Findcate

By the time Chelsea’s managerial pursuit had officially begun, with the sacking of Avram Grant in May, it appeared that they had limited options to choose from. Sven Goran Eriksson, thought to be Roman Abramovich’s first choice back in 2003 after ‘purely a social meeting’, had already been courting the Mexican FA after being axed by Thaksin Shinawatra. Frank Rijkaard was mentioned, but he hasn’t enjoyed as much success as he did whilst Henk Ten Cate was involved with the coaching at Barca.

Ten Cate is also a man who, ironically, has also just been sacked by Chelsea. Marco van Basten had already signed a contract to take over at Ajax after this summer’s Euro tournament, back in February. Similarly, Jurgen Klinsmann was already in line to replace the retiring Ottmar Hitzfeld at Bayern Munich, a deal that was arranged at the turn of this year. AC Milan claim that Carlo Ancelotti has been pursued by Chelsea, yet would he have even been the right man for the Russian owner so adamant on his footballing investments playing an attacking brand? Ancelotti has come under fire for favouring a defensive style of football, and could well have ended up like Capello under the Madrid regime of you’re out if you win ugly.

You have to give credit where it is due though, and Scolari did mastermind three successive international tournament knock-outs to the English national team. It just strikes me as odd that if you are scouting the Euro internationals for footballing talent, in terms of both players, and managers, then why not go for one of the up and coming coaches who are certain to have successes in front of them given the right opportunities.

In the English leagues stability and success seem synonymous. Look at Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsenal and Arsene Wenger, and even, to a lesser degree, Hereford United and Graham Turner. All at their clubs for 22, 12, and 13 years respectively. Wenger was a little known French coach with experience in the Japanese J League and French Ligue Une, and Ferguson had enjoyed successes in the Scottish Premier division.

Tags: ac milan, ajax, arsene wenger, avram grant, bayern munich, boise, carlo ancelotti, cate, chelsea, defensive style, first choice, ford, frank rijkaard, french coach, french ligue, goran eriksson, graham turner, henk, hereford united, j league, jurgen klinsmann, knock outs, manchester united, marco van basten, ottmar hitzfeld, roman abramovich, sir alex ferguson, ten cate, thaksin shinawatra

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Dutchman Henk ten Cate, who was Avram Grant’s right-hand man at Chelsea last season, was named as the new coach of Greek side Panathinaikos on Friday.

“Panathinaikos’ organization, history, ambition and attitude match those of the greatest clubs in Europe, so I’m confident that we will achieve our goals. I’m looking forward to coming to Athens and meeting my players.”

Ten Cate, 54, was assistant manager at Chelsea under Grant last season where the Londoners finished runners-up to Manchester United in the Premier League and the Champions League.

Grant has now been replaced by Brazil’s Luiz Felipe Scolari.

During the 2005-2006 season ten Cate was assistant to Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona which won the Champions League title and the La Liga crown.

Ten Cate was a former player in the Dutch league and briefly had a stint with North American Soccer League side Edmonton Drillers in Canada.

Tags: ambition, american soccer, athens, attitude, avram grant, boss, cate, champion, champions league, chelsea, dutch league, dutchman, edmonton drillers, europe, felipe scolari, frank rijkaard, greek side, henk, londoners, luiz felipe scolari, manchester united, new boss, north american soccer league, organization history, panathinaikos, premier league, right hand man, stint, ten cate

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The Dutchman had a contract until 2010 but he follows in the footsteps of Avram Grant, who was dismissed last weekend.

A statement on Chelsea’s confirmed ten Cate’s exit following a meeting this morning.

“As a result of the team management changes at Chelsea FC, and in the light of any forthcoming appointment, it was clear this was the correct decision for all parties, ” it said.

“Everybody at Chelsea would like to thank Henk for his contribution since coming to the club last year.”

Earlier this week, ten Cate dismissed fears that he would be leaving Chelsea.

“He informed me that the departure of Grant will not affect me. I’d rather go on that than all those newspaper reports.”

However, the club’s Champions League final defeat in Roman Abramovich’s home city has clearly left a mark on Chelsea’s owner.

Ten Cate joined Chelsea from Ajax in October last year when he was released by mutual consent.

The Dutchman’s sacking now raises questions as to the future of Steve Clarke, Chelsea’s former player and current assistant coach.

Grant was dismissed just three days after the Champions League final defeat to Manchester United and reports soon after suggested whether Ten Cate and fellow assistant Clarke would survive a summer of change at Stamford Bridge.

Meanwhile, the contenders to replace Grant continues with Luiz Felipe Scolari heading a long list in the race to take over at Stamford Bridge.

Tags: ajax, appointment, assistant coach, avram grant, cate, champion, champions league, champions league final, chelsea, contenders, correct decision, dutchman, felipe scolari, footsteps, ford, grant successor, henk, luiz felipe scolari, management changes, manchester united, mutual consent, roman abramovich, steve clarke, team management, ten cate

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John Terry’s bravery has brought him concussion, broken bones and painful wounds, but nothing as painful as the emotional trauma he suffered last night when, having stepped up to take the penalty that would have won the Champions League final, the Chelsea captain slipped and shot wide, off a post. As the tears flowed stronger than the Russian downpour, he looked inconsolable. He was a man in grief.

Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, has a perspective on life because of the traumas his family suffered in the Holocaust, but even he was struggling to find the words to ease the pain of Terry, who was white with shock.

It is hard enough for any player to miss a penalty, but the pain can only have been heightened for Terry, brought through at Chelsea, their captain, their leader and a man who had been deeply hurt by three semi-final failures in the Champions League.

The sympathy will only heighten at the revelation that Terry was not meant to be among Chelsea’s first five takers and would not have been had Didier Drogba not been sent off for his gentle but idiotic slap of Nemanja Vidic, the Manchester United defender, in the second half of extra time.

“He was not supposed to be in the first five,” Henk ten Cate, the Chelsea assistant manager, said. “John stepped up when he wasn’t supposed to. It’s unbelievable it happens to him. He slipped. We practised penalties so much all last week and he was very confident. We were all very confident. Penalties is a lottery and we got the short straw.”

We associate the English with a woeful lack of nerve when it comes to penalty shoot-outs, but it appears that it is only in the national colours. Liverpool won the Champions League in Istanbul in 2005 from the spot and there was a high quality last night, including from those Englishmen such as Michael Carrick, Lampard, Owen Hargreaves and Ashley Cole.

Indeed, the only miss before Terry’s left ankle turned over, Beckham-style, and he slipped as he took the kick had been, remarkably, from Cristiano Ronaldo with United’s third effort. It was an awful penalty, his stuttering run confusing himself rather than Petr Cech. The Chelsea goalkeeper held his nerve and Ronaldo’s shot was saved by the Czech Republic player, diving to his right.

Edwin van der Sar knew that he had to pull off something special and he thought he had done so with Chelsea’s fourth, from Ashley Cole. “I had been close to one or two, especially that one,” he said. But it was not skill that thwarted Terry. “It is our luck that he slipped,” Van der Sar said. Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, felt a rush of good vibes at that moment. “The slip from Terry gave us an opening and I felt from there we were going to win it,” he said.

Anderson scored United’s first in sudden death, Salomon Kalou struck back for Chelsea. Then Ryan Giggs, on the night he broke Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of appearances, stroked his home to leave Nicolas Anelka needing to score to keep his team in it.

Tags: ashley cole, avram grant, broken bones, cate, champion, champions league, champions league final, chelsea, downpour, emotional trauma, englishmen, extra time, henk, john terry, lampard, left ankle, manchester united, michael carrick, national colours, nemanja vidic, owen hargreaves, painful wounds, penalty shoot outs, short straw, sir alex ferguson, team coach, ten cate, traumas

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With two games to go, his team are joint leaders of the Premier League. On top of that, they are only one night’s work away from the Champions League final. Not bad going, that, for any grade of manager, but a doubly impressive achievement for someone still getting to grips with his first big job while being condemned as an imposter, supposedly only given a chance because he is mates with the club’s owner.

Maybe it is time, then, that we gave Avram Grant the benefit of the doubt, embraced the theory that the Chelsea manager might actually have something going for him, even if he does sometimes give the impression of being out of his depth when it comes to rallying the troops or making the right decisions in the heat of battle.

He wasn’t out of his depth on Saturday. On the contrary, everything clicked for the Israeli coach on a day when each of his players rose to the occasion to stop Manchester United leaving Stamford Bridge as certain champions. No question that John Terry, Michael Ballack and everyone else wearing blue had been sent out in the right frame of mind. From start to finish, Chelsea played with poise and purpose, not to mention fire in their belly. So can we give Grant credit for that? Or do we simply assume that any professional worth his salt will be pumped up anyway for such a huge match?

That’s the thing with Grant - the default reaction from us outsiders is to look elsewhere for reasons and heroes, assuming that this mild-mannered character with the hangdog looks couldn’t possibly be responsible for what happened on that pitch.

More likely, we might imagine that Grant’s more vocal and aggressive assistant, Henk ten Cate, had wound up the players with a stirring team talk. It is difficult, after all, to picture Grant in Churchillian mode. Mind you, if Ten Cate did do a lot of the motivating beforehand, what’s wrong with that? That’s what partnerships are about - blending different attributes to cover all the bases.

As for Grant’s attributes, it is difficult from this distance to see exactly what he brings to the party himself. But he must bring something, otherwise his team wouldn’t still be in with a chance of writing their name in the record books.

Tags: avram grant, cate, champion, champions league, champions league final, chelsea, ford, henk, hero, job, john terry, manchester united, ten cate

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John TerryThere were reports this week of a falling out with Henk Ten Cate that suggests he is at boiling point. This could be born out of frustration over injuries. Terry has played only 18 times for Chelsea this season and finds his starting-place under threat. His England place is also exposed.Frank LampardThe midfielder was left out of the side that played Olympiakos last week, a trend that could continue now Michael Ballack is in form. Should Avram Grant decide to play the German he could end up pushing Lampard out of the door. He has yet to sign a contract extension.Joe ColeThe decision to leave Cole out of Sunday’s starting line-up was strange considering he has openly praised Grant for revitalising his career. The Israeli may have alienated one of the few players who back him.Didier Drogba/Nicolas AnelkaGrant’s insistence on deploying a 4-3-3 formation will mean either Drogba or Anelka playing out of position or not all. Either outcome could harm Chelsea. As shown on Sunday, when Anelka started on the left of a front three, an unbalanced side is an ineffective side, but leaving out one of the two strongest characters in English football may damage morale.Upcoming matchesChelsea’s next three matches are in all the competitions they are still in, with each containing the potential for disaster. They go to West Ham on Saturday in the league before the visit of Olympiakos in the Champions League four days later. Chelsea then travel to Liverpool’s conquerors Barnsley in the FA Cup.Mourinho’s legacyGrant has yet to hear his name sung by Chelsea’s supporters and popularity will be hard to find as he struggles to assert himself while Mourinho’s shadow continues to hang over Stamford Bridge. The Israeli has won 24 out of his first 35 matches in charge but Mourinho won 27 and did not lose to Manchester United or Arsenal in that run. Mourinho also won the Carling Cup last season.

Tags: avram grant, cate, champion, champions league, chelsea, contract extension, ford, henk, john terry, lampard, manchester united, ten cate

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11 March 2008

Shona Khona - meaning Go for it - is a youth soccer development

initiative started three years ago to develop role models among South

African school children, with a special emphasis on rural and poorer

communities. The SA Football Association-endorsed programme is now

paying exciting dividends.

The brainchild of the former general manager of Reckitt Benckiser South

Africa, Roberto Funari, Shona Khona has attracted some significant

sponsors since launching in 2005.

Reckitt Benckiser began the initiative with Metro Cash %26amp; Carry. Its

partners now include Premier Soccer League club Mamelodi Sundowns,

Manchester United sponsors AIG, leading sports management agency

ForwardZone, Imperial Motors, and The Sowetan newspaper.

How Shona Khona works

The programme gives youngsters between the ages of 10 and 16 the

opportunity to take part in training camps through competitions

involving specially marked household products made by Reckitt

Benckiser. They SMS the lucky number found on the packaging, and

numbers are drawn which allocate the winners to a training camp closest

to their cities or towns.

Regional camps are held in 20 different locations across the

country. At each camp, the most talented players are selected by South

African Football Association (Safa) coaches and former football greats

to attend a national Shona Khona weekend soccer and life-skills camp,

which takes place in July each year.

This year, the special weekend camp will include the Sundowns and

Manchester United Soccer Schools coaches. After the camp, a handful of

the most talented children will be selected to travel to Old Trafford,

the home of Manchester United, for a week of training at the famous

club’s facilities.

Successes

Among the successes achieved so far are five boys who were accepted

into, and are currently enrolled at, the Safa/Transnet School of

Excellence.

Another youngster, Sifiso Mnguni, who was discovered at the very first

Shona Khona training camp, has just signed a three-year playing

contract with the under-19 development team of Premier Soccer League

club Platinum Stars.

However, the most exciting accomplishment was recently achieved at the

Sao Paulo Futebol de Base in Brazil where, since December 2005, 24

youngsters selected by Shona Khona have undergone a week’s training.

It has become the experience of a lifetime for 12-year-old Tyroane

Sandows who, after being selected to go to Brazil, so impressed Sao

Paulo’s coaches that he has been signed to a three-year contract with

the club.

After the three years are up, Sandows will be re-evaluated, with the

prospect of being able to join the senior section of the club’s

academy, which means he would then be eligible to start the process of

becoming a professional soccer player in accordance with Fifa

guidelines.

Moving to

Brazil

Sandows has managed to set himself apart from his peers - he continues

to shine, said Stan Whiting, Shona Khona’s project coordinator.

Since being discovered, the quiet Sandows has let his talent speak for

itself. His passion and consistency is what impressed his Brazilian

coaches and earned him a contract.

Sandows’ experience started with the purchase of a specially marked

Reckitt Benckiser product from his local Metcash store. What seemed

then a simple purchase has not only earned him the chance of a

lifetime, but has also changed his family’s life; they will relocate to

join the elder of their two sons in Brazil in August.

I do not have enough words to thank you for your commitment to this

project and for making Tyroane’s dreams a reality, Sandows’ father,

Joe, told the Shona Khona sponsors.

At first it was just a wonderful weekend experience, then an

incredible opportunity for Tyroane to travel to Brazil for a week, and

now, nearly two years later, we are on our way to actually live in

Brazil.

Opportunities in England

The opportunities for talented youngsters will shift from a South

American powerhouse, Sao Paulo, to an English powerhouse, Manchester

United, in 2008, and project co-ordinator Whiting is excited about the

impact Shona Khona is making.

By taking the training and life-skills camps into communities, Shona

Khona is able to reach more children than ever before, Whiting said.

And with AIG on board, the most talented children will have the chance

to travel to the UK, Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, where

they will receive a week of world-class football training.

The national soccer camp, featuring the best of the best from the

community-based camps, will give coaches from the Manchester United

Schools programme and the Mamelodi Sundowns technical team a chance to

put the youngsters through their paces, with various skills and

training drills covering all aspects of the game of soccer. These will

provide the coaches and other selectors a chance to make a qualified

decision about the players.

During the camps, the learners will also take part in life-skills education sessions designed to be interactive and fun.

Shona Khona is set to continue up to and beyond the 2010 Fifa World

Cup, which will be hosted by South Africa. If its successes are

anything to go by, South Africa will have players to answer the call to

shona khona in tournaments well beyond 2010.

SAinfo reporter

Tags: accomplishment, cate, endor, ford, manchester united, pace

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substantial away support chanting his predecessor Jose Mourinho’s name.Asked afterwards whether he accepted he now has to win one of the two major competitions in which Chelsea are still in contention to keep his job, Grant admitted: “I will accept it. When I am responsible for the team, and when my team loses at Barnsley, there will be many negative things said about it. On the other hand, we have two major competitions left. I am concentrating on them, not other things. But this is a massive disappointment.”The Israeli summoned his entire first-team squad to training at their Cobham base yesterday, addressing his players in an attempt to discover why his line-up - without Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard who had not travelled to Barnsley as, according to the club, they were injured - failed so miserably against Championship opposition. It was damning that the home goalkeeper Luke Steele’s only significant save came after 53 minutes.Yet the concerns expressed by the club’s hierarchy after the defeat by Spurs two weeks earlier have swiftly resurfaced. The manager boasts a fine record on paper, and recovered from the Carling Cup final defeat to win his next two matches, 4-0 and 3-0 against West Ham and Olympiakos, though he cut a solitary figure in the technical area on Saturday, doing little to dispel fears that he is out of his depth.His assistant, Henk ten Cate, illustrated the level of pressure the management team were under when he added: “One bad run of results and you’re out. You just can’t afford to lose here. I came to Chelsea because I was looking for peace. I wanted to work at the top level and at the same time I was looking for peace.”League games with Arsenal and Manchester United were lost early in his reign, before the League Cup final was followed by this untimely first elimination from the FA Cup to lower league opposition since 1995. “I’m the manager and I’m responsible for everything,” said Grant. “It’s very sad because we’d played so well in the last week. This team has shown they can play good football. They did it against West Ham and Olympiakos, good teams. The team that played at Barnsley, even though we had a lot of injuries, was good enough to win.”Lampard was apparently keen to play at Oakwell despite suffering from a minor thigh strain, but Grant felt he had enough quality to win the game without theEngland midfielder. His starting line-up, after all, boasted 10 full internationals.Lampard is expected to feature in the Premier League game with Derby County on Wednesday, though whether Florent Malouda and Juliano Belletti have long-term futures at Stamford Bridge after uninspiring displays on Saturday remains to be seen. Victory against the division’s bottom club would move Chelsea to within four points of the top.”The tactics were right and the criticism should be aimed at the players,” said Nicolas Anelka, who started at Oakwell. “It is not about the manager, it is the players. We have spoken about the Champions League before and we will try our best to win it because, when you look around the dressing room, we have big players. I think Barnsley will be forgotten if we win the Champions League.”Match report, page 3 …#8805;

Tags: appointment, cate, champion, champions league, chelsea, disappointment, ford, henk, job, lampard, manchester united, premier league, ten cate

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Aliadié‘¢e’s SHOCKING GENTLE TAP has earned the player a four-game suspension, one match longer than the ban received by Birmingham defender Lennie Small for his studs-up early reducer on Arsenal striker Eduardo. That’s because while clumsy Lennie ground the bones of someone’s leg into a powder so fine you could sift it through a pair of 783-denier surgical stockings, Aliadié‘¢e had the brass front to question the three-match ban given to him by an FA panel consisting of Amusement the Clown, Humour the Clown, Jocularity the Entertainer and Funny Dog, on the grounds that a SHOCKING GENTLE TAP is actually not particularly that shocking - an appeal regarded by the FA as a “frivolous” act which earned the striker an extra game off.”We have amateurs in charge of the professional game,” seethed Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson, a man who once employed Bryan Robson and Steve McClaren. “We need professional people making decisions, not these silly little men. It is ridiculous to call our appeal frivolous and I’m absolutely furious.” Gibson is obviously livid over the punishment, which kicks in tonight as Boro host Sheffield United in the first replayed FA Cup tie for more than 682 months, but it is notable that Gareth Southgate has been mysteriously quiet on the issue. It’s almost as if the Boro manager knew full well what would happen if they complained to the FA about the initial ban, and now isn’t obliged to pick the hapless marquee signing for four matches, not just three. He’s cleverer than he looks, is Southgate. Which is admittedly faint praise but praise nonetheless.Follow live minute-by-minute coverage of Boro’s monotonous 1-0 win on penalties against Sheffield United with Scott Murray from 7.30pm.*********************QUOTE OF THE DAY”Why should football fans be singled out? The whole thing needs a root and branch review” - Motherwell chairman John Boyle takes the Geoff Thompson approach in railing against the current booze ban at Scottish fitba grounds.*********************YOU SHOOK ME ALL NIGHT LONGAs you will probably have gleaned from other sources an earthquake got all Def Leppard on our a$$es today and rocked England quite vigorously. People fretted, buildings broke and boffins measured: apparently the Lincolnshire seism was of magnitude 5.2, making it the most powerful rumble to hit the country in well over 80 hours - though, thankfully, unlike last Saturday’s mighty ruckus between John Terry and Henk ten Cate at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground, its tremors are no longer being felt.In a bid to quell the ructions caused by the Cobham quake, top scientist Ten Cate turned to the much-mocked but still widely-used Downplay Technique. “This is all blown out of all proportion … on Saturday the distance between me and John was nowhere less than five metres, it is total nonsense to write, as they [The Sun] did, that our heads were against each other,” sweet-talked Ten Cate to Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad. “The discussion was about the sharpness of the training, as we have more often,” continued Ten Cate in translated segments of an interview that probably sounded more coherent in his native Dutch. “There is no problem between John and me: I respect him fully and he respects me fully,” continued Ten Cate in an interview that probably didn’t sound any more convincing in his native Dutch.Avram Grant, whose decision to delay the naming of his Carling Cup final team is being blamed for the quake, has not yet commented publicly on the matter, possibly because he’s awaiting permission from Frank Lampard. But with his team now losing matches and their heads, the manager has skipped coaching lessons in Israel in order to stay in London and try to muster the wherewithal to do something useful for his club.”I believe he’ll catch up on the lessons he has missed but all the coaches know they have to come to 80% of the classes in the programme,” parped Amnon Raz, chairman of the Israel Coaches Association. “But if he misses too many more he will be treated like everybody else who fails to turn up: he will be out of the programme and he will not get his Pro Licence.” And without that he won’t be able to continue managing Chelsea next season. And in fairness, some would say that disqualifying himself from his current job constitutes doing something useful for his club.*********************THE RUMOUR MILLAlex Ferguson wants to part-exchange his broken down Louis Saha for the shiny new Karim Benzema that he saw cruising through his defence last week.Juventus and Internazionale are going to spend their summer duking it out for the attentions of Arsenal’s Mathieu Flamini and Abou Diaby.And now Tottenham are good again they have no need for mardy Frenchmen with no positional sense or over-priced strikers with one good season under their belts. So it’s bye-bye Pascal Chimbonda and Darren Bent.*********************NEWS IN BRIEFEverton have sent out a statement of their Big Cup qualifying intent by applying for a spot in next season’s Intertoto Cup.Rafa Ben韙ez will bide his time before deciding whether to offer Sami Hyypia the chance to be part of Liverpool’s quest for fourth place next season…. dition of living in the country all the time and will become national coach after all. CONSTANTLY MOVING IRAN STATE TELEVISION BREAKING NEWS YELLOW TICKER THAT SUCKS MORE AND MORE LIFE OUT OF YOU WITH EVERY MILLIMETRE OF ITS SCROLL Javier Clemente has accepted Iran’s con …Liam Miller, Ross Wallace, David Connolly, Graham Kavanagh and Stanislav Varga have all been told they can do one from Sunderland.MLS outfit Real Salt Lake have signed Gretna striker Dr Kenny Deuchar. “We saw some video and liked what we saw,” yeehawed coach Jason Kreis.And a survey in Brazilian magazine Mundo Estranho claims that Flamengo have the biggest fanbase in the world, with 32.6 million supporters. Mexican clubs Chivas and America came second and third in the study, which didn’t take into consideration foreign fans “like Chinese people who support Manchester United”.*********************STILL WANT MORE?Which top flight is the most competitive in Europe? The Knowledge sits back and lets hacks from Germany and Sweden take the strain.When oh when will the madness of modern-day man-of-the-match awards and all this people-powered democracy end, asks Simon Hawkins.James Montague argues that it’s time for Israel to return to its Asian roots if the country’s fans ever want to see World Cup football.With cricket newly flushed with IPL money, young Indian players need to be careful not to lose sight of the game and become more like, well, footballers, writes Dileep Premachandran.And in tomorrow’s all-singing, all-dancing award-winning %26#163;0.80 Berliner Big Paper: page 12 stunnah Marina Hyde on why Brian Barwick could learn a thing or two from a classic Ealing comedy; Andy Wilson previews the World Club Challenge; and it’s Grand Slam Kakuro Thursday, featuring the long-awaited No634.*********************WIN! WIN! WIN!Fancy tickets to Man Utd’s Big Cup clash with Lyon next week? Or Chelsea’s second leg against Olympiakos? No? Then don’t read on. If you do, the kind people at Ford are offering you the chance to win tickets to the game of your choice by answering a ludicrously simple question.And we’ve also teamed up with/got an email from top replica kit company TOFFS to give away vintage kits for your five-a-side team. To be in with a chance of getting to run around in comical black-and-white Pathe News fashion, all you need to do is click here and answer a ridiculously easy question.*********************FIVER LETTERS”Surely the most unsavoury thing about Frank Lampard purchasing an Aston Martin at the age of 20 (yesterday’s quote of the day) is not that one so young was able to afford such an expensive car, but that he listened to Keane whilst driving it?” - Adrian Foster.”What’s the difference between Damien Duff (yesterday’s news in brief) and the rest of Newcastle United? At least Mr Duff has picked up three points recently” - Jim Adamson.Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk.*********************EIGHT HOURS AND COUNTING …

Tags: avram grant, boss, cate, chairman john, chelsea, europe, ford, henk, job, john terry, juventus, lampard, manchester united, newcastle united, ten cate

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Sifting through the wreckage of the Premier League’s plan for global expansion it now seems clear that this is where Richard Scudamore and his cohorts went wrong. They took everyone for mugs; the fans, the FA, the overseas football associations and, finally, fatally, they took Fifa for mugs.By cancelling today’s meeting with Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, to discuss the so-called “39th game”, the Premier League’s hierarchy was assumed by most observers to have called time on its own idea. But it now seems it was not a cancellation but rather a “deferment to allow a consultation process to go ahead and refine details of the scheme”.We can skip the most obvious question raised by this nugget of PR sophistry (why didn’t the consultation process take place before any scheme was announced?) and head straight to crux: what would be the result of this consultation process? What refinements could be made that would transform non-believers into believers?It is clear that a full programme of Premier League games staged overseas will not fly. What about three games, with some of the proceeds used to develop the sport in the host country? How about two games between the top four teams, or one game featuring the top two?Blatter is a flexible fellow but even if Fifa’s overlord was willing to bend, the principal objection to overseas games would remain: they would damage the symmetry and, therefore, the integrity of the league.Scudamore must now know that all roads lead down a cul de sac and, as someone who has plenty but wants more, his unwillingness to accept that fact is understandable. How he must wish he lived in same world as Flavio Briatore, the chief of the Renault F1 team, who spoke in gushing terms yesterday about the global vision of his old pal Bernie Ecclestone. “What he has done to develop F1 in countries with economic potential is amazing. Next we have to look for opportunities in India, Korea and Russia,” Briatore said.India, Korea, Russia … the Premier League chief executive can only stare at his passport wistfully and dream. Or maybe he would rather curse his luck at having to operate in a world with decades of tradition, endless bureaucracies, and competing commercial interests.In the world of Bernie and Flavio there is nothing to stop them turning their enormous fortunes into even bigger fortunes other than the limitations imposed by their own egos. The world of football does not quite operate like that, thankfully. Much as those in charge of the game would like to think otherwise, it is nobody’s fiefdom, to do with what they like when they like.If Scudamore finds that fact of life unpalatable then God only knows how he might feel about the most obvious possibility raised by the demise of his scheme for a 39th game; that perhaps this - the here and now, the multimillion TV deals, the global fan base, the worldwide acknowledgment that it offers an exciting and entertaining brand of football - is as good as it will ever get for the Premier League?Admittedly, all of the above falls short of the even more promised by the 39th game. But it does add up to plenty. And what is so awful about plenty?Chelsea’s defeat says more about Spurs than GrantThe temptation to view internal strife at Stamford Bridge as either the inevitable consequence of sacking Jose Mourinho or some kind of cosmic comeuppance for Roman Abramovich is strong, but it should be resisted.The truth is more obvious and less satisfying for those who wish eternal damnation on Chelsea. Although it is the case that Avram Grant’s side are less dominant than Mourinho’s, they are still performing decently.Sunday’s defeat may have been painful for supporters used to winning trophies, but it said more about Tottenham’s renaissance than it did about Chelsea’s supposed decline.Likewise, the club’s third place in the Premier League is a symptom more of the huge strides made by Arsenal and Manchester United in recent months than of the Special One’s departure.As for the confrontation between John Terry and the first-team coach, Henk ten Cate, clearly the pair are not best buddies but theirs was not the first training-ground spat in living memory and it won’t be the last. Nor does it amount to conclusive proof that the patently decent Grant is not up to the job of controlling the club.TV should have pulled the plug on shameless FaldoA few weeks ago Kelly Tilghman, a commentator on the US-based Golf Channel, suggested on air that Tiger Woods’ rivals might want to “lynch” him - an inexplicable, albeit inadvertent, choice of words which brought her a two-week suspension.Tilghman was again in the booth on Sunday, during the final of the World Match Play between Woods and Stewart Cink, when another egregious, and this time quite deliberate, remark was made by her co-commentator, Nick Faldo.Faldo launched into a little speech about the alleged benefits of balls made by TaylorMade over those of Nike, as played by the two finalists. Many viewers were bemused by the Englishman’s soliloquy and it was only later that the mystery was solved: earlier in the week he had signed a deal with - yes - TaylorMade.A spokesman for the Golf Channel later brushed off Faldo’s conduct as just another example of the Englishman’s “humour”. It was nothing of the sort. It was just another example of sports programmes exempting themselves from the standards applied by other broadcasters who would have had no hesitation in taking action if one of their number had used his platform to shamelessly puff a product in which he had a direct commercial interest. At the very least Faldo should have received the same punishment as Tilghman.Rangers’ gerrymandering gets short shrift in Bremen Encouraged by their success in persuading the Scottish Premier League to shift fixtures to suit their purposes, Rangers tried the same trick this week with Werder Bremen, asking the German club to bring forward their Uefa Cup match by 24 hours to allow them more time to prepare for the CIS Cup final against Dundee United, scheduled to take place less than 72 hours later.Full marks for chutzpah but Rangers received the answer they, and any club that tries to manipulate the fixture list, deserves to receive: get lost.

Tags: avram grant, cate, chelsea, commentator, decades, fact of life, ford, henk, issa, job, john terry, manchester united, premier league, roman abramovich, team coach, ten cate

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