SOCCER WORLD

Fractional misjudgments led to three Chelsea players striking the woodwork in Moscow. Got right, two of them could have been decisive, one of them definitely would have been. Enter Nicolas Anelka – whose interview a couple of days after the final affirmed that my sympathy at the time was entirely misplaced and that he, of all shoot-out missers ever, most deserves to be cast as the villain. Anelka, signed in January, was effective at times and, personality aside, should not be judged on one moment. But he and the other players who have joined since the end of 2006-07 – Florent Malouda, Steve Sidwell, Tal Ben Haim, Juliano Belletti, Claudio Pizarro, Branislav Ivanovic and Franco Di Santo – have shown few signs of becoming Stamford Bridge legends. The Champions League final was reached at last, but then lost at the last.

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