Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Sponsored silence

Mon Feb 11 08:56AM

Hats off to fans of Manchesters United and City, who observed an immaculate minute's silence at Old Trafford yesterday without so much as a ring tone disturbing the calm.

Although the school teacher in Early Doors feels compelled to point out Sir Alex Ferguson appeared to be chewing gum as he laid his wreath, it was nonetheless a fitting tribute to the victims of the Munich air crash.

United fans have had plenty of practice at being silent, as they usually tack on an additional 89 minutes of hush at home games.

Several days after the Premier League unveiled its most shamelessly money-spinning concept yet, it may have worried Richard Scudamore to see just how great those plain United shirts looked.

The club's main sponsors still managed to install themselves on the main tribute wall outside the ground, but at least United didn't go down the American route of announcing: 'This minute's silence was brought to you by the good people at AIG'.

With United trailing 2-0 at the break, you half-expected them to re-emerge in their modern garb with Fergie complaining that his players didn't recognise each other without sponsors' logos.

The shirts were meant to evoke the 1950s, but Early Doors cannot remember back that far and was instead reminded of the 80s, when teams wore numbers one to 11 and United frequently lost the derby - the six-goal thriller at Maine Road in 1989 springs to mind, with City edging it 5-1.

On a day that showed football cannot just be about dollars and cents, Fergie took the unusual step of leaving Old Trafford immediately after full-time and refusing to speak to the press.

Was he sulking about the result, or merely keeping schtum out of respect for the occasion? No - he had to hot-foot it onto a plane bound for South Africa to promote the club's summer tour. Nice touch.

- - -

As the curtain came down on Liverpool's dire goalless draw at Stamford Bridge, fans could have been forgiven for thinking their team has made no progress since the late 90s.

But had they turned over to watch the second half of the African Cup of Nations final, they would have discovered this is not the case at all.

Egypt ran out 1-0 winners against Cameroon courtesy of the single worst piece of defending in the history of football by Anfield old boy Rigobert Song.

The Cameroon skipper attempted to intercept an innocuous pass around halfway but succeeded only in clogging the ball backwards.

Another ludicrously clumsy touch later Song was charging into his own box under pressure entirely of his own making.

Early Doors distinctly remembers that Song's spell in the Premier League coincided with a general Wenger-inspired obsession with speed.

Players with no discernible talent but bags of pace (Darren Huckerby, Julian Joachim, Christopher Wreh) were gainfully employed before managers realised most of Wenger's players also possessed a modicum of ability.

Even in these rarified times, Song was often touted as one of the quickest players in the Premiership - the kind of player who would needlessly get himself into trouble before wowing the fans by using his size and speed to get him out of trouble.

So when Early Doors saw him punt the ball into his own final third, it assumed he would sprint back, showcase a couple of stepovers or a 'roulette' and shepherd the ball back to his keeper.

Instead, he was easily overtaken by Mohamed 'No relation to the French bloke' Zidan. Song then fell over, somehow won the ball back, gave it away again and allowed Zidan to set up Egypt's winner.

The Egyptian victory was another hammer blow to the theory of Premier League supremacy.

While Ghana and Ivory Coast's Chelsea, Arsenal and Portsmouth stars flaked out at the semi-final stage, Egypt triumphed with a squad largely made up of domestic non-entities and just one English-based player - the deeply mediocre Mohamed Shawky.

The Pharaohs were without Shawky's Boro team-mate Mido, who was left out through 'injury', although it may have had as much to do with the striker calling his coach a 'donkey' at the African Nations two years ago.

On a livestock-related note, Early Doors wonders whether Egypt's success has anything to do with their being the only team who sacrificed a cow after training during the tournament.

- - -

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I want to play for England, but who wants to get a couple of friendlies and then say I'm not having any more of it?" David James on his international future. Strange that in 11 years together in the England set-up James has obviously never met David Beckham.

SELF-EFFACING HUMOUR OF THE DAY: West Ham keeper Robert Green, who reacted to his omission from the England squad by getting 'England's no.6' stitched into his gloves.

FOREIGN VIEW: Marca reckon Guti notched up two goals and five assists in Real Madrid's 7-0 romp against Valladolid last night. Should have put him in the fantasy team ahead of Kevin Nolan, eh?

DEBATE OF THE DAY: On Friday Early Doors asked in which foreign city you wanted your team to play. The Early Doors readers' fantasy fixture list features such gets as Liverpool v Manchester United in Baghdad, Derby v Fulham on the Isle of Man and a request to see Lech Poznan at Old Trafford - presumably while United are in Iraq.

The final word on football's commercialisation goes to james_ssmith: "Football and McDonalds will become the same except that you're only expected to hang around for 20 minutes eating a Big Mac not 2 hours watching, say, Sunderland and Bolton drawing 0-0 in Taiwan."

COMING UP: Arsenal hope to take advantage of their bumbling rivals when they take on Blackburn this evening. A win takes them five clear of United. Follow it live with us from 8pm.

• E-mail this story
• IM this story