In a news item from Friday, Spanish doctor has apparently published a paper that explains that the human eye cannot accurately assess whether a player is offside under the rules of football. This is because officials have to be able to keep in view four players simultaneously: the attacking player making the pass; the intended receiver; and, two defenders. This will not surprise most football fans.

I’ve always thought that this particular incapacity has put an unfair burden on players who are exceptionally quick. Linesmen (for it is they who make almost all offside calls) see a forward yards behind the line of defence and conclude that they must be offside. My own “exhibit A” in this line of thought was Denis Law. He anticipated the pass so well and accelerated so quickly that he would often be fifteen yards or more behind the defence, if was playing the “trap”, when he picked up the ball. If you weren’t looking for it, most people would conclude that “he must have been offside”. It's hard to really blame the officials. Yet I’m convinced that most of the time he wasn’t offside. My guess is he was robbed of between 20-30 goals between 1963 and 1969. I got into the habit of tracking Law a good percentage of the time when either Charlton or Crerand had the ball. You could see that he could read from their posture that they were about to hit a through ball and he would break along the line of defence and then sharply veer goalwards as the pass was struck; he could get an astonishing distance behind the nearest defender.

Among United’s opponents of that era there was one player who suffered the same fate as Law, possibly worse; Jimmy Greaves. I saw Greaves at Old Trafford three times; he scored only twice but should have had at least three more. I have not seen anyone since as quick as these two. Owen is the nearest but I don’t think he quite reads the play as well as Law and Greaves did; nevertheless I think Owen has been robbed of a good number of goal opportunities already in his career. Ruud van Nistelrooy is a fantastic goalscorer but beating the offside trap is not one of his great strengths. Although he’s no slouch at anything to do with scoring goals. Similarly, Henri is a defender’s nightmare and lightning fast but doesn’t get a lot of goals from beating the offside trap nor, reciprocally, does he have them disallowed much.

Bill Nicholson:in memoriam
Another sad event to note: the passing of Bill Nicholson. Nicholson’s great achievement was to manage the Spurs team of the early 1960s, which did the “double” in the 1960-61 season. That was a legendary team. Its mark of 12 straight victories to start the season still stands and will be hard to beat. What the straight facts don’t convey is the style of that team. They played football at its best. The comparison to Wenger’s current Arsenal squad is apt. At the heart of each team is “push and run” (as it was termed under Nicholson) or “one-touch” (as we’re more likely to say now) executed to perfection, supplemented by sublime individual skill (Blanchflower and White for “Bill Nick”; Pires, Henry and Bergkamp for Wenger). There’s another interesting comparison: if Dave Mackay has a modern counterpart it’s PatrickViera; both tremendous combinations of toughness, stamina, savvy and skill. It remains to be seen if Arsenal can repeat as Champs and, perhaps, do a Double (or Triple?) While Nicholson's Spurs were never quite the same after the tragic death of John White (struck by lightning) and Mackay's leg injuries, they produced much magical football. Good on yer, Bill!

Before this blog was started, two great English cricketers, Colin Cowdrey and Brian Statham, died fairly close together, around the same time as the incomparable Stan Matthews. Miller, like all three, was a “throwback” to a different era in sports, the like of which we will not see again. Very different people from very different backgrounds but with a common value system as far as sports go. Give it your all, but it’s only a game. Statham was a particular hero of mine. The archetypal Lancashire man. Soft spoken, laconic, gentle, honest but a fierce competitor. I watched “George” bowl for hours at Old Trafford, many from right behind his arm. He was relentless; off-stump on a length, ball after ball and quick, to the end. He must have been murder to face. He was also a joy to watch, in a different way from his Yorkshire “twin”, “Fiery Fred” Trueman. Fred had a classic fast bowler’s action, full of menace as he accelerated into the stumps. Statham’s was unique; lithe and whippy but just as smooth. We will not see his like again, either.

Gods or Flannelled Fools? That was the title of Keith Miller’s autobiography published in the 1950s. Sorry to hear of his death. I gather he leaned very much to the latter, which meant he didn’t get on well with the god-like Don or the rest of the Oz cricketing establishment. Despite that, my recollection is that he recognized Bradman’s supreme skill with the bat. Miller himself, qualitative factors aside, was the second-greatest all-rounder of all-time. Qualitative factors almost certainly fall in his favour against other contenders (but not Sobers). He competed for wickets with Lindwall, the no.2 all-time quickie to Marshall. He was known to give away his wicket when nothing was at stake, so his batting average is undoubtedly understated. A more detailed all-rounder analysis will appear later but, to repeat, this weekend saw the passing of a very great cricketer and, by all accounts, a convivial human being. Bradmetrics salutes Keith Miller’s memory!

Wayne Rooney has appeared in almost 100 games and scored 30 goals. This is impressive but does it warrant such appraisals as that of “Robbo” on the Beeb’s website that he will undoubtedly be England’s finest talent yet if he remains relatively injury-free? He does have a seeming head for the occasion, witness his Euro 2004 performance and his recent hat-trick debut for United. The answer is, of course, “no”. It would be wonderful if he becomes a great player. It’s far too early to even compare him to, say, Trevor Francis, or Kevin Keegan or Gary Lineker (or, for that matter, Michael Owen), much less Matthews, Finney, Charlton, Greaves among forwards or Moore or Brian Robson. Such are the times in which we live.

An interesting comparison is the young Charlton, the last true World-class forward /mid-fielder England has produced. At the end of Charlton’s first three seasons he’d played 63 games and scored 47 goals. Leaving aside the stats, the young Rooney is fast, strong, cocky, has good ball control and a very good right foot. The young Charlton, was faster, strong (but not as obviously so), had phenomenal ball control and natural swerve and two exceptional feet. He wasn’t that cocky. He switched from being a goalscoring winger to a commander of midfield, with a passing ability unsurpassed by even the great European and Latin midfielders. Rooney has a long way to go before he can carry Bobby’s jock.

Vijay Singh won another tourney this past weekend. Stewart Cink was second. This is of interest because at the 1999 PGA at Medinah, which represented the start of Woods’ extraordinary period of dominance, besides Woods himself the golfers who most impressed me were – Singh and Cink. I mean just in terms of ballstriking. Singh and Cink – and in 1999, I confess I hadn’t heard of the latter – are very similar in that they’re tall with very graceful swings. Like Woods, they hit the ball noticeably better than most of their peers, except that Woods is a “cut above”. I haven’t seen Woods (or anyone) in the flesh since then so am not able to judge if there has been any diminution in his edge. But I doubt it. Woods, like Nicklaus when he was younger, just hits the ball better. He’s also had a great short game going. When you see them live, it’s quite apparent: there’s a “whoosh” that no-one else puts on the ball; and the trajectory – the drives take off like jet planes, low at first then rising rapidly and incredibly high. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Woods; it’s just probability – he’ll start to win majors again. Again, the comparison with Bradman – perhaps Nicklaus is the nearest and Woods is an intriguing contender? – what needs to be looked at is how much better someone is than their peers. So is Singh going to dominate, like Woods? No. I think he’s more like a Player or Watson – an elite player but not quite “Bradman class”. But he is something to watch as a striker of golf balls.

It’s always a little sad when a great player starts to “go back”. It looks like Real Madrid has two such cases, right now, Zidane and Figo. We saw this in Euro 2004. There was enough of the flashes of brilliance – Zidane most obviously against England and even some moments off magic from Figo that may have tied the Final against Greece – to tantalize us but enough of a general sense that they were no longer the forces they were to give that edge of sadness.

My first encounter with this was seeing Denis Law slip from being the King of Old Trafford to just an “average” great player. Returning from recovery from yet another knee injury in 1968, it became sadly apparent that we weren’t ever going to see again the electric Law. The Law that scored the spectacular disallowed goal against Gornik with a gravity-defying overhead kick, the Law that rose so high at the far post that it was a miracle that he didn’t crash into the crossbar, the Law that beat the offside trap by so far that good goals were disallowed by the sheer disbelief of the officials in what their own eyes were telling them (modern fans could get an idea of this watching Owen 3 or 4 years ago). One incident stands out. A match at Burnley that United should have won handily in which Law should have but the Reds up 2-0 just before the half. It was all so familiar. Ball to the far post, the blonde hair rising above the marker, the snap of the neck. But no ball in the back of the net. He’d missed!

It’s possible that Law had missed before, when he was King. Memory plays tricks. But not from so close, if at all. He still scored. He still showed superb touches. By any standards, he was still one of the best players in the League. But he was no longer King.

He played for several more years, including a spell at cross-town City. What do you say? Law was likely still among the best players when he retired. Yet, watching him, there was a tinge of sadness for what was no longer there.

So, let us try to celebrate the years we enjoyed Zizou and Figo, rather than dwell on their decline. But it will be hard.

This is yet another way in which Bradman was remarkable. Other than his famous duck in his last test innings, he showed very little signs of decline.

Another thought, in response to what appears to be a general sentiment of "it's sour grapes to denigrate the Greece victory" in Euro 2004. One of the reasons for fearing a descent into very defensive football, as became prevalent from the late 1970s to the mid 90s, is that conceding the first goal becomes increasingly important. This reinforces even more defensive caution and tends to build teams that find it hard to score at all.It seems to me that a true champion should be able to recover from falling behind. Greece did come back from a goal down to Spain and got one back after falling down two to Russia. So, a mixed verdict but I'm sceptical that Greece would have recovered had any of the early chances gone in for either Czech or Portugal. For my money, the team that impressed me the most was Czech. They would have made champions you could feel good about. My picks for a best-of team: Nikopolidis (Greece), Seitaridis(Greece),Campbell(Eng),Ujfalusi(Cz), Cole (Eng), Nedved(Cz), Maniche(Por),Davids(Neth),Zidane(Fr)(not what he was but still all-round one of the best),Baros(Cz),van Nistelrooy(Neth).

While congratulations are in order to the Greek football team and its legions of fans, who are among the best, in terms of knowledge and good-natured passion, on becoming the European champions, this bodes ill for the next trends in football.

Like all other sports, football’s practitioners fall into fads. This is just the sports version of the herd-like behaviour of corporations. Just as businesses have gone through the waves of the Harvard Business School inspired interchangeable cogs theory of management, the Peters and Waterman “excellence” theory, and the “reengineering” theory which is now on the wane, football has seen both evolution and cyclical behaviour. In football there will always be the issue of balance between individualism and adherence to “team concept”. At the same time, the game has evolved as pay and professionalism have advanced, which has seen greater speed, fitness and higher levels of technical skill.

Superimposed on these trends, which have their origins in the very nature of the game and of professional sport in contemporary culture, respectively, have been fads. The most obvious are the “systems”, beloved of the natterers of football small-talk, 4-2-4, 4-4-2, the “diamond” etc.. All BS. Coaches have to go on about it because it’s the language of their employment. Fundamentally, positional play in football is the same as it ever was. It’s determined by the nature of play. All that has changed has been the addition of defenders to the basic back three and greater fitness and substitution leading to the "filling up" of midfield. It’s also why “man-marking” can never be more than a selective option.

The dark trend presaged by the Greek win is that coaches, to stay in or gain employment are going to find is safer to “go Rehhagel”, which will mean emphasizing “team concept” over individual play. (Call me pigheaded but the Greeks were just luckier. While it’s a mistake to dwell on individual incidents, if you look at the Czech and Portugal games combined, it can only be put down to good fortune that Greece conceded no goals. There were about ten high quality chances, despite the efforts of the admittedly excellent Greek defenders. This would normally yield at least two and up to five goals. I will claim some credit for identifying Nikopolidis as the edge: he was solid and Ricardo outright botched the Greek goal. He as also made heavy weather of the only other chances – two- that Greece made. Terrible keeping.) This, in turn, will lead to a new cycle of defence-oriented football,

We’ve been here before. The World Cups of the 1980s through the resurgence of Brazil in 1994 reflected general trends towards defensive soccer. It was sad to see the Brazil teams of that era, despite the odd memorable player, such as Zico and Socrates. Brazil remains the great hope against the Greek trend. Contrary to the misplaced emphasis on individual stars, Brazilian football is based on the overwhelming creation of goal opportunities, which stems from having superior players. ( I actually think, in general, that far from being "clinical finshers" Brazilians flub more chances than anyone else but they create so many that it doesn't usually matter. Check out all the goals Romario missed in '94: but he was a brillant player who created chances on his own. Look at recordings of 2002 for the many flubs by Rivaldo and Ronaldo.) Incidentally, they are “well-organized” and work hard, too, and are as good defensively as anyone else (a good player is a good player, it’s not magic!) but this is neither why they win nor why they are more entertaining than everyone else. Except when they have met teams with even better talent, like the wonderful French team of '98.That Brazil is not immune from fads, which saw them shackle their superior talent to misplaced “systems”, we have already seen. The stakes are high for the 2006 World Cup!

A provisional answer to the question "how far can an average team go on luck?" has been provided by Greece, in Euro 2004. As far as the Final. It remains to be seen if their luck will hold on Sunday.

Greece's offence thoughout the tournament has consisted of crosses, crosses and more crosses, most of them from low-probability positions. However, you send over 40 crosses in a match and maybe you'll get lucky once, which is what happened to Greece - right on the stroke of the 15 minute mark of extra-time. (This exaggerates only slightly. Greece have scored only 6 goals, the last two from crosses. One was a penalty conceded recklessly by Ronaldo and another was a long range shot that crept in because of a goalkeeper error.) Of course, this only works if the other team doesn't score. Despite creating at least four high-probability chances the Czechs were out of luck. The roll of the dice works at that end, too.

The Greeks are thoroughly competent pros and hard-working to boot. But so are England, Denmark and many others, including Russia, who beat Greece on a day when the dice didn't run their way. The Greek keeper is the only one in the tournament who appears to be able to handle the ball cleanly, so he's an edge.

Portugal are a much better team, with a fading superstar Figo, a rising potential superstar, Ronaldo and more general ability than Greece. They should win the Final. Even more so that they lost to Greece in the round-robin.

Two other notes. One, I note that the beeb, predictably harps on about the goalscorer "losing his marker". I refer the reader to earlier posts on this but add that this also misunderstands the technique of marking at soccer. The basic rule is you don't let your mark get behind you - i.e. closer to the goal. This is a sound rule but there are going to be occasions when your mark gets to the ball first and scores. It's bound to happen - but not often, and, crucially, far less than if you let the mark get "goalside" of you. That's what happened. No one lost his mark. It was a combination of luck and - give Dellas credit - a piece of skill with the head.

Which brings me to the observation that Koller, despite his size, is a poor header of the ball. He's quite a paradox. He is skilful with his feet, which is amazing. Yet he wins very few clean balls in the air and does very little with it when he wins one. And I'm not using as a yardstick great headers of the ball - like Andy Lockhead, Derek Dougan, Wyn Davies, etc. - but just average solid pros, like almost all of Koller's opponents today.

Further to the post below, Euro 2004 provides a great deal of similar nonsense with respect to football. Scoring goals, in this case, has a large element of chance. Using our urn analogy helps us understand what's really going on.

Let's label our balls "goal" or "not goal" for each player subject to the rules dscribed below. Most obviously, you'll get more goals by anyone the more draws you make from the urn, i.e. the more times you get a shot on goal. Better teams, however, create not only more shots on goal but shots from places with a higher probability of scoring. We can again envisage a series of urns in which the ratio of the number of balls labeled "goal" to "non-goal" changes, from a low scoring probability (more "non-goal" balls) to high (more "goal" balls). The highest probability urn is an attempt from ten yards or less from directly between the goalposts. Most pro footballers will score at a high % from this position, whatever their position. Creating draws from this urn is very difficult, though and can be made more difficult by skilful defence. The best way to create such opportunities is to beat either full back and pull the ball back from the dead-ball line. This is why good fullbacks are important and why players who can beat fullbacks so valued.

The next most dangerous play for a defence is an attack that breaks through the center of the penalty box. Incidentally, the reason this is not quite as dangerous as a cross from the byline is that the goalie has the play in front of him whereas the cross requires the goalie to switch from watching the cross (to be able to judge the flight) to trying anticipate the actual attempt on goal. It requires tremendous skill to dribble though the center of any defence even with good luck. For those who haven't played organized soccer this is hard to explain but it's basically geometry. Unless a defender is absent or falls down and the goalie is really bad, the forward just runs out of room. Neither of these conditions ever apply at any level of pro soccer. So that leaves sheer skill with a bit of luck. Only the great players ever do this and even they may only do it a few times in a career (they may get foiled by the keeper a number of times). Think Maradonna's 1986 goal against England. To work the ball into the box in the center is only marginally easier, since the offside trap also comes into play. The Swiss goal against France was such a goal. Pundits to the contrary ("the French back line looked vulnerable") the chance of anyone victimizing France again in this way in this tournament are close to zero. As the strike moves away from the box the chances of scoring diminish rapidly. They make great highlight reels but my guess is that maybe 1 in 30 go in.

All of this is by way of pointing out that commentators's obsession with "lax marking" is just laziness. It's an obvious comment to make and it's almost always wrong. One egregious example from yesterday was the commentator who ascribed Zidane's goal to a "breakdown in marking". I don't know how much closer the Swiss player who went up with Zidane could get to him without wearing the same shirt! Plus Zidane headed the ball virtually out of the grasp of the Swiss keeper. Believe it or not, sometimes the forward gets to the ball first! Give Zizou some credit for timing, technique and courage. And it was his turn from the urn.

Good teams don't win by "clinical finishing". They win by creating many high-probability goalscoring events, the probability of which also increases with their ability to create varied opportunities. Alternatively, they stymie their opponents into a barrage of hopeful crosses from forward of the box, long-range shots, free-kicks and corners. Sure goals do get scored from these situations but teams that rely on pulling these balls from the urn don't win championships. (Alas for Albion.)Great goalscorers convert many more of these opportunities than their peers but even they miss more than they convert. Get a tape of Czech-Holland and see how many van Nistelrooy might have scored - and he's as good as they come. The key is not the glamorous "moment of genius" but the accumulation of high-quality chances created by superior players, who may, indeeed, in isolation have a moment in which the luck ran with them that makes you forget the three previous times it didn't. Think Henry, yesterday.

There's a lot of rubbish in the sports media about Tiger Woods in the aftermath of the US Open at Shinnecock. While sports media are paid to "hype", in the belief that controversy increases media purchases, listening and/or viewing, which, in turn increasing adverizing revenues, the commentary on Woods is particularly bad. There is a systematic feature of the coverage of golf by the sports media that is prominent here.

There's a fundamental misconception of the nature of winning at golf which focuses on single events and on individuals with respect to "clutch" performance. This is true of all sports journalism (although preoccupation with "clutch" performance is worst in Baseball. Let's take the "turning point" obsession. Which shot of Goosen's "won" him the US Open? Clearly the answer is "none of them". He won by hitting 278 golf shots to Mickelson's 280. ALL OF THOSE STROKES COUNTED, FOLKS! True Mickelson 3-putt the 17th in tht last round but I'm sure he one-putt some greens, too. The 17th seems significant because of the drama of the last few holes but that drama would have been absent had Mickelson not holed an awful lot of putts before then.

What's the key point here? Like all sports golf has a random element. At the level of play of tour pros chance determines the outcome of x% of tournaments, where x is very difficult to figure out but my guess is in the vicinity of 50%. The remaining determinants are the relative strengths of the all-round game of the strongest players. Think of the PGA tour as the urn beloved of statistics texts. Balls representing the 200 or so players are put into the urn each week and one of them is drawn as the winner. If the balls were identical and the selection process unbiased the winners would follow closely a uniform distribution, with equal probabilities of a win for each player. However, in a year there are only 30 or so draws plus the week-to-week composition of the draw changes. While over a ten year period, if the draw composition were fixed, we would expect wins to equalize over all players, in each year we would expect, by chance alone, some apparent anomalies, such as one player winning three or more times, possibly in closely adjacent draws.

The phrase "at the level of play" is emphasized for two reasons:(1) the "balls" are not all the same, some players do have better games than others; and, (2) golf pros are on a completely different level than 999.9% of people who play golf. Taking the second point first, pressure is a huge factor for you and I but it isn't for tour pros. They wouldn't be there if they weren't all able to handle pressure. The way they handle pressure is all the same: they have techniques that are so well-honed that they have extruded the effect of nerves that keep everyone else off the tour. This is not to cavil at their mental strength, but no more so than their superior techniques in the wide variety of strokes that a pro must have in their repertoire. The first point brings us back to Tiger.

Tiger is just better than the others. Just as Nicklaus was. Els is not as good as Tiger but better than everyone else, Singh is not as good a Els but ...and so on. How much better Tiger is compared to Nicklaus is the extended experiment that we're seeing played out. Whether either or both are "Bradman Class" is good issue for debate. What is not debatable is that both are or were much better than everyone else. This is reflected very clearly in their performace records: they finished in the top ten mcuh more often than their contemporaries and if you keep adding your "ball" to that smaller urn, yopur going to get drawn as winner more often. Incidentally, Nicklaus has always said this, in non geek-speak; go back and check how many times he's been quoted as saying that to win tournaments you have to be on the leaderboard on the last day "to give yourself a chance to win". Easier said than done! Unless you're as good as Jack, which no-one has been until Woods. What we saw with Woods in his early years was partly a measure of his superiority and partly chance. We don't know how much to attribute to skill and to chance. We can say this: winning 7 of 11 majors in a stretch was an incomparable achievement. Whether chance will stretch out his "drought" to 9, 10,11 we don't know; the balls will keep going in the urns and the one labelled "T" will get its draws. Irrespective of what Butch Harmon says.

Word has leaked out that Lance Armstrong is being accused of using “illegal” drugs. Does anyone believe any more that any elite athletes don’t use drugs? The entire athletics world – I include cycling – has become a complete farce. Unfortunately, the farce is spreading slowly to major pro sports, too. It’s now simply a contest of testing labs and those who devise ways to confound the testing, a spiral that will always favor the confounders. Unfortunately, it’s money for a lot of people. Those who’ve made their careers out of pious posturing – step forward, Dick Pound, the testing labs and consultants, the drug testing bureaucracies, and, the drug makers. The confounders have upper hand for two reasons: testing protocols can never be water-tight; and, more decisively, you can only test for what you know and it’s much easier to slightly modify a chemical than to characterize, reclassify and test for the new chemical. In any event, Armstrong’s achievement is in no way diminished in my mind, at least. With the chemical assault his body has withstood to hold cancer at bay (i.e. chemotherapy) the technique(s) he may have used to compete with everyone else are chickenfeed.

No-one ever breathed a word of performance-enhancing substances for “Braddles”.

England’s recent loss to France in Euro 2004 raises interesting issues about the meaning of “World Class” and, beyond that, of “Bradman Class”.

My view is that football (soccer) has not produced a Bradman. There are a number of players who were or are markedly better than most other players and good arguments may be made for against their relative “greatness”; Pele, di Stefano, Puskas, Best, Matthews, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Maradonna, Bobby Charlton, Matthaeus and Platini, among others, are retired players who fall into this category. There is a much broader category that might usefully be called “World Class” and current players who would be included in this class without much argument would be, e.g. Beckham, Zidane, Figo, Henry, Owen, Totti, Maldini, Nedved, van Nistelrooy, Kluivert, Raul and quite a few others.

England’s failure to win a major trophy since 1966, I believe, turns on the failure to produce enough World Class players.

Why are such players so important in this quintessential team game? Simply because the standards at the international level are so high. Just about everyone on any pitch in any game can “play”. In particular, defensive players are so good (I include defensive midfielders) that much of any match may be thought of as a chess game, albeit amongst “pieces” of tremendous technical physical skill. The outcome of games, then, do tend to depend on either mistakes or moments of unexpected brilliance or both. This is the difference that “World Class” makes, either in correcting or extinguishing mistakes or creating opportunities or capitalizing on mistakes.

To illustrate this, compare the current England team to the benchmark, the 1966 squad. In my view, that team had the unusual feature of three players who were not only “World Class” but “high end” World Class, i.e. arguably among the “greats”. One I have mentioned, Bobby Charlton; the other two are Banks, the ‘keeper, and Moore, a defensive midfielder who was almost as good as Beckenbauer. I yield to few my admiration for the defence of that team – Wilson (my favourite defensive fullback of any), Jack Charlton and Cohen – but England has always had good or even great defenders. Yesterday’s back four – Neville, King, Campbell and Cole – played magnificently and are generally comparable. (Jack Charlton has always been a favorite of mine – I think he’s very underrated – but Campbell is truly superb, perhaps the best pure defensive player in the World right now and King showed he belongs at this level). However, there is no Moore. The midfields, other than Bobby Charlton, are likewise comparable – Stiles, Ball and Peters versus Lampard, Gerrard, Scholes and Beckham and at striker it’s close, too – Hurst and Hunt against Owen and Rooney.

Substitution makes a difference, too but not such a big one. The key differences are Banks, Moore and Bobby Charlton. Let’s go a little further and compare Charlton and Beckham. Without reiterating points made in earlier posts, Beckham is a “low-end” World player; aside from his (admittedly superior) deadball and right-wing crossing, he’s fairly pedestrian. Bobby C was the complete package, with both feet. Beckham tackles better but Bobby was equally tireless and, in my view, a superior positional player on defence. Moore is harder to classify; he made his own role, like Beckenbauer. It’s not fair to compare King or his likely sub, Terry. Moore was a consummate defender. He was, bar none, the best pure tackler I’ve ever seen, as near to perfection as is humanly possible. Part of this stemmed from his legendary “reading” of the play, part from strength and determination, part from peerless technique. Yet he was more than that; with Moore defence was the foundation for attack. Whether it was simply ultra-cool controlled transition with short passes or carrying the ball or a rapier long-ball (like the one that set up Hurst’s third goal in the Final), he added a dimension that England have lacked ever since. In addition, in his prime, he simply didn’t make mistakes; more than that he cleaned up for others. I would hazard that the only mistake he made wearing an England shirt was in one of his final games; he allowed Lubanski to dispossess him, which led to the great Polish forward scoring.

In a previous post I’ve rhapsodized about Banks. Let me just emphasize here his steadiness. In addition to his acrobatics and his command of the box, he just didn’t let the side down with errors.

So, to get specific, would Banks have saved Zidane’s free-kick? Would Moore have read and snuffed out Gerrard’s faulty back-pass? If he hadn’t would Banks have avoided giving up a penalty? Obviously, we don’t know. Football just doesn’t work that way. What we do know is that having the presence of players like Banks, Moore and Bobby Charlton over the course of several matches, lifts their team to another level. A level, alas, that will not reached by the current one.

To a degree, let me say that Rooney epitomizes England’s problem. He’s almost good enough. He has skill and speed and determination but he’s too much of the “blood and guts” heritage of England. I cringe slightly as I say this; wholehearted toughness is an English virtue, not vice, but it doesn’t carry the day at this level of play. In contrast, Owen is the “real thing” but he’s stymied by unimaginative service. This isn’t to knock Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes, Butt, Hargreaves, etc.. They’re as good as most of their counterparts but they’re not Zidane or Figo or Nedved.

In the end, yesterday’s game, while this a gross simplification, did personify the difference between Beckham – a low-end World Class – and Zidane, who will surely join Platini in the exalted category, even though he’s clearly on the wane. Paranthetically, France is going to have get more creative if it’s going to win the championship again. Give credit to England’s excellent defensive work, but there were too many useless crosses from forward of the box, too little of Henry and Pires taking on Neville and Cole, respectively, to pull back dangerous crosses.

To compare Henry, the best player in the World right now, with a true “great” – a possible contender for Bradman class – let’s recall that Stan Matthews faced the same challenge and never backed away. What did Matthews do when faced with massed defences? Two things. First, the same. He knew that only one defender at once can face you as go for the byline to cross the ball; more than one just get in each other’s way. He had the supreme confidence that he could make that jink, beat whoever was marking him and get in the cross. Second, different. If he got the ball too far from the box he would draw the crowd and pass the ball off, stranding at least one marker. So he did rely on service. You could keep him quiet by choking off passes that let his get into “his” territory, right side of the box 20 yards out but it came at a cost – gaps elsewhere for lesser players to exploit. Henry has the pace and the skill. Does he have the savvy and the fortitude?

The phrase “gaps elsewhere for lesser players” brings us full circle. This is why the exceptional players are needed to create champions at the international level. It’s the accumulation of flashes of brilliance or creation of opportunities that makes all the difference at the attacking end and the snuffing out of the same by exceptional defending and goalkeeping at the defensive end.

In a sports column I read today on the Masters, beginning today at Augusta, Georgia, Jack Nicklaus is referred to, casually, as the “best golfer who ever lived”. There are a few points of interest: (1) I agree and would doubt if many would disagree; (2) this can be said about very few sportsmen or women; (3) the distinction between peak years and full career; and, (4) relatedly, the unique character of the sport of golf.

Over his career Nicklaus is incomparably the best golfer who has ever played, allowing for era, equipment etc.. Good cases can be made that several golfers have had “purple patches” as good or superior to Nicklaus’ best periods, Watson, Hogan and Woods, in particular. I think that, from roughly1997 to 2002, Tiger Woods treated golf fans to the best golf ever played. The issue is whether in twenty years we will be able took back and say he was the greatest. On a straight-up comparison, he stacks up well. Nothing to choose on driving and irons – perhaps an edge to Nicklaus in the mid-irons – but Tiger has a better short game than Nicklaus ever had. Mentally, the key part of the game at their level, both seem about the same, which is to say, astonishing. The sheer will of Woods at the last hole in near-darkness in last year’s Presidents Cup in draining a tough 15 footer to stay square with Els was something to behold. Yet, this may be where, in the long run, the Golden Bear outdistances even Tiger. The way he maintained concentration on every shot and sustained it for all those years will take some beating. Even Gary Player, a man of no small achievements, will or determination, was in awe of Nicklaus’ ability to blot out everything once he addressed the ball.

Bradman is the only other sportsman of whom such a clear claim may be made. Except that, in his case, no-one has ever bettered his peak years either. Bill James makes a great case for Babe Ruth, as hitter and all-round player (including pitching) but some good statistical reasoning is needed to buttress his case. Not so either Nicklaus or Bradman. Unlike cricket, though, golf achievement is all of a piece; there’s no meaning in “best putter” or “best driver”. Was Bradman, though, the best cricketer ever or “merely” the best batsman?

The only possible challenger, in my view, is Sobers. Even if bowlers are somehow to be weighted as more valuable than batsmen, there is no bowler for whom the claim may be made about undeniable superiority. Indeed, it isn’t easy to say whether, say Marshall (who I regard as the greatest fast bowler) was a greater bowler than O’Reilly or, in his peak years, Laker. On these grounds alone, Bradman deserves to be regarded as greatest cricketer. In fact, I believe that individual batsmen should be valued slightly higher than bowlers. Great batsmen, when on top form, have always been able to thrash the best bowlers of their era.

How do we assess the contribution of an all-rounder like Sobers? Future posts will go into this in more detail but let me observe that as a batsman alone, Sobers has a very strong case to be regarded as the next best to Bradman. Playing in many more tests than Bradman, Sobers averaged 60, against great bowling and scored runs everywhere with almost equal ease. But 60 isn’t 100. So, the issue is: is there some weighting scheme that equalizes that 40 point gap on the basis of bowling and fielding? We shall see.

Finally, let me compare and contrast great batsmen and great golfers. Both have almost in human concentration that has to be sustained for many hours. There is an element of combat, too. Batsman vs bowler; golfer vs the course. But golfers are the true “warriors”. They also play each other. One of the striking features of golf is the obvious respect with which the really good ones view each other. Batsmen respect bowlers who test them and vice versa, as do tennis players and pitchers and hitters but golfers are on another plane.

The revelations about the 1954 West Germany World Cup victory serve to emphasize that, contrary to popular myth, sport is not about “only winning”. It’s about winning gloriously. In the limit, it’s the glory that lasts. No-one outside of Germany today remembers the 54 team or any of its players. In contrast, the team they beat in the Final lives on in the collective memory and hearts of soccer fans and its leading players have joined the pantheon of the greats. The Magic Magyars, as the Hungarian national team were and are known, are remembered for their style as much as their overpowering record that preceded the World Cup. Falling at the last hurdle, after they had drubbed West Germany 8-3 earlier in the tournament, only adds to their mythic status. Puskas remains the highest goalscorer in the history of international soccer and was the owner of soccer’s most deadly left foot (at a time when balls were radically different from today’s light marvels of engineering). Hidgekuti invented the modern striker’s role and was a player of sublime skill. Koscis was both a silky playmaker and scoring machine and generally agreed to be among the finest headers of the ball to have graced the game. Boszik was a commanding and athletic keeper.

It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for the German soccer fan. The two drinks from the Rimet cup have each been a poisoned chalice. Perhaps more tragic than the 54 team was the 74 team. Despite having, in the majestic Beckenbauer and goalscorer supreme Muller, two of the all-time greats, this team is mainly remembered outside Germany as the team that beat Netherlands in the Final, led by the incomparable Cruyff, another team that is revered for its passion, innovation and style.

In comparison, the Brazilian championship teams all live, in various degrees, in the hearts of soccer afficianados. In my experience, even Italian fans, who generally have no equals in intensity or knowledge, remember with affection and even awe the 1970 Brazil team that beat a gallant Italian team in the final. If the other four championship teams shine with a lesser light that is only because that 1970 team remains the benchmark for all, even the Magic Magyars. When glory goes up against glory, winning glory does win by a nose.

It really doesn’t matter if the allegations about drug injections are true or false. History long ago made its verdict. Leave the players in peace.

Oliver Kahn was in the news again for a major mistake; this time his fumble of a late Roberto Carlos free kick gave Real Madrid a draw against Bayern Munich. It was the highly over-rated Kahn who botched the job on Brazil’s first goal in the 2002 World Cup final against Brazil.

If forwards are the positions most amenable to statistical evaluation in football, goalkeepers are the least. Goals conceded are not a good measure; they depend on the defenders in front of the keeper and there are significant era biases. In more recent years shots on goal figures are available but these don’t permit comparisons going back more than about 15 years. They also don’t take into account the quality of the chances.

I don’t have any doubt that the best goalie I’ve ever seen is Gordon Banks. Not so much for the “highlight reel” saves that he made that are still shown but for the way he commanded the penalty area. This is an area of particular contrast with Kahn. Kahn is a big man but he doesn’t make cross balls into the six-yard box his. Banks not only commanded the six-yard box, he clearly thought anything in the air out to penalty spot was his ball. In general, this is perhaps the one area in which football has not improved. My recollection is that 20-30 years ago, in English soccer at least, is was expected that goalies would go out and collect cross balls, not leave them to the defence. Moreover, they would rarely punch the ball.

Perhaps instructional techniques have been rethought. I need to be convinced that staying more on the line and punching at crosses are better goalkeeping.

Courage and command of the air are not the only factors that make a great keeper. Avoiding major blunders, reflexes, positioning are all important, too. Banks was great in all these areas. In terms of statistics, there is also the evidence of Banks’ record in the 1966 World Cup; he did not concede a goal until the Final – about 480 minutes, I think, before anyone scored on England. Granted the 1966 World Cup was probably lower scoring than 2002 and he had in front of him a superb defence (astoundingly under-rated, too – everyone seems to have forgotten the back line of Wilson, Charlton and Cohen, surely the best defensive back line ever assembled) but that’s also testimony to the guy between the pipes. Mr Banks, Bradmetrics te salute.

On an unrelated matter, I note with sadness the death of John Charles, another somewhat forgotten great. There’s a very good case that he was the best ever Welsh player. He was certainly unique: a world-class player at both center-half and center forward.