Free Kick: Big question: Can Wales survive the Moscow test?

Next Saturday sees the first leg play offs for the European Championship of 2004.
Can Wales survive in Moscow? Their early results in the qualifiers, a fine win in Finland, an even better one at home to Italy, suggested that they might go straight through as top of the group, which would be the first time they'd ever legitimately qualified for the finals of a major tournament.

Yes, they did splendidly reach the quarter finals of the 1958 World Cup to give Brazil, the eventual winners, a gallant run for their money. But they only got into that World Cup at all through the back door, beating, Israel home and away after they'd themselves been eliminated.

Alas, injuries took the shine off their game and their performances. They crashed in Milan, were lucky to hold Finland to a draw in Gardiff, and, tiring badly, lost there to Serbia though by then it didn't matter.

Alas, there will by no Craig Bellamy, with his devastating pace, in Moscow, nor in the return in Cardiff, the following Wednesday. He's just had the "other" knee operated on in the States.

But there seem good hopes that, against expectations, the ultra combative Robbie Savage will be fit for midfield. He and his fellow terrier, Mark Pembridge, both missed the Serbian game. Hughes kept Pembridge, perhaps unwisely, on the bench throughout, for fear he might pick up a second yellow card and thus miss the first play off.

Without these two enforcers, Wales ultimately, wearily, lost the midfield and the match. Even with Savage on show – though Pembridge has had trouble of late with an injury and may well miss the match - the Welsh midfield still lacks one crucial element; a playmaker in the would of such former stars as Ivor Allchurch and Roy Vernon.

But there are good hopes that Simon Davies of Spurs will be fit to play on the right flank of midfield, another speed merchant, Ryan Giggs remains one of Britain's finest talents, and John Hertson is a host in himself as the solitary striker.

But the Russian team has been revolutionised almost overnight by its new manager, the 55- year- old Georgi Yartsev once a star centre forward with Spartak Moscow, 19 goals in the 1978 Russian Championship.

Yartsev took over when the team looked at rock bottom and doomed to elimination. Strangely, his predecessor, Valeri Gazzaev, resigned last summer after a 2-1 defeat in a meaningless friendly by Israel, proclaiming that our team played a shameful and revolting game.

Bunch of youngsters

Where Gazzaev filled his team with players from the club he also managed, CSKA Moscow, Yartsev brought in a bunch of youngsters, drew in Dublin, thrashed Switzerland 4-1 and qualified for the play offs.

Talk about The Immutable Law of the Ex, as the Italians call it. That's to say, the habit of discarded players to score against their old clubs. Last week, who should score the winner for Lyon in Munich against Bayern but the Brasilian international striker they so rashly sold to the French club last summer Giovaane De Sousa Elber, best known by his last name.

All the more finely ironic in that the Bayern goal was scored by the Dutch internationaly Roy Makeay, whom Bayern bought last summer from Spain to replace Elber.

Officially, the tale was that Elber didn't want to stay beyond 2004. Since Bayern could now, with just five points and two game to go, miss the cut for the next Euro Champions Cup round, it seems more than ever a daft decision.