Benfica warning for United

ALL derbies are equal but some are more equal than others, declared the Portuguese football paper O Jogo last week, a proposition that will be sadly familiar to Tottenham fans.

Porto and Benfica duly beat their local rivals at the weekend, both games finishing 2-0. But while Porto’s defeat of Boavista was routine, Benfica’s win at Sporting was a big boost to their confidence ahead of tomorrow night’s decisive Champions League match in Manchester.

Benfica’s chronic weakness away from home this season has left them struggling to keep up with the leaders, but an unexpected tactical switch paid off beautifully in Friday night’s game.

Nuno Gomes, usually the central player of a front three, dropped back into the role of playmaker, while Simao Sabrosa and Fabrizio Miccoli, who normally play wide, pushed up against the Sporting centre-backs and used their pace and trickery to disrupt the opposing defence.

Sporting were already one down before they had time to react, and when they conceded a second after just over half an hour they were unable to get back in the game, despite playing with four forwards in the second half. United will no doubt take note.

In Spain, fans are still coming to terms with Fabio Capello’s new regime, where the value of a player is apparently no longer measured by the number of dummies he sells (or shirts for that matter) but in Metres Per Game.

That was their conclusion anyway from the club’s private computer analysis of the Valencia-Read Madrid match leaked to the media last Thursday which showed Madrid’s best MPG man was Raul, with 11,222 metres covered.

Much-maligned at the start of the season, and dropped from the national squad by coach Luis Aragones, the Real Madrid captain has been a key player in Capello’s new regime at the Bernabeu. Leadership by example is definitely Fabio’s philosophy, and Raul has responded by constantly tracking back and helping out in midfield and defence.

His MPG compared well with Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Reyes — both around the 9,900 mark — although it’s less impressive when you take into account that 6,941 of those metres were walking, while another 1,804 are politely described as a ‘trot’. And with an average speed of 7.2 kilometres an hour, or 4.5 mph, some of that walking around must have been on the gentle side.

Of more relevance is the fact that the Madrid striker won the ball from opponents more times than any other player apart from midfield enforcer Emerson. That certainly reflects effectiveness as well as ‘work rate’, and is a nice symbol of the Capello revolution — just like the European Player of the Year award for Fabio Cannavaro.

For fans that used to believe that defenders were simply players who didn’t have the ability to attack, Cannavaro’s status takes a bit of getting used to — although not as much as for the French, who think this should have been their year.

E-mails of protest have been flooding into the offices of France Football, sponsors of the award, but, as the magazine itself pointed out, there was even more of a fuss when Luis Figo beat Zinedine Zidane to the award six years ago, and when Pavel Nedved was preferred to Thierry Henry in 2003.

“It’s like a beauty contest,” explained journalist Gerard Ernault, with a comparison designed to appeal to every red-blooded Frenchman. “Whether it’s Monica Bellucci or the most beautiful girl in the world, even the best of criteria cannot be relied upon to resolve every disagreement.”

With some of the greatest defenders in history missing out over the years, including Giacinto Facchetti, Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini, it was time to honour a top Italian player, the magazine argued — revealing that it too had voted for Cannavaro.

Opinions are more divided about the World Player award, due to be announced in a fortnight’s time at FIFA’s usual jamboree in Zurich.

Cannavaro is on the shortlist, along with Zidane and Ronaldinho. Eight players have won both prizes in the same year, including Ronaldinho last year, but never a defender.

Italian journalists have been working themselves into a frenzy about the possible return of Andriy Shevchenko to Milan, on loan. For much of last week it was merely a matter of time. Mrs Shevchenko would have to be won round, but apart from that...

However, Milan’s Brazilian star Kaka, himself constantly beset by transfer speculation, put a bit of a dampener on things, by stating: “we talk a lot on the phone, and he tells me that everything’s going very well in London.”

With the club confirming on Sunday that neither Shevchenko nor Ronaldinho are in prospect, Milan’s search for reinforcements in attack doesn’t look like having a simple solution.

Juventus went top of the table briefly on Friday night (that’s the Serie B table) after an excellent match against Genoa that finished 1-1. 35,000 people watched the game — almost double Genoa’s normal gate — and the statistics show attendances have rocketed everywhere that Juventus have gone. There were nearly 17,000 at Albinoleffe in Bergamo to watch them — over five times as many as usual. It’s an ill wind.