SOCCER: Tonight in Barcelona Steve McManaman has a chance to stake his claim for a World Cup place. It might just be his last, says Michael Walker

Zinedine Zidane was at the far end of the Ciudad Deportivo, Real Madrid's prosaic training ground five minutes north of the Bernabeu Stadium. Zidane was doing short sprints timed by a stopwatch-holding Real coach. Raul and Fernando Hierro had already strutted off, Spanish kings at home in the lair. Luis Figo was nowhere to be seen, his injury requiring more attention.

Steve McManaman, meanwhile, was hosting the local press, every question addressed to "Macca". Macca smiled, said muy importante a few times, the sun shone, everyone was happy.

Humble and crumbling the Ciudad Deportivo may be, but it is Real's centenary season, they have removed the advertising from the kit and the mood in Madrid is one of opulent omnipotence. A mere perusal of the cast was enough to see why: if one is judged by the company one keeps, McManaman is a most prosperous individual.

Tuesday evening brought confirmation of this potent impression. Fielding a reserve team in which McManaman featured for the first 52 minutes against Sparta Prague, in a Champions League match rendered meaningless by Real's qualification for the quarter-finals the week before, Madrid won 3-0 at a nonchalant tempo. McManaman departed fresh and chirpy. His substitution was a sign that he will feature tonight in Barcelona when Real visit the Nou Camp. His team-mates slapped his back.

In England, the perception may be that McManaman is 12th as opposed to first among equals in Madrid, but Real's eloquent and powerful technical director, Jorge Valdano, stopped on his way home to say: "McManaman? McManaman is connected to everybody. A football match is a game of little societies and McManaman is a member of them all."

Such inclusivity will come as a surprise back home. If McManaman is thought of at all in England now, it is as a man for whom exclusion beckons. Given his status at Real, England's World Cup squad should be comfortably within his grasp, but McManaman, befitting someone who patrols the flanks, is drifting towards the periphery of Sven-Goran Eriksson's radar.

The question is not whether McManaman, 30 a month ago, has the ability to force his way back into the centre of Eriksson's considerations, but whether he has the will. In England's World Cup qualifier against Albania at St James' Park last September, four days after Munich, he made a fleeting appearance of such apparent apathy that even he was taken aback, never mind Eriksson.

Eriksson, after his first England press conference, retired to an office where the first words of his assistant, Tord Grip, were: "No one asked about McManaman" - at which point Eriksson also expressed surprise. Not today, however. McManaman is on the edge of a long summer holiday.

Appropriately, he drove from the middle of Madrid to the outskirts to sit in the shade and talk about England and Albania. On his car stereo Bob Dylan was singing about how Ruben Carter could have been champion of the world.

"I must have slipped over about 20 times in 15 minutes," McManaman said ruefully of that Albania match. "It was frustrating. I was hard on myself about it, I am hard on myself, but I try to do it at the right time. And it was a frustrating game overall, being 1-0 for such a long time. But those things happen."

That last "those things happen" is the sort of throwaway remark McManaman's detractors would seize upon, an example of his casual air. Yet, face to face, it becomes clear how insulting it is to question the commitment of someone who has not only survived two-and-a-half seasons at Real Madrid, winning a European Cup along the way, but continues to perform at a club in the throes of transforming itself into football's Harlem Globetrotters.

Tonight will be McManaman's 18th game of the season for Real, albeit several as substitute, and Zidane's 25th. The degree of difficulty in maintaining a visible and valued presence in such a peer group should not be underestimated. It is one of the less remarked upon aspects of McManaman that beneath his jocular superficiality lurks a stern realism.

Thus, when asked the direct question about Eriksson's final summer squad, McManaman replied: "As for the World Cup, people say: 'Do you want to go?' Well of course I want to go. But first and foremost you have to be fit and free from injury and also playing decent football. If you're not playing well, you don't deserve to be in; I've always said that."

In these words there seemed to be an acceptance within McManaman that he will not make the squad, and it felt valid to ask him about his England zeal. It is not of the clenched-fist, Stuart Pearce variety?

"No, it isn't," McManaman said. "But I still want to play. If I go, I'll be thrilled to bits. I get on well with the lads, I love going back to see them. A major thing for me now is that because I don't see the English lads, I try and make the most of it when I get home. Yes, I feel part of it."

Eriksson's view may be different. McManaman has started two and been substitute four times in the Swede's 11 England games. But an insight into their relationship is that, after the tabloid tale of McManaman's alleged drinking before the Greece game, Eriksson called Emilio Butragueno, Real's director of sport, to inform him that it was untrue. Eriksson knew McManaman's reputation in Spain would be sullied by the story and it was reported in Madrid.

That mattered to McManaman because, for all the perceived flippancy in England, McManaman cares what people think in Spain. "I think they see and portray me as this very gentlemanly professional who also enjoys himself," he said.

Were Real to approach him about extending his contract - he has two more seasons after this - then he would probably stay, "if it was right".

The relentless patter about Patrick Vieira may signal a more abrupt departure, but McManaman is phlegmatic about Real's possible purchases. The suggestion is always that he will be the one to make way. "We get linked with hundreds," he said. "I never give it a thought."

But what about Figo, his arrival has surely threatened McManaman?

"Again no. People like to think that he's displaced me, but in the first year, before Figo came, we played as a five and I rarely played as an out-and-out right-winger. Last year I played a lot on the left, so to say I never played because Figo came in is ridiculous; we were in the same team. But in England, if we buy another midfielder, then it's always me going out, never one of the Spanish lads. I suppose the English papers can't write one of the Spanish lads is under pressure because no one cares.

"This is my third year and I've played well over 100 games. I'm averaging 40-odd a season, which isn't bad for someone who never plays. So, dissatisfied? Nah. Maybe next year instead of playing 40 games I'll play four. If that's the case, the process (of leaving) might quicken up. But I wouldn't like to go somewhere for the sake of it, knowing I'll be well paid, have a good time and just relax.

"To join a middle-of-the-road team and play average football, that would drive me round the bend. I'd like to feel the pressure of going somewhere and trying to be successful. I am driven: to come here and be successful was the hardest thing in the world. If you're not consistently good, it's a problem. But I'm part of the team and I get on well with the lads."

If he does depart early, would England be his destination?

"My cliched answer is that, if I was to leave tomorrow, I don't fancy it. But next year, or in 18 months, then who knows? I might get a fantastic offer from Italy or France where I'll say: 'I fancy that, that's a challenge.'

"I might get to the point where no one comes in for me. I've got one eye on it, but living here, I must say, you get very spoilt. The club is so big, you get treated so well, the lifestyle's fantastic, Madrid's gorgeous . . ."

It is hard to argue with that.

Guardian Service