Jan Koller - a major force in Czech team

By Brian Glanville

BRUSSELS, JUNE 16. You do have to wonder why no major European club, with all respect to the Belgian champion Anderlecht, has picked up the phenomenal Jan Koller. At 27, a major force in the Czech team which so hugely deserved to beat the Dutch rather than lose to them on such a contentious penalty.

It was Koller who headed against the Dutch bar; a giant unbeatable in the air, so tall that he scarcely has to jump, a super heavyweight astonishingly deft on the ground. Yet he was a second rate ice hockey player until he was 20 and turned to soccer. Even then his rise through the ranks was slow. He played Fourth Division Czech soccer till Sparta Prague signed him in 1996.

When he did move West, it was to the relatively minor Belgian club Lokeren, from whom Anderlecht snapped him up in 1999 after he had scored 40 league goals for Lokeren. He is so powerful and versatile that he virtually constitutes an attack in himself. The Czechs can perfectly well afford to leave him alone up front and reinforce him from behind, knowing he can strike with foot or head, hold up the ball and distribute it to his colleagues.

What to say of Sinisa Mihailovic and his astonishing, undisciplined, self-destructive behaviour in that amazing game between his Yugoslav team and the buoyant if mercurial Slovenians? I thought Mihailovic, he of the devastating left foot which has scored 20 free kick goals in Italy's Campionato, looked podgy and overweight.

It was already being said that the years - though 31 is hardly ancient - had taken the edge of his speed and that a long season with Lazio might have taken its toll. Yet who could ever have forecast that when he so stupidly - or perhaps perversely, deliberately - got himself sent off, with the Yugoslavs 3-0 down, they would rally to draw with Solvenia 3-3? The stuff of science fiction.

Mihailovic got himself booked in the first half for stupidly disputing a refereeing decision. In the second half there was no need at all for him to intervene when a colleague was fouled by a Slovenian opponent, whom he confronted and then, incredibly, pushed over. That meant probably a red card on its own but added to the yellow he had already received meant off he went anyway. Smiling, it seemed.

The Yugoslav rally was testimony to its resilience and morale, but there is no doubt the star of the show was the astonishing little Slovenian attacking midfielder Zlatko Zahovic, supreme scorer and maker of goals with head and foot. Though he could hardly have expected the astonishing gift made to him by the ill starred Mihailovic, just before his expulsion, when the centre back casually pushed the ball square across his own box right to the foot of Zahovic. The Slovenian is now 29 and again you wonder why he wasn't picked up long ago by a major European club, even if Olympiakos, the Greek team for which he plays - and every now and then abandons - has plenty of money.

I've now seen both Italy's opening games, both of them won, and though this is hardly a great Italian team it has certainly begun to believe in itself and Francesco Totti, named the man of the match after the victory over Belgium, is on song. This after a somewhat uneven season with Roma.

At one point it was even reported that Totti wanted to leave, which seemed astonishing considering that he is a Roman himself who has spent his whole career with the club, emerging as a precocious teenager. But when Roma last summer bought Vincenza Montella from Sampdoria, as a renowned goal scorer, Totti had to face the double challenge of Montella and the big Marco Delvecchio - brought on as a substitute against Belgium - for a place in the attack.

But as the season wore on, Totti firmly established himself, playing a little behind the frontline. And it was Montella who started asking for a move when Roma, surely over- egging the pudding, bought the gifted Japanese attacker Hidetoshi Nakata from Perugia. Totti headed that first goal against Belgium from the right wing free kick by Demetrio Albertini, at last living up to his early international promise in midfield. Shades of the goal Italy's defence surprisingly conceded to a small Turkish attacker in Arnhem, for Totti is hardly huge. But his range is wide, he is mobile, intelligent, versatile. And now Alex del Piero has emerged as a very influential substitute in both Italian games.

Injury once again blunted his season and not till Juventus' penultimate game did he score a goal from open play. But in stark contrast to the 1998 World Cup, where Cesare Maldini so obstinately preferred him to the far more convincing Roberto Baggio, he now seems to be back to coruscating form.

Italy, of course, found out that it had qualified for the quarterfinals once Sweden and Turkey drew goalless. Now what?

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