Recoba's riddle

Sunday November 23, 2003

If Arsenal were hammered 3-0 at Highbury by an Internazionale side missing their two most talented players, what chance do they have in the return game this week at the San Siro, where the Londoners must win to avoid another embarrassing premature exit from the Champions League?

Christian Vieri, the best battering ram in football and Alvaro Recoba, the world's number one almost-great player, are back in the Inter side but, the vagaries of football being what they are, Arsenal naturally have every chance in the world of doing what they have to do. When Real Madrid lost 4-1 two weeks ago to Sevilla, Florentino Pérez, the Real president when asked after the game to comment, said that in football, as in life, 'accidents happen'. Perhaps that is the best way to describe the 3-0 defeat Arsenal suffered against a team that, in all other respects, was going through a miserable patch. So much so that since then the coach, Héctor Cúper, has been sacked and replaced by Alberto Zaccheroni.

One reason Cúper was sacked was that he refused to play Recoba, Inter's best-paid player and, until he took a voluntary wage cut in the summer, the best-paid in the world. Massimo Moratti, the Inter president, fumed at the ultra-defensive former coach's insistence that Recoba did not fit his utilitarian scheme (another reason why that Highbury result was so abhorrent). One of the first things 'Zac' said on being appointed was that Recoba would always be in his starting line-up - as powerful a statement as he could make of the philosophical revolution he intended to bring about.

Recoba - Uruguayan, nickname ' El Chino ' (the Chinese) because of his Oriental features - would be an adornment to any team in the world. Sandro Mazzola, star of the legendary Inter team of the 1960s, spotted him in 1996 playing for Nacional of Montevideo. Only 20, Recoba was in the middle of a run that would see him score 30 goals in 27 league games. Mazzola, convinced he had stumbled across a genius, notified his friend Moratti, who promptly shipped him over to Italy.

Recoba's first game in Serie A sealed Moratti's relationship with Mazzola for evermore. The young Uruguayan scored two goals in a 2-1 win over Brescia - the first a rocket from nearly 40 yards out, the second one of those free-kicks that rises over the defensive wall then, defying the known laws of physics, drops like a stone into the net. No one had ever witnessed a more stunning debut. His left foot not only packed amazing power and precision, it possessed exquisite touch. Beautifully balanced and deceptively fast, he was a classic winger on the dribble, lethal on the turn inside the box. Maradona, it seemed, had been reborn.

Yet Recoba not quite cut it that first season. He is almost as short as Maradona but less chunky, and the Serie A defenders were too rough and strong for him. In his second season, Inter loaned him out to struggling Venezia. With 11 goals in 19 games, he was almost singlehandedly responsible for saving them from the drop. Mention Recoba today in the city of the canals and they'll tell you he's the biggest thing they've seen since Tintoretto.

Inter grabbed him back for the 1999-2000 season. He scored 10 goals in 28 games and made countless more. The apple of Moratti's eye, Recoba clinched a £4million after-tax annual salary at the end of 2000, making him the world's highest paid player. At which point things started to go steadily downhill.

Partly it was injuries, partly it was a ban he received for acquiring a fabricated Portuguese passport, partly it was his inability to gel with the dour Cúper. Recoba has played these last three seasons only sporadically. When he has started games, he has had a tendency to fade, possibly the consequence of never having the opportunity to get fully match fit. Yet he always produces his moments of magic: the extraordinary free-kicks, the magnificent shots from outside the area, the beautifully weighted passes, every bit as good as David Beckham's. And then there are, indeed, Maradona moments, such as the goal he scored on 17 March last year against Lecce, when he jinked and bobbed his way past the entire rival defence before crashing the ball into the net.

Now, with Zaccheroni in charge, Recoba has no more excuses. At 27, and injury-free, he has the necessary backing and the big stage on which to do great things, to live up to the potential the whole of Italy saw in him on his arrival six years ago. The question is whether he will make the leap to consistency that true greatness demands or whether he will remain for the rest of his career in the ranks of the only fleetingly brilliant almost-greats. Will he become a regular challenger for European footballer of the year - the way Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Luís Figo, Beckham and Ronaldo have - or will he remain like David Ginola, the perfect example of a player who had all the attributes but lacked the mental edge to make it really big.

Other examples of such players? Alexander Mostovoi, Celta Vigo's Russian midfielder known as 'the Czar', a fabulously gifted all-rounder, elegant and tough, who can score with his head and both feet yet never quite imposes his presence over the length of a season. Juan Verón did well at Lazio, and maybe now he will do well again at Chelsea, but at Manchester United he looked like the most overvalued of players, blessed with all the ability but incapable of deploying it effectively - like a Ferrari stuck in second gear. Joe Cole could be another: he threatens and threatens to become a major force in world football, and has been billed for three years as England's answer to Zidane, but so far has flattered - his glittering first half against Denmark last weekend notwithstanding - to deceive.

Ruud van Nistelrooy is the perfect example of a player who is the precise opposite of these almost-greats. Raúl another. Neither has the technical ability of Recoba, Cole, or Mostovoi; neither is a brilliant trickster on the ball, but they have the heads of champions. They are clever, they battle and they have the discipline and dedication to maximise what skills they have.

Transfer the attitude of Van Nistelrooy or Raúl or, for that matter, Beckham or Roy Keane, to Recoba and he could indeed be the biggest thing since Maradona. But it is a mighty big 'if'. The raw material is there, but if you had to bet on it?

Let us hope, for the sake of Arsenal, that San Siro on Tuesday night does not come to be remembered as the moment when the Uruguayan finally turned the corner, when he transformed his natural genius into footballing gold.

[The Observer]