It may be a couch or a sofa but, whatever it is, I crouched behind it

Will Man U turn things around against Real Madrid? The world waits. The Galaxy is agog. According to Fergie, it is. He believes this game is bigger than a World Cup Final. Fergie does talk a lot of bollocks, mainly to annoy, but in football terms, Man U v Real Madrid is quite big.

During that first leg, I was behind the couch for about 50 minutes, crouching. It wasn't just the half bottle of Beaujolais, OK most of a bottle, but the embarrassing display by Man U. I didn't want them to see me watching them. When at last they got a goal, I was able to climb back on the sofa. Did I say couch last time? I know one of them is the correct 2003 terminology in lovely houses like ours, but I can never remember which it is.

I'm not a Man U fan, but I don't hate them, so I was willing them on, wanting them to do justice to themselves. And to us. That's what happens when playing Johnny Foreigner. Our own teams are stuffed with foreign johnnies, but once they have on our shirt, they're white Anglo-Saxon or Celtic, perhaps Irish, but they definitely change colour and character, going sort of, well, normal and civilised. Just like what we are.

One of the pleasures of this season has been watching Spanish and Italian games live on Saturday and Sunday evenings, thanks to Sky and Eurosport. Makes for a long day, football morning, noon and night, and I'm always pleased to reach Monday, but it's got to be done. Off to work, I say, as I stagger upstairs to my, er, settee.

It's not just the fact that three Spanish and three Italian teams got into Europe's last eight, as opposed to only one from England. I now think their top teams are clearly superior. We get carried away when Man U and Arsenal are on song, and begin to imagine they are world beaters, as Wenger certainly did, but the world they are best at beating ends at Dover.

The refs in Spanish football are poorer, make more mistakes, and those stupid moving ads are annoying, as are the close-ups of some fat bastard smoking or a thin bloke in a suit who looks like a hangman. Spanish TV directors are convinced we want to linger on the facial twitches of club presidents, while in England the cliche is to pick out a pretty girl, a silly hat, a fan biting his nails or a visiting manager whose nostrils they will explore.

The crowds are bigger and older at the Nou Camp and the Bernabeu than here, but the atmosphere is often subdued, defused, mainly because they are so far away. At every English ground, the crowd is within touching or at least spitting distance. They sing "Yellow Submarine" and "Auld Lang Syne", tunes from here, which we never sing. You see fewer repro shirts in Spain or Italy, which could explain why Man U's revenue is bigger than Real Madrid's.

I like Gerry Armstrong on Sky talking about Spanish football, but Ray "My Word" Wilkins, whom I'd hoped never to have to listen to again, pops up on Eurosport as an Italian expert, droning away, stating the bleedin' obvious.

I can now spot the main Spanish and Italian players by their walks. Rivaldo walks stiffly, jerkily, like Roy Keane, and I bet both will get arthritis. Roberto Carlos is a wonder of the world, how can someone so small in height be so big in stature? Figo and Ronaldo are so graceful in motion, but while watching, I'm examining their latent fleshiness, imagining them hugely overweight when they stop playing.

The Italians are the handsomest, such style, lovely hair, only use designer Alice bands. They appear artistic and intellectual, as well as athletic. We used to tell ourselves that Brit teams would always triumph because our lads got stuck in, never gave up, not like these foreign softies. That hasn't been true for about 50 years, since the Hungarians stuffed us. Italians and Spaniards have long had more skill. Now they can match us for speed, strength and determination - and team spirit. And with Real Madrid, they also have supreme confidence, knowing they are the world's best team. Plus they are two goals ahead. But Man U scored three against Juventus in that earlier game, and did the humiliating then, which was a surprise. So I'll be cheering them on. Though, in fact, I'll be lying down, on the thingy . . .

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website