James Lawton: Nedved fills void as Gerrard loses way

If you took a poll now there wouldn't be much doubt about it. Pavel Nedved would walk in as the top midfielder of Euro 2004. There is, however, one big problem. Nedved, athletic, quick, and with the capacity to hit wondrous defence-splitting passes on the run, is not really a midfielder in any classic sense, no more than the hopelessly overvalued Steven Gerrard. Also, he will soon be 32, a late age to revive a football fashion.

Indeed, even if Nedved maintains his momentum and carries the Czechs to their second European title - they won their first in partnership with Slovakia in 1976 - this tournament, barring a dramatic improvement by the Dutch, will have been saved only by his team's excellent balance and application, the passion of the Portuguese and the brilliant coaching and inspiration of Greece's Otto Rehhagel. At the heart of the competition there has been a wasteland where great midfielders used to operate.

Patrick Vieira - who with Roy Keane for so long represented the best of the old genre - had a negligible effect on France's pathetic attempt to retain their title. England's vaunted "flat four" of Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard and Scholes produced football that could only be described as vacuous. The Italians failed to produce even a hint of Gianni Rivera or Giancarlo Antognoni. The Spanish midfield was one big nada. The best pure midfielder was Germany's Michael Ballack, but sometimes his face said that he knew he was playing in a void. Passing to a team-mate, he might have mused, was a bit like conducting a conversation with a puddle.

This, God forbid, is not another tactical treatise. Football is already bombarded with them and most are gibberish. No, it is a lament for the loss of that most vital element in the game, the one that has always been most responsible for its form and its beauty. That the midfielder who shapes a match, gets on the ball and creates space and opportunity for all of his team-mates, is a disappearing breed is surely confirmed quite bizarrely, by the fact that before yesterday's late onset of loyalty by Gerrard, Chelsea were said to be about to spend £40m on one of the most conspicuous failures in this tournament.

While his fellow Merseysider Wayne Rooney explained what it is to be a truly world-class player, Gerrard, like most of his celebrated team-mates, floundered on another inferior level. Of course he has great attributes. Of course he can explode into the action. But that's not what we are talking about. We are discussing players who bend games to their will, who impose not just their talent but their understanding of what they are supposed to be doing.

Maybe Chelsea's new coach Jose - "show me the water and I'll walk on it" - Mourinho fancied himself to bring on Gerrard the way he did Deco, the Portuguese playmaker who had brilliant moments on the way to winning the Champions' League with Porto but has so far failed to make a significant impact on the Portuguese campaign. With Gerrard, you could only have wished Mourinho the best of luck. His challenge would not have been just to discipline Gerrard's game. It would have been to throw upon it a little light.

Gerrard was a disaster in Euro 2004 because he consistently revealed his ignorance of what great midfielders do. One thing they definitely don't do is spend most of their time trying to catch the eye. It is true that sometimes they do erupt spectacularly - Bobby Charlton, Johan Cruyff, Gerson, Franz Beckenbauer, sweeping out of a withdrawn position, could all do it quite beautifully and with devastating effect - but most of the time they are determining the rhythm of their team. They are getting into optimum positions to take the ball and then use it. Gerrard's lack of economy for England over the last week or two has been quite shocking.

You might say he has plenty of time to improve. Yet he is 24 and at this age most great players are moving towards the final stages of their development. Gerrard has great talent, but has he the mind of a true midfielder? Does he have the technique and the craft and the care to build a performance rather than produce sporadic, eye-catching assaults on the opposite goal? All available evidence says no.

Nedved seems certain to continue to draw the eye in a much more satisfying way. He is a wonderful mover, capable of thrilling aggression and those instinctive passes delivered at pace, and at this moment is one of two compelling contenders for man of the tournament. Portugal's central defender Ricardo Carvalho is the other and if we get the final everyone outside of the Netherlands and Greece most desires, the final decision cannot come sooner than Sunday night.

While so many of his fellow superstars have fallen dismayingly short of acceptable standards of passion and performance, Nedved has been true to the best of his game. That makes him a huge man of the moment. Unfortunately, that doesn't make him one of the great midfielders. Until we find one, the game will continue to lack its most important dimension. That will always be the capacity to create.

Bruckner magic shows up Eriksson myth

At Anfield, Gérard Houllier bitterly rebuked his critics and his chosen weapon was often statistics. A particular favourite was the number of shots Liverpool fired on goal. But then statistics can prove almost anything, as his former player Milan Baros is reminding us here as he shoots to the top of the scoring list with five goals.

The 23-year-old Czech Republic star scored a combined total of 33 goals for his original club Banik Ostrava and Liverpool, where he has been for three years. For the man they call "The Magician", the 64-year-old Czech coach, Karel Bruckner, Baros has knocked in 11 in his last 10 appearances.

Bruckner's salary is on the shy side of £100,000 a year, or 45 times less than the £4.5m picked up by Sven Goran Eriksson. It means that while he has been producing a wonderfully prepared team here at Euro 2004, Bruckner has also delivered a pulverising comment on the Football Association's extravagance in rewarding Eriksson with a £1m a year rise for negotiating with Chelsea behind its back.

At the weekend, the FA chief executive, Mark Palios, was unchastened, saying: "There are no second thoughts. We want Sven with us. He has a great relationship with the players and that's key. For that reason he is the best around - he's still the man for the job. I don't think we had much luck. Sol Campbell scored a good goal and the bottom line is that I'm sure no one is happy playing us. That's a good sign. Now we move on to 2006."

There is more of this but I rather think we have heard enough. There is only one thing worse that the repeated failures of English football on the big stage of the international game. It is the absolute failure to see what is before our eyes. There is only one virtue in defeat. It is that you may just learn something through the pain. It is a concept plainly beyond the grasp of the FA, and that is a bigger problem than a grossly overpaid, underachieving coach and players who have been allowed to believe they are so much better than they are. It would be nice to get a magician on the job, but right now a little basic honesty would be a help.

Beckham's fairy-tale turns into horror story

Those of us who long argued that David Beckham's reputation as a world-class player was a myth - we used to hold our annual meetings in the handiest telephone box - can take no pleasure from the mauling he is currently receiving at the hands of some of his once slavish supporters.

Here was one particularly repellent paragraph: "David is a basket case. He's completely exhausted. She's screaming at him, he's shouting at her in reply, and all the time they're trying to maintain this fairy-tale image of a golden couple. It's utter madness." Yes, certainly, but whose madness? Beckham may have complied enthusiastically with the fairy-tale nonsense, but now he is reported to be yearning for the simplicities of his Essex boyhood. He should be allowed to return to them. A decent society would end this cruel and silly business right now.