Good forwards, shame about the defenders

FABRIZIO RAVANELLI has, apparently, already been voted by Middlesbrough fans the man most likely to be their player of the season come next May.

This is how obsessed we have all become with football: not content with one annual vote, supporters, schooled on fantasy and dream, now spend their time in polling booths conducting the sporting equivalent of the American primaries.

It will not be long before Gallup and MORI become involved, conducting lengthy interviews on voting intentions with those leaving the Riverside Stadium, the television news leading with the revelation that while 36 per cent are backing Ravanelli, Juninho is only seven percentage points behind and closing.

Since Euro `96 reality seems to have packed up its bags and departed from the English football scene entirely.

And nowhere has reality left with such haste as from Teesside. The sight of a top Italian striker tearing around the Middlesbrough pitch with a shirt over his head, giving him the appearance of someone caught on closed-circuit television holding up a sub-post office, was so improbable one's arm was a mass of pinch marks by the end of a fantastic 90 minutes.

It was a glorious exhibition by Ravanelli, greeted with displays of genuine affection from the stands, proof positive that money can buy you love. When it was first announced that the White Feather was leaving the European champions for Boro it seemed impossible to work out what he was doing. On Saturday, as allegedly one of the top in the country invited him to step through their midst with commendable hospitality, all became clear.

As the ever-sharp Alan Hansen pointed out on Match of the Day: "I love it when they (foreign forwards) come here and say it's a challenge for them. At times he (Ravanelli) will be playing against mediocrity and getting paid a lot of money for it. It's the kind of challenge I would have loved."

Which is the point. Ravanelli came to England because he knew he would be paid £30,000 a week and twice a season he would be lining up against Liam Daish.

Defence has been apparently entirely forgotten. Fortunes, remember, were not offered to tempt Sammer, Sergi and Maldini in our direction after Euro `96.

Instead in came the strikers, eagerly looking forward to filling their boots.

Still, enjoy the moment while you can. It will not be long before the euphoric rush of early-season optimism engendered by fancy foreign forwards is brought down by the reality of facing European sides who can defend.

If you want to know how that will feel, ask a Newcastle fan. Last season Newcastle started like champions and ended like chumps. This year so as to save the local population further tears of frustration - they have begun as they mean to finish. So far this season Kevin Keegan's romantic "they can score six for all we care, because we'll score seven" philosophy has been overtaken by a less exhilarating one: "they can score six and we'll score none."

Keegan spent £15 million over the summer and still possesses full-backs with debilitating wanderlust. By the end of their game against Everton on Saturday poor Shaka Hislop must have been suffering from the symptoms of advanced agoraphobia, so large were the spaces opening up in front of him. As he dived the wrong way for David Unsworth's penalty, incidentally, one could not help noticing that his oversized shirt was decorated with pictures of the Tyne Bridge.

The way things are going, by the time Hislop is confronted by Ravanelli, Adidas's designers will have to graft on the image of several little figures of blubbing Geordies leaping from it.