Gary Speed 1969-2011

I realise a great deal has already been written about the tragic death of Gary Speed, but it seems churlish to devote column inches to any other football story from this weekend. All of a sudden, debating whether Mario Ballotelli is being treated harshly by referees seems almost insultingly trivial.

Gary Speed 1969-2011

Speed’s death has hit the football world hard. Shay Given started yesterday’s match against Swansea in tears, Craig Bellamy was left out of Liverpool’s squad for their game against Manchester City and Robbie Savage struggled to get the words past a huge lump in his throat when attempting to speak from the heart about his former teammate and friend.

From a supporters’ perspective, Gary Speed was that rare breed of footballer for whom pretty much all fans had a lot of respect for. His professionalism, talent and attitude seemed to transcend even club rivalries. I don’t know a single person that ever disliked Gary Speed, and we all know how irrational hatred can manifest itself when it comes to footballers.

As a West Ham and England fan, I have no affiliation to Speed other than he played the game I love. And yet when I heard the news that he had died on Sunday morning, I was overwhelmed with sadness. Hearing the tributes pour in, the spontaneous minute’s applause at the Liberty Stadium and radio presenters - so calm and professional by their nature - audibly devastated, was utterly heartbreaking. I am still shocked by the news, but sadness remains the stronger emotion.

Gary Speed was a man who at 42 had an exciting future ahead of him. He had recently enjoyed success whilst managing his country’s national team, was a well respected media pundit and seemed to have a happy family life and wide circle of friends. Whilst some footballers struggle with the aftermath of their playing careers, Speed seemed to be approaching it with gusto.

But something changed all that. Something drove Speed to the point where he was unable to look ahead to next year, next month or even tomorrow. Something in Gary Speed made him feel the only option was to end it all.

The question many will now ask is what was that something? What made him do it? Well we may never find out and to be honest, does it matter to us? To Gary’s friends and family it will, but to us - fans, media - we don’t have any right to know what drove him to this decision. Just because he was in the public eye, it doesn’t mean we deserve to know the inner workings of someone who was clearly in a very bad place. We don’t own footballers, just as we don’t own actors, singers or models. Our thirst for detail about them is completely irrelevant in circumstances such as these.

What we do know is that football has lost one of its greatest servants of recent times. A man who played and excelled for some of England’s biggest clubs in a career spanning 20 years. A man who was a star before Sky and the Premier League, yet still shone brightly in the global business that football in the 21st century has become.

I remember Gary Speed as a young player coming through, as a star of the Premier League and as a wily old veteran still cutting it at the top. He is someone that I only had respect for and as a football supporter, my heart goes out to the fans of the clubs he played for. Because if he earned this much respect from supporters of the clubs he didn’t play for, God only knows how much the fans of those he did play for will miss him.

RIP Gary Speed. 

England show how to ignore the possession obsession

At the weekend, in case you didn’t notice, England beat Spain at Wembley. Spain the European champions. Spain the world champions. Spain the team whose style is the envy of pretty much every international football team on the planet.

Lampard celebrates scoring 

So naturally, beating Spain would surely send the nation into a state of euphoria; a result that signalled that the good times were on their way back to English football, and that the trip to Poland and the Ukraine next summer will not be a wasted one? Well no, not exactly.

The press and many fans alike seemed to offer only grudging credit to Capello and the England team, despite the fact that they went into the game as heavy underdogs. The reason for this muted response is that England beat Spain playing a defensive style designed to restrict the opposition, rather than expose them. It wasn’t pretty and was far from the ‘tika takka’ style we have come to expect from the Spanish.

But you know what? It worked. Spain were by and large unable to penetrate England’s defence and midfield, and ended up frustrated and resorting to cynical fouls when things were not going their way. England’s tactic of getting men behind the ball, allowing the Spanish to pass the ball between themselves at will until they reached the final third, starved them of space and meant chances were few and far between. It was no accident that it worked. It was simply an example of an excellent tactical plan being executed to perfection.

Many people in England seem uncomfortable with this. They don’t like the idea of an England team, being the world super power that we quite obviously are, playing defensively. Perhaps they would have preferred us to play three up front and leave space for Spain to exploit? Or maybe have the midfield chasing Xavi et al like headless chickens; allowing the Spanish to pop the ball around and create chances for the lethal David Villa? Yes, that sounds like a good plan. I think we tried that against Germany in South Africa and it seemed to work just fine then didn’t it.

What England did on Saturday is exactly what they will need to do next summer if they are to have any chance of success at the Euros. They played tournament football. They tailored their game for the opposition and did it successfully. They stopped one of the best teams in international history from playing their natural game. They made the most of a set piece opportunity. They came away from a tight, often nervy game, with a victory. They’ll need to do all of those things and more in Poland and Ukraine, but it was pleasing to see Capello having at least some kind of tactical plan.

What I also think Saturday proved is that you’ll never beat Spain by continuing to obsess over the way they keep the ball. Yes English football needs to have more appreciation for possession, and I completely agree that for England to move forward, we must look beyond just pace and power. But there is also more to football than possession. In being patient and choosing when to close Spain down, England did their work in the areas where it made most impact. It was sensible, if unspectacular, and most important of all, effective. They deserve credit, not criticism for it.

Spain will rightly be favourites for next year’s European Championships and England will be hard pressed to beat them again. But it can be done, and England proved that on Saturday. It might not have been pretty, but it worked brilliantly. It showed England have it in them to adapt to the way tournament football is played. Something that’s been lacking ever since…..well, you know the rest. 

Olympic Park project looking good as it enters the home straight

I recently had the pleasure of taking part in a tour of the Olympic Park at Stratford. I use the word “pleasure” hesitantly, as I know feelings on the Olympics still remain high, with many unconvinced of the supposed benefits of London hosting the Games.

As I wrote earlier this year, I’m strongly in the “for” camp when it comes to opinion on the Olympics. My view is that without it, there would be no catalyst for regenerating this part of London. In all likelihood, the investment that’s already poured into the area in the shape of transport improvements, the Westfield shopping mall and the Olympic Park itself, would have been diverted elsewhere. As a result, this area would have remained desolate, because trust me, if you aren’t familiar with area now known as the Olympic Park, I can assure you that it was an absolute wasteland before development work started.

However, I appreciate that the project has not been short on controversy, and football has of course been at the forefront of that, with negotiations around the use of the stadium post-Games now becoming something of a farce. I think we’ve all heard more than enough about that particular spat between West Ham, Leyton Orient, Tottenham Hotspur, Newham Council, the Mayor of London, the Government, LOCOG…..as I said, we’ve heard enough and far better to instead look at how the park is shaping up, with little over eight months until the Games begins.

Many of you will probably have seen artistic photographs of the completed venues and on the whole, it’s hard not be impressed by them. Whilst the Olympic Stadium does not have the iconic uniqueness of something like Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, it remains an imposing structure that dominates the whole park. Whilst not a thing of beauty, it’s by no means an unpleasant structure.

The Aquatics Centre on the other hand, with it’s wave-inspired roof, is certainly amongst the most impressive sights you will see in the park. Given the appalling shortage of international standard swimming facilities in the country, it is also probably the venue that will offer the clearest opportunity for genuine sporting legacy.

Similarly the Velodrome is very aesthetically pleasing structure, that will probably play host to Britain’s best performances during the Games next year. Visible from the nearby A12, it’s a venue that turns the heads of many drivers and it’s a wonder that daily car crashes are not commonplace as a result. Again, it will give aspiring cyclists another opportunity to use world-class facilities for years to come. 

Perhaps even more importantly is that both the Aquatics Centre and Velodrome cater for non-mainstream sports, that if promoted and managed properly, could experience a surge in interest post-Games. The vast majority of children can both swim and ride a bike and enjoy doing so; there is no reason why the combination of top facilities and increased exposure cannot harness that interest, and bring those sports into the mainstream with a generation of British stars.

The tour also takes in the Basketball Arena. Now for me, this is the most disappointing of the venues. Many of you will have seen photographs of the arena, which has a large white bubble-like façade that it is visible for miles around. It’s an ugly structure that symbolises neither basketball or sport in anyway. In fact, it simply screams “temporary structure”, which is exactly what it is. The fate of the venue after the Games have finished seems to be a grey area; it will be dismantled and used for other purposes, perhaps the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, perhaps not. If the commitment wasn’t there to smash the thing down once the final game has taken place, this would be the most whitest of white elephants.

The Handball Arena has a more assured future. A large copper-coloured building, it looks more like one of the historic factory buildings that border the park to the west, than a sporting venue. Now I have handball tickets for next year, and this has caused much merriment amongst my friends and family, who quite rightly point out that neither I, or anyone we know, has any clue about handball. With that in mind, it’s hard to imagine the venue packing people in for handball fixtures after London 2012 has finished, which presumably is why it’s being earmarked for community sports use afterwards. Handball, basketball, indoor football and other non-sporting events will be able to take place in the arena, which for me seems to be one of the more sensible legacy decisions.

But as well as the venues, we also get to see a glimpse of the huge landscaping project currently taking place in the park. Anyone with an interest in the Olympic Park project will probably have seen computer generated images of beautifully manicured lawns leading to crystal clear canals and waterways throughout the park. Families were digitally inserted into the images to create a vision of relaxation and comfort in London’s newest open space. Knowing the area before the project started as I did, I was dubious they could pull this off, but in actual fact the landscaping is perhaps the most impressive part of the project. It looks just how the optimistic images proposed it would, and you can really imagine families using the space for years to come. Crucially, this is a legacy benefit that can be realised by people with no interest in sport whatsoever.

As well as the open spaces, we’re also shown other examples of non-sporting development work. The Athletes Village looks like a huge modern housing development, which is exactly what it will be turned into once the athletes have packed their bags, hung their medals round their necks and jetted off back to their home countries. A new school to cater for the increased number of residents to the area has already been built and is ready for its first intake. 

Other housing plots are also highlighted to us, although we’re tasked with stretching our imagination to its limits, as bricks and mortar will not be seen on many of these until the Games finish. One only hopes that the necessary infrastructure - bars, cafes, restaurants, youth and leisure facilities, community centres - follow the construction of these new housing estates, as otherwise the social ills of failed regeneration projects of yesteryear will rear their heads again.

All in all I was once again hugely impressed by the Olympic Park. Excellent venues have been created well ahead of schedule, and genuine thought given to improving the area beyond the lifespan of the Games and even some of the venues. I understand that the disruption, congestion and cost remain concerns for people, but I urge you to look a little closer at the project, and beyond 2012, to see the positive impact that hosting the Olympics could have.

If you would like to get a good view of the Olympic Park before the Games begin, I recommend the following:

• Taking the Docklands Light Railway from Stratford to Canary Wharf - excellent views of the stadium, Aquatics Centre and Orbit.
• Joining the Greenway cycling and walking route, that cuts through the site of the park.
• Head to the View Tube near Pudding Mill Lane Station, which as well as offering views of the park, includes a café and information resources.