'A vicious circle mugged Europe's maestros in Portugal over the past three weeks. The salary demands of lauded players force clubs to stage more games, placing greater physical and mental pressures on leading players who are exhausted when it mattered most. Zinedine Zidane fizzled out at Euro 2004. David Beckham, Thierry Henry and Raul never got going. Luis Figo had one great game in six. The stars were hidden behind the clouds of a congested calendar.
With due respect to the Greek champions, few schoolchildren outside Athens were running around playgrounds at break-time yesterday, shouting: "I want to be a man-marker like Georgios Seitaridis." They want to emulate Zidane, Figo, Beckham, Henry or Raul and such precious talents need protecting.
Cristiano Ronaldo proved such an invigorating force at Euro 2004 because he had been used carefully by Manchester United's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, who has sensibly told him to delay his return to training. Ronaldo will miss United's summer tour and that may give him a chance of being fresh next season. Lucrative pre-season trips are increasingly far-flung and competitive as United and Chelsea will discover when they head to the United States. But clubs need them to spread the merchandising word and help fund their luminaries' £80,000-a-week pay cheques.
Until some sanity returns to re- numeration packages, the sorry cycle of mounting costs for clubs and increasing work-load for players will continue its destructive course. As one Premiership dignitary confided: "We will reduce the size of the Premiership only when players reduce their wages."
UEFA are right. Prominent leagues like the Premiership should slim from 20 to 18. A winter break should be introduced. But such measures are rendered pointless if clubs simply fill the gaps with money-spinning friendlies. Salvation will arrive only when Premiership chairmen agree en masse to make salaries more performance-related, offering a healthy basic wage plus generous bonuses for individual or collective achievements. But just try suggesting that to Roman Abramovich, Chelsea's benefactor, who dishes out handsome salaries.
Over-paid and overplayed, the Continent's luminaries docked in Lisbon, Faro and Oporto as empty vessels.'