The leading scorer in Euro 2008 qualifying will come down to earth on Friday when he runs out for a team bottom of the English second division for whom he struggles to hold down a first-team place.

The relegation woes of Leeds United took a back seat for a few days as Northern Ireland’s David Healy scored a hat-trick against Liechtenstein and both goals in a 2-1 win over Sweden.

That made it nine goals in six qualifiers as Northern Ireland claimed top spot in their group above the Swedes, Spain and Denmark. His overall tally is 29 goals in 56 appearances - and that for a team who went 13 games without scoring not too long ago.

What Wayne Rooney would give for such a return after failing to score a competitive international goal for almost three years.

So how has Healy outscored more feted and far better paid strikers so comfortably? Perhaps the international experience doesn’t motivate players used to performing in front of huge crowds in major competitions as much as it does those whose bread and butter soccer is a little more mundane.

The step from a Champions League game against Barcelona in ram-full Camp Nou to an international against Andorra in the same city’s sparsely filled Olympic Stadium can hardly be described as up.

But when Healy says he feels as much pride playing for his country now as he did on his first appearance, you believe him. When the former Manchester United trainee says his country’s success is due to hard work and a great spirit, you can only wonder why such qualities are absent elsewhere.

An earlier post on this blog asked for nominations for Europe’s unsung heroes. How about Healy for starters?

Mitch Phillips is head of UK sports reporting for Reuters

Brazil, clear favourites to host the 2014 World Cup, have finally started work on getting ready for the big event.

After plenty of talk but no action, the country badly needed a gesture to show the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) is taking the bid seriously — the laying of a first sleeper in a new high-speed railway, perhaps, or driving the first stake into a brand new stadium.

So it was amid great expectation that the CBF unveiled this week… a T-shirt. Or rather lots of T-shirts reading “2014 bid nation” (the CBF’s imagination clearly having run riot).

Coach Dunga wore one on the touchline during Tuesday’s friendly against Ghana in Stockholm, the team wore them as they took to the field and CBF chief Ricardo Teixeira has been handing them around to all and sundry.

It will need a lot more serious work if the World Cup really is going to come here. The CBF openly admits the country does not have a single stadium which can at present host World Cup games.

More worryingly, how are the fans going to get around? The country has almost no passenger-carrying railways, most highways are in a shambolic state and air travel, fraught with delays due to outdated equipment and overworked controllers, cannot cope with local demand.

South America is due to stage the 2014 World Cup under FIFA’s rotation system and the CBF believes it can easily see off Colombia, the only country to join the race.

But not all Brazilians share that optimism. In an Internet poll carried out by the Estado do Sao Paulo newspaper this week, 73 percent said the country could not stage the event. If they are right, FIFA may have to carry out Sepp Blatter’s threat to go north.

Brian Homewood is a Reuters sports correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro

Italy’s 2-0 win over Scotland showed once again how the world champions have learned to thrive on a bunker mentality.

At last years World Cup it was the fallout from the Serie A match-fixing scandal that galvanised a team more usually renowned for reflecting the deep internal divisions in Italian society.

On Wednesday it was 10 days of unrelenting press criticism of the team and coach Roberto Donadoni that spurred the Azzurri to their best performance since beating France in the World Cup final.

The kilts, booze and bagpipes of the Scottish fans provided a colorful sideshow but this match was really a case of the Italians against themselves, the world champions showing they can bypass their old self-destructive tendency.

By the time the teams arrived at Baris San Nicola stadium, the criticism of the team had worked its magic. The ground was full, the anthem was sung with unusual gusto, and everyone including the journalists who had been attacking the team with such venom leapt from their seats to punch the air when Luca Toni scored the winning goals.

Italy are now pretty well placed in Group B, within striking distance of the leaders, and as long as the criticism keeps on coming they should make it with something to spare.

James Eve reports for Reuters on sport from Rome

Steve McClaren has finally lost patience with the media, the media have lost all respect for the coach and England fans are rapidly losing their tempers. 

What England have not done in the last week is lose a match. It’s easy to forget that when you see McClaren being so mercilessly hounded.

England played poorly against Andorra but a 3-0 victory, followed by a goalless draw in Israel on Saturday, leaves them in a decent position to qualify for Euro 2008.

McClaren was subjected to nasty abuse from the crowd at Montjuic on Wednesday and when he was asked about it at his post-match press conference the coach decided he had had enough. “Go ahead and write whatever you want,” he told reporters before walking out.

According to the Times, the atmosphere was so bad England’s substitutes were forced to retreat from the stands to the dressing room over fears for their safety. Yet there was little or no criticism of the crowd’s behaviour in Thursday’s newspapers and it was left to a thoughtful blogger at Soccerlens to give a different, less hysterical view.

So has England lost a sense perspective on this? The team are two points off the lead in Group E, in a similar position to Italy in Group B and Spain in Group F.

Roberto Donadoni and Luis Aragones have been under fire as well but they have not had to suffer anything like the abuse directed at McClaren.

It just feels wrong.

I’m watching a Euro 2008 qualifier between Turkey and Norway in a virtually empty stadium.

In Frankfurt, Germany.

Turkey were punished after violence erupted at the end of their World Cup qualifier against Switzerland in November 2005. They were ordered to play their next three home games away from home, and behind closed doors.

Which is why the stadium in Frankfurt is empty. Hollow. All but dead.

Norway lead 2-0 at halftime. Turkey have a lot chances and they get one back. The standard of play is fine but the match is not entertaining until the very end when Turkey snatch a 2-2 draw, leaving Norway keeper Thomas Myhre devastated.

Since 1971, I’ve spent countless hours in packed sports stadiums from Barcelona to Helsinki and from Seoul to Los Angeles but it’s only this evening I truly realise how utterly vital the spectators are.

The chants, the shouts, the flags. People close together, living the thrill of the sport. Nothing of that is present this evening and it’s an acute loss.

Before kickoff the national anthems of Norway and Turkey were played but nobody sang along, nobody clapped their hands, nobody roared afterwards in anticipation.

It’s a far cry from the sell-out matches here during last year’s World Cup. Tonight, the voices of the players, calling to each other on the field, carry easily. Outside, pressing against a high metal fence, some 50 Turkish supporters cheer and I hear them as well. Loud and clear.

Peter Starck is a Reuters correspondent based in Frankfurt

The national hysteria surrounding Steve McClaren is likely to continue whatever the result against Andorra on Wednesday even if England match Germanys 13-0 win away to San Marino last year.

On Tuesday he was labelled “mad” and “deluded” while on Wednesday one tabloid said the best place for him, should they flop against Andorra, would be the far reaches of the universe.

Everyone wants to know how it is that England players do so well for their clubs in the Champions League yet seem to perform consistently less well for their country.

McClaren deserves sympathy. Club managers get 60-odd games a season to tinker with systems and four or five training sessions a week to evaluate their players. McClaren does not have that luxury.

The players owe their vast riches to their clubs and are judged by fans on what they do week in week out in the Premier League. A ropey Rooney performance for England is soon forgotten when he turns on the style at Old Trafford, while a nondescript display from Lampard will not unduly bother Chelsea fans when he has scored 20 goals in their midfield this season.

One bad England display and McClaren is criticised for months, while the players head off to bask in adulation elsewhere.

So whats the solution? Go easy on the coach? Be harder on the players? Or wait for McClaren to be replaced and let the cycle continue.

Martyn Herman is a Reuters sports correspondent based in London

Celery! Celery! So Chelsea have banned three fans for throwing the crunchy vegetable about, and put one of English football’s more obscure traditions in the limelight.

Chelsea were so bad in the 1980s they nearly fell into England’s third division, and supporters soon found other ways of keeping themselves amused at matches. Out of nowhere the (unprintable) celery song became a favourite, especially at away games when the blue and white army would smuggle in pounds of the stuff to the delight of greengrocers all over the country.

Sticks of it would fly around, occasionally landing around players from other teams as they prepared to take a corner, but not hurled in malice.

Celery went out of fashion at Stamford Bridge, replaced by fake Ruud Gullit dreadlocks and Russian fur hats as the team were transformed into champions.

The Tottenham fan who ran onto the pitch to throw a punch at Chelsea’s Frank Lampard
– at the same recent game as the latest celery outbreak — is a reminder of the violence no one wants to see back in football.

But the celery revival perhaps points to a nostalgia for the wilder, more unpredictable days of the terraces that make English football now, for all its world-class players and state-of-the-art stadia, seem a little boring.

William Schomberg is a Reuters correspondent based in Brussels

If Scotland beat Italy in Bari on Wednesday don’t be surprised if you start hearing that the Scots have become football’s undisputed world champions.

Italy are, of course, the World Cup holders after beating France in the final in Berlin last year. It is less well known that for some fans Scotland are the unofficial world champions after beating Georgia in their last game in Group B.

How on earth did they work that one out?

It is all admirably explained here, the official unofficial website and clearly home to some of the most obsessive statisticians in the business.

It goes like this. England became the first unofficial world champions back in 1873 when they beat Scotland in what was only the second full international match (the first had ended in a goalless draw the year before).

Since then, whenever the holders have faced another country in a full international, the winners have taken over the honorary title. After a route too convoluted to go down here, it passed to Georgia when they beat Uruguay last year and Scotland’s 2-1 win on Saturday saw them take over.

So does that make Wednesday’s date with Italy a world title unification bout?

So just who is the least popular coach in Europe?

England’s Steve McClaren is facing concerted calls for him to go after a 0-0 draw with Israel on Saturday left the country in third place in Group E. A poll in the Guardian has over 75 percent saying he should make way for Terry Venables immediately.

F365 have taken to calling the manager Steve McClown, countless articles at Sportingo have it in for the coach and over at Who Ate All the Pies they are campaigning, none too seriously, for McClaren to be replaced by Plymouth Argyle manager Ian Holloway, a man who once likened himself to a cheap teabag. 

But McClaren is up against some pretty stiff competition in Europe’s great unpopularity contest.

Italy’s Roberto Donadoni is really feeling the heat and on Monday he slammed the country’s media for what he calls a campaign to cause trouble. Italy are fourth in Group B but the coach makes the perfectly reasonable point that as Italy weren’t even playing on Saturday there is really nothing new to say. Of course, that will all change if the world champions manage to lose against Scotland on Wednesday.

And then there is Javier Clemente, once a wildly unpopular Spain coach who is now under fire in Serbia after they became the first team to lose a competitive international against Kazakhstan.

Have I missed anyone out?

A visit to the Bernabeu can come as a culture shock if youve been brought up watching English lower league football played at tumbledown grounds lined with sheets of corrugated iron and tucked behind rows of terraced houses.

Slap bang in the middle of Madrids most exclusive neighbourhood, the Bernabeu shares the same address as the headquarters of banks, multinational companies and designer boutiques.

The stadium is impressive and you cant help but draw breath once youre inside, casting your eyes over the 80,000 dark blue seats rising steeply into the Madrid sky.

Around 90,000 crammed in here for the final of the 1982 World Cup. My first visit was 10 years later, when I was drawn there to see a fading Maradona play for Sevilla against Real Madrid.

Maradona was seriously overweight and looked desperately unhappy. He still managed a couple of touches that hinted at the old genius but Sevilla were hammered 5-0, Chilean striker Ivan Zamorano getting a first-half hat-trick.

The strange thing was that the Real fans werent in raptures. Instead they were taking it all in their stride. It was all a bit too easy, all a bit too predictable.

Earlier this season, the current Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon made an unguarded comment that revealed much about the atmosphere at the Bernabeu.

“It’s a stadium where people behave as if it were the theatre,” said Calderon. “The people don’t support the team, not like they do in Italy and England.”

It is actually more like a bull ring, a place were dedicated Madridistas come in the hope of seeing a spectacle, a mixture of sport and art with a fair dose of cruelty.

When the players do turn it on, the Bernabeu can bring the house down. When things go wrong the fans turn nasty. Poor play will provoke a chorus of shrill whistles or worse still a pañolada a mass waving of white handkerchiefs in best bullfighting tradition.

The elderly cigar-chomping man who sits just below the press box is a classic Madridista. Hes been coming to the Bernabeu for nearly as long as it has been standing. He claims there is no one to equal Alfredo Di Stefano and believes Fabio Capello should never have been allowed to take charge because his teams are too defensive.

Since the arrival of the Galacticos there are more foreigners, ex-pats and tourists in the crowd, easily spotted because of Beckham shirts, but the old core of supporters remains. Three years without a major trophy has hit them hard, but even though they are desperate for silverware they still demand victory with style.

Simon Baskett is Reuters sports correspondent in Madrid