Free Kick: Mediocrity rules in Euro soccer

Mediocrity rules, okay or not okay, one's tempted just now to say this of European soccer, just as one was bound to say it of last year's deeply disappointing World Cup, won by a far from dazzling Brazilian team in a Final reached by an utterly commonplace German team.

I know. I saw the Germans, not least how they struggled against a depleted Paraguay.

Faultlines

But look at some of last week's faults. Not least at how Manchester United, having managed to squeeze past Rangers at Ibrox in midweek, managing to crash 3-1 at home to Fulham who hadn't beaten them at Old Trafford for 40 years!

True Alex Ferguson - condemned to watch from the stand, being suspended after his recent abuse of the "fourth" referee, hadn't deployed his full complement, Roy Keane being absent, Paul Scholes introduced only in the second half. But he himself, disillusioned, didn't offer this as an excuse.

Not for the first time, you wondered why he had splashed out so much money, or indeed any money at all, on as pedestrian a midfielder as the Camerron international, Eric Djemba Djemba who looked, well out of his depth.

Bought from Nantes last summer, Djemba Djemba signalled his arrival in Britain with an appalling foul on Arsenal's Sol Campbell in the Charity Shield curtain raiser in Cardiff, provoking a kick which had Campbell red carded and recently heavily fined.

Yet I have seen a great deal of Fulham this season and though I do admire the way that young manager Chris Colman has turned them round he took them over last season, I know they are no super team.

But let us broaden the argument. Inter came to Highbury and thrashed Arsenal 3-0. Since when, and in fact beforehand, their results have been so disappointing that the much criticised President, Massimo Moretti, has sacked his Argentine coach, Hector Cuper - now rumoured to be next in line for Tottenham - and replaced him with Alberto Zaccheroni.

His first time on the bench saw Inter astoundingly thrashed 3-0 in Moscow by modest Lokomotiv. Even Arsenal hammered out a laborious goalless draw there. You couldn't, felt Italian critics, really blame Zaccheroni.

After all he had only just taken over; though we do know that quite often when a new man comes in, players respond to him initially as some kind of saviour, and instantly improve their game.

Inter seem to have started well, given away a couple of goals against the run of play, and then subsided.

But what of their city rivals, Milan, beaten the same European week at home by another modest side Bruges of Belgium, the only goal - yes, against the run of play - scored by the Peruvian striker, Andres Mendoza?

While Real Madrid, with all those refulgent stars, could only squeeze through 1-0 at the Bernabeu against Partiznan, another opponent of moderate means.

Chelsea, whose merited 2-1 victory against Lazio, I saw at Stamford Bridge, at least put the horrors of their home defeat by Besiktas behind them while the Turks went down 2-1 in Prague to a surprisingly resilient Sparta, winner from the little right winger Karel Poborsky, snapped up then discarded by Manchester United after he had shone for the Czechs in Euro 2000.

Chelsea followed up, Frank Lampard their star of the week, with an uneasy 1-0 home win against Manchester United, courtesy of yet another blunder by David Seaman.

Though not as awful a one as that by Arsenal's German keeper, Jens Lehmann in Kiev.

The Gunners, in desperate financial trouble now that Europe may see them fall at the first fence, and they still have to raise untold millions to build that new stadium, flopped yet again in Eastern Europe.