The year is coming to an end, which means it is time for football’s annual awards, including the mischievous top-of-the-flops variety.

In Italy listeners of Rai radio show Catersport voted Inter Milan’s 18.6-million-euro signing Ricardo Quaresma Serie A’s worst player of 2008.

With Cristiano Ronaldo winning the Ballon d’Or and favourite for the FIFA World Player of the Year award, there’s a nice symmetry about another Portuguese player taking a top booby prize.

It’s a spectacular showing in a way, as Quaresma has only been in Serie A since the close season, but still got almost twice as many votes as his nearest rival for the ‘Golden Bin’ gong, Atalanta’s former Italy striker Christian Vieri.

Catersport’s listeners may have been a tad harsh. Fellow winger Mancini has been equally anonymous since moving to Inter from AS Roma in July, while forward Adriano, the 2006 and 2007 Golden Bin winner, could have come further up than third after wasting another chance to get his career back on track with indiscipline.

Andriy Shevchenko, who came sixth, is still looking for his first Serie A goal since returning to AC Milan from Chelsea and he too may have deserved a higher ranking.

The people have spoken though, so let’s assume that Quaresma was Serie A’s top flop of the year. But if we looked further afield, who would be his competitors for the title of world football’s biggest letdown of 2008?

Chelsea’s John Terry for his miss in the Champions League final?

Bayern Munich striker Luca Toni for failing to live up to his billing for Italy at Euro 2008?

Who would get your Golden Bin?

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s Ricardo Quaresma controls the ball against Anorthosis during their Champions League match at San Siro, Oct. 22, 2008. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini

Liverpool seem to have got through their sticky patch and continued failures from Chelsea and Arsenal have limited the damage.

After convincing wins over Bolton and Newcastle Liverpool are clear at the top of the table and will stay there going into 2009.

So is it going to be a happy new year for Liverpool fans? I blogged  the other day about (what seems to me) Liverpool’s need for another forward or midfielder with the wow factor but Steven Gerrard seems to be playing that role to perfection just at the moment. Can he carry on in this form until the end of the season?

Liverpool’s biggest problem, of course, is the prospect of Manchester United continuing their ominous rise up the table. United have three games in hand and if they win all three they’ll be within a point of the top.

But still, optimism is creeping in. Here’s how Kai at the Liverpool Offside put it after the Newcastle win:

“And so with Chel$ki held to a 2-2 draw at Craven Cottage, we are 3 points clear heading into 2009!! I’m strangely starting to believe we might just nick it this year.”

redfloyd at Have You Ever Been to Liverpool? sounds more cautious in his report on the game:

“This can only be good for the team’s confidence going into the long home straight. Although we are top we have, with one or two exceptions, achieved this through perspiration rather than inspiration, in short we haven’t really got going. Perhaps the last two games are a first sign of us starting to put our foot on the accelerator? However, it is still a long, long treacherous journey. God speed!”

I think that’s about right, in that this season they have gone top while hardly ever playing really well. If the Newcastle performance is a sign of things to come, who knows?

So what do you think? Can Liverpool stay clear and get that first title since 1990? Or have they just delayed the inevitable slide away from the top two?

Christmas is here and it´s time for the annual debate about whether England´s Premier League should follow the rest of Europe and introduce a winter break … you know, to give the players (and fans) a much needed rest, to ensure they´re not all too exhausted to give their best at the business end of the Champions League.

Except this year, there is no real debate (with apologies to Martin O´Neill). This is an argument that has been settled decisively in favour of the status quo. In fact, I think we´ll see more pressure on the other big leagues to copy the Premier League and go hell for leather over the festive season.

Can you imagine if West End theatres decided they were going to close down over the Christmas period to give the actors a rest? If TV stations said there would be no live programmes for a fortnight this year? If Apple Inc said they were taking a break from selling iPods over the holidays?

The Premier League understands that it is pushing a spectacle, a show, entertainment, and not just organising a sporting event. Why on earth would you close things down when people have more leisure time … when the kids are off school and the adults are off work?

Sure, you could still have a winter break in January or February, but why give up the spotlight to the leagues in Spain, Italy or Germany? Why give up your unique selling point? For the good of the national team? What a quaint idea. And anyway, that´s surely irrelevant now given the international flavour of the English game.

I blogged last year about the unusual level of interest in the Premier League in Spain these days. Where once Spain looked down on English football as a very inferior branch of the family, this time last year it was wall to wall Premier League in the Spanish media and the level is cranking up again, it seems.

I don´t think it will be long before Spain has a rethink on the calendar.

With English clubs so competitive in the Champions League in recent years, you might have expected Italy to react with trepidation after Inter Milan, Juventus and AS Roma were pitched against Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal in the last 16.

The teams in question betrayed no nerves after the draw, although they could hardly be expected to raise the white flag before a kick of the ball.

But the media and pundits have also been upbeat about the Serie A sides’ chances of pulling off a 3-0 whitewash over their Premier League rivals, surprisingly so given the recent history of knockout-stage ties between the nations (Italian clubs have been on the losing end in most knockout ties against English clubs, the most significant exception being AC Milan´s win over Liverpool in the 2007 final).

Nevertheless, Italy’s top sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport borrowed some optimism from Barack Obama to greet the draw with the headline, “Yes We Can”.

They found an ally in Britain in The Observer’s Paul Wilson, who wrote that Real Madrid’s opponents Liverpool looked England’s best bet of making the quarter-finals in a blog on Sunday.

Former Italy and AC Milan coach Arrigo Sacchi, frequently a harsh critic of Italian football, struck a confident note too.

“The distance between Roma, Inter, Juve and their respective opponents Arsenal, Manchester and Chelsea has narrowed,” he wrote in Gazzetta this week.

“The time is right for them to pull off this extraordinary feat… They must believe they can do it because they have the capabilities and quality to win convincingly against very strong opposition.”

So can Serie A’s representatives really dent the Premier League supremacy this year? Sacchi said they can if they avoid the negative play often associated with Italian soccer and take the ties to the English.

Roma, Juve and Inter certainly have the firepower to do damage with the likes of forwards Francesco Totti, Alessandro Del Piero, Amauri and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

And Italian football is not as defensive as it used to be.

But this could be because, as Mark Meadows pointed in a recent blog here, Italians are simply not as good at defending as they were when their sides ruled the European roost. Once it would have been unthinkable for a Serie A team to ship seven goals in the way Roma did at Old Trafford two seasons ago.

If Italy’s traditional forte has become its Achilles heel, the optimism Sacchi and company have expressed looks misplaced.

PHOTO: Kaka celebrates with the trophy after AC Milan´s Champions League final win over Liverpool in Athens, May 23, 2007. REUTERS/Phil Noble

Don’t you just hate daft excuses?

Soccer is riddled with them. The manager who can’t comment on his player being sent off because he didn’t see it - despite having the best seat in the stadium - is perhpas the most common, but a different example caught my attention this week.

Everton assistant manager Steve Round believes the club’s record signing Marouane Fellaini is being booked unfairly by referees in England because of his size.

The gangly Belgian midfielder, 1.94 metres tall, joined from Standard Liege in September and has collected eight yellow cards in just 12 appearances. Many would say the player nicknamed “Screech” commits too many fouls, although Round offers a different explanation:

“He’s disappointed with how many bookings he’s had and has put that down to inexperience. But we’ve also put it down to the fact he’s quite recognisable. I think referees need to book him on merit rather than because it’s ‘big’ Fellaini.

“There was a recent game when one player from the opposition did six consecutive fouls and didn’t get booked. Fellaini made one foul and got a yellow card.

“It was pointed out to the officials and they’ve taken that on board. Hopefully we’ll start seeing him getting fair treatment.”

However, a delve into the Premier League stats offers a different view.

Heading into the latest round of matches Fellaini, according to official Premier League statistics, had committed the most fouls in the league at 53.

A further look at the stats shows that Fulham defender Brede Hangeland has been booked twice in 17 appearances this season, committing only 14 fouls. Oh and he is 1.94 metres - the same size as Fellaini.

Any other excuses from coaches or players caught your eye this season? Let us know in the comments.

Jose Mourinho will clash with old foe Alex Ferguson in the Champions League last 16 with holders Manchester United playing Inter Milan.

It is England v Italy twice more with Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri facing former club Chelsea while Arsenal and Roma, two teams who love to play the beautiful game, also meet.

Real Madrid against Liverpool will also be special for Madrid-born Rafael Benitez. Here’s the draw. What do you make of it?

Chelsea v Juventus

Villarreal v Panathinaikos

Sporting Lisbon v Bayern Munich

Atletico Madrid v Porto

Olympique Lyon v Barcelona

Real Madrid v Liverpool

Arsenal v AS Roma

Inter Milan v Manchester United

One of the most exciting finishes to the Argentine championship in recent memory is now in danger of turning into a huge anti-climax.

Last Sunday, San Lorenzo, Tigre and Boca Juniors won their last matches of the regular tournament to finish level on points at the top in a three-way tie. Goal difference is not used for the title so a mini-league is being played.

The Argentina Football Association (AFA) appeared unprepared for this eventuality (it’s the first time it has happened since the current system of two championships per season was introduced) and could now find themselves with a lame duck final.

Amid much criticism, the draw for the three-way final was held behind closed doors and produced the following fixture list: San Lorenzo v Tigre (last Wednesday), San Lorenzo v Boca (on Saturday) and Boca v Tigre (next Tuesday).

Boca, the country’s most popular club, appeared to come out of it the best as they got a week’s rest between their final league match and their first playoff.

San Lorenzo, on the other hand, find themselves playing three games in seven days in an unseasonal spring heatwave.

The biggest criticism is that the AFA should not have fixed the order of the games in advance.

San Lorenzo beat Tigre 2-1 in the opening match on Wednesday and will now clinch the title on Saturday if they beat Boca. In that case, Tuesday’s game will not be played.

A Boca win would leave both sides with three points and leave all three teams in with a chance of winning on Tuesday.

But if Saturday’s match ends in a draw, the AFA will be faced with the unhappy scenario of Boca playing the decisive game against a Tigre side who will be out of the running and more interested in their holidays.

Such a situation could have been avoided if, instead of fixing the order of matches, the AFA had ruled that the losers of Wednesday’s game had played Boca on Saturday. Instead, San Lorenzo’s hopes could be placed in the hands of a team with almost no motivation.

“With what sort of enthusiasm will a team play if they have no chance of being champions, having fought hard for 20 matches and lost everything three days ago?” asked the daily newspaper Clarin.

PHOTO: San Lorenzo’s Gonzalo Bergessio celebrates after scoring his team’s second goal against Tigre during their playoff match in Buenos Aires, Dec. 17. REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian

NOTE: Refiled with correct author’s name 1106 GMT Friday, Dec 18. Sorry, Brian.

During the 1980s and 90s, Italian defences were world-renowned as the toughest of the lot.

The word catenaccio became known in other languages and jokes about boring Italian teams winning 1-0 were all the rage.

The likes of Franco Baresi, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini were hailed while Fabio Cannavaro was a rare defender to win the Ballon d’Or and FIFA world player after his stunning defensive displays helped Italy lift the 2006 World Cup.

Now everything has changed.

Cannavaro is coming to the end of the line after some stuttering displays for Real Madrid. Maldini, 40, is in his last season before retirement and only plays now and then when his weary body allows. AC Milan team mate Alessandro Nesta has missed the past two seasons with injury. (more…)

Rafa Benitez needs to pull a rabbit from the hat again in the New Year but if Liverpool are going to end that long wait for a title they need a more creative player than Michael Owen.

If Liverpool fans with longish memories have faith that the coming of a striker can make the difference you can understand why. The last time Liverpool were champions, back in 1990, their successful run-in was inspired by Ronny Rosenthal, an Israeli forward who arrived seemingly from nowhere on or near deadline day (my memory’s a bit fuzzy).

Gerard Houllier tried to repeat the trick by signing Nicolas Anelka in 2002 and Benitez tried Fernando Morientes in 2005 before bringing back ’God’ himself when he signed Robbie Fowler at the start of 2006. None of them did the required business.

Even though Liverpool could presumably pick Michael Owen up on the cheap, given that his contract at Newcastle is up at the end of the season, I believe the temptation to bring back another striker should be resisted.

Liverpool don’t need an out-an-out goalscorer, even if it’s true that they have struggled to find the net this season. Benitez has enough options up front as it is, even if Torres isn’t fit. Ryan Babel is eager for opportunities, David “Wash” Ngog has potential and Robbie Keane… well, presumably he’ll start scoring regularly soon.

What Liverpool need, as they have done for a long time, is more creativity in midfield. They need genuine inspiration, a player who can bring gasps from the crowd and give opposition defences more, much more, to worry about.

The last Liverpool player who could do that was Jari Litmanen, signed in January 2001 by Houllier but injured for much of the rest of that season and left on the sidelines for too much of the following campaign. Here’s Liverpool’s official website verdict on the Finn:

“Litmanen’s career at Anfield will go down as a case of what might have been. Despite his undoubted skill and creativity many supporters will say he was underused at Anfield.” Says it all, really.

In recent transfer windows Benitez has made really useful defensive signings like Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel. Now it’s up to the coach to prove he can show the same eye for a creative midfielder.

I assume Franck Ribery, Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are not for sale at any price, but there must be players out there who could give Liverpool’s midfield a bit more of the wow factor. Who do you think he should go for?

PHOTO: Liverpool’s Michael Owen (L) and his team mate Jari Litmanen celebrate a goal against Bayer Leverkusen during their Champions League quarter-final second leg match in Germany, April 9, 2002. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

Eighteen years ago today, on Dec. 16 1990, a 19-year-old midfielder made his debut for Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona dream team in a Primera Liga match against Cadiz.

Pep Guardiola, who picked up a yellow card that day as the Catalans won 2-0, has come a long way since then, carving out a distinguished career both for Barca and the Spanish national side before taking over as coach at the Nou Camp from Frank Rijkaard at the end of last season.

The dapper Guardiola, who cuts a reserved yet assured figure, immediately stamped his mark on the squad, junking the under-performing Ronaldinho and the unwanted Deco, and bringing in the dynamic Daniel Alves and midfield pair Aleksandr Hleb and Seydou Keita.

He has restored the discipline, professionalism and team spirit to the club and the results are there for all to see: a lead of eight points at the top of the table, 46 goals in 15 matches with only nine conceded and, best of all, a 12-point advantage over champions Real Madrid.

In their last three league matches, Barca have dismissed three of their closest rivals with uncanny ease — 3-0 at Sevilla, 4-0 at home to Valencia and 2-0 in Saturday’s “Clasico” at the Nou Camp against Real Madrid.

This without the creative midfield talents of Spain international Andres Iniesta, who has been out for six weeks with a thigh strain but may return as soon as Sunday’s match at Villarreal.

After such an explosive start to the season, and with confidence and expectations sky high, anything but a Champions League, Primera Liga and King’s Cup treble would surely be a disappointment.

PHOTO: Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola smiles during the news conference at the Nou Camp Dec. 12, 2008. REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino