Going looks good for Fergie-Jose final - 7M sport

Going looks good for Fergie-Jose final



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Posted Saturday, March 19, 2011 by UK.eurosport.yahoo.com

Going looks good for Fergie-Jose final

Sir Alex Ferguson is at Cheltenham today, watching his horse What A Friend in action.

His nag may be the Wolves of the Gold Cup, but Fergie appears to be enjoying the opportunity to play the owner, mixing with race men, swapping tips, getting away from the fraught soap opera that is the Premier League.

How thrilled he must have been, then, to see a growing knot of pressmen gathering at the one entrance to the owners' bar where he was calming his pre-race nerves.

The Sky cameras were there, the radio mics, the reporters' notebooks, all seeking comment not on the going (good to soft), not on the condition of the favourite (belting, apparently) but on the Champions League draw. United against Chelsea in the quarter final: it's the Gold Cup of football ties, like Kauto Star against Denman. Except with less sentient participants.

Dismayed as he may have been by the sight of all those pressmen Fergie could not, as he walked up to the owners' enclosure, disguise the fact the draw has been kinder to him than it might. Sure, he has a quarter against Carlo Ancelotti's side, who will be no pushovers. But with the second leg at home, it cannot hold greater fears than he has overcome in the past in this competition. And better than that, thanks to the simultaneous semi draw, he knows this: he will avoid the real threats, Barcelona or Real Madrid, until obliged to meet one or other at Wembley in the final.

No, the manager who has been most stymied by the draw is Fergie's fellow racing enthusiast, Harry Redknapp.

What a route now opens up ahead of Tottenham. A club that has never competed in the Champions League before this season now has to dispose of the grandest of all opponents to reach a semi-final against the current darlings. It is enough to make a man twitch.

But imagine if Harry was to do it. To steer their way past Milan, then Madrid, then Barca before a possible meeting at Wembley with United, Chelsea, Inter or Shalke: if there was ever demonstration of the old cliche about having to meet the big teams at some point in a knock-out, this is it. And what a way to announce his credentials.

What a glorious sequence that would be for Redknapp, one that would finally seal the rapid elevation he has made this season from jokey outsider to proper, grown-up, serious manager.

There is just one obstacle in the way of such unfettered romance. And it wears a fancy suit, favours designer stubble and can fluently swear at the match official in half a dozen European languages. Jose Mourinho is precisely not the sort of opponent Redknapp needs right now. The wily Portu-geezer has an astonishing European record, winning the big gong with two different outfits. He is not going to let a small matter like Spurs block his progress to success with a third.

The problem for Redknapp is that Mourinho will find a way to out-fox him. True, the blanket defence that brought him such success with Porto and Inter is probably not available to him with Real, going so completely against the club's sense of itself as it does. But still, he will already be working on ways to block the flow to Luka Modric, combat the aerial threat of Peter Crouch, man-mark Gareth Bale. Given the depth of his resources, there is not much Redknapp can spring on him by way of surprise; he will find a way to counter whatever Spurs throw at him.

Plus, Mourinho has been blessed by the re-emergence of Karim Benzema. The Frenchman seemed to be on his way out of the club but three months ago. Now, after destroying Lyon in the last round, he looks the kind of player everyone thought he might become five years ago. As Redknapp has done with Bale and Michael Dawson, Mourinho has produced from his own ranks a player that others had missed.

All the evidence suggests - never mind how joyful it would be to see Spurs progress, how refreshing to see an English manager take his place at Europe's top table - it will be Mourinho obliged to solve the Barcelona conundrum in the semis.

Indeed, this is how I see things progressing, with the semis of Madrid against Barca and United against Inter, leading to a final between United and, after confounding every wider opinion by out-witting their Spanish rivals, Madrid.

Fergie against Mourinho, the master against his successor: it has got to be that, hasn't it?



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