AC Milan midfielder Clarence Seedorf has pulled out of the provisional Dutch squad for Euro 2008 after falling out with coach Marco van Basten.

That got me thinking about other top players who won’t be in Austria and Switzerland in June. Mark van Bommel said a while back he wouldn’t play for Holland under Van Basten but Ruud van Nistelrooy is back after patching things up with the coach.

Apart from the England players who will miss the tournament because they didn’t qualify, Raul is looking increasingly unlikely to get into Spain’s squad. It is doubtful that both Filippo Inzaghi and Alessandro Del Piero will make the cut for Italy.

Oliver Kahn meanwhile quit Germany after the 2006 World Cup. Is there anyone else you think we will miss at Euro 2008?

They did it the hard way but Atletico finally managed to battle their way into the Champions League - well the qualifying round at least - after a 12 year absence.

Typically Sunday’s 1-0 win over Deportivo Coruna came with the usual dose of nail-biting, wincing and stomach churning that have made the Calderon such a stressful place to be in recent seasons.

Although the dependable Diego Forlan put Atletico ahead on the stroke of halftime, the team looked to be suffering a severe bout of stage fright in the final quarter and nearly threw it away as they watched the Galicians lay siege to their goal.

So it was with a mixture of joy and relief that Atletico secured their first top four finish since they did the double back in 1996.

It is about time too as the club’s claims to be one of the “equipos grandes” had begun to wear dangerously thin following a stream of morale-sapping disappointments and false dawns.

Atletico have always been one of La Liga’s big spenders but they have developed the unfortunate knack of buying expensive and selling cheap, recruiting sought-after players who then sink without trace while watching their discards turn into world beaters at other clubs.

This season seemed set up for the usual disappointment, what with the sale of iconic striker Fernando Torres to Liverpool and a massive outlay on new players such as Forlan, Jose Antonio Reyes, Simao Sabrosa, Raul Garcia and Luis Garcia. The club then appeared to have shot themselves in the foot when they decided to sell Maniche mid-season after he fell out with coach Javier Aguirre.

But for once, other results went Atletico’s way as their immediate rivals failed to take advantage of their slip-ups. They also had the good fortune to have one Sergio Aguero in their ranks. Shielded by Aguirre in his first season at the club, the 19-year-old Argentine came into his own following the departure of Torres and thrived alongside the selfless Forlan.

Aguero has racked up 18 goals this season, while Forlan has weighed in with another 16, so that despite losing their direction in midfield following Maniche’s exit and having one of the shakiest defences in the league, Atletico held on to ensure their return to the big time.

Some of the club’s success-starved fans used Sunday’s win as an excuse to celebrate at the Neptuno fountain in the centre of Madrid, but the more experienced of the Calderon faithful kept their feet on the ground.

“Just wait until we lose in the Champions League qualifiers and don’t even end up playing in Europe next season. That will be typical Atletico,” one fan said to me when I saw him this morning.

Simon Baskett, Madrid

PHOTO: Atletico players celebrate the win against Deportivo Coruna, May 11. REUTERS/Susana Vera

After a second consecutive season without any silverware — and a humiliating 4-1 drubbing by arch-rivals by Real Madrid into the bargain – Barcelona have tried to stem the rising tide of criticism of the club by announcing that former club captain Pep Guardiola is to take charge of the team at the end of the season.

It’s quite a gamble.

Over the past two seasons, Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Marco van Basten, Juande Ramos and Ernesto Valverde have all been mentioned as possible replacements for Rijkaard, but the club have rejected the tried and tested contenders and gone for old boy Guardiola, whose coaching experience amounts to nothing more than a single season in charge of the club’s reserve team Barça B.

Given his Catalan credentials and close association with Johan Cruyff’s “dream team”, the appointment of Guardiola will be welcomed by some of the Nou Camp faithful, but he is hardly the sort of figure you would expect to take charge of a big team like Barça when they’re going through a Galactico-style meltdown.

Guardiola’s appointment could be a sign that Barça now realise their attempt to pack the team with big-name players was a foolish one and that they may now try to recruit more low profile figures to replace the likes of Ronaldinho.

But it is a risky strategy to ask a coach as inexperienced as Guardiola to try and pick up the pieces, construct a new side and deliver success in his first season in the big time.

Real Madrid tried a similar approach with coaches like Mariano Garcia Remon and Juan Ramon Lopez Caro, but both ended up being turfed out as they struggled to deal with the pressure and expectation. In the end it took the experienced Fabio Capello to get the team back on their feet.

Will Guardiola prove the sceptics wrong and make a success of his first major coaching job? He’ll need time to do it, and that may not be available. Maybe it’s a healthy sign that the club has gone for a former player, hungry to make his name in coaching. Or is it a case of being too scared to appoint a coach like Mourinho, who might be too headstrong and independent? Give is your thoughts in the comments below.

FILE PHOTO: Pep Guardiola during his presentation as Barcelona B team coach in 2007. REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino

The great 1970s TV programme ‘Fawlty Towers’ left its mark by being voted Britain’s fifth best sitcom in 2004, and the way Fernando Torres is going he’s bound to leave an indelible print on English football.

‘Fawlty Towers’ only lasted four years, in which a mere 12 episodes were shot. No doubt Liverpool will want the 24-year-old Torres to stick around a little longer, even if he didn’t sparkle at the weekend against Manchester United.

But this is international week, and it’s a good time to consider whether Torres might be the man to lead Spain to long-overdue success at Euro 2008.

As Simon Baskett writes in his preview, Wednesday’s friendly against Italy is the perfect time for Torres to show his country how far he has come since leaving Atletico Madrid for Liverpool last summer.

As a 17-year-old, Torres became the youngest player to take the field in an Atletico shirt, and two years later he became the youngest player to captain the side. As if this wasn’t enough, that season (2003-4) he also made his international debut.

His first year in the Spanish top flight yielded 13 goals from 29 appearances which was an impressive return for an 18/19-year-old, but since then he has added a lot more to his game.

I’m thinking mainly about his willingness to get stuck in, just one of the many hurdles for foreign players to overcome if they want to succeed in the Premiership.

Back in September Torres was having lumps kicked out of him by Reading’s Andre Bikey during a league cup match but responded with a hat-trick rather than a sulk.

Then there are the goals – 27 of them this season.

Greece’s victory in the last European Championship continued a trend that has seen the last four titles going to the team with the greatest collective understanding.

That is in stark contrast to the two previous tournaments - events that are remembered for the genius of Platini in 1984 and the combination of Van Basten and Gullitt in 1988.

So, will this year’s European championships be won by a ‘whole’ team or a squad containing a few talismanic individuals? And with Torres, Fabregas et al, can Spain now claim to stand in the latter camp?

PHOTO: Torres falls to the ground after a tackle by France’s Lilian Thuram during a friendly in Malaga, February 6, 2008. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

Spain’s likely performance at Euro 2008 remains an enigma but one thing that can be guaranteed is that Luis Aragones will step down as coach at the end of the tournament.

The grand old man of Spanish football has made it clear that he will be going at the end of June, a month before his 70th birthday, and after four turbulent years at the helm there will many who will be heaving a sigh of relief.

The atmosphere in Spanish football is tense enough without having a figure like Aragones as its most high-profile international representative. From the moment he took charge after the last European Championship, he has never been far away from controversy. From his derogatory comments about Thierry Henry, to his intermittent threats to quit, his decision to exclude Raul or his tendency to fly off the handle during news conferences, Aragones has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Brusque, outspoken and at times inadvertently comic, Aragones comes from the same mould as two recent predecessors Jose Antonio Camacho and Javier Clemente. But the word is that after his departure, the Federation will appoint former Real Madrid coach Vicente del Bosque.

While Aragones resembles a bad-tempered, somewhat eccentric grandfather, Del Bosque is like a kindly uncle, a model of diplomacy, politeness and sportsmanship.

The moustachioed 57-year-old also oversaw his former club during their most successful period since the late 1950s. In a little over three years, he steered his team to two Champions Leagues, two league titles, the World Club Cup, the European Super Cup and the Spanish Super Cup.

Florentino Perez’s decision to discard Del Bosque the day after the team won the league title in 2003 and a week after they signed David Beckham is widely seen as one of the prime reasons for the galactico meltdown that followed. Whereas Del Bosque managed to control a dressing room packed full of the biggest egos in the game with disarming ease, a string of successors were driven to distraction by the challenge. And the club did not win another trophy until Fabio Capello arrived on the scene four years later.

Del Bosque does, of course, have his critics. Perez said his methods were too old-fashioned and hinted that his dry, deadpan delivery and stoical Castilian image did not fit into his plans to develop the club’s global image. His only subsequent coaching job at Besiktas ended in failure and he has displayed little enthusiasm to renew his career at a club.

On the other hand you will never hear a bad word said against Del Bosque by any of his former players or colleagues and he is widely respected in the game. The Spanish Federation’s sporting director Fernando Hierro, who was purged from Real at the same time as Del Bosque, is reported to be the driving force behind the decision to appoint him.

Could Del Bosque’s safe pair of hands be just what Spain now needs?

PHOTO: Del Bosque parades the European Cup back in Madrid after Real’s final victory over Bayer Leverkusen in 2002. REUTERS/Sergio Perez