Los Coladeros, Episode 55: Roo Camp
Some people would say that playing newly-promoted Compostela at home just three days after probably the most famous victory in your club’s history is a huge comedown, and they’re right. Our stunning 3–2 win against Liverpool is going to be celebrated from the Alameda to the Alcázar for months and years to come, and as we prepare La Cartuja for the visit of BATE Borisov in our first ever home Champions League game next Tuesday, the Galicians are like a trapped fly bashing its head against the windows of our party bus. They’ve started badly, they are bad, and we should dispatch them with cruel efficiency.
Most of our Anfield heroes are still knackered from chasing Premier League champions around for 90 minutes, so wholesale changes are necessary today. Duff, Desailly, Welsh, García, Kerr, Davies, Ronaldo and Tsigalko are all hovering near or below 90% fitness, and with the games we’ve got on the horizon — namely BATE and Barcelona at home, then Werder Bremen away — resting and rotating is the name of the game.
That means first and possibly only starts of the season for Nuno Mata and Alberto Saavedra, whose cool “double a” name keeps him in the squad for at least six more months, while Bergtoft, Arteta, Lundén, Harbuzi and Drogba also get the chance to impress.
And impress they don’t. Harbuzi clips the top of the crossbar with a run and shot in the third minute, but that’s as good as it gets for us in the opening 45, as thereafter Compostela hit three stinging shots on target that Costanzo saves while my defenders go around gathering as many yellow cards as the referee is prepared to hand out. I should get a statue for getting anywhere near the top of the league last season with these plodders as my second choices.
I don’t really want to play any of my megastars if I can help it, but with 70 minutes gone, we’ve done nothing except look like we’re going to throw what should be an easy three points directly in the bin, so with a wince, I ring the changes. Bergtoft, Harbuzi and Drogba are out, Ronaldo, Tsigalko and Samba are in. You could call it my RTS strategy, if you were a huge nerd.
Three minutes later, we’re 2–0 up. In essence, Ronaldo comes on, collects the ball, and does things. Some people would say I’m a genius but I couldn’t possibly agree out loud.
The lad is a player, no doubt about it. This could be his season.
When man-of-the-match Mikel Arteta adds a third in the 86th minute, I’m high on life and awaiting the sweet release of the final whistle — but there’s still to be a horrible sting in the tail. A minute later, within seconds of one another, Compostela ruin our clean sheet and Ronaldo, who was clattered in the build-up, is forced off injured. We’re down to ten, which makes no difference since the game is over, and we’ve won — but at what cost?
Ronaldo for two months, that’s what, with yet another groin tear. It’s by far and away the most prevalent injury we get in games — the players must have a lot of stiffness down there. I should ask what they’re doing in their spare time… but that’s really none of my business. I might just hire more physios and forget all about it.
In the meantime, I pour myself an Old Fashioned from the dugout optic — best £250 I ever spent — and head back to my office, where I fire up the Player Search list and scan down over 100 pages of players looking for the ones that have Minimum Fee Release clauses, just in case I can activate an undiscovered superstar for a few quid and drag him over here in time for the winter. There are some pretty interesting players with this clause in their contracts — Juan Pablo Angel, Mattias Asper, Allan Bak Jensen, Phillipe Christanval, Deco, Ugo Ehiogu, Sidney Gouvou and Shaun Wright-Phillips, to name just a few. However, one name in particular stands out.
My bank balance says that I’ve got £6.75m available for transfers right this second, which is easily enough to activate Wazza’s release clause. Whether I’ll still have it by the time I need to pay for him in December is another matter, however, since I’m losing money every month from spreading Mark Kerr and Stilian Petrov’s fees over 24 months… but even still. Wayne Rooney could be mine for what will prove to be a snip in a few years’ time. He’s already scored 42 goals and notched 24 assists in his 94-game Everton career, and he’s still just 18 years old — the boy, quite clearly, is a player. I’m going for it. £6m it is. We can deal with the crippling overdraft fees some other time.
I click off the monitor and head back down to the pitch, where it’s time to commence preparations for our first ever Champions League fixture at La Cartuja against the titans of Belarus, BATE Borisov. It’s not exactly the marquee European opener we might have wanted, but never mind — it’s the first of many elite continental fixtures for this undersized, understaffed and underfunded stadium. It’s only three years old, and it already feels like it’s about to fall down.
After helping Susan to refill my optic and littering the away dugout with pieces of A4 paper with middle fingers printed on them, I take a seat in the home dressing room and consider my starting team. BATE shouldn’t be much to worry about based on their players — they only have 11 real ones, which means their bench isn’t going to have much on it — but they did manage a 1–0 win against Werder Bremen in their opening CL fixture and actually outplayed the Germans almost entirely, which is a big surprise. That alone gives me cause for concern. Having said that, their best defender has 10 for Tackling and their best striker has 41 goals in eight years, so really, we should be confident.
The loss of Cristiano is tough to take, but we at least have the squad to cover for his loss — plus BATE should be a team we can turn over without needing all our best players. I decide to let Petrov, Kerr and Kalogeras sit this one out, but I’m not letting BATE entirely off the hook; they’ll still have Desailly, Welsh, Duff, Tsigalko and Samba to contend with. Sergio Sestelo gets a start since my love for him is timeless and he can play whenever I see fit, while Victory, Raúl García, Alonso and Harbuzi can also have a run because they should be easily good enough to take the Belarusians apart.
We do win, and it’s far more comfortable than it looks. Raúl García is a matador in DMC, winning seven tackles and three headers alongside a stinging free-kick that BATE captain Madin Klimovich does well to save. Klimovich is also on hand to deny Alonso, before Maxim Tsigalko is extremely lucky not to be sent off after squaring up to the referee, who had just booked him for lunging through a BATE defender. I assume our opponents are doing an excellent job of winding him up in his native tongue, so with a plan to withdraw him at the break, I wave my drink at him and tell him to calm down — and while I’m doing so, Alonso whips a cross into the box and Cherno Samba pumps a header past Klimovich and in to give us the lead I’ve been waiting for.
Having lost his cool, I withdraw the Iceman at the break and bring on Drogba up front with Samba in a front two, but it’s an old favourite who doubles our lead. Raúl García collects a loose ball that’s headed out from a corner, puts it back into the box, John Welsh heads down, and Sergio Sestelo crashes a superb volley in off the crossbar for 2–0 to the Wet Bandits, and that, my friends, is game over. Drogba spends his time on the pitch missing the target from excellent positions and Costanzo has already got his gloves off when Merabi Panteleev slashes a speculative shot past him from range in the closing stages, but really, BATE never really offered anything today. If we’d won 4–0, it would have flattered them.
Liverpool win 1–0 in Germany to leave Werder flat bottom of our group after two games, while we’re sitting pretty at the top. Given our win at Anfield and the dreadful start Bremen have made, we’re well on course to qualify for the second lucrative group stage. Better starts only existed in my dreams.
We receive record gate receipts from the BATE fixture — £310k — but I can’t help but look at our paltry 13,500 capacity and dream of making over a million per game if we just expanded it to a normal level for a Champions League club. I mean, jesus, Plymouth Argyle get more people through the doors every week than us. Given our unusually strong financial performance so far this year, I generously offer my time to the board and suggest they take steps to expand the stadium, or better, move us to a new one.
Oh what the f — k do you know, you cretins. You’ll run this club into the ground as long as they keep rolling out the tortilla montaditos in the executive boxes. You know those are potato sandwiches, don’t you, you clowns? Gah. I need a new board.
I also need to get Chugger serviced, because he’s well overdue — but it’s going to have to wait, because we need him to blacken that lonely, familiar road to Catalonia on our way to the Camp Nou. Yes, dear Ultras, pack your silver and blue scarves, because we’re heading back to Barcelona to play arguably Europe’s best club side. I’m delighted to report that they’ve been ravaged by injuries — not to Roberto Bonano, sadly, but instead to Juan Roman Riquelme, Gerard, Thiago Motta, Phillip Cocu, Robert Kovac and Luis Enrique. You could even go as far as to call it a crisis, or at least you could if their starting lineup didn’t still contain Stam, Thuram, Iuliano, Xavi, Mendieta, Ramelow, Kluivert and Saviola. Again, it’s just… so hard to feel sorry for them, ever.
In order to stay in their 3–5–2 formation they’re going to need to either play someone out of position at left wing-back, or pick Cocu even though he’s got a twisted ankle. I’m hoping van Gaal goes with the latter so that Duffman can make mincemeat out of him. As well as our ever-present right back, we’re going to super-strength for this one, with the bone collector Raúl García retaining his spot in DMC; Kerr, Petrov and Davies lining up across the middle; Desailly and Welsh continuing at centre-half; Kalogeras returning at left full-back; and the Iceman supporting Samba as a lone striker. Boy, would I love to have Ronaldo fit for this game, but there’s nothing we can do now except use his memory to propel us to victory.
Cocu does not play, but Riquelme and his orange injury does, in what appears to be a brand new formation for the La Liga champions. Don’t worry, though; Raúl García knows he’s got a damaged shoulder. Aim high, matador.
Most of the 85,000 screaming fans that are packed inside the Camp Nou have come for Saviola vs Costanzo, the grudge match between two Argentinian heavyweights — and over the first 45, there’s only one winner. Saviola’s hat-trick of chances are all beaten away by our dominant young stopper, who first turns a swerving drive around the post, then palms a header over the crossbar and goes down superbly at feet to thwart another Barcelona attack. The only impact we’re having at the other end is on the home defenders’ shins, particularly via Tsigalko, who seems to still be wound up from the BATE game — he’s booked for upending Changui after just ten minutes and is then lucky to only get a warning for sailing through Mark Iuliano as he makes a clearance, and the Iceman finishes the half on a yellow card, a 5/10, and the man most likely to ignite this game with an early bath.
At the break, I tell Tsigalko to get out of my sight and introduce the more steadying influence of Mikel Arteta to my midfield, advancing Petrov into the ten role behind Samba for the second period — and I have to say, it does make a difference. Without a crazed Eastern European breaking the game up into stupid free-kicks, our football begins to flow a little more, and we start to pin Barcelona back into their half. Petrov exchanges passes with Davies to release Duff, who smashes a shot just over the bar, before Costanzo is back to denying Saviola at the other end with a flying save to push his compatriot’s rangy drive over the bar.
Advanced into AMC, Petrov quickly tires after being kicked half to death by Jaap Stam, so with half an hour to go we bundle him into an ambulance and Labinot Harbuzi reluctantly replaces him. I’m hopeful that the arrogance of youth will lead us to victory, but after a further 15 minutes we’ve not made any more of a dent, so I throw Drogba on for Samba as my final throw of the dice. Barcelona break forward several more times but they can’t get their shots away, and when they do, The Rock launches himself into tackles and blocks that only a man of his valiance would even consider. The ever-emerging Giannis Kaolgeras also needs his props for completely shutting down the Barcelona right-hand side, and with five minutes to go, it looks like a draw is the most likely result.
But what’s this? Saviola drags Drogba to the ground and we’ve got a free-kick in their half, just before the final whistle? Kalogeras heads up to take it, and I wave all my big men forward. That’s pretty much everyone except Simon Davies. Kalogeras whips the free-kick into the box — it’s past everyone! BONANO TIPS IT WIDE! Ooooh, that could have gone anywhere. Great save, Bonano. Davies takes the corner, Drogba beats Puyol in the air and heads down to García, who shoots! Trashorras blocks! The ball runs wide, Kalogeras collects it again, and puts it back into the mixer… HARBUZI’S HEADER! Bonano saves, but Drogba can’t miss! STAM GETS ACROSS TO BLOCK ON THE LINE!! And that’s full time! Oh, my god. We could have had them. We could have bloody well had them.
Well, objectively a draw at the Camp Nou is a great result, isn’t it. If you’d offered me a draw before the game I’d have taken it, and in truth, Saviola could have had a hat-trick if it weren’t for Costanzo. But man, that last-minute winner would have been so sweet. Even still, it solidifies our decent start to the season — we’re up to third behind Valencia and Real Madrid for the time being at least.
Episode 56 coming soon!
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