When Jordan Henderson turned his back on communities he claimed to support and headed off to Saudi Arabia, it should have been the end of his England career.
Not because he went to Saudi Arabia, though that’s no bad reason in itself.
Not because he’s 33 years old, though the only player older than him in the latest squad justifies his place by being yet to miss a second of the Premier League season for the champions.
Not because he’s over the hill, though he appears to be exactly that.
But calling time on Henderson’s international career was the path of least resistance for manager Gareth Southgate and barely anybody would have noticed, never mind offered dissent.
England aren’t blessed with an embarrassment of riches in Henderson’s role but the former Liverpool captain simply isn’t worth the trouble. He’s not good enough. It’s a distraction for the media and for England supporters, and therefore it’s a distraction for Southgate too. The decision is overdue. Time’s up.
With that out of the way, we move on to better things. I’m dipping back into the archive this week and I want to share with you one of the old articles I most enjoyed working on. It’s appeared now in three different places.
What can I say? I just love looking back at football in the nineties.
The Fire of Zorro
When the sociologists of the future assemble the definitive study on the social history of UK football fandom, they'll discover the Gazzetta Generation.
Gazzetta Football Italia and its sister coverage of Sunday afternoon Serie A matches represented an unprecedented level of access to a European league in the early 1990s.
It was intoxicating and it beguiled those of us who soon came to construct our weekends around its fortuitous dovetail with domestic Saturday 3pm matches.
Channel 4 allowed us to gorge on the exploits of players whose presence would otherwise have been fleeting, and few of the memories live on as vividly as Fabio Capello's AC Milan. Hot on the heels of Arrigo Sacchi's iconic Rossoneri side, Capello's Milan seemed exotic and omnipotent.
They worked hard in the transfer market to bolster Sacchi's talented and famously well-drilled squad. Of all the players brought to San Siro as the Rossoneri smoothly transitioned from double European Cup winners to domestic dominators, none was more complex and voracious than Zvonimir Boban.
Born in 1968 in Croatia's patriotic south, when it was part of Yugoslavia, Boban was as ardent a citizen as they come. He's a man of palpable intensity, a fiery fanatic with red and white chequered bones.
But his youthful intellectualism extended beyond the explosive matter of Croatian identity. Boban is a lover of literature who once recommended Nietzsche to Antonio Matarrese, the president of the Italian Football Federation.
In May 1990, 21-year-old Boban struck the most infamous blow in the battle that derailed Dinamo Zagreb's end-of-season match against Red Star Belgrade and dragged the region closer to war, kicking a police officer on the pitch as Dinamo's notorious Bad Blue Boys ultras clashed with Serbian fans and police.
His kick targeted not a Serb officer but a Bosnian Muslim, but its symbolism was immovable. The midfielder had been lined up to play for Yugoslavia at World Cup Italia '90 but was instead suspended for six months by the Yugoslavian FA.
The incident that prevented him playing at Italia '90 was an overtly political act. In football, his considerable reputation was made after he belatedly arrived in Italy to sign for AC Milan in 1991.
Boban was relegated whilst on loan with AS Bari but in Milan there emerged a player of ferocity and extraordinary ability, a young man who took his scholarly outlook into football and ended up in the AC Milan Hall of Fame.
The football brain that made Boban's name in Milan was flawless. He was a technically excellent, two-footed midfielder whose natural preference was to create and attack, often from an ostensibly orthodox central midfield position.
He had a great understanding with George Weah, Milan's prolific mid- to late-1990s goalscorer, for whom he created the second goal in a famous win at Juventus as Milan strode towards the Scudetto in May 1999.
Boban himself was a surprisingly adept penalty box finisher and was also capable of scoring from distance, often - but, pleasingly, not always - by applying culture over brutality.
He was a terrific header of the ball and scored a handful of scorching free kicks, though it sometimes took him a few attempts to get his shooting calibrated.
And Boban was never not Boban.
Just as his intellectual education was married to a simmering Croatian pride, his footballing elegance was paired with endless tenacity on the field of play. He was captivating.
The Rossoneri and Boban won Serie A in 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1999, but his highest-ranking triumph in Milan was a continental one, and was achieved just as the Croatian was coming into his prime.
They snuck past FC Aarau in the First Round of the UEFA Champions League in 1993/94 but found form with a Second Round demolition of FC København on the way to the Group Stage. The first leg decided the tie thanks to a 6-0 Milan win that was capped by a Boban-assisted Jean-Pierre Papin header.
Boban sat out three Group B games but was instrumental as the Rossoneri closed out the round with a draw against FC Porto to secure a semi-final place against Arsène Wenger's similarly star-studded AS Monaco. Milan overcame Alessandro Costacurta's controversial dismissal to win 3-0.
The campaign did wonders for his reputation but Milan's charge to the final against Barcelona was spearheaded by other players, bigger names than Boban.
His contribution to their remarkable 4-0 final victory against Barcelona in Athens, though, was a vital part of the performance Capello described as "perfection" when asked to reflect on the match.
Goalscorers Daniele Massaro and Dejan Savićević deservedly attracted the headlines but Boban was terrific throughout the 90 minutes, working inwards from the right flank and directing the Rossoneri's possession in Barcelona's defensive third.
Savićević did the hard work to tee up Massaro's first goal but Boban's aggression in intercepting the ball made it happen.
Massaro's second was the unheralded side of Boban's creativity writ large. He pulled all the strings as Milan probed from right to left and conjured a relatively simple finish for Massaro, duly buried along with the hopes of Johan Cruyff and his mighty Barcelona side.
Four years later Boban finally took his place in international football history, proudly captaining the sensational Croatia team that finished third at World Cup France '98.
He finished playing in 2002 with a glittering career full of caps and trophies behind him, and remains a man of culture and contradictions.
He graduated from the University of Zagreb with a history degree in 2004, has worked as a pundit, owns the trendy and deliciously named Italian restaurant 'Boban' in central Zagreb (Boban's wife Leonarda owns a rather more modest café next door) and has now plunged into the murky waters of football administration, having joined the office of FIFA president Gianni Infantino as a special adviser in 2016. UEFA followed.
But a tamed suit he ain't. He expects high standards of form and conduct as an AC Milan observer, and some impressive players have been on the receiving end of Boban's pointed criticism in the years since his retirement.
"Two-faced liar" Kaka can attest to that. Mario Balotelli's perceived attitude put him in the firing line too.
For British Serie A fans of a certain age, Boban is a name that instantly brings to mind recollections of Italian football's brilliance in the 1990s. He was a player who had quality and character, a combination guaranteed to win supporters around the world.
In the eyes of generations before and after Gazzetta the fullness of Boban's ability has inevitably been overshadowed by more famous players.
But Boban's fire was – and, one presumes, still is – undeniable.
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“John Eustace never stood a chance. He had all the brand power of Wayne Rooney’s sock. Less probably. Winning games as a result of assiduous, hard work is too prosaic for Birmingham City’s new ownership. Successive victories, sixth in the table. Sorry son, your vision for the club does not match ours.”
Kevin Garside of the i welcomes Wayne Rooney back to England, where he has become the new manager of Birmingham City.
When an Aston Villa supporter – say, me, for example – is relieved to hear of the departure of a Blues manager who had the team in the Championship play-off positions and warranted begrudging respect, you know the owners have been hasty.
As for Rooney, I’m not sure the widely held view that he’ll be a disaster is entirely fair. Ignore the influence of his agent and Rooney’s managerial career path to date is an intriguing one, far more so than some of his high-profile peers. My suspicion is he’s learned a lot.
Salty beef extracts
Check in on those around you | #WorldMentalHealthDay (Norwich City)
Rushton’s Corner: The real problem with the Terrace View is an issue at the heart of the Holte End (7500 to Holte)
Calling the cops to ensure a safe passage home (Referee Tales)
Bukayo Saka is just another victim of a game which can't leave its very best alone (Unexpected Delirium)
Visiting the Oval, Glentoran’s Iconic Ground (Outside Write)
No team has fallen as far as Yeovil Town but now there is reason for hope (i)
Alexander-Arnold is biggest teaser in endless England midfield question (The Observer)
Breakaways or crossing borders: what is the future of European football? (The Observer)
Dessert
You know, I think I’ll let the re-released Diadora Brasil Gold special edition speak for itself.
By the way…
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