a value when compared to far more unsavoury incidents? For UEFA to punish Chelsea so sternly in comparison is an easy decision by UEFA. It’s an easy way out for them as it was so widely publicised around the world but in the scheme of football what causes the game more damage? Racist morons or emotionally charged football fans?

Drogba though is rather lucky in my opinion to have only received a 4 game ban from European competition; though he does have the threat of a further two games that have been suspended if he oversteps the mark again. Boswinga, who rightly apologised after calling the referee a cheat in the Portuguese media, strangely received a 3 match ban. He withdrew his comments as quickly as he had made them and even rang Overbo to apologise, so can feel harshly done by in comparison to Drogba. Michael Ballack meanwhile is quite possibly the luckiest player at Stamford Bridge, as he’s got away scot free for his body checking and pulling of the referee. Perhaps they were impressed with his star jumps?

In UEFA’s mind, swearing at a referee or calling him a cheat is a worse offence than racially abusing someone and that for me is a sad indictment of the governing bodies attitude to the fight against racism in football. Until they get their priorities right and throw teams out of competitions or hit them with seven figure fines, the racists will continue to abuse and divide. Now that is the real disgrace about Chelsea’s fine.

Torres, Fabregas: Premier League Stars Open Confederation Scoring

Ethan Armstrong — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:04:43 +0000

Few would have expected New Zealand to pull an upset over a Spain who entered the fray of the FIFA Confederations Cup boasting a 32 match unbeaten streak. But no one could have predicted that Liverpool’s Fernando Torres would score a hat trick within the first seventeen minutes of play.

Torres rapidly erases any doubt he’s the best striker on the planet these days.

Earlier in the day, I had been disappointed watching Iraq and host country South Africa start off the competition. Not only because it was a defensive, uninspired 0-0 draw. But because the fixture gave me nothing to write about. With no Benni McCartney in sight—it’s a long story, Steven Pienaar was the only name I recognized. And though he showed some influence after being introduced in the 85th, there was no time for the Everton man to help his country pierce the goal line.

I was hoping an EPL player would score or at least set up a great goal, so I could convert watching the matches into some relevant subject matter for EPL Talk.

When I saw Spain’s team sheet, sheet I was quickly filled with optimism. Torres, Fabregas, Alonso and Riera were all among the starters.

After Barcelona’s 2-0 decimation of Manchester United in the Champions League, I expected Spain’s backbone to be full of Camp Nou genius. But with only Carles Puyol and Xavi Hernandez in from Barca, it was clear Liverpool’s excellent season had made its impression on Vincente del Bosque. He fielded three Merseyside starters and added Alvaro Arbelo in the 53rd minutes. And with Arsenal’s Fabregas slotted in behind Torres and Villa, I just knew I’d get my EPL inspired goal.

Maybe del Bosque, a former Real Madrid manager, wasn’t as impressed by Barca’s Rome heroics as most of the rest of us.

Better for me.

Torres took no time. Picking up Fabregas’s pass on six minutes, he scooped the ball from twenty yards, curling it around the defender and keeper into the top corner of the net. Most strikers would have tried to lose their man first. Torres decided there was no need.

Then on 14 minutes, he was at it again. David Villa slotted the ball through traffic to Torres who side-footed it in.

Just as I was texting a friend to say, El Niño just scored two in the first 14! Capdevila launched the ball into the area and Torres put his head to it with force. Hat trick within seventeen minutes. After his third goal, Torres hesitated to put his arms up, as if thinking this is too easy, should I even celebrate?

And on top of the four goals from Premier League men, La Liga’s David Villa made his own brilliant and direct contributions as well. In addition to his sharp service to Torres, on 48 minutes, Villa was on hand to eat up a wayward New Zealand ball in the box and side-foot it into the net past the lunging Glen Moss.

New Zealand were demolished. It could have been worse but a couple dubious offsides calls kept Torres and Villa in check. Each had his chances to burst through into one-on-one territory where each man would certainly have found the composure and skill to beat Moss.

Spain’s unbeaten streak rises to 33. They are two away from tying Brazil’s record. No question they belong at number one in the world rankings.