TALKING FOOTBALL WITH DON HOWE
by Myles Palmer
There have been three or four times when I've really had fun with interviews.
Watching Stevie Wonder rehearse at the Rainbow. Playing table
tennis with Alice Cooper at his mansion in Connecticut. Chatting
to Mick
Jagger at a Warner Brothers party for Van Morrison. Gatecrashing
the Wembley dressing room for a paper cup of champagne with Cyrille
Regis, David Moorcroft and the boys after Coventry beat Spurs
in the FA Cup Final.
And talking to Don Howe about football.
I did a piece with Don last week, two days after the Manchester United replay, to preview the Juventus-United semi-final second leg.First leg was 1-1 at Old Trafford.
Don, now 63, is a veteran with a young man's passion for the game. He still bubbles with enthusiasm when he talks about the nuts and bolts of who will be marking who in a forthcoming game. He is infectious, and he is also educational.
I had been wondering how on earth Roy Keane made those two tackles after chasing Anelka. I had been surprised and baffled by those tackles, and if I had not talked to Don I would never have understood how Keane got there.
Clearly, Don Howe is up there with Alf Ramsey, Dave Sexton and Malcolm Allison. One of the greatest coaching brains these islands have ever produced. He has studied Italian football, and loves commentating on Serie A games for Channel Four.
As Martin Tyler once remarked to me, "Don is a very skilled broadcaster."
Being a realist, he admits the possibility of a 0-0 draw, which would put Juventus through to their fourth consecutive European Cup Final.
"Juventus might not be in the Champions League next season, as they are now 7th in the league, three points behind Udinese. We all look on Juventus as the top team in Italy," he says.
"This game is very important to the future of the club." He admires Juventus coach Carlo Ancelotti and believes he will concentrate on keeping a clean sheet.
"These days the manager makes sure that everything's tight at the back. And if it becomes a no goal draw, fine. And if people wanna say you played for a no goal draw, fine.
"So he's gonna say : Look, we have a nice situation. If we don't give anything away we go through. If we don't give anything away, and then we hit them on the break, or we do as we did in Manchester, and get a goal, it is goodnight for Manchester United."
He reckons Juventus attacked enterprisingly and cleverly in the first half in Manchester. Then, as the second half went on, they started to sit back.
"I know Conte well, the captain. He's a wholehearted lad. A typical box-to-box midfield worker who plays on the right. And all of a sudden he's popped up on the edge of the box, and they've got the ball to him, and he's stuck it in the net.
"He does have a habit of doing that. He did the same in the game before over in Greece. He got in the box and scored an important goal against Olympiakos. I think he'll play very similar to what he did in Manchester.
"Ancelotti's mentor was Sacchi. He played for him in that wonderful game in Barcelona in roughly 1989 when AC Milan beat Steua Bucharest 4-0.
"He looked at Sacchi's ideas as the way he wanted to play. He then left Milan, and got the job at Parma and introduced his system there. He's a 4-4-2 man. His best two players at Old Trafford were Davids and Dechamps.
"Instead of playing one in front of the back four, he's playing two in front of the back four. He'll do that again. I think this is a good way of defending, a zonal back four and two sitting in front.
"Alright, Davids came forward a couple of times. I didn't think Davids was getting foward as much as he did with Lippi, who used to let him go rampaging forward. It looks as though Ancelotti says : 'No, you stay there with Deschamps. Occasionally, when it is there for you, you go.' But, in general, the two you sit there and don't let them get at us.
"I love Davids. I think he's an outstanding player. And Deschamps is an outstanding player. Davids has the ability of a playmaker, and a player who can get forward from midfield, where Deschamps is an out-and-out anchorman who will sit there and give Davids the ball.
"In 1990 he played outside left, tucking in. He was a midfield player who used to go forward. Sacchi's team that night was Tassotti, Baresi and Costacurta, Maldini at left back. He had Colombo at outside right, who is now playing in San Marino. His two centre midfield players were Donadoni and Rijkaard.
"He had Ancelotti wide on the left, and up front he had Gullit and Van Basten. A superb side, and on the night they were absolutely out of this world. Ancelotti was brought up on that, and believed in that, and I think he'll play the same way.
"People say: What will he do? Will he play the sweeper? He won't. He'll play Juliano and Montero, his centrebacks. He'll play the same lot because he believes in that system. He'll keep things tight, but they'll come forward. He'll be saying to them: Look, if we can get a goal, that's the end of the tie.
"He reckons the knee injury suffered by Allessandro Del Piero, which ended his season last November, had a colossal impact on the team and the club.
"They played one up, Inzaghi, and Zidane off him, ten or 15 yards behind him, like Dennis Bergkamp plays. And Del Piero virtually played outside left, coming in.
"He was brilliant, and he could pick up a goal. Sometimes he'd come across in the right wing and have a go there for ten minutes. He works the outside left strip, and does it well. All of a sudden they've lost their best goalscorer, the bloke who can get them a goal out of nothing. And they've lost the shape that seems to work for them.
"Losing Del Piero was virtually the end of Lippi. Because it was the start of one of the worst runs Juventus have had for years. They couldn't win a game. I have a feeling that it even confused Lippi. He didn't know what to do in the end. Then, all of a sudden, he's out.
"But I don't think they're gonna do anyting different. Except the little lad they played at left back, Di Livio. I have a feeling hell play him wide midfield. He'll play him outside left or outside right. He's a real little grafter. They can always depend on him to do a job wherever they play him. He's a super little player who doesn't give it away.
"I think it will be a zonal back four, and four in front of them. As we all do now.
"The other day when Manchester United played against Arsenal, they played 4-4-1 and we couldn't get through that eight.
"A lot of teams do this now, they play 4-4-1 when they have a player sent off. And if the back four hold the edge of the box, and this is what Manchester United have got quite clever at now, because obviously they've got players like Giggs who can go on the break.
"If you play two banks of four, a back four with another four midfield players ten or 15 yards in front of them - you try and get through that! Its bloody difficult. Obviously, you'd love to go round the corner, you'd love to go down the flanks.
"The Dutch would go over the top. People say the Dutch are wonderful footballers, and they are, but they don't mind a few up-and-unders, putting it in the mixer."
Don Howe is a born coach who feels sympathy for other coaches, even for Arrigo Sacchi, one of the most unpopular men in world football. "I felt sorry for Sacchi, really. This man who had hit it. Its not very often in your life that you're with a wonderful team. But he's never, ever managed to get it going again. Even when he went back there he couldn't get it together again.
"Its funny that.You've got a bloke whose got tactics, and his philosophy is to play that 4-4-2, and he's got a team that's won everything, championships, European Cup.
"He then got the national job, and Capello took over. And he has similar views. There's a line of them over there. Sacchi introduced a zonal back four into Italian football, there's no doubt about that.
"Up to a point he got the Italian team playing quite well in USA 94, and they got to the final. But he could never ever seem to find the right pieces to fit into the puzzle. As time went on, the next fella to really take it up was Zeman.
"The bloke at Fiorentina, Trapattoni, will always stick with his man-for-man and his sweeper, because that's got him success. You get that anywhere. If you have success with a certain way of playing, that becomes your philosophy of the way the game should be played. You stick with it. But I'm afraid you shouldn't, really. I think you should be more open-minded, because the next lot are a different set of players, a different mentality."
Don reckons Alex Ferguson has a decision to make about Zinedine Zidane, the world player of the year. And no, its not about whether to buy the French playmaker.
"If Zidane plays, he'll have the freedom to go anywhere he likes. In some ways the loss of Del Piero makes them a bit more solid. When Zidane and Del Piero and Inzaghi played, they only had three in midfield. That's where Di Livio was very important, tucking in. That's gonna be Alex's big problem.
"Alex has very rarely man-marked anybody. The last time Manchester United man-marked anybody was about a month ago. They played Chelsea and he put young Phil Neville on Zola, and nobody expected it.
"Alex might look at that, and say: 'No, I can't afford to do that, I've gotta win this game.' In his mind he's gonna have to say to himself:'Do I do another Zola on Zidane? Or do I let the nearest player pick him up?'
"After the first game there was a story that they were talking at half time and they'd had a bit of a ding-dong. And the story was that they didn't worry too much about Zidane, they were more concerned about Davids. And that Keane and Scholes had got to look after Davids.
"In retrospect, he might have picked Butt, as he did against Arsenal. A midfield player rather than someone who keeps bombing forward all the time.
"What they did ever so well the other night against us was that the back four squeezed up onto Keane and Butt, so if the ball went past Roy Keane, and went in to Anelka, Roy Keane turned round and tackled him. You can only do that if your back four are squeezed up. If your back four are not squeezed up, the midfield players are not close enough to the centre forward if he comes off.
"I thought : Roy Keane's tackling in front, Roy Keane's tackling behind, he's running the game here. Then he got himself sent off. But Nicky Butt and Scholes did just as good a job."
Don doubts whether the two Arsenal semis will have taken a toll on United, even though both went to extra time. Good athletes should be able to recover in a few days. When you're on a little bit of a run, tiredness never seems to be the problem. They're so full of chat and talk. You give them a day off.
"I notice that Alex went off to the races on Thursday, so he got out of it. When we did the double at the Arsenal we didn't know exactly how to do it. We went to the doc and he said give them some time off. If they go away from each other, when they come back its all fresh again and they're ready to go. Whereas if you keep them together too long, they'll get fed up with each other. They won't know what to say because they've said it all, so we ended up giving them a lot of time off.
"And I'm sure Alex is doing this. We gave them a day off after a match, sometimes we'd give them two days if we had enough time to give them two days. So that when they came back together they came back fresh. They'd had something else happen in their life.
"I think Alex is into that. That's why he let Schmeichel go off to the West Indies. Beckham, who was outstanding the other night, can go off and look after his baby. Alex is aware that if you want the football atmosphere to be there all the time, get them away from it every now and again. So they come back fresh.
"And he's very confident of his squad. When we saw the team he picked the other night we thought: thats a surprise! Because we knew nobody was injured. Sheringham, Solskjaer. He left Giggs out and put on Blomqvist. That's confidence in his squad. Teddy Sheringham had some beautiful touches, he reminded me of Euro 96. He might not have liked the enforced rest, but he'd got his game back together. In Euro 96 he had an outstanding tournament, and that night he looked like the Teddy Sheringham that played in that."
Don won't have it when I suggest that, for some of these millionaire players, a Serie A game is just another day at the office.
"He insists they cannot be complacent because the fans are so intense, so critical. The fans are very demanding in Italy. The players have to play. They have to go out there and perform. Over there, if you don't perform, they're on your back. They're very unforgiving. I'm sure they could sell this game out twice in the Stadio Delle Alpi.
"The atmosphere in Turin next week will be electric. Not just on the night, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdsay. I'd really love to be there. Because you go in the restaurants and everybody's talking football. People just live for football there.
"I've been lucky enough to be in Italy a few times when there's been a big game coming up, and if youre there two or three days before the game, its a wonderful atmosphere. But demanding as well.
"The Italians are good pros. Being a millionaire is gonna be a common thing. They can give you a million pounds, but they can't give you a medal.
"They can give you a million pounds, but they cant give you the European Champions Cup. So they have to become good pros.
"I think it is gonna be a great game. I wish I was going but I'm not. Nobody's asked me. So, like everybody else, I shall be in front of the box, living every moment."
Sunday 18th April.
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