Barcelona will fear Kanu now
By Myles Palmer
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Features
FEATURES
THE ARSENAL AGM - FULL WRITE UP
FIVE REASONS: ARSENAL COULD WIN IN BARCELONA
CARLTON AND ITV UPSET US AGAIN
JEKYLL AND HYDE PLAY THE NOU CAMP
Arsenal worked Barcelona out. They finished strongly in the Nou Camp because they worked Barcelona out.
They struggled, lost the first half 1-0, but improved hugely and won the second half 1-0.
That was preferable to starting well and then fading.
Psychologically, finishing the 1-1 draw on top was important because Barcelona at Wembley is the next game.
Kanu was better than Rivaldo and made a little piece of history. Arsenal fans will remember that Kanu was, unquestionably, the best player on the pitch in the 1-1 draw in Barcelona on Wednesday 29th September, 1999.
He was hungry, brave and immensely resourceful. He foraged and feinted and dummied and turned and jogged and generally made himself available everywhere.
The ball always sticks to Kanu, especially in the box, where it matters. After scoring a priceless goal he switched to central midfield.
We watched the match on ITV2. Surprisingly, Kanu, the supersub, started the game. He played all 93 minutes, and gave an astonishing 93 minute performance. Barcelona will fear him now.
Sadly, Bergkamp played like a zombie.Why? Maybe he expected to play with Suker, and the switch threw him off his game. Maybe Bergkamp had travelled south on the train thinking he was going to play with Suker,who is just starting to click with him.
Just when Dennis and Davor are turning into Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the manager gives his star a new sidekick.
Despite that handsome 0-0 draw in Fiorentina, Wenger may be dubious about playing Suker, Bergkamp and Overmars in an away game in the Champions League.
The chemistry is risky. All three are moody players who play precise, technical football. If one or two are slightly below par, Arsenal will end up with a powderpuff strike-force. And if Bergkamp has spent two days travelling to the match he will not be at his sharpest.
So Wenger played the lanky African warrior and it paid off.
Kanu has the Gooner spirit, and that is why he scores late goals.And that is why Wenger, when he put on two subs, Ljungberg and Suker, left Kanu on, and took off Bergkamp and Overmars.
But Kanu needs bright, supportive movement around him to feed off his creative short passes. Players should be making runs close to him, and the post-Anelka Arsenal do not yet provided that element of attacking play. Not consistently anyway.
Barcelona coach Louis Van Gaal also made an unexpected striker switch. He selected the nippy, nimble Dani rather than Kluivert, a tall, strong target man.
Dani, coming off a hat-trick against Real Betis, is less of a known quantity and his movement was more likely to trouble Adams and Keown than Kluivert's strength. But Van Gaals switch did not work. Dani was anonymous, and Barcelona missed Kluivert's power in the second half when Arsenal raised the tempo.
Kluivert is a better foil for Rivaldo and Figo, who like to play one-twos, and for Luis Enrique, who can read knockdowns into the box.
Marc Overmars played his best game of the season so far. But he still has not scored a goal in his seven games this season. He missed chance after chance all through September. But goals will come. He is a matchwinner.
Overmars showed, once again, that he has the big match temperament.When he starts scoring, Arsenal's season will really lift off.
After 24 minutes I realised Bergkamp's contribution was over. He backed into Bogarde and put his arms in the air in protest as a free-kick is given against him. A pathetic surrender. I annoyed the kids, Michael and Caroline, by saying, "The next time he puts his arms up I'll switch over to the Man Utd-Marseilles game."
When the caption came up after 35 minutes, Barcelona had enjoyed 71% of possession.An amazing stat.When have Arsenal had only 29% possession in a serious game? In any game? The match had been billed by Wenger as an exercise: Lets find out how good we are.
On the evidence of the first 35 minutes the answer was: not good enough.Gilles Grimandi had given away two 25-yard freekicks in the first 11 minutes and Lee Dixon had kicked a Luis Enrique header off the line. Manninger was flapping and punching, so it was hardly surprising when he spilled a tame Cocu shot. What happened next was mind-boggling. The ball bounced up onto Vieira's thigh inside the six yard box. Amazingly, Vieira took a second touch and wanted a third touch. Luis Enrique came up behind him - and poked it in from four yards.
Astonishing! What a gift! What a soft goal ! Was this the biggest blunder I have seen on a football field since Ray Clemence let in a 40-yard shot by Olmo? What was Vieira doing? What was he thinking about?
My favourite player ! The footballer I described as a £35 million gladiator in the Five Reasons preview last week. Patrick Vieira should have whacked that loose ball into Row Z. What an idiot! He is a professional footballer. An international. His job is to play like a pro, not an amateur! This is the Champions League ! This is the biggest stage in Europe! Are you an extraterrestrial? What planet are you from?
OK, everybody makes mistakes. Like yours truly said Figo was captain of Barcelona in the Five Reasons feature. Figo is only captain when Guardiola is not playing. I am sorry I made that mistake. But I'm sorrier that Patrick Vieira wants three touches in his six yard box when the score is 0-0 in the Nou Camp with only 16 minutes played.
If Vieira had been given three touches he might have wanted four! But always remember: they are only footballers.Human beings. We expect too much from footballers, and we expect too much from human beings. We learn that lesson, then forget it, and have to re-learn it again and again and again.
And Manninger was also to blame. He had slapped a feeble shot into the ground, so it bounced up awkwardly in a dangerous area. Manninger should have gobbled up that feeble shot from Cocu.
Two minutes later Bergkamp went flying into Rivaldo, an angry, malicious kick on the ankle.
Bergkamp had just seen the most stupid goal Arsenal have conceded since he joined the club in 1995, and he reacted by kicking Barcelonas star player. Bergkamp deserved his yellow card, and put himself in prison for the rest of the night. As if he was not already inhibited, without the added fear of a second yellow.
At that point Arsenal seemed to have lost the plot completely.
One wondered whether Vieira would do the same and get sent off.
Vieira, fading in the 46th minute of the first half, made a lunge
at Rivaldo in the centre circle. A late, tired challenge, another
yellow card Everyone had expected Wenger to start Suker and Bergkamp,
but he pulled a Double Whammy by starting the Nigerian AND throwing
an
unexploded bomb onto the field after 73 minutes.
The crowd jeered Suker after 53 minutes as he warmed up.Becasue he played for rivals Real Madrid. They howled when he took his white top off.
We thought Paul Ince got stick when he went back to Upton Park with Man Utd.They screamed when Suker replaced Bergkamp after 73 minutes.
And Suker had only been on the field 20 seconds when he lunged in high and late on local hero Guardiola and kicked his foot. And then, after 79 minutes, Suker perpetrated one of the most calculated fouls of the season so far. He chased across the field, allowed Winston Bogarde to get the ball, then dived fractionally in late and whacked Bogarde as he cleared it.
The UXB exploded and the crowd went ballistic. If Suker was a hate figure before that tackle, he was DEMON now. His name went into the book as Barcelona's concentration went out of the window.
The second half was a different match, nothing like the first half, but now, suddenly, a third match had started. Arsenal were still 1-0 down, but at last they had 11 players capable of winning the game.
Unfortunately, that situation only lasted 25 seconds. Grimandi elbowed Guardiola when they were on the ground, right in front of the referee, long after the ball had gone. Grimandi was sent off. The pendulum had swung towards Arsenal, but now it was swung back by a second act of French idiocy.
The original Guardiola/Grimandi freekick had gone to Arsenal,
not to Barcelona. Dixon knocked the ball out to Ljungberg, who
crossed early from the touchline.Keown headed back into the D,
Guardiola jumped and missed the ball, Suker nodded it gently forward,
Kanu nudged Guardiola
off balance. And while this was happening the crafty Croatian
re-adjusted his balance, his body position, just in case the ball
rolled back towards his left foot.When it did exactly that, Suker
got his head over the ball and hit a textbook shot through Guardiola's
legs, through Bogarde's legs, wrongfooting Hesp, who parried the
ball with his right hand.
It popped out to Kanu, who half-volleyed into the corner of the net from eight yards.
Incredibly, within a minute of Grimandi's red card, Kanu had equalised.
Keown earned a yellow card for a crunching late tackle on Guardiola. Rivaldo hit a dipper, and as Manninger went for it, Keown, Dixon and Adams all ran in to clear the loose ball, but Manninger held this one.
The keeper had grown up a lot during the game. When Figo headed down Ronald de Boer's cross, Tony Adams made a match-saving mega-interception ahead of Dani on the six yard line.
So it finished 1-1.
Arsenal need time to get the hang of playing against the big boys The Champions And Runners Up League is a steep learning curve.
The big question was not so much: Can Arsenal get a point? It was: Can they handle it? Will they be intimidated?
The biggest club ground they visit is Old Trafford, and the Nou Camp is twice that size. So would they get stage-fright in Europe's biggest football theatre ?
Manninger did not handle it in the first 20 minutes.Bergkamp and Parlour didnt.Vieira didn't And, most obviously, Grimandi did not handle it either.
Very disappointing that five out of the eleven players did not handle the event. Half the team was overawed.But very encouraging that Arsenal, reduced to 10 men for the last 15 minutes, were, eventually, well worth a draw.
Wenger knew Suker would generate mass hostility, creating a disruptive atmosphere of aggravation.
And he cleverly found a way of making that work for Arsenal.
My best friend Doug D'Arcy phoned on the final whistle. He said, "I remembered you saying: we won't be murdered. I was watching the first half and thinking: Arsenal are getting murdered here. They should save Dennis Bergkamp's trainfare next time. Patrick Vieira is so arrogant he thinks nobody can tackle him."
When I put the phone down, Alexis Grower, a Gooner pop lawyer, rang from the stadium. Alexis said: "We're going all the way! We were clueless in the first half, especially Dixon and Winterburn. But I couldn't fault either of them in the second half.This is a fantastic result for us.I'm telling you, we're going all the way. We don't fear anyone now." I said, "I didn't fear anyone anyway. I thought we might win. And we might have won if Vieira hadn't done what he did."
On Thursday night I bumped into Evening Standard showbiz reporter Tim Cooper at a Paul McCartney playback party at the Equinox, Leicester Square.
Tim said, "Myles, you should have been with us last night at the Nou Camp."
"Were you in the fifth tier?" I said.
"Sixth tier, I think. I was on a freebie. Tuesday night at 7pm our sports editor Simon Greenberg gets a call saying some people have dropped out of Barcelona from OnDigital, who wants to go? So I said Yes, please. He said, 'Do you know anybody else who would like to go?' I said: Myles Palmer."
Simon did not call me. I wonder why. Maybe it was that reference to him in What's the Story? Boring Glory.
*FOOTNOTE: THE OLMO GOAL. That night in 1982 was a Cup Winners Cup semi-final, Spurs v Barcelona. Sitting in the stand at White Hart Lane, I thought : the shot floated towards Clemence so slowly that he started thinking which teammate he was going to throw the ball to, and the ball went through his hands into the net. An amazing mistake. Clemence would have caught a hard shot. If it had been a very hard shot, he would have tipped it over the bar. But the Olmo shot was so tame, and from so far out, that he lost concentration.
About 15 years later I read an interview with Clemence admitted this was exactly what had happened.
The final score was Tottenham 1 Barcelona 1. Barca had Alesanco, a big bandit, at the back, Carrasco, a tricky left winger, and Simonsen, the deadly Dane up front.
Barcelona won the second leg 1-0. The Cup Winners Cup Final was due to be played at their own Nou Camp. They met Standard Liege and beat them 2-1.
Sunday October 3rd 1999.