As with last season, Arsenal beat them in the Charity Shield, but as the new season kicks off Manchester United still dominate the game in England, on and off the field. Ian Ridley reports
>From the wedding of Mr and Mrs Posh Spice, through world travels that make Rolling Stones tours look like a trip to the shops, to their despicable decision to withdraw from the FA Cup, it has been the European summer of matters Manchester United. Are they now English football? Is everyone else reduced to a run-on part?
United’s treble was a colossal, if at times fortuitous, achievement. Sir Alex Ferguson has arisen yet higher in the pantheon. United will go to the World Club Championship ball in Brazil as they and their marketing people scour the cornershops of the world in search of new superstore opportunities. The English game owes them thanks. It was revered by Europe for its heart and soul, pace and power. Now its quality, at club level at least, is to be taken seriously once again.
United also owe the English game. It has honed and battle-hardened them. As we enter the last months of the millennium, it is worth remembering that the springboard into the decade they dominated was an FA Cup win that saved Ferguson’s job after four potless years of rebuilding. Now the arrogance of their disdain for the very essence of domestic competition rankles.
United’s sheer size and success now seems to set them apart and they are treated with an unhealthy reverence. We are told we have to tolerate and accommodate their needs because otherwise they will simply emigrate to some Super League. Well, so be it. Do we really want a bully in the playground? The strength of any society, and football should be no different, is not how it panders to the strong but how well it takes care of the weak.
Thankfully, though, there is more to the Premiership than Manchester United. Though they will undoubtedly be major players once again, there is now sufficient depth in the Premiership to make the forthcoming season much more than a saga of obsessive deference to the champions. That is quite apart from an intriguing first division and a colourful variety of professional and semi-pro competitions unmatched anywhere else in the world.
At least this is one league where there is more to play for than second place. The familiar three-tier Premiership of half-a- dozen big clubs competing for three Champions League places with another eight mid-size ones trying to cling to them and avoid the clutches of six smaller fry seeking to avoid relegation is likely to be the pattern again. Within that framework there is room for intrigue aplenty. With six, perhaps seven, capable of winning the title, that certainly suggests a more open competition than most European leagues.
Football seems such a predictable game in hindsight. It was obvious, of course, that United would win it all last season, given their resources and resolve. Fortunately, in foresight, it is a much more slippery task. And happily, too, big clubs do not always mean big teams. Ask Everton.
It would be heart-warming, for example, if Watford and Bradford City could buck the trend of promoted clubs going straight back down. Sunderland look to have the wherewithal to do so. It would also be encouraging to see someone such as Leicester City muscling into the top six as testimony to sound husbandry and team development.
Realistically though, the champions will come from the moneyed men. By now Sir Alex, as he does every pre-season, will have looked into the eyes of his players and will know deep down whether they are hungry enough to do it all over again. Other doubts and questions arise. Will Mark Bosnich fill Peter Schmeichel’s gloves? Can they hold on to Roy Keane? Does the squad need new blood? What effect will an expanding Champions League have?
What wouldn’t most clubs give to have such problems? Arsenal have the comdie franaise of Nicolas Anelka to contend with and will surely miss his pace. Chelsea have 10- million worth of Chris Sutton to integrate and a pocketful of staying power to find. Elsewhere, for all their spending, Newcastle and Aston Villa do not yet look significantly stronger while Leeds will do well to maintain their progress if they lose Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
Having spent 25-million, Liverpool have more questions to answer than most, the most pressing being whether they finally have enough defensive resilience to match their attacking talent. The hunch here is that they do and without Europe sapping their resources, they are the choice as champions of this correspondent. Sander Westerveld could be the new Schmeichel; Sami Hyypia the new Jaap Stam. Dietmar Hamann and Jamie Redknapp may prove their Vieira and Petit. Then come Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen.
We will probably be able to read the signposts by the end of August, with each club playing six games before England’s crucial match in Poland intervenes. A win there – certainly achievable, with Tony Adams and Owen likely to be fit enough to return – and then, via a play-off, Euro 2000 in the Low Countries next year does not look quite as remote as it did in the Bulgarian June.
For all the fillip provided by United, English football does need a competitive national team for the sake of its self- esteem. Otherwise it will move closer to being simply a showcase for overpriced overseas talent scenting a soft touch. Much will depend on Kevin Keegan at last selecting the right players and tactics.
A dwindling list of first-team regulars from whom to choose is his – and England’s – biggest current problem.
There will be many other issues this season. The course of true love of the game never runs true. The Premiership may have breathed a sigh of relief last week when the Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT)case against their television deal collapsed- and it did seem here that the OFT was attempting, justifiably, to explore whether fans might get a better deal – but they still have David Mellor’s Football Task Force to contend with.
If it has been doing its exhaustive work properly, then it will have much to say on the subject of pricing and commercialism. Tony Banks threatened a football ombudsman if the game did not pull back from fat-cattery. The new Minister of Sport, Kate Hoey, fearlessly opposed to football’s often cavalier financial dealings, is likely to be even more hawkish on behalf of football supporters.
Then there is the Anelka saga, with the potential for contractual anarchy that has driven Arsen Wenger to fret that the game could be up for the sport we love. Deep down, though, you know it will survive, and the Arsenal manager will survive with it, because too many, him included, will not let it die.
Sometimes you do hate English football, with its range of one-eyed, one-club, over-hyped and over-here guises.
But when the referee blows that whistle at three on Saturday, dammit, you know you just can’t help adoring it.