Bodin's Left Boot

By my reckoning it's just over seven weeks to the day Wales kicks off its Euro 2008 qualifying campaign away in the Czech Republic.

It's a milestone in more ways than one. It will not only mark the first serious tilt at a qualifying campaign for Welsh boss John Toshack, but also signify the initial competitive outing for a Czech Republic team still reeling from an early exit from the World Cup.

As yet, it's anybody's guess which Czech players Wales will line-up against in the spa town of Teplice, come Saturday 2 September.

Rumours of retirements abound with star veterans Pavel Nedved and Karel Poborsky, so far the most likely to hang up their boots. At 33 and 34 respectively, this dynamic duo have been the heartbeat of the Czech midfield for over a decade.

Both have been inspirational figures and the bedrock on which Czech success has been built and Wales would surely benefit from their retirement.

Poborsky looks likely to take his leave internationally but play on for his club side Ceske Budejovice of which he is part owner, while Juventus player Nedved faces an uncertain future.

The European player of the year in 2003 proved during the World Cup that he is still a force to be reckoned with despite his side's early exit, but he has indicated he would like to prolong his playing career for one more season. However, with the Italian league club facing relegation amidst corruption charges just where that will be remains to be seen.

What has surprised some is that wizened manager Karel Bruckner was so quickly offered and accepted a new contract to coach the Czechs through the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign.

This could be seen to be an attempt to galvanize a team needing to reawaken the spirit that saw it named by many as a dark horse for World Cup glory.

Nevertheless, there are those surprised that 66-year-old was kept on - the Czech FA obviously figuring that continuity is eminently preferable to upheaval so close to the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign.

Whatever, it was no surprise that Wales were happy to meet Bruckner's side immediately after the World Cup. Toshack was savvy enough to realise that the Czechs were an ageing side. Stars such as Poborsky and Nedved, as well 33-year-olds - captain Tomas Galasek and giant striker Jan Koller, could have seen the World Cup in Germany as their final international curtain call.

If those four were to exit stage right it would at least give Wales a fighting chance against an international side that has a formidable record at home.

That could have been part of the plan by Tosh and the FAW team pushing for this fixture: hit a reshaped Czech Republic after a particularly difficult World Cup with retirements, cynicism over failure in Germany and a new contract to the orchestrator of their early exit all contributing to give Wales renewed optimism in Teplice on September 2.

Of course, even those with the most clearest of crystal balls would have been hard pushed to have predicted that, but the retirements of several Czech players did a look a racing certainty ahead of Germany 2006 and surely was a major factor in Wales clashing with the Czechs in this mouth-watering fixture.

However, let's not get carried away with ourselves just yet. It would be wise to remember that international stars such as Chelsea 'keeper Peter Czech, midfield wizard Tomas Rosicky and striker Milan Baros still remain part of a strong Czech team who will be eager to banish those German ghosts.

Let's just hope that with our own big name players on board that it's a full-strength, well organised and determined Wales that haunt Bruckner's team come the opening game of Euro 2008 qualifying.

Now that really would lift the spirits.

Posted by Juan Estupendo at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm pleased to say I'm back, eyes narrowed blinking in the sunlight. Finally it's over. And for many it couldn't have come soon enough.

For those of us locked in our darkened rooms in front of widescreen TVs with relationships temporarily put on hold for a month, the World Cup has presented its fair share of logistical and personal problems - not least how to keep the wife, whose name you may or may not have forgotten, from filing for divorce.

With work sweepstake choices clutched to our hearts and enough chilled lager in the fridge to keep Threshers profits buoyant until the next World Cup, we've had to plan our viewing of games with military-like precision.

Afternoon kick-offs had presented their own particular problems, especially if you are lucky, as I have been, to have a television on all day as part of your job.

Lucky then that redemption comes in the form of a boss who is as particularly entranced with the prospect of the footballing feast that is Saudi Arabia v Tunisia as this particular blogger is!

Like the purest of football trainspotters I had hoped to tick off every televised game as keenly as my younger self slavishly pursued that elusive final sticker for his Panini World Cup album. (Spain '82 my personal favourite, if you were wondering)

However, like my most lofty ambitions, life has a habit of getting in the way - or should I say in this instance, egotistical, cynical, play-acting footballers.

As the World Cup hoved into view I anticipated it as eagerly as a five year-old on Christmas Eve, but with the fulsome realisation that like a yuletide present from your gran, you're never quite sure what you are going to get.

So it was that the first two glorious weeks of Germany 2006 was like being locked in Toys R Us on a 14 day trolley dash. Each glorious game provided the sort of thrills and spills that had office conversations ruminating over whether this really was going to be the greatest World Cup ever.

Well no, it wasn't, but how were we to know when Germany opened the proceedings with a couple of blockbusting, net-stretching screamers - the new official World Cup ball giving goalkeepers sleepless nights as it swerved devilishly in the air.

Those dynamite strikes continued, with Thomas Rosicky, Arsenal's new wizard-like Czech Republic midfielder, the pick of the bunch. Wales will do well to keep him in check (if you pardon the pun) come September's Euro 2008 qualifier.

But like most things in life, all good things come to an end, although a little earlier than one would have hoped or anticipated - and I'm not just talking about England's predictable exit at the quarter finals stages once again.

If footballing talent was equated to an ability take a dive or deceive a referee, then we have most surely seen the greatest tournament in the history of modern day 'football'.

Many games were reduced to non-contact sport, as the slightest touch saw mock-anguished players pirouetting dramatically in the air as if that imaginary sniper secreted away in the stand had successfully hit its mark.

So who's to blame for this machievellian comedy of errors? The players, for perpetuating the deceit? The referees, for failing to deal with it? Or FIFA, for allowing the continued play-acting of cheats to infect the game?

The answer must most surely and sadly be all three. Players knowingly and willingly took dives, referees looked unsure and uninstructed on how to deal with it, while FIFA's gnomic hierarchy trotted out their usual empty platitudes of fairplay without ever stating their desire to address this endemic problem.

That's why, despite the best efforts of the carnival of football fans who made Germany 2006 such a colourful, vibrant and occasionally joyous event, it will surely only be seen for what lurked on its soulless dark side.

That insidious foul play neatly polarised in one shutter frame as the finest purveyor of beautiful football Zinedine Zidane became a beast in the World Cup final in front of a global audience, inexplicably headbutting Italian defender Marco Materrazzi.

How tragic that the greatest artisan had succumbed to the malaise.

Well done then to Italy, they deserved their victory - but how strangely fitting that the team of a country whose national sport is plagued by fraud and corruption should get their hands on the richest prize in sport.

Sometimes, you can't help feeling cheated.

Posted by Juan Estupendo at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)