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On Soccer
Given Room to Run, Eto'o Thrives for Inter
By ROB HUGHES
Published: September 30, 2010
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LONDON — It was the kind of pulsating night for which Tottenham Hotspur fans had waited a lifetime. Top European soccer was back at the London club’s White Hart Lane stadium for the first time in 48 years.
Enlarge This Image
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press
“I’m happy to win as a striker after winning as a defender last season,” Samuel Eto’o said after the match on Wednesday.
The Times's soccer blog has the world's game covered from all angles.
Go to the Goal Blog
The drama was as relentless as the teeming rain Wednesday. Spurs beat FC Twente, 4-1. And Tottenham’s new Dutchman, Rafael van der Vaart, summed up his first European night at the Lane: “I miss a penalty, I score a goal, I get sent off — a full house!” Yet when the crowd came in out of the rain, there was an image on the television screen that superseded even this.
It came from the San Siro, where Inter Milan, Europe’s reigning champion, crushed Werder Bremen, 4-0. And the image was the transcendent smile of one man: Samuel Eto’o.
He scored three of those goals, and his pass allowed the other by Wesley Schneider.
And when Eto’o spoke on television after the match, he could barely describe his innermost feelings. “I’m happy to win as a striker after winning as a defender last season,” he said.
The inference was clear. Eto’o is a player whose very instinct has always been, since his childhood in Cameroon, to hunt for goals. He is swift, predatory and the very epitome of the Cameroon lion, as his national team is known.
Last year, his coach at Inter, José Mourinho, suppressed Eto’o’s greatest traits by making him a right winger, a defensive one at that. Mourinho’s team won the Champions League, the Italian League and the Italian Cup, so it is difficult to argue with the results.
But Mourinho’s nature is the antithesis to Eto’o’s. The coach is tactically obsessed. It seemed at the time, and even more so today, that he robbed Eto’o of the freedom on which he thrives.
The day before the Bremen match, Rafael Benitez, who succeeded Mourinho as Inter’s coach, said, “I’ve read that Eto’o could be a problem, but I believe he could be the solution more than the problem.” Benitez has so far used Eto’o on the left of the field and down the center — but never as far from the goal, or as far from his nature, as Mourinho did.
The result is a player uncaged. Still fast, still lean, and still under 30 years of age, Eto’o showed again Wednesday that he had not lost the attributes that made him a great finisher with Barcelona.
His former team could have used that sharpness this week. More than 3,200 kilometers, or 2,000 miles, away, faced with opponents even more defensively minded than Mourinho, Barça struggled to draw, 1-1, at Rubin Kazan.
It was a contest ruled by Rubin’s fear of playing the game. “A point against Barcelona is a noble achievement,” said Rubin’s coach, Kurban Berdyev. “I am grateful to the boys. We decided not to take risk, we needed to be perfectly organized, and the players outdid themselves.”
The Russian side kept 9 or 10 men in defense, as drilled and as grim as foot soldiers. Barcelona lacked the movement to break that defense, even though Lionel Messi — who had damaged his ankle ligaments 10 days before — was risked for the final half hour.
The only goals were penalty kicks.
The Tottenham game also had penalties — three of them, all to the benefit of the home side. Van der Vaart’s shot was saved, but he atoned with a beautiful goal, a thunderously athletic volley with his left foot. He was playing against his countrymen, and even Tottenham admitted he was too hyper.
Van der Vaart was shown a yellow card for one foul and then sent off after a reckless body check of a kind more commonly seen in gridiron football in the United States. He gave the referee little option, and the Spurs were fortunate that Tom Huddlestone was not red-carded for a mean-looking elbow into the face of a Twente player.
Yet Spurs, lifted by van der Vaart’s goal, went on to win convincingly. Roman Pavlyuchenko showed a cooler head to score twice from the penalty spot, and Gareth Bale, the Spurs’ most galvanic player this season, came in off his wing to shoot the fourth goal.
Tottenham’s team is geared to a win-or-bust philosophy. After the club was out of Europe’s top competition for 48 years, no one presumes it is going to end up winning the trophy, but it will not fail through lack of daring.
Its next opponent? The holder, Inter Milan.
Taking a more considered, more cautious approach to the title, Manchester United made just one goal do the job in Spain, where United had not won a match since April 2002.
Against Valencia, the unbeaten leader of this season’s Spanish league, United trod carefully. While never as negative as the Rubin Kazan sterility, the match in the Mestella stadium seemed to be petering toward a goalless tie until that deadlock was broken five minutes from the end.
The scorer, Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, had been on the field for only a handful of minutes. His pace, his directness, his eye for a goal is reminiscent of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the Norwegian who famously came off the bench to score when United won the Champions League in 1999.
Solskjaer is still at Manchester United, as coach to the reserves. Since the club paid around $11 million to buy Hernández from Guadalajara this summer, he has had some tutoring from the Norwegian.
“I always watched the Champions League when I was back home,” Hernández said Wednesday. “This is my dream. I am only at the start of my career, and to score so early in the Champions League is a big boost for me.” And for United. His ability to sense the space in a packed defense, and to control the ball with one foot and strike so swiftly with the other, is a deadly art.
“Chico is young,” said the United manager, Alex Ferguson. “He’s getting a lot of strength work in the gymnasium because he needs that. But we felt his pace might be a problem for Valencia, and it was.”
Given Room to Run, Eto'o Thrives for Inter
By ROB HUGHES
Published: September 30, 2010
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LONDON — It was the kind of pulsating night for which Tottenham Hotspur fans had waited a lifetime. Top European soccer was back at the London club’s White Hart Lane stadium for the first time in 48 years.
Enlarge This Image
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press
“I’m happy to win as a striker after winning as a defender last season,” Samuel Eto’o said after the match on Wednesday.
The Times's soccer blog has the world's game covered from all angles.
Go to the Goal Blog
The drama was as relentless as the teeming rain Wednesday. Spurs beat FC Twente, 4-1. And Tottenham’s new Dutchman, Rafael van der Vaart, summed up his first European night at the Lane: “I miss a penalty, I score a goal, I get sent off — a full house!” Yet when the crowd came in out of the rain, there was an image on the television screen that superseded even this.
It came from the San Siro, where Inter Milan, Europe’s reigning champion, crushed Werder Bremen, 4-0. And the image was the transcendent smile of one man: Samuel Eto’o.
He scored three of those goals, and his pass allowed the other by Wesley Schneider.
And when Eto’o spoke on television after the match, he could barely describe his innermost feelings. “I’m happy to win as a striker after winning as a defender last season,” he said.
The inference was clear. Eto’o is a player whose very instinct has always been, since his childhood in Cameroon, to hunt for goals. He is swift, predatory and the very epitome of the Cameroon lion, as his national team is known.
Last year, his coach at Inter, José Mourinho, suppressed Eto’o’s greatest traits by making him a right winger, a defensive one at that. Mourinho’s team won the Champions League, the Italian League and the Italian Cup, so it is difficult to argue with the results.
But Mourinho’s nature is the antithesis to Eto’o’s. The coach is tactically obsessed. It seemed at the time, and even more so today, that he robbed Eto’o of the freedom on which he thrives.
The day before the Bremen match, Rafael Benitez, who succeeded Mourinho as Inter’s coach, said, “I’ve read that Eto’o could be a problem, but I believe he could be the solution more than the problem.” Benitez has so far used Eto’o on the left of the field and down the center — but never as far from the goal, or as far from his nature, as Mourinho did.
The result is a player uncaged. Still fast, still lean, and still under 30 years of age, Eto’o showed again Wednesday that he had not lost the attributes that made him a great finisher with Barcelona.
His former team could have used that sharpness this week. More than 3,200 kilometers, or 2,000 miles, away, faced with opponents even more defensively minded than Mourinho, Barça struggled to draw, 1-1, at Rubin Kazan.
It was a contest ruled by Rubin’s fear of playing the game. “A point against Barcelona is a noble achievement,” said Rubin’s coach, Kurban Berdyev. “I am grateful to the boys. We decided not to take risk, we needed to be perfectly organized, and the players outdid themselves.”
The Russian side kept 9 or 10 men in defense, as drilled and as grim as foot soldiers. Barcelona lacked the movement to break that defense, even though Lionel Messi — who had damaged his ankle ligaments 10 days before — was risked for the final half hour.
The only goals were penalty kicks.
The Tottenham game also had penalties — three of them, all to the benefit of the home side. Van der Vaart’s shot was saved, but he atoned with a beautiful goal, a thunderously athletic volley with his left foot. He was playing against his countrymen, and even Tottenham admitted he was too hyper.
Van der Vaart was shown a yellow card for one foul and then sent off after a reckless body check of a kind more commonly seen in gridiron football in the United States. He gave the referee little option, and the Spurs were fortunate that Tom Huddlestone was not red-carded for a mean-looking elbow into the face of a Twente player.
Yet Spurs, lifted by van der Vaart’s goal, went on to win convincingly. Roman Pavlyuchenko showed a cooler head to score twice from the penalty spot, and Gareth Bale, the Spurs’ most galvanic player this season, came in off his wing to shoot the fourth goal.
Tottenham’s team is geared to a win-or-bust philosophy. After the club was out of Europe’s top competition for 48 years, no one presumes it is going to end up winning the trophy, but it will not fail through lack of daring.
Its next opponent? The holder, Inter Milan.
Taking a more considered, more cautious approach to the title, Manchester United made just one goal do the job in Spain, where United had not won a match since April 2002.
Against Valencia, the unbeaten leader of this season’s Spanish league, United trod carefully. While never as negative as the Rubin Kazan sterility, the match in the Mestella stadium seemed to be petering toward a goalless tie until that deadlock was broken five minutes from the end.
The scorer, Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, had been on the field for only a handful of minutes. His pace, his directness, his eye for a goal is reminiscent of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the Norwegian who famously came off the bench to score when United won the Champions League in 1999.
Solskjaer is still at Manchester United, as coach to the reserves. Since the club paid around $11 million to buy Hernández from Guadalajara this summer, he has had some tutoring from the Norwegian.
“I always watched the Champions League when I was back home,” Hernández said Wednesday. “This is my dream. I am only at the start of my career, and to score so early in the Champions League is a big boost for me.” And for United. His ability to sense the space in a packed defense, and to control the ball with one foot and strike so swiftly with the other, is a deadly art.
“Chico is young,” said the United manager, Alex Ferguson. “He’s getting a lot of strength work in the gymnasium because he needs that. But we felt his pace might be a problem for Valencia, and it was.”
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
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