LONDON – Romantic though the notion sounds of Deportivo de la Coruna winning the Spanish championship, it appears to be functioning as nothing more than a pacesetter in a long-distance foot race. And after the conclusion of an awful week, even its most optimistic fans see dark clouds on the horizon.
At a glance, it looks promising: Deportivo holds a five-point lead atop the standings, with the big two, –
Real Madrid and Barcelona, nestled among the chasing pack. Yet confidence has been vanishing in recent weeks – not a single win racked up on the road in 2000 – and last Thursday Coruna suffered its most crushing blow yet.
Playing at Arsenal in a UEFA Cup match, Coruna suffered a 5-1 mauling made all the more painful by Arsenal’s mockery. As the goals poured in, the home team started to showboat, Nwankwo Kanu really rubbing it in with his goal towards the end by strolling past goalie Jacques Songo, then rolling the ball into the net with one foot after he had deked to shoot with the other.
This was the kind of humiliation that takes a while to recover from, and sure enough the cracks showed again on Sunday. Deportivo gave away a goal at Malaga inside three minutes, as Dario Silva swept in to score, and spent the rest of the match with plenty of possession, trying to pull the goal back -but without reward.
Possession of the ball means nothing if you don’t have the means to capitalize on it. That’s why so many coaches gamble their entire careers by forking over seven-eighths of the club’s existing profits on strikers that they pray can pull the trigger. When it works they look like tactical geniuses, but when it doesn’t … well, they don’t remain coach for long.
While the glittering all-star lineups representing some of the richest clubs in Europe embark on yet another round of the overblown new and distinctly unimproved European Champions’ competition tonight and tomorrow, it’s reassuring to see humble Alaves, based in the Basque city of Vittoria, flying high in the Spanish standings.
Alaves, without a single trophy in its 79-year history, plays economical, no-frills soccer, for that is all its budget allows for. But the strategy has taken the club into fifth place, up among the leading lights. A 1-0 defeat of Vallecano was typical of Alavez this week, the only goal coming when Oscar Tellez fired a shot past Vallecano goalie Kasey Keller.
Now finally on his way to the MetroStars, 38-year-old Lothar Mattheus bowed out of the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich after a rare defeat for the club. Perhaps understandably a little drained after caning Real Madrid 4-2 earlier in the week, Bayern crashed 2-0 at Stuttgart.
The Stuttgart game was Mattheus’ 464th and last league appearance for Bayern, as he crosses the Atlantic in the manner of Franz Beckenbauer some 25 years ago. Franz did OK in his years with the Cosmos, and there’s life in Mattheus yet, though probably no more than a season or two. After that he says he’d like to come back and coach Bayern – and again in the manner of his old mentor it’s easy to see him eventually taking charge of the German national team, too.
WHEN you’re looking for a potential champ two-thirds of the way through a season, it’s worth remembering that a stingy defense tends to count for more than a productive offense as the finish line grows nearer. And applying that criterion, it’s evident that Juventus is back with a vengeance in Italy.
Alessandro Del Piero’s penalty and a back-heeled goal from Antonio Conte gave Juve the 2-0 margin over Bari. That preserves Juve’s four-point cushion atop Serie A, and though its output of 35 goals in 24 matches is not especially ruthless, a mere 11 goals given up in the meantime shows what a barrier Juve’s opponents face.