Stalemate stops Chelsea opening bigger gap

Crunch time for top teams to up their pace and intensity

SPANISH midfielder David Silva equalised as Manchester City prevented Chelsea pulling eight points clear at the Premier League summit in a hard-fought 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge last night.

Loic Remy put Chelsea in front in the 41st minute, but Silva touched in a shot from Sergio Aguero four minutes later to keep the defending champions five points behind José Mourinho’s side with 15 matches remaining.

Manuel Pellegrini’s City have won only one of their past five league games, but following successive defeats by Arsenal and Middlesbrough, they at least prevented Chelsea from streaking away into the distance.

Chelsea great Frank Lampard, sent on by City as a late substitute, was afforded a warm reception on what was likely to prove his final appearance at Stamford Bridge.

Although the sight of Willian limping off late in the game was a concern, Chelsea coped well without the suspended Diego Costa and the injured Cesc Fabregas. They remain on track for a first league title since 2010.

With Costa beginning a threegame ban for treading on Liverpool’s Emre Can, Mourinho plumped for the pace of Remy over the battering-ram qualities of Didier Drogba up front, but it was City’s attackers who showed their opponents a clean pair of heels in the early stages.

Inside the first minute, Jesus Navas drifted past Cesar Azpilicueta and tested Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois

Chelsea great Frank Lampard, sent on by City as a late substitute, was afforded a warm reception

with a rising shot, while Fernandinho had a shot deflected wide.

Aguero gave Chelsea three scares, obliging Kurt Zouma to make a perfectly timed lastditch tackle, drawing a parry from Courtois and then rolling a shot a foot wide after JohnTerry failed to cut out a long ball.

In response, Oscar could only shoot tamely at Joe Hart after Remy had dispossessed Vincent Kompany and galloped down the left flank.

Chelsea went in front four minutes before half time. Branislav Ivanovic’s cross from the right was volleyed back across goal at the far post by Eden Hazard, and Remy tucked away his fifth goal of the season from inside the six-yard box.

It seemed an ideal time to take the lead, but in the final minute of the half City levelled following an uncharacteristic error of judgement by Courtois.

The Belgium international has been one of Chelsea’s standout performers this season, but he flapped at Navas’s cross from the right and when Aguero drilled the ball back towards goal, Silva slid in to score.

Navas continued to prove City’s best outlet in the second half, teeing up Fernandinho for a downward header that bounced up and had to be touched over by Courtois.

Fernandinho curled a shot at Courtois after Ramires’s run had been checked by Milner.

Lampard, Chelsea’s all-time leading scorer, replaced Fernando with 14 minutes to play, while Willian’s injury resulted in another Stamford Bridge legend, Drogba, entering the fray.

Pellegrini also introduced Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic, but Chelsea held firm, with Milner dragging a late chance wide with his left foot.

Mourinho had refused to speak to the media in the buildup to the game, apparently in protest at Costa’s ban, but though he reacted to every adverse decision with trademark theatricality on the touchline, the result suited him better than Pellegrini. — AFP

IT WAS not, it’s fair to say, a vintage group stage. It’s hard to imagine that in 30 or 40 years time anybody will be sitting their grandchildren down and talking them through South Africa’s group of the three goalkeepers, or Thievy Bifouma’s two goals, or the great drawing of lots to separate Guinea and Mali in the Malabo Hilton.

Has there been a result or a performance that has made the world sit up? No, there hasn’t. What there has been is a lot of earnest, high-tempo football played in hot, humid conditions on, in some cases, indifferent pitches. It’s been, in other words, like most recent African Nations Cups.

Actually, it’s been like most recent tournaments; sluggish football is not specifically an African problem. The early stages of the World Cup in Brazil were the exception: there, for a couple of weeks at least, individuals took flight, there were brilliant goals and there was the very obvious narrative of the collapse of Spain, the world and double European champions.

Mostly, though, the group stages are something of a plod: they were in South Africa two years ago, they were in Argentina at the Copa America in 2011, and they were at the European Championship in Poland and Ukraine in 2012. At least until the third round of games the incentive not to lose is always greater than the incentive to win, and that often saps the life from the closing stage of games.

But there’s also a wider point, international football’s dirty secret, which is that it’s not very good. After watching Algeria’s 2-0 win over Senegal in Malabo I went back to my hotel and turned on the second half of the Capital One Cup semifinal second leg between Chelsea and Liverpool. The difference in pace and intensity was remarkable.

Of course, it probably helps that there was a 25° difference in temperature between the two venues, but it’s not just that. Nor is this particularly a criticism of Algeria or Senegal: they could have been just about any two international sides and the difference in quality would have been just as great.

The problem lies with international football itself and, specifically, with the lack of time coaches have available with their sides.

Since the1960s, football has become increasingly systematised. Even those with supreme individual skills are part of an overall structure.

The organisation and planning was made clear in a column by the Secret Footballer in the Guardian.

“The level of detail that goes into games still, to this day, amazes me,” he wrote. “Every player has his own script, what to do, when to do it, information on the player he’s up against. We memorise every single setpiece, where we have to stand, run and end up. We even memorise this for the other players so we know where everyone else will be at any given time.

“You know that pass when you say to yourself: ‘How did he spot that?’

“Often he didn’t need to; he knew the player would be there because, the night before in the hotel he read about the runs he would be making. It’s exactly the same pass after which sometimes you might find yourself saying: ‘Who was that to?’ The receiving player either forgot to be there or was taken out of the game by a tactical manoeuvre by his opposite number. Football at this level is very chess-like, maybe not to those outside of football but certainly to those inside.”

Organisation is essential, not only in defending but also in attacking.

What’s more, attacking systems are harder to learn than defensive systems. Personnel change and there will be minor variations, but one back four is much the same as another; and besides, the logic of building from the back, from firm foundations, means managers are likely to focus on getting the defence right.

The same logic applies to international football. Excluding major tournaments, managers have players together for about a week six times a year. In that time it’s simply not possible to create attacking systems as sophisticated as those to be found at club level, where players are playing or training together every day.

That’s why international football can often seem stodgy,

International football can often seem stodgy, and that’s why the best teams often have a core from one or two clubs The problem lies with international football itself and with the lack of time coaches have available with their sides

and why the best teams often have a core from one or two clubs, as Germany are based on Bayern or Spain largely based on Barcelona and Real Madrid.

It’s natural, anyway, for international coaches to err on the side of conservatism. Lose a game, even in the group stage, and it’s extremely difficult to recover, not only in terms of points but of morale. Defeats that with a club would rapidly be forgotten have a tendency to linger at international level, where fixtures are fewer and the consequences of each therefore far greater.

Has this Cup of Nations been particularly bad? No. It hasn’t had the dramatic highs of the early weeks in Brazil, but few tournaments do.

What will determine whether it’s remembered fondly or not though, is what happens in the next fortnight — and storylines will be as important in determining the tournament’s legacy as the quality of the football. In that regard, the absence of Nigeria is a problem, because the toppling of the champions is the key part of any narrative, as Spain’s was in Brazil. The World Cup will be remembered for that, for the host’s collapse and for this great German generation at last to reach fulfilment. That the excitement rather dipped in the knockout stages — the 7-1 excepted — is forgotten.

It was the same three years ago. Zambia’s triumph in Libreville, in the first game they’d played in the city since the 1994 plane crash there that killed their entire squad, was one of the most moving stories football has ever produced; the quality of football became irrelevant. This tournament is unlikely to match that for emotional resonance, but there’s still plenty of time for it to lay down narrative trails that will redeem the ordinariness of the football. The writer is a columnist for World Soccer and founder and editor of the quarterly football magazine The Blizzard