I will always be Sevillista and that fondness is always something special and will continue.”Of his first experiences of the English game, he added: “The referees whistle a lot and take control. Jose Antonio Reyes, Arsenal’s £17m record signing from Sevilla, admitted yesterday that he plans to return to the Spanish club sooner or later.
The youngster, who flew home yesterday to bid farewell to his old club, said: “My desire is to return. He’s going to keep quiet until Fulham say he can talk.”He did well [on Wednesday night against Everton in the FA Cup replay]. I don’t know if he was man of the match but he set up both goals.”Boa Morte twisted his way clear of three opponents to set up Junichi Inamoto who scored with a fierce 25-yard drive in the 56th minute. Francis Jeffers then hit a last minute equaliser – just as he had in the first game at Goodison Park – before Boa Morte set up Steed Malbranque to score Fulham’s winner in extra-time..

Despite the furore, Boa Morte – who must also respond to a separate FA demand for a “full explanation” of his claim against Ferguson – is apparently coping with the media attention Amadeu Paixco, Boa Morte’s agent, said: “Luis is doing OK He doesn’t want to speak to any reporters now. “You have to be there and try to fight against them and show the things you have.”. You always try your best to get that kind of game, so I’m happy with that.”A winners’ medal and a return to European action would do Mendieta no harm at all in his bid to stay in the international picture with Spain.”It’s one of the most important things in a player’s career because you have to be in Europe to play against the biggest teams in Europe,” he said. “We won the cup, so I can imagine something similar.”It’s fantastic. It’s very good for me to arrive at a new club and reach a final or have the possibility to play in a final, so I’m very happy.”You always hope for that, but you never know what’s going to happen. We’ve got very good players and experienced players that have played in Europe in other teams. I think the people are just thinking about the title, but we can get into Europe as well.”Boro claimed their big day out in South Wales with a 3-1 aggregate win over Arsenal in the semi-finals after Tuesday night’s 2-1 triumph at the Riverside Stadium.It was Mendieta’s pass which allowed Bolo Zenden to fire the Teessiders in front, but his overall display helped keep the Gunners on the back foot.The impact he has had in his first five months in England has been immense, and he has quickly picked up a sense of just how important the cup run has been to his latest club.”I can imagine because in Valencia when we won the first cup, Valencia had gone for 25 years winning nothing,” he said.

Since I arrived at Valencia, they played always in the Uefa Cup and after that, in the Champions’ League.”I said when I arrived at Middlesbrough that any club that wants to be an important club or a big club should be in Europe where the big teams are. Mendieta’s rehabilitation in England has provided McClaren and Boro with just reward for their ambition in luring him to the north-east.But he admits that a lack of European football has left a huge hole, and that is something he intends to remedy.”When you come and you watch the European games on television, of course you miss it because it’s a big competition that every player wants to play in,” he said “But I knew that before I came. Gaizka Mendieta has set his heart on taking a Carling Cup winners’ medal later this month – and a ticket back to Europe.
The 29-year-old Middlesbrough midfielder surprised many people when he agreed a five-year deal on Teesside during the summer after making his name at Valencia, Lazio and Barcelona and sampling Champions’ League and World Cup football.However, in no small part down to the Spaniard, Steve McClaren’s side will run out at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on 29 February against Bolton for the first trophy of the 2003-04 season in England.Victory would cap a remarkable personal turn-around for a player whose career had found itself in the doldrums following his £28.9m move to Rome and subsequent loan spell at Barca. Now that the job is down to Five Bellies in the unlighted flat by the fish-and-chip shop, we see finally the extent of his need – and the degree of his loss.. Whatever it was, it sent him running, crying, into the arms of his parents, demanding hugs of re-assurance. But certainly when I saw it in Gazza I feared for his future. Now we know that in a football sense Gazza has lived a tragedy.”In a television documentary last year Gazza indeed revealed that he knew terror as a boy.

He said he was sometimes overcome with a fear of something he couldn’t quite identify; maybe it was death, perhaps it was some weird premonition of future agony. There was a bit of torture in the face, and I can’t say quite what it was Pain, insecurity, something created when he was very young. But too many outside things got in the way.”However, Gascoigne’s story, when it is published in the summer, will perhaps contradict Giles in at least one sense: that the most critical problems lay within rather than without. Even father-confessor Terry Venables concedes, “When I had Paul at Tottenham, there were times when I looked at his face and saw the same expression that Diego Maradona sometimes wore when I had him at Barcelona.