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A Portrait of Croatian Bicyles
Thursday, 14 April 2011 10:23
Written by Rab Boyle
What follows in an unashamed look at Rangers new hero,
Nikica Jelavic.
I'm
not interested in your Greek Mercury-esque gormless Bambi-with-stilts
goal hangers. You can keep your young buck expeditious and shovel-faced
Essex-lad 'international'. Your Easten delights do not excite and your
Israeli engine doesn't come close. We're not interested. Dripping
yourselves in American Ralph Lauren tailored finery will not compare
either, for we can all see mutton when it's dressed like lamb.
A
little closer to home, there is Northern Ireland's attacking little and
large. With the Ulster Gazelle perennially flattering to deceive and the
other we've had more chance to applaud from the sidelines then we have
had making our headlines. The Senegalese playboy, who has a thrive for a
dive and a penchant for dropping deeper than a Zen monk's meditation,
has yet to hit the high notes and despite much supporter adulation.
The
Ayrshire lion-heart who started his career as a pioneering forward has
found a new home for himself as the Scottish incarnation of the one time
Rangers target Tim Cahill. His ability to dart forward from midfield
and appear late into the box has been justly rewarded with his future
consigned to being with the blues.
Yet you can keep all of them
though. You can keep your swaggering vox-pops and larger than life
characters. For the Rangers support have a new fulcrum. Our focal point
is our warrior with the legs of Jim Leighton. The Rangers one-man
attacking ton of bricks on pointed toe, Nikica Jelavic.
What do you get when you splice the footballing stylings of Dimitar Berbatov and Dado Prso? You get Croatian bicycles.
Jela
is yet to have made many interviews, making a conscious decision to
wait until he feels his English is 'better'. Yet you can see when you
look into his eyes that he understands everything and uses the facade of
being a foreign man in a foreign climate as an excuse to perpetuate his
quiet and unassuming demeanor. There's certainly an argument that he
has a fuller and more articulate grasp of the English language than the
garbled brogue of Scott 'ah dunno' Brown.
Right from the get-go,
Jelavic showed clarity and lucidity of thought, from his comments before
he left the stable of Rapid until he made his first interview at
Auchenhowie clutching his new work uniform he has been curt and wanted
to do his talking on the pitch where he needs no English.
His
pensive, muted and thoughtful demeanor are carried onto the pitch, where
he has more than a passing resemblance to the leggy, deceptively
athletic gait of Dado Prso. If you watch Jela in a warm up he can look
like a stiff wooden board who is non committal to making himself sweat.
But once you have seen him on a pitch once the referee blows the
whistle, you'll know that he is a different animal altogether.
On
first glance at him, you could make the assertion that he doesn't seem
to cover much ground and that if he were to get going then it would take
him a minute or so to wind up to top speed, like an Olympic hammer
thrower working his centripetal force to a climax. Jelavic is fast -
much faster than you would think from looking at snapshot image of him.
You would never imagine from his pigeon-toed trot, looking like his feet
are always hurting, that he possesses the turn of pace that can bring
him from an awkward lumbering near stationary position to top flight in a
matter of milliseconds.
If you give Nikica a football, he'll
rampage. Given a whiff of getting onto a football and he's a bully, as
strong as an ox with the level of determination that is betrayed by his
calm exterior. Jelavic plays football like the bull and the matador at
the same time. He is equally as comfortable playing with the craft and
guile as a fencer wielding a foil, as he is being a runaway train
bludgeoning his way though even the worthiest of adversaries. When he
scores at the end of it all, he has the merciless smile of a man who has
been proven right in the notion that you couldn't handle his prowess.
Jelavic
can become anonymous for large parts of a game, but if he is then it's
because he is dragging himself and his imposing frame out of position to
create space for the likes of the young Ayrshire lion heart to probe
with deadly affect. Yet when the Croatian does drop from the enemy radar
for periods of the game, he lets the play flow around him and is
comfortable in the realms of an incommunicable pocket, waiting for a
time when he can step back into the game at a matched tempo, usually
with a deadly contribution.
There's a hint of devil in his angel
too. For all of his polite and quiet exterior, when he is on the pitch,
in the zone and rampaging, he is not adverse to a bit of niggle and
shows the strength and dogged determination that make great players
winners.
We are in the midst of a time when there are two
distinct groups of footballers at the highest level. There are the
awkward geniuses that look as though they have been spliced together
like Frankensteins monster, in order to create a freakishly effective
footballer. They appear as though their limbs purposefully chosen and
sewn together, exuding the impression that it is the awkward nature of
their frames that lifts them above other players.
Think the
lumbering elegance of Berbatov, the glass footed and sometimes
uncomfortable appearing Andrea Pirlo, the elasticated limbs of
Ronaldinho, the nimble low centre of gravity dribbling machine of the
dwarven Lionel Messi or the sure-footed but weak upper body of Arijen
Robben. All perfectly crafted as if intentionally, to fit their role as
niche genre professional footballers; like freak show carnival
components.
The other group of players are the athletes. The
players that wouldn't look out of place if they pitched up next week as a
pole vaulter or a swimmer at the Olympics or as a MMA fighter cut for
five rounds of Championship fighting. These type of footballers have the
perfectly chiseled calf muscles, the clockwork precision and highly
engineered bodies and technical abilities to slip into any role on a
football pitch. These are Wenger-esque footballers, like Drogba,
Lampard, Henry or Ballack who were made to perform at the highest level
of competition.
Nikica Jelavic can fit easily into either of
these two nomenclatures of professional footballer. His unassuming,
lumbering and deceptive framework is matched only by his icy coolness,
deftness of touch and technical mastery. Last night's goal against a
dreary Aberdeen is the epitome of what we have come to expect from our
Bosnian-born Croatian and the ease with which he fought off his marker
and technical excellence and athleticism in twisting his contorted body
to clip the ball beyond the dumbfounded keeper proves he is every bit
the modern day complete attacker.
'The' Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as he
would surely refer to himself, is another player who can be found
within the intersection of the Venn diagram of the aforementioned two
sets of players. With his abilities perhaps more closely aligned with
the carnival trickery and ballet-esque poise with which he plays the
game of football, Zlatan could very well be the antipode of Jelavic who
has the same combinations of skill and physicality, but from a more
lumbering and unassuming side of the coin, both comfortable on the deck
or in the air, in a dog fight and flicking the ball with elegance.
Naturally,
Jelavic has a long way to go before he is mentioned in the same breaths
as the players mentioned thus far, but should Rangers under Ally
McCoist take the obvious route and build the play around Nikica we can
only expect to see more from him. His flashes of brilliance have been
mesmerising this season and if you factor in that he has recently moved
to a new country with a new more physical football style, became a dad
for the first time and sustained a large portion of the season on the
sidelines after one player decided that the only way you can stop a man
as strong as an oak tree is to chop him down - then all looks well for
Nikica and Rangers.
Nevertheless, Jelavic has played 20 times
this season, he's started 17 times, scored 14 goals and set up 5 goals.
Those are the kind of stats that are a dream for a striker at any time,
never mind in his first season at a new club. With statistics like that
then we have every right to get excited about what the future might hold
for Rangers with Jelavic as our fulcrum. If he can continue playing the
way he is now into next season and beyond, then it might very well not
be long before Europe comes banging on Rangers' door looking for our one
man attacking ton of bricks to rampage in another league across the
continent.
Until then, I'll keep watching for Croatian bicycles.
![[VIDEO] Raspoloženi Petković doveo Kocaelispor u vodstvo, Trabzonspor ipak slavio preokretom](/photos/_resized/515/59/0000000000515599_400_230_cut.jpg)
