This Is Not A Tennis Crowd

The Madrid Masters, Spain's biggest tennis tournament, was on this week: the Mutua Madrileña Masters Madrid 2006, featuring 64 of the best male players in the world in singles plus a mens doubles tourny. It's hosted indoors at the Madrid Arena de la Casa de Campo with a lightning fast surface (Green Set), and this year's favourites were Federer and last year's winner and local hero Rafael Nadal (who hails from Majorca - where the worter darn't taste like wot it oughta). It proved to be a fractious 9 days in the ATP Masters Series with lots of thrown rackets and temper tantrums.

Tiger Tim (lol) upset the partisan home crowd by knocking out two Spanish players in the first two rounds and then lost his gentleman image by getting into a fight with ginger whinger Nalbandian in the 4th round over a disputed line call. Murray also made it through to the fourth round, beating world No.3 Ljubicic on the way before losing out to Djokovic. El Rey Federer cruised through the early rounds as did Rafa until the Friday quarter-final when he got downed by Czech player Tomas Berdych, who sent the crowd apopletic when he put his fingers to his lips in a shushing gesture at the end. Come Saturday and the semi-final against Chilenean Fernando Gonzalez the spectators gave the Czech a torrid time: "I've never seen anything like it, it's like a (bad) dream," said Berdych. "It's not a tennis crowd."

An amusing sideshow in the tourny was the use of models as ball-girls. As a red blooded male I whole-heartedly approve of this measure (lol). Being models they're not quite as keen as, for example, the ball boys and girls at Wimbledon who will rush to give a player his towel or new balls when serving. Instead, the girls sort of sauntered around and scowled a lot (as models will) but hell, they were cute and the TV directors filled in empty time with close-ups as they adjusted their pig-tails or fiddled with their knickers. Grrrrr.

In a best of five-set final, attended by stars such as Fernando Torres (Atletico Madrid and Spain striker), film director Pedro Almodovar and other Spanish worthies who I didn't recognise, Federer crushed Gonzalez 7-5, 6-1, 6-0. "Super Numero Uno" the TV commentator called him. Exactly.

No Width, No Invention, No Goals, No Beckham

The signs were already there - I was just too much of an optimist to read them properly. The nil-nil against Macedonia (at home, if Old Trafford can be called 'home') was pretty poor, but the 0-2 capitulation to Croatia was worse. No width (3-5-2 formation eh? great call Mac), no invention and no goals, unless you count the comedy own-goal by Muppet brother number one.

And why drop Beckham? The guy is world class, plays for the second best team in the world (after NCFC, of course) offers width on the right, always works hard, takes wicked free-kicks, and, most importantly of all, top class crossing. Consider, you have Peter Crouch in the team, standing some ten feet tall with clouds hanging around his head, and you drop the best crosser of a football the world has ever seen. And this is great management is it?

I give Maclaren ten more matches and then he'll start getting the root vegetable photo-shop treatment from the currant bun.