Fitba Hell

NO SPORT offers greater freedom to its finest exponents than football. Basketball and ice hockey confine their players to small, restrictive playing areas; cricket and tennis always start with the same action; rugby forbids forward passes; American football is punctuated by constant stoppages.

But the flow and freedom of football is unmatched: referee’s handbooks are filled with obscure minutiae, but no arcane limits to what a player can do. Avoid handballs and heavy tackling, and – if you have the skill – anything is possible. Go wherever you want, use the ball however you want, score from wherever you want. Footballers can roam free and indulge their imagination like no practitioners of other sports.

This is why tonight’s European Cup final is exciting people far beyond Catalonia and North London. Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry are two of the finest footballers we’ve ever seen, and tonight they’ll both be working on football’s blank canvas.

THE forays of British teams into Europe aren't as thrilling as they once were. My addiction to football became complete in 1984 when, aged eight, I settled into the Paddock for my first European match at Pittodrie. Aberdeen were 2-0 down from the first leg against Ujpest Dosza, of Hungary. The match was unlike any I'd been to previously: the unfamiliar names and tanned complexions of the opponents lent a sense of exoticism, and the siege mentality they adopted made for a different type of game. Aberdeen pounded their opponents' goal, but the penalty was a morass of flailing, desperate limbs that looked nigh impassable. Only two minutes from full-time did Mark McGhee score a rapturous equaliser, before the win was secured in extra-time.

Matches against European opposition have since become more familiar and increasingly cerebral. The sense of mystery that once shrouded the continent's finest teams has been whisked away by the relentless coverage of the Champions League, and most matches between them are tactical to the point of baroque. While Arsenal's organisational nous and youthful zest in Europe this season have been engrossing, they've rarely thrilled. For white-knuckle drama and ventures into the unknown, you've had to turn to Middlesborough and their astonishing comebacks Basel and Steaua Bucharest. It's this contribution to old-style European football that ensures I'll be supporting Teeside's finest tonight.

THERE are only two occasions after which the word 'vile', with its quaint overtones of moral disgust, is used in a match report. One is when supporters are heard chanting racist abuse; the other when a footballer spits on an opponent.

Rudi Skacel stands accused of the second of these apparently comparable activities after appeaaring to spit towards Neil Lennon on Sunday. Afterwards, the columnists' frenzied condemnation of Skacel's apparent misdemeanour almost matched Lennon's own fury.

What a skewed sense of morality the football fraternity has. Dispensing phlegm onto an opponent is pretty reprehensible, but is it really worse than dangerously scything down an opponent? Spit can be wiped away, but a cynical tackle can end careers.

One of Lennon's team-mates is an expert in the latter. Is Skacel's alleged crime really worse than the brutal and calculated challenge that Roy Keane perpetuated on Alfe-Inge Haaland?