SPECTATOR SPORT
Señors vs Juniors
FRANK KEATING
Romantics as well as purists will be lucky if today’s FA Cup final in Cardiff riddles the cockles and stirs the spirits. The knockout rounds might have been compelling enough, but for some time now succeeding finals have been limpidly predictable. Perhaps the event itself yearns too longingly for a return to its natural home at Wembley. That chaotic building site in London must surely be up and running by next May (precisely the forecast of 12 months ago). For neutrals, Liverpool vs West Ham this afternoon whets few appetites; keenest interest for pessimists is whether England’s World Cupper Gerrard is next to follow fellow Scouser Rooney into the emergency outpatients’ department.
West Ham are a gaping street behind Liverpool in the Premiership, but should the intermittently attractive London side manage a heady outsiders’ victory today, it would buck a tediously repetitive trend. Since the Premiership began in 1992, the moneyed strutters have also hogged the FA Cup Arsenal have won it five times, Manchester United four, Chelsea twice, Everton once, and should Liverpool lift it around teatime today, it will be for the third occasion in those 15 seasons. So much for ‘the magic’ of the Cup. The play-offs for promotion in the lower divisions now under way have, by the bucketful, more theatrical edge, intensity and watchability. Which commodities, however, shall be overflowing in Paris on Wednesday when Arsenal attempt to reprise Liverpool’s astonishing show last year in the European Champions’ final. Few fancy the Londoners, but a famous victory would put the tin lid on an exhilarating run to the final by a vibrant young team and, as well, crown the career of the producer-director Frenchman who single-mindedly forged and fashioned it for pre-eminence: Arsene Wenger, the complex hot-blooded cold fish.
Arsene’s Arsenal play Barcelona, sleek thoroughbreds of the bigtime, phantoms of the opera, each starrily luminous downstage bill-toppers. In comparison, through Arsenal’s advance to a final which could define his life’s work, Wenger put together two wise and experienced leaders with a whole bunch of eager colts from all over. Wednesday in Paris will, if you like, be very much a case of Señors vs Juniors. Barcelona’s ringmaster, around whom the galaxy revolves, is the bewilderingly good Brazilian Ronaldinho, for two years running and deservedly the ‘world player of the year’. It is sheer joy to watch him, even when he’s having what they call a ‘quiet match’. He has precious few of those, to be sure; on Wednesday beware Ronaldinho with a guaranteed worldwide audience. To rally his callow group, and spread composure, example and nerveless retort, Wenger relies on his own highly gifted compatriot, the streamlined dirk-sharp attacker Henry and, on the last line with the gloves, the 36-year-old leggy German goalkeeper Lehmann.
Should Arsene’s Arsenal conjure victory for him in Paris, it would leave the ambitious fellow needing, for posterity, only to win a World Cup with a national team. Why weren’t the dolts at the FA courting his ego like mad for weeks? Wenger is a gracious enough winner, but the bottling up of his passions make him a sullen, one-eyed, even vindictive loser. If Wednesday is to be his night for graciousness, then a greatness would be acclaimed and, with his string of titles and cups already in the bag, he would be the first foreign coach deservedly to be serenaded high into the British pantheon alongside Stein and Busby, Ramsey and Paisley, Clough and Ferguson.
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