The Soccer Column

2009-04-09T13:16:00.004-05:00

"OBSESSION"...by the English Media

Now you hear some stupid things being said about Liverpool’s devastating loss to Chelski in the first leg of the European Cup quarterfinal, and the stupidest of the stupid seems to be coming from the English media – that's that lunatic fringe that loosely associates itself with journalism.

Nobody else on this planet can match their incredibly acute ability to obsess over the most insignificant of details and I am of the opinion that it costs their national team a sense of balance. Take your pick of psychoses:

The “left midfield" problem
The “Gerrard/Lampard” problem
The “who will partner with Gary Lineker/Alan Shearer/Michael Owen/Wayne Rooney" problem
And the ever-present “England captaincy" problem

Google anything in quotes above and you'll find literally millions of hits, and all of them from the English. These "problems" are, in fact, almost entirely imagined, and so far away from the reality of what has ailed the national team, that you almost suspect foul play. It is as if their intent is to do everything they can to distract themselves from what's actually important. But this ability to obsess also extends to their coverage of club teams.

I give you exhibit A: The Zonal Marking Problem (http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=goal_defiant_benitez_defends&prov=goal&type=lgns)

This week, every imbecile and his brother, starting with easily the worlds stupidest commentator, the Master of the Obvious, Tommy Smith of ESPN, will have something to say about the so-called "zonal marking" system in use at Liverpool. Why? Because the English football solution to everything is to bludgeon their way through it; if you want to score a goal, hit it long and knock it down Route 1 style. If you want to defend on a set piece, man-mark every single player on the pitch and tackle him 30 seconds before the ball gets there...even if he's on the other side of the park, or making his way down the tunnel for an early shower.

With the English there’s no subtlety, no finesse, no balance. It’s all or nothing. But look carefully at the way Ana Ivanovic of Chelski scored both goals yesterday and you’ll see that it is precisely man marking that got them into trouble.

On the first goal, note how Xavi Alonso is so obsessed with tracking Ivanovic that he scarcely realizes that he has completely turned his back on the incoming ball and by the time he gets his bearings again, she has already lept into the air and headed it home. In fact, Alonso is so obsessed with man-marking that he doesn't even leave the ground to actually challenge the header.

Now I know every coach you’ve ever had has told you that you have keep your marks on set pieces, and of course there is some truth to this. There is always the second touch; so if every defender challenges for the ball and miss (it happens!) and you leave someone unmarked on the second touch, then you have a problem solved by man marking. Or, if, say, all 5 attackers are on the far post, and you do zonal marking that puts 2 defenders on the far post and the others evenly dispersed throughout the box, you'll likely give up a goal. In that case you'd be wise to man mark in that case and put 5 players on the back post with the attackers.

But let me ask you this: what purpose does that serve if the ball doesn’t go to the back post? If a player nobody's ever heard of suddenly makes a run to the near post, and the ball goes near post, now you’ve gone out of your way to make sure you’re man marking and yet you have no shot at achieving your objective which is to make a clearance!

Marking your attacker is not an end, it’s a means to making a clearance – that’s the objective. If the ball's halfway up the field, they can't score on you, so the objective is not to man-mark until you can smell his breath, the objective is to make a clearance.

The second goal by Ivanovic was different – this time Steven Gerrard was the victim, and he too was obsessed with man marking. The difference was that we now know he was already carrying a groin injury and in no position to make a challenge – that’s a mistake on his part and on the part of Benitez for having him out there. But let me ask you this: what about the other 10 idiots in the box for Liverpool?

Were they just out for a stroll on the grass, or were they also playing? The last time I checked, just because your man doesn’t go up for the ball doesn’t mean you can’t either. Not a single other Liverpudlian within 10 feet (and there were several of them) bothered to challenge for the cross. They were all either man marking or zonal marking or magic marking...who the hell knows, but none of them challenged for the ball. The result: the only one who did, the one who's man he was marking actually went for the header, the one who was half injured, made a really weak challenge while everyone else...just...watched.

I’m not saying the headers weren’t good – they were very good, and Ana should be very proud of herself – but the problem Liverpool had on the night was not the zonal marking system, or the man marking system...it was the "let's all watch a beautifully headed goal while nobody does the most important thing you can do when defending a set piece" system.

WIN THE BALL.

Just because stupid commentators and even stupider reporters make the comment over and over and over again, doesn’t mean they have any idea what they’re talking about.

"I've gotta' say, the man-marking on that set piece was awful."

"You cannot allow a man that much time and space on a set piece."

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

I've got news for you, you can give a man as much time and space as he wants, even if he's 3 feet in front of your goal as long as you've cleared the ball before it gets to him. And I'll tell you something else - the marking on every set piece in every match that's ever been played in the history of soccer is always been awful. It is physicaly impossible to follow someone around for 30 seconds, find the ball and beat him to it all at the same time. The marking always looks beautiful when you make a clearance. What they really mean by man-marking is man mugging a la John Terry or Marco Materazzi. The next best alternative is to just win the ball.

Your main objective as a defender on any set piece should be to win the ball if it should come within 10 feet of you. If following around some guy on the other team brings you closer to the ball, then by all means follow him around - but chasing shadows can hardly replace the fine art of winning the ball. After all, if your attacker can do it, then why the hell can't you?

It's like those players they always have on the post - the one's who couldn't fit a piece of paper between their feet and the ground on their best vertical leap. We've all seen those goals when some poor fool is holding onto the post for dear life and won't let go, even as the ball slowly rolls 6-inches away from their outstretched foot. If that idiot would forget about "getting on the post" for 3/10ths of a second, let go of the pipe and take one step left or right, he'd have a game saving clearance to his credit, and probably a kiss from the prettiest girl in town waiting for him.

Instead, being a good soldier with no idea how to play the game, he stands on the post and watches as it rolls past his foot.

Why?

Because in that moment he loses the ability to rationalize that it's more important to win the ball than it is to do what I've been told, which is to stand on the post. That's when doing your job morphs into our word of the day: obsession.

Dictionary.com defines it as, “an irrational motive for performing trivial or repetitive actions, even against your will...” That's why Liverpool missed the boat yesterday, and it's the same way these imbeciles in the English media concern themselves with mundane details like the "zonal marking" system, that are so much less important than the main objectives like...oh, I don't know...winning the ball?

"Obsession"...brought to you by the English media.

2009-01-09T11:41:00.004-05:00

POLL TAX

I’ve never liked Graham Poll as a referee – I know, I know, until he gave the same player three cautions in a single match at the World Cup in 2006, he was the cat’s meow in England. But to me, Poll had been preferred by the powers that be in England for all the wrong reasons. First and foremost he smiled a lot, and smiling makes you look like you’re very calm and have everything under control, which, by the way, is exactly the impression the referees want to give. They also seemed to enjoy that he carried on conversations with players from time to time – even joking with them. That looks good on tv, because nothing makes you look more in control of the situation than if you’re calm enough to have a conversation that doesn’t involve cards, and even joke about it along the way. I’m not intimidated by Roy Keane, or Franky “F—king Four Fingers” Lampard, just look at me, I’m having a laugh with them!

But let’s take the international standard bearer for good refereeing – Pierluigi Collina. Ever see him smile at a player? Ever see him make a joke with any of them? Ever see a game of his get out of hand? And for all the fear he instilled in players throughout his illustrious career as the world best referee (perhaps ever) did you ever see him send a player off? Of course it happened, but usually with good reason, at least you assume so with Collina for one good reason – he gets the calls right no matter what kind of pressure he's under.

At the end of the day, English referees, just like the English FA, are concerned with one thing above all else – the illusion of control. We’ve got it all under control, and we know exactly what we’re doing. And we’ve got the smiliest, most gregarious, charming, take charge referees in the world to go with the smiliest, most exciting, take charge players in the world.

Well, it seems Mr. Poll would beg to differ.

Recently, Mr. Poll went to great lengths to criticize the “Respect” campaign of the FA, which was ostensibly intended to reduce the amount of abuse directed towards the referee allowing him to do his job properly. But wait, wait – there’s more!

It turns out, just with all things coming out of the FA, what they’re saying is almost the exact opposite of what they’re doing. In the opinion of Mr. Poll, this campaign is an effort by the teams to reduce the number of cautions and sendings-off by referees to key players, making them unavailable for matches. There is an easier way to do this. Players could simply be fined by the FA for abusing referees. So why don’t they do this?

As with all things that make no sense in football, just follow the money. What happens to the fan support if half the good players in the team are (rightfully) suspended for accumulation of cautions, or simply serving a 3-match ban for a sending off? And what happens when the television audience isn't happy? Like so many things coming out of the English FA, this is really much ado about nothing.

Referees have enormous power in football - no single individual on the pitch has the ability to change the nature of the match the way a referee does. If he calls it tight, it can be an advantage to the skilled teams, but then he gets hammered for getting too involved in the match. If he lets a bunch of stuff go, he's letting the players determine their own fate, but then he gets hammered for letting the match get out of control. At the end of the day, it seems with 99 out of 100 referees, no matter what they do, they get hammered. But by having a "respect" campaign, creating the illusion of an effort by players to be more congenial, it puts MORE pressure on referees not to send them off, even when they deserve it.

Then there's Mike Riley.

Last week Riley took it upon himself to send Frankie-Four-Fingers-Lampard off for a violent conduct in what appeared to be a 50/50 challenge on Xavi Alonso in Chelski's match against Liverpool. Probably scared shirtless, as can be expected of a guy who's 5'5'', 135 pounds sopping wet, and looks like he just came down from the mother ship, in amongst some of the strongest, fastest and hardest men in the game. But the television replays show that Riley, like so many English referees, completely overreacted to the challenge, and sent a player off, basically for going in hard on a tackle. In American football, the pendulum has swung so much in favor of the quarterbacks that if a defensive player blows him a kiss after the ball has left his fingertips, he's likely to get a fine. (Jack Lambert, a hall of fame linebacker for the Pittsburg Steelers, may have said it best when asked what they could do to protect the quarterback more - he promplty responded they could put a skirt on him.)

In the world's football it's different - posession of the ball is a fleeting concept - with every touch the ball is technically within the realm of a player's control, but in reality is there for the taking, and knowing just when and how hard to go in for it, particularly in the EPL, is becoming more and more confusing.

Having been shown the replay later, Riley admitted he got it wrong - that's not the first time he's gotten it wrong, but by my account, the first time he's admitted it. Nevertheless, the damage was done, and one key player for Chelski was sent off, and the tenor of the game was changed for the remainder of the match. Liverpool took their undeserved numerical advantage and pulled off a result that they scarcely deserved, and one that has kept them within striking distance of league leaders Manchester United. On the other side of the dugout, Luis "Felipao" Scolari has been given his marching orders by (The) Roman (Emperor) Abramovich and Chelski have all but conceded that their chances of winning the EPL. The truth is that Abramovich has shown himself to be so fickle, that Riley's error may well have cost Scolari his job, because there's no guarantee that Chelski wouldn't have gone barnstorming through the remainder of the season and/or won the Champions Leauge - now we'll never know.

Is it fair to say that given the freedoms of the "Respect" campaign that Riley may have been too quick to exercise his power (incredibly incorrectly as it turned out?) Do some referees need to be forced to think twice before they reach into their pocket for that terrible red card? I suspect that Poll would not agree with that assessment, but this may have been an unintended consequence of a program designed to protect referees from abuse, when in fact, it appears the one who needed protection against abuse of power, was Frankie Four Fingers.

2008-12-19T13:08:00.006-05:00

A MOUTHFUL BY ANY OTHER NAME MIGHT NOT SOUND AS STUPID

Let me be clear: I hate calling it “the Champions League”. There are 16 teams left in the competition, and only 5 of them (less than a 1/3) are in fact league champions. I started out watching it when it was still called the European Cup, the previous incarnation of this competition, which was in fact (more than a bit ironically) a CHAMPIONS’ league.

Today, England, Italy, and Spain have produced fully 10 of the remaining 16 teams, and 7 of them are NOT league champions. In fact, 2 of those 10 teams haven’t won their own leagues in at least 18 years. Villareal have only ever won their league once...and that was the Tercera (3rd) Division in 1970 – there isn’t a single player on the books who was even alive at the time…and yes, I’m sorry to have to admit it…my beloved Liverpool hasn’t won an English title since 1990.

So why in the world do they insist on calling it the UEFA Champions League? It makes no sense at all. And if you’ve read this blog before you know that rule #1 in football is this: if it makes no sense on face value, follow the money and you’ll have your answer to what it's all about – no matter how stupid it turns out to be.

In this case, the objective is to explicitly conceal what is so obvious that we have become accustomed to ignoring it. This is, in fact, a “super” league, structured like the domestic sports leagues in North America with divisions, a regular season, and the winner chosen by playoffs – and we’re now in playoffs that will last until May.

So why the subterfuge? Why pretend it’s a Champions League? You have to go back a few years...
20 years ago, UEFA had a double edged sword on their hands: they had a cash-cow competition with the prestige of producing the Champions of Europe, but they only raked in the moolah if (and only if) big clubs, with a lot of independent prestige, and big television fan bases, survived to reach the latter stages of the competition. The little clubs of Europe had to concede their rightful place in the European Cup because one too many of them were crashing the party right when UEFA was opening the champagne. For UEFA it was a financial nightmare.

To remain a legitimate sporting event, they had to find a way to include all members of UEFA. But to keep it a money growing tree for the foreseeable future, they had to figure out a way to give the biggest clubs in Europe the best chance to make it through to the final rounds of the competition.

Enter the UEFA Champions League.

Case in point: the first 5 European Cups were contested by Real Madrid, and with names like Di Stefano, Pusksas and Bento on the roster, they had enough star power to make the competition a huge success. In those days, European football on television was a rarity, and so most of the money came from the stadium attendances. And because if you were Scottish, the only way you’d likely ever see Real Madrid play was if they came to Hampden Park where you and 150,000 other bravehearts could plunk down a week's salary for tickets to view the match. Fortunately in 1960, the bet paid off, and Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in one of the best European finals in history.

Through the 60’s and 70’s names like Beckenbauer and Cruyff lent their gravitas to the great trophy (3 times each), and through the late 70’s and early 80’s a team that continues to benefit disproportionately from their ancient success, Liverpool, became a household name around the world as something more than just the birthplace of the Beatles. (Speaking of whom, word is only McCartney is a Toffee (scum), while Ringo’s a Red – not a supporter, he just likes the color red – and George and John were disinterested. Harrison once famously said, in the midst of Beatle mania, that there were 3 teams in Liverpool and he liked the other one - brilliant.)

But along came the late 80’s and a couple of communists threw a monkey wrench into this money-making machine that threatened to stop its wheels turning forever: in 1986 Steau Bucharest of Romania took on and beat Barcelona, in Spain no less. And not to be outdone by their fellow eastern Europeans, Red Star Belgrade beat Olympique Marseille in the 1991 final. As if two clubs whose supporters were precluded from purchasing western products wasn’t bad enough, both matches were decided in half-empty stadiums on penalties. The latter was the last year that the competition was strictly a knockout affair. That’s when UEFA said enough is enough and changed the name and structure of the competition to include multiple teams from the same targeted (and by targeted I mean money making) leagues.

But that wasn’t enough for UEFA – because when you make money from something, the only thing you want is more of it. Accordingly, as the years went by, and too often rich clubs with rich fan-bases were matched against European minnows in the late stages, and the mouthwatering match-ups, like the ones we have this year, were too few and far between, the geniuses in Switzerland came up with another wrinkle. The resultant league coefficients and qualifying stages ensured that only a trickle of small fish in the big European pond, made it through to the group stages - they could just forget about the knockout stages altogether.

So what we have today is this: Inter Milan and Man U (can go jump in a lake) are 2 of 5 actual league champions who’ve made it through to the knockout stages, and their reward is playing each other. Meanwhile Lyon, six-times champions of France (on the trot, I might atdd) get to host probably the best team in the world, at the moment, in FC Barcelona. And while Bayern Munich and Sporting Lisbon may both be breathing a sigh of relief at their draws, it’s more than mildly ironic that they’ll be delighted to have drawn one of the remaining league champions, and not one of the non-champion colossuses of Juventus, Real, Chelski, Liverpool, Barcelona or Arsenal. Even Roma, the red-shirted step child of the Serie A titans, would have been preferable to these other behemoths, so I have a sneaking suspicion that this year, we could very well see yet another first, second...even THIRD runner-up winning the so-called Champions League.

For my money, if UEFA are so concerned with tradition and history that they’ll do away with the confetti ridden, fireworks accompanied on-field celebration, and force the losers to form a line of honor in their moment of greatest despair, they’d be better off doing away with the ridiculous concept that this is a champions’ league. Call it what it really is, The European Super League, and leave out all the clowns you don’t want in the competition anyway – what are they going to do, quit UEFA?

Or they could make it an actual European cup, and go back to a single elimination cup competition, and call it the European Cup. In the this case the games will be INFINITELY more interesting because more will be at stake, and in the former case, people from all over the world, that have vicarious skin in the game (like me, for example) will want to watch their teams play against the true cream of the European crop, instead of CFR Cluj-es of the world (and not for nothin' Cluj are also from Romania, from whence all this non-sense started in the first place).

Either way, let’s just stop with the pretense and give it a name that doesn’t sound as stupid as the Union of European Football Associations Champions League, because it’s a deceptive mouthful that by any other name would not sound as stupid.

2008-12-16T21:18:00.006-05:00

GENNARO GATTUSO: MILAN'S NOT-SO-SECRET WEAPON

They have Kaka, Seedorf, Pirlo, Ronaldinho, Pato, Shevchenko and soon Beckham - but the one they love the most, the one who eats, breathes and sweats Rossoneri, and the one who may very well be the reason things are not so good in the red half of Milan this year, is their not-so-secret secret weapon. Hiding there in plain sight, until his impact is only fully appreciated in his absence, is a little phenomenon called Gennaro Gattuso.

You've heard of him, you've seen him play and you've told yourself that he's the "heart and soul" of Milan, but be honest...you really mean that as the only compliment you could give the least aesthetically appealing member of squad.

Well, here's a post I found on him that is so elegantly constructed, it may just change what's in your heart the next time you utter this compliment.

A link to this site will reside permanently on the left-hand navigation of The Soccer Column, and I hope you enjoy the posts as much as I do...

http://www.runofplay.com/2008/11/04/the-tuesday-portrait-gennaro-gattuso/

2008-12-12T11:52:00.005-05:00

THE BALANCE OF POWER

Much as it pains me to admit it, I don’t think there's a more obvious choice for FIFA World Player of the Year in 2008 than Cristiano Ronaldo. With deference to Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, it’s unlikely that any other player would command the same transfer fee or salary as Ronaldo, and based on his performances in the 2007 and 2008 season, it’s fair to say that this award is well deserved. To me, it appeared Messi had some lingering effects from not being selected as the Europe's best, as he trudged ignominiously through a league match against Valencia last weekend, but it’s also a safe bet that he’s in the running for next year’s Ballon d'Or and FIFA's POTY.

When Cristiano Rolando arrived at Man U as a replacement for David Beckham, few could have imagined that this free-styling bafoon would make it in the man’s game of professional football, and fewer still believed he could do it in England – after all, it’s the last place in the world you’d think such skill on the ball as he has exhibited, would be even possible, let alone appreciated. Fortunately, 17 touches in the span of 3 seconds, fabulously enthralling as it may be, is not why he has been deemed the best in the world.

43 goals in all competitions – that’s why.

At the end of the day, by winning the Champions League with Manchester United, despite missing a penalty and appearing to wilt under the pressure of the big match, Ronaldo’s star shines brightly, and few could argue against him as a worthy recipient.

But what does this say about the balance of power in football?

A brief review of all players of the year since FIFA decided to encroach on the Ballon d’Or’s territory, reveals that EVERY SINGLE ONE was playing, and lighting it up, in either La Liga or the the Serie A.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifa_world_player_of_the_year#List_of_male_winners

As a matter of fact, there are only 5 teams who have ever had a world player of the year, and they read like a who’s who of the biggest clubs in the world – the clubs who’s jerseys every young player aspires to wear one day:

AC Milan
Inter Milan
Juventus
Real Madrid
Barcelona

Financially, although Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelski all fare as well or better than the teams in this aforementioned list, the fact remains that these 5 are the standard bearers in world football in terms of prestige, and FIFA’s bias towards them is an indication of such.

But in 2009, that’s about to change.

For the 4th year in a row, all 4 English teams entered in the Champions League have progressed to the knockout stages – neither La Liga nor the Serie A can boast such league consistency. And moreover, an English team has contested the final for 4 years in a row as well. Last year, the international humiliation was complete when two English teams contested the final – guaranteeing the first English champion since my beloved Liverpool lifted their 5th European Cup in 2005.

So let’s, for the record, take a look at what the EPL can boast in the debate over the best league in the world:

1. 3 of the 4 richest clubs in the world are English (Man U(seless), Arsenal and Liverpool) and the richest of the rich is Manchester United
2. All four of England’s Champions League representatives have contested the final in the last 4 year (2 have won – Liverpool and Man U(re))
3. 2 of the top 10 average stadium attendance teams are English (Man (F) U and Arsenal)
4. Of the 4 leagues who have had players nominated, but never won, the FIFA World Player of the year award, England have the most with 11
5. 25% of ALL PROFITS IN EUROPEAN FOOTBALL are generated in England.

So it appears the only thing left for the EPL to win is the FIFA World Player of the Year, which we should expect shortly, and it's no small irony that he's not English. The fact of the matter is that the balance of power in international club football, if not international football, has gone beyond shifting to England, to now residing in it. Without going on another extended tirade of why I think the England team are crap, I doubt it will translate into the success at the World Cup or European Championships (assuming of course, England qualify) but that’s about the only thing left that we could reasonably use as an argument against English dominance of the game altogether.

Of course Brazil do, and probably forever will, produce better players than the English, and Italians clubs will probably win more in Europe, and La Liga will likely continue to host the biggest stars; but in the terms that matter the most in professional football (that being moolah) there’s no doubt that the balance of power has shifted to England.

(Not for the first time) God save (the rest of us from) the Queen.

2008-12-11T12:23:00.003-05:00

THIERRY HENRY: THE BEST MOST MEN COULD GET

I was watching Barcelona beat up on Valencia this weekend, and I was struck by the extent to which an American commentator, Phil Schoen, was trashing Thierry Henry. Before he had scored his first (of 3) goal(s), Schoen took every opportunity he could to point out how the “old” Thierry Henry would have done this, and the "old" Thierry Henry would have done that. Thankfully, Ray Hudson, that over-enthusiastic former MLS guru had the good sense to point out a couple of things that if Shoen knew a thing about football, would have shut him up...of course, we would have no such luck.

It’s not the first time Henry has been castigated for his performances in Barcelona, but for the life of me I really can’t understand why. All he’s done since he arrived is lead the team in goals in all competitions last year, this despite coming to the club and playing with a back and groin injury his first 3 months, and furthermore, playing in a new position in deference to Samuel Eto’o who, suddenly can do no wrong. I should point out that Shoen (as have other Barca supporters, for that matter) has been critical of him too – go figure. I guess, 90 goals in 119 appearances isn't good enough. For someone who has (clearly) never played the game at probably any level, and certainly not professionally, it’s easy to throw stones at the best players of a generation when your expectations are so out of proportion with the realities of the professional game – it’s a bit like a day-trader thinks it’s easy to make money in stocks when all he’s experienced is a bull market, then when the bears come rumbling through, suddenly nobody knows what they’re doing.

I would beg to differ.

In his first season in the Catalan capital, Henry made 42 appearances, many of them as a substitute, and scored 19 times – that was good enough to lead the team in goals, and a strike rate of nearly a goal every other game, that most strikers would sell their first born children to have. This year, he has 9 goals in 19 appearances, many of those were also as a substitute, but somehow that’s not enough for the likes of Phil Schoen. By comparison, Bojan Krkic has scored 10 in 36 and everybody’s favorite eskimo, Eidur Gudjohnsen has the same number of goals in 53 appearances. Even Lionel Messi has only 40 goals in 89 appearances, a worse scoring rate than Henry, but because everybody loves him at the moment, nobody seems to care that his strike rate is not even the equal of Henry currently, and doesn’t even compare to what Henry did at Arsenal in his physical prime. Eto’o is clearly the gold standard – it kind of makes you wonder why on earth anyone at the club was considering selling him this summer .

There are a lot of reasons why the expectation that Henry would score goals as freely at Barcelona as he did at Arsenal, were a recipe for dashed hopes, but the example of Eto’o, and the case for Henry himself, shows that Barcelona would do well to consider those factors before jumping off the Henry bandwagon just yet.

First, he is at a new club and in a new league. Even the great Zidane had his worst seasons the first seasons he moved to new clubs, and look how he turned out. The EPL, as good as the top teams are, is hardly comparable to La Liga, particularly when it comes to the mid-table teams. Most of them would likely be competing for European places if they were transplanted to another league, but in Spain their quality and skills are mostly in vain. A new team that doesn’t center around Henry makes it impossible for him to get the same level and production of service as before, and knowing your defenders is as important to consistent goal-scoring in Spain as it is anywhere else, so time for adjustment is probably the best prescription for success. The slower pace of the game in Spain probably contributes to fewer goal-scoring opportunities, and different ones, making the need for adjustments even more important.

Second, he is playing out of position – at Arsenal he was a center forward who drifted to the wings to find space for himself, coming back into the middle to score his goals. At Barcelona, he’s got white powder on his heels for all the time he spends starting out on the wings. Defenders are taught to defend from the middle out, so a center forward drifting wide can more easily escape his markers, than a winger working his way in. And even if he played in the middle, there’d be another winger out there taking up the space he normally found for himself at Arsenal. Thus the formation and positioning at Barca presents difficult challenges to scoring in the same way he did at Arsenal. As such, he has to find new ways to be effective – ways he hasn’t had to come up with for probably 7 years. Speaking of which….

Third, Henry is 31 years old. Now he can still run like the wind, and to me he looks the same as he did before, but anyone who’s crossed this terrible threshold in age knows that acceleration, resilience and recovery time all suffer with age, so his appearances will diminish, and as such, so will his goal tally. Furthermore, as you get older, and your body starts to fail you in oh-so-many little ways, you begin to lose confidence in yourself physically – that hesitation is the difference between 20 goals and 30, and another good reason to mitigate our expectations.

Finally, I don’t think Henry’s teammates are looking to him to be the savior as he was at Arsenal, and as such, they seem to use him more as an outlet than as a go to guy. Furthermore, I’ve noticed that Messi can be a bit greedy when he gets past the first defender, which is fine if you’re only value is as a scorer (like Eto’o) but that kid’s value lies as much in what he does to make his teammates better, as the goals he scores. I’ve never seen a guy get a standing ovation from his supporters without even scoring, as he has on several occassions this season, and that’s because everyone can recognize his value even if he’s not tallying goals. The same cannot be said for Henry – I would venture to guess that if you took him off the field, Eto’o and Messi would suffer from more defensive attention, and probably the team's performance wouldn't be so good. Well, look how they did without a fully performing Ronadinho last year.

At the end of the day, perhaps Henry and his Gillette commercial contemporaries (Roger Federer and Tiger Woods) suffer from the same weight of expectations that makes perfectly good results for the average player look like a bad year for them. After all, 226 goals in 369 games is enough to make anyone look like he just came down from Mount Olympus, but does anyone expect Gudjohnsen to score 29 goals in 66 appearances? I doubt it, and if he did, he’d be hailed as a Barca’s unsung hero. But this is Henry’s tally in the blaugrana, and you’d never know that he was performing so much better than his (most of his) teammates by the comments of idiots like Shoen.

Ask yourself this – would you rather have Henry at 70% or Gudjohnsen at 100%? If you’d take the latter, you should probably take up bird-watching, rather than football.

2008-02-20T08:58:00.017-05:00

THE SQUAD ROTATION MYTH

Football today is played faster and harder than in the old days, and there are too many games. To ensure the best results in all competitions, players must be fresh and hungry, and as such, rotated in and out of the starting 11. This, in a nutshell, is the theory of squad rotation.

And it's complete bull$#!^.

Nowhere has it come under more scrutiny than at Liverpool. But if the theory is correct, then it should bear out that players in the pre-rotation era should have either: (1) played less often due to injury and/or (2) been less fresh and (3) gotten worse results.

Take a look at the two tables below on Wikipedia about the Liverpool appearances of Steven Gerrard and Kenny Dalglish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_gerrard#Club_statistics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Dalglish#Club) whose career spans are roughly 20 years apart. If you pull it into a spreadsheet and sort descending by appearances, you'll note the following interesting facts:

In Dalglish’s 7 heaviest years, he averaged 57.4 appearances and a total of 401, whereas Gerrard averaged 48.7 appearances and a total of 341.
In those same 7 years Dalglish had 3 years of 60+ appearances. Gerrard has never had more than 55.
In those same 7 years Dalglish's teams reached 4 European Cup finals and won 3 (Gerrard 2 and 1), reached 4 league cup finals and won 3 (Gerrard 2 and 2) and here's the kicker: Dalglish won the league 4 times, whereas Gerrard's team have finished 2nd once.

Hmm...It seems the rotation theory doesn’t bear out with the two most influential Liverpool players of their respective eras. This doesn't take into account the pitch conditions (have you ever gone 90 minutes in the mud?) the ball technology, or the general improvements in physical fitness. Fair enough, one player does not account for the results of an entire team, but you can continue the comparison to Alan Hansen vs. Jamie Carragher, or Phil Neal to John Arne Riise, and you'll see that it never bears out. Old school players played more and got better results - period.

So what is it about the myth of squad rotation? Why has it been propagated on us when it doesn't bear out in superior results? As with all things that make no sense, do like Woodward and Bernstein and follow the money.

Exactly Why Are There So Many “Cups”?

You guessed it - money. Until 1961, there was only one “major” cup competition in England, the FA Cup, and even then it was 98 years old. The English FA, primarily in existence to manage the England team, are and have been the primary financial beneficiaries of FA Cup revenues, whereas the League Cup has financed the various football leagues.

Tired of being chicks on the end of the FA’s regurgitated seconds, they started their own cup competition – the League Cup. Fixture congestion was initially addressed by following the lead of the European Cup and playing night matches under floodlights mid-week. (FA Cup fixtures are almost exclusively on weekends).

Up until the advent of satellite television, football revenue came primarily from ticket sales to matches, and as such, clubs looked for any excuse they could find to play matches on their empty grounds. FA Cup matches that end in ties are replayed, not because it makes any sense from a sporting perspective, but to double the revenue from the fixture. In the end, it's all a big money grab.

Today, the money in English football comes from television rights to 2 competitions: the Champions League, and the EPL. Ticket sales are a proportionally significant source of income to only those clubs with the biggest stadiums, and even they continue to build more and more capacity, but mostly that's with the hope of hosting a European final or an international match, which can be a big payday.

There is a risk of injury in any football match, but the risk of having a Gerrard-less Liverpool UCL fixture at any given moment far outweighs the value of playing him, and all 10 of the other best players in the team, in a meaningless cup tie, even if they're better served in sporting terms by creating continuity and keeping changes to the squad to a minimum.

Squad Rotation? What Squad Rotation?

The first team in the EPL to espouse the squad rotation system was Manchester United, whose incorporation in the early 90's meant they had the cash to go after many quality players without prostituting themselves in meaningless cup competitions.

The 1998-1999 season is considered the squad rotation gold standard, when they won the league, the European Cup and the FA Cup. Ignominiously absent from the trophy cabinet that season was the League Cup. On their payroll that year Man U(seless) had Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Any one of those strikers would have been considered a first team automatic in 9 out of 10 EPL teams. Playing all 4 at the same time was out of the question, so they had to be rotated to keep them all pleased, right?

Wrong.

Solskjaer and Sheringham didn't start any important games together, and Ole was an ever present that year only in…(drum roll)…the League Cup, which the club clearly bottled. With games in all 4 competitions early on in the season, it is only THEN that we saw the so-called squad rotation. For the most part, in matches that mattered (i.e. EPL and UCL), they paired Yorke and Cole and never looked back, with notable exceptions when the pairing wasn't producing goals. That didn't happen too often. Significantly both Sheringham and Solskjaer made more appearances that season as substitutes than as regulars.

The problem with squad rotation is two-fold: if you have an obvious best line-up, then it's difficult for the team as a whole to take games seriously when that best line-up is not in place. As a result you get wayward performances from everyone, even the substitutes – never mind the regulars. By creating a line-up based sense of priority, the players have the impression that some games are to be taken for granted, and can lose when they should definitely win.

Sound familiar to any Liverpool supporters out there?

Even in the FA Cup final that year, Sheringham only came on as a substitute for an injured Roy Keane, albeit to great effect. Suspended for the Champions League final, Keane and Scholes were replaced by Beckham and Butt in the middle (Jesper Blomqvist took Beckham's place on the right.) The Butt/Beckham pairing nearly cost United the Cup until they were saved by the super-subs Sheringham and Solskjaer. But it's important to remember that they came on as substitutes, and were not rotated into the starting line-up.

The Other Problem with Squad Rotation

The second problem with squad rotation is the simplest - the best team is not on the field. Even the best line-up will have collective fluctuations in form, and as such results may vary. The pressure is then greater on the best line-up when they are on the field because the expectation is that this result must be achieved now because it cannot be guaranteed later. Some players perform well under those circumstances, and some do not. But constantly leaving your best 11 off the field, reduces your chance of getting the best result on it.

If you're playing Liverpool, and two names are not in the line-up (say, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres) no matter who else is on the field, the opponent cannot help but get a sense of optimism that they might otherwise not have. One advantage of being one of the bigger teams in the country is that if the result is not in sight at a certain point, the energy and commitment of the opponents, while they start out ready to run through brick walls, quickly dissipates when it looks like order is restored. In other words, they bag it.

But if teams always feel they're in with a chance because the best line-up isn't on the field, it becomes a never-ending struggle to get results against even the worst teams in the league, and it is in this area that Liverpool have failed miserably since the end of the Boot Room dynasty.

Protecting the energy and fitness of players who stink does little to ensure results, unless by results, you mean bad ones. At its core it makes sense only if there is a best line-up to save. That’s not the case at Liverpool.

Squad rotation also implies that you have a squad to rotate. It doesn't apply if your reserves are terrible. The top 3 in England have reserves that would make most first teams green with envy, but Liverpool suffers from the same kind of delusion as the England team does – "we're right up there" with Arse-nal, Chelski and Man U(re), so we have to rotate our squads just like they do.

But they have the squads to do it, and we don't. For who among us would suffer the slings and arrows of Vronin and Crouch if you had Kallou and Shevchenko at your disposal? Why would you bother with Sissoko if you can have Hargreaves?

Newsflash

There are 3 great teams in England, and none of them are in Liverpool. That illusion went out the window the first time Everton won a Champions League berth. As a supporter of LFC, no matter how envious I am of the top 3, I hate the thought of playing second fiddle to Everton even more. This prospect, more than anything else, has snapped me out of a false sense of superiority.

Even a neutral must admit that Everton are a crap club, with crap players. It used to make me want to vomit every time I saw their name before ours on the table, even if it was just an alphabetical anomaly in the second week of the season. That I'm no longer dry heaving at the sight is my body's way of telling my mind that the party's over: we're no longer head and shoulders above all the “Toffee scum” – now maybe just half a head – and the sooner we play a line-up that reflects that, the better.

All told, Liverpool FC is a great club, with a great history, and frankly, a shitty team. Our Champions League performances have been anomalies, because results in the league, never better than second once in the last 10 years, show the true quality is 45 minutes up the road, and in London. As long as we perpetuate this illusion that we're "right up there" with the true behemoths of English football, we are subject to irrelevant and false assumptions that result in squad rotation, when in reality, they do not apply to us at all. If the best 11 players in the squad can't cut it for say, 2-3 games, nobody will question the decision to make changes. But when the best 11 never feature AND changes are made, the question of whether the club are really doing its best always lingers.

It’s time for Liverpool to admit, once and for all that, until results tell us that our players need a rest and are good enough to be rotated, they shouldn't be. It worked for Kenny Dalglish and the last great Liverpool sides, so why can't it work for this one?

2007-12-14T10:41:00.001-05:00

HAVE THEIR CAKE? MAY HAVE TO EAT IT TOO

The thing about Don Fabio Capello is that he doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t care if your name is Brooking, Barwick, Beckham, Terry, Ronaldo or Totti – he knows he’s forgotten more about football management than the lot of these combined idiots will ever know, and he has no reason to think otherwise. With an unparalleled record of 9 league titles with four different teams in 16 years of management, why should he doubt himself? That’s the thing – he doesn’t.

Unfortunately the ink from the contract isn't even dry yet, and already the problems with managing the English, have arisen. There were rumours recently about the FA holding up negotiations to insist that he put an English coach or assistant on his staff. The reasons for this may be obvious – the FA want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to hire the perceived best candidate available, and to have an English presence on the staff, so the public don’t feel so bad about having to admit that they lack the management acumen in England.

But the English FA could be in for a surprise - because in having their cake, they may discover they'll have to eat it too. If you want someone strong enough to stand up to public pressure and star power, you'll also have someone strong enough to stand up to the FA. And that's exactly what they'll get with Capello.

The best thing about Capello is that he does it his way, and nobody will tell him differently.
The worst thing about Capello is that he does it his way and nobody will tell him differently.

I'm not sure that, based on the evidence so far, the English FA know what they're getting into. Why in the world would the FA insist on disrupting his method – why would they insist on forcing an Englishman on him when his own formula has proved so successful? Maybe because the English FA care more about looking like they're "in control of the situation" than it does about winning – if they didn’t, they would have hired Capello with no strings attached, and told him to run the team as he wishes.

You see, when you care more about looking good than winning, you get Sven Goran Ericksson. And when it turns out that he's not the man, rather than starting from scratch, and admitting you've gotten it all wrong, you hire his lieutenant after the next best candidate (Luis "Felipao" Scolari) turns you down. That way, you can say, "We were just a little bit wrong with Ericksson - the only problem with him was that he wasn't English!"

Capello could never be accused of caring more about looking good than winning. His teams are characterized by defensive discipline, accurate and controlled passing with a majority of possession and few easy chances donated to the opponent. At the other end of the pitch, he typically goes for strikers who are capable of slotting into his system, doing all the other work required of a striker aside from scoring goals, and finishing the chances that come their way. It is in this area that I would be most interested to see what is his solution, because there aren’t too many strikers in England that can do this, and fewer still with the ability to possess sufficiently to score in this setup.

At Madrid he had van Nistelrooy, at Roma Totti, at Juventus Ibrahimovic. There is some confusion surrounding his first stint at Milan – although Papin, van Basten and Gullit were on the books at the time, these were not the strikers that were in his line-up – this was left to the likes of Daniele Massaro and Dejan Savićević. Not big names, but players who knew the strategy, and had the skills to execute the tactics necessary to bring that strategy to fruition. Frankly, I don’t see those kinds of attacking players in England (remember when Rooney got sent-off against Portugal in the World Cup, how they blamed it on Cristiano Ronaldo and the frustration of having to play alone up front).

Despite Capello’s record, I think it is a mistake for the FA to take him on as a manager, not because he isn’t good, but because what he’s good at is senior team management, and not player development. In my opinion, this is the biggest problem they have in England. In France, all the good French players know each other from a very young age, because they’ve all trained together for years at the national training center at Clairefontaine. By the time they become full professionals, they’re so in synch with one another about how to play the game, and how to combine, their value is multiplied by each French player they encounter.

There’s a camaraderie amongst the French players that doesn’t exist in England, and it comes from the fact that they’ve mostly come through the same development system, been through the selection wars, and come out the other end with the same competitiveness and sense of allegiance to the team. The English are a band of mercenaries, who rarely play with one another unless they’re in the same club growing up – outside of that, there is no commonality, and little understanding of how to play together. Young English players are brought up in the club youth system, and not in a national youth system like what they have in France. The English have good players, and as a national team if they’re playing Moldova or Lichtenstein they can manage, but let pressure come through and that same group of players is just a band of step-brothers.

The key to the French success is that there is a club mentality in the national team, and as such a synergy that has made them successful in the last few years. In my view Mourinho would have been a better choice, because he understands how to create an effective club atmosphere that he could have translated to the international level. But we’ll never know why it is he took his hat out of the ring AFTER being interviewed. That’s extraordinary. The idea that he was just using the England job as a ploy to get a deal from Real or Bayern is, in my opinion, silly. In management, you never know what the next opportunity is going to be, and even for "the special one" to assume that he’ll get an offer from one of the other G14 clubs in the next year or so, would be extremely presumptuous. We've all had interviews where it seemed like the people across the table were interested in something (or someone else). If Mourinho he had gotten a positive response from Barwick and Brooking, I'm sure he would have taken the job, because given his record, he would have walked on water in England as long as he got results. Unfortunately for him, the FA had other ideas – namely Capello.

Now they find themselves in the unenviable position of having to concede in their first public spat over something that really ought to be left up to the manager they wanted to hire in the first place - or maybe that's just what they wanted?

In politics, when a story like this leaks to the press, you assume it's a plant, and I wouldn't put it past the FA to do the same here. What better way to show the public that you did your best to bring in English coaches (assuaging an idiotic groupthink mentality that has no merit on its own, but has resonance if enough people echo the same thoughts), while at the same time, being able to blame it on someone else (namely Capello) if the England staff isn't the least bit English. And what about this idiotic "search" for the best candidate? All the people they (told us they) consulted along the way, including Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, and whoever else. Are we really to believe that if any one of them had said, "Hire Mourinho", they would have offered him a contract?

This is another shameless publicity stunt aimed at looking like they've taken all the right steps and righted the ship as best they can. So that they can't be accused of "rushing into" the decision, like they did when they hired McLaren. The truth is, they've had their eye on Capello for months, and nothing in the world would have stopped them hiring him. All this intentional voyeurism into the process of hiring a manager is just another way these jerks are trying to indemnify themselves if they turn out to have made a mistake - again. They can always say, "Hey we consulted all the greatest minds in English football and they recommended Capello!" As if he needed their endorsement.

My guess is that all of this is sowing the seeds of a terrible relationship, because Capello will have noted all of this hemming and hawing, and is definitely the type to hold a grudge. He’s moody and dictatorial, even to those who pay his wage – and at $12M a year for 4 years, what a wage it is.

If they hoped to get someone they could manage a little better than Mourinho, I think they’re sorely mistaken. And if they think he’s going to waste his time looking around the country for the next great English player, they’re barking up the wrong tree. To me, Capello smells of the old English ideas that have proven so wrong in the past. Building a team from scratch, and finding the manager to do that, means a admitting that you're not "right up there with the best". Capello's reputation is for taking a team that's underperforming and turning them into winners

Let’s just see if that remains the case when he's through with England.

2007-12-09T22:29:00.003-05:00

THE HIDDEN TAX ON DOMESTIC TALENT

If you had your choice between paying £20 million for Ashley "Cashley" Cole, or one-tenth as much for Gael Clichy, which would you choose? Cashley may be English, but he's definitely not ten times better than his french counterpart at Arsenal. He's definitely ten times a better marketing tool. If you saw Clichy on the street, you probably wouldn't recognize him, but somehow, through some slick marketing and the irresistible force that is the English FA PR machine, we've been fooled into thinking that Cashley Cole is the best left back in the world.

Please.

Recently, FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his counterpart Michel Platini of UEFA, have publicly expressed a desire to limit the number of foreign players at club level.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/7080436.stm

Ostensibly the reason is to protect the quality of available players for the various national teams and at face value seems like a good idea. But let's just examine this proposition, and see if can't determine if this is the true motivation.

Since the advent of the Bosman rule ("HOW THE BOSMAN STOLE EUROPEAN FOOTBALL", September 7th, 2006 entry on this blog), the movement of European players across borders has been unabated and the face of European football has been altered considerably. You could scarcely identify a club's nationality today by the nationalities of its players. Recently, in a match between Juventus and Inter Milan in Italy, Roberto Mancini saw fit to field not a single Italian player in his line-up, whereas his counterpart from Turin fielded seven. Guess who's 8 points further ahead in the Serie A table?

Yet somehow Italy found a way to win the World Cup in 2006, thus calling into question the assumption that a country where the best teams have little domestic talent, cannot compete internationally. Blatter's argument is even more absurd when you consider that the national team of France in 2000, fielded scarcely any players from their domestic league, and had no problem winning the European Championships.

So is it really a question of protecting the quality of the national teams, or is it something else? To answer this, you have to do like Woodward and Bernstein and follow the money.

It's an open secret in the business of football that there's a hidden tax on domestic talent. A few years ago, in the throws of their era of galacticos, now disgraced Real Madrid President, Florentino Perez, put a $100M price tag on Raul.

Why?

Not because he was $30M better than Zidane, or $45M better than Figo, but because he's a good domestic player in Spain. Nobody in their right mind would pay $100M for Raul, and as such, you never saw anyone - not even Chelski - shell out that kind of money for him. The price tag reflects an important maxim in professional football - Raul's value to his own team is far greater than it would be on the European market, because in most of the market he wouldn't be a "domestic" star.

Domestic talent can create loyalty to a club. Chivas Guadalajara and Atletic Bilbao have shown that it is possible to compete, strictly with domestic players. It's always been an issue in Spain. Espaynol - that other team in Barcelona - was created as a club restricted to Spanish players (hence the name and Catalan spelling thereof), unlike their Catalan neighbors who were actually founded by a Swiss man. In theory, a team that restricts itself to domestic players could engender the loyalty of the players themseleves, something that is an all but a forgotten concept in the more cosmopolitan big clubs of modern football. But they would pay heavy price for it today. Because in the world of modern football there's a hidden tax on domestic players, and is one of the reasons why some teams have decided to bypass domestic talent altogether.

So who stands to benefit from this hidden tax on domestic talent? Who benefits from restricting the flow of internationals across European and now continental borders? For starters, domestic talent.

The player union in England, overwhelmingly English, is notoriously stingy about allowing internatioal talent to play in England (a player is supposed to have played in 75% of their country's internationals in the last year, and that national team has to have averaged a FIFA ranking of at least 70). They can't do anything about European players - they are free to come and go without incumberance - that's down to the European Union. But non-European internationals are another story.

The players union in the UK seek to keep their opportunities to break into domestic clubs plentiful, so the obvious solution is to restrict the flow of internationals. (http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/news/article3233386.ece) Domestic players won't have to worry as much about competing with better players from countries with worse economies, for whom a significant pay cut against inflated English transfer fees and salaries, is a signficant pay raise as compared to what they get at home. Furthermore, the harder it becomes to get foreign talent, the more expensive it becomes to get and retain domestic talent, and thus their pockets are lined again.

How about FIFA and UEFA? What's in it for them? Well, as we all know, there are two competitions in the World that are considered the most important - the World Cup and the European Championships. Why? Because we still believe that a team full of the best, say French players, is better than the best domestic french team. Nevermind that best players in French clubs are not French. But what about when there are no domestic players in the best club teams? Could the Italian national team beat Inter of Milan? Could the England team beat Arsenal?

You see where I'm going with this?

If the trend continues, very soon the perceived best teams in the world will not be the national teams - they will be the club teams that can claim this distinction. And then, why would anyone bother about the World Cup or the European Championships if the best soccer in the world is played in the Champions League? Very soon the luster comes off the international competitions, and with it the interest. And when the interest goes, so too does the money.

Argentine and Brazilian players are the most common export, with Brazilians in teams as far away as the Ukraine and the Far East. But other nationalities, such as those from the African continent, and eastern european countries, are fast filling the rosters of European teams, across the continent, not only because their players are cheaper, but because they are better. Where else in the world would someone like Michael Essien make less than Joe Cole? It's strange, because in most European countries, as in the US, entire industries absolutely depend on immigration, so why not European football as well?

So what's the solution?

Open up everything to anyone. The solution to not having enough home-grown players is not to reduce the overall quality of the league, but to improve the quality of the players. If Argentina, Brazil, Holland and France produce the best players in the world on a regular basis, then why not study their recruitment and training techniques to determine if there is a flaw in the way your country produces players?

There is a myth that these kids spontaneously generate on the streets and walk into the biggest clubs in the country. It doesn't work that way. The art of finding talent in South America, particularly in Brazil and Argentina, is a pain-staking process of attrition that looks at all the qualities of a player, and ensures that any one who makes it to the top level has all the required skills and characterisitics to add value, and not detract it.

Can the same be said, for example, for England? How many Francis Jeffers have we had to suffer through before we get to a Wayne Rooney? How many Kieron Dyers before we get to a Steven Gerrard. And would any other country in the world go ga-ga over the likes of Joey Barton, Alan Smith and Lee Bowyer? Only in England, my friends, only in England.

Take Alan Smith - I heard an Englishman (of course) the other day on a podcast claim that Smith's versatility has worked against him as striker. In other words, if he weren't such a good winger or midfielder, he'd be used more as a striker. As if Smith is as good as, say, Louis Saha, but he's just too valuable as a midfielder to waste as a striker. As the English like to say, that's bollocks.

Smith's versatility is THE ONLY reason he still has a career. In most countries, a striker with his scoring rate would be in the 3rd division. In his career Smith has made 248 club appearances and scored 45 goals, earned 20 caps and scored once. Steven Gerrard - strictly a midfielder - has scored 50 goals in 281 appearances at club level and 12 goals in 62 caps - you do the math. But because Smith is an Englishman playing in England, he's gone from Leeds, to Man U, to Newcastle without earning his keep as a striker or midfielder - and has changed positions regularly with each team he plays for.

In Brazil, you're a flavor of the month (if you're lucky) before the next phenom is waiting in the tunnel to take your place. It's one reason why their players are so determined to succeed. They will play almost anywhere in the world to make a good living, even in the Ukraine. They know what they've been through to make it, and it would take a lot more than some crap weather, crap food, hard fouls and the Cyrillic alphabet to keep them down.

Not so for English players. All they have to do is be English, and a marginally good player, and they can make a great living raising and then dashing the hopes of English supporters across the country. At the end of the day, English players can't cut it in England because they're not good enough, but as I've said many times, that they're not playing for the big clubs is not what makes the English players so bad.

Anyway, all the foreign talent they've had in Italy didn't seem to hurt their World Cup campaign in 2006, so why do the English need this special consideration? It isn't the case yet in Italy or Spain that there are so few good domestic players available to play for the national team, but if they don't qualify for a major competition, you'll hear the exact same rubbish from them. Because they, like the English, don't produce as many good players as the French, Brazilians and Argentines.

If UEFA and FIFA are honest about it, the real problem they have with the movement of foreign players is the big advantage the club competitions will eventually have over national team competitions, in claiming which produces the highest levels of play, and thus garnering the most interest.

That, and the money that goes with the biggest stars, is the reason they want the clubs to restrict the quality of their players by making quotas. They don't want the clubs to get too good by not limiting foreign players, because pretty soon people will care more about club competitions than international ones, and when that happens, the balance of power (and money) in world football tips in favor of the clubs.

At the end of the day, follow the money, and you'll see why so much nonsense seems to be coming from such high places as Zurich and Nyon.

2007-12-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

THE US WNT: ENGLANDITIS?

Once again, Hope Solo is apologizing to her teammates, and anyone else who will listen, for her very personal diatribe against Greg Ryan and Briana Scurry, following the US WNT’s disappointing semi-final loss to Brazil in the 2007 World Cup.

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=ap-solospeaks&prov=ap&type=lgns

But if you ask me, every single one of them ought to be sending her a gift-basket this Christmas with a microphone and tape recorder. Despite her teammates castigation' of her for her tirade, and grotesque display of selfishness and self-aggrandizement, the truth is she did them an enormous favor by focusing all the attention paid to their failure on the issue of goal-keeping…as if that alone was the problem.

Each time I watch the US Women’s national team I am more and more disappointed in their performances. From a technical standpoint, there has never been a more clear indication that this team, like the men’s national team of England, is suffering from a false sense of entitlement and superiority (what I call "Englanditis"), and although qualification for the Beijing Olympics is probably on the cards, medals will, in my opinion be much harder to come by.

The improvement in the technical level of the women teams in the World Cup from many countries, particularly the Brazilians, Germans and North Koreans, was phenomenal. It pains me, however, to have to exclude from that list, the Americans – but if I’m honest, I must.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the simple test of how many passes a team can string together as a good indication of their technical level – that is not the only indicator of a team’s quality, but it’s a good start. Because at it’s core, soccer is a very simple game, and all tactical and strategic approaches stem from a simple maxim with two sides to it:

(1) If you have the ball you can score, and if you can score, you can win. (2) If you have the ball, your opponent can’t score, and if they can’t score, they can’t win.

In other words, it’s the possession, stupid.

Much has been made of Ryan’s decision to bench Solo in favor of Scurry, and the hullabaloo surrounding Solo’s personal criticisms of both thereafter. No matter how many press conferences she does, now matter how hard she tries to qualify her statements, it’s clear she meant two things on that day:

1. I’m better than Briana Scurry
2. Ryan doesn’t know what he doing

What she didn’t say, but ironically and unwittingly implied that day, was that the full responsibility for their loss was on weak goal-keeping.

Excuse me? The last time I checked, soccer is not a shooting contest, except for the rare case of a penalty shoot-out – but that didn’t happen on that terrible night in September. Highlights of a match can often be manufactured to leave you with the impression that the balance of the match was not as lopsided as the score would have you believe.

This was not one of those matches. You can probably count on one hand the number of times the Americans were able to string together more than ten passes in a row. In fact, you don't need the help of your hand, because how hard is it to count to zero? Ten passes may seem like a tall order, but it didn’t seem to be a problem for the Brazilians.

Technically, the Brazilian women were head and shoulders above the Americans. They kept better possession, particularly in attacking positions. They created more 1 v 1 opportunities and finished the chances they created. That, my friends, is just a better team, putting a beat down on a (much) worse team. If you had replaced the American flag with a Canadian one, and watched the same game, the result would have come as no surprise. But somehow, the US team was supposed to be more competitive, and even win?

Take a look at anyone of these clips of Marta and the Brazilian women:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kPjIBL4C8Zo&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OXKKxdsTZ-w&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZFIUJafchK8&feature=related

There isn’t a single woman in America with half her technique, pace and least importantly, will and determination. Please note the ass-whipping she handed the American U-20’s at the Pan American games this year – in retrospect, should the World Cup semi-final result have come as any surprise?

I know that Solo was castigated by her own teammates for making her self to be more important than the team, and nowhere is the concept of team unity more important than in the WNT – but to be honest, her mouth has allowed each of them to duck responsibility for their inadequacy.

Nobody said a word about the atrocious own goal by Leslie Osborne – a defensive diving header in her own box somehow redirected into her own net – why on earth didn’t she just kick it back the way it came?

Nothing about the dearth of possession or combinations from the Americans, nor the route 1 tactics of booting the ball up to Wambach and hoping for collateral damage...and goals.

Not a peep about Shannon Boxx, probably suffering from quadruple vision chasing all the Brazlians dribbling and passing around her, committing two very stupid fouls inside 45 minutes and getting sent off.

A player getting sent off for that kind of foul, is almost always a symptom of having little to no possession of the ball. Because a player's energy and focus is limited, and if she spends it all chasing her opponents around the field because she and her teammates can’t keep the ball, eventually she'll to crack. And boy, did she ever crack.

The game against North Korea should have been a wake-up call. There’s no way you can tell me that the Americans were physically inferior to the North Koreans – they were not. They were technically inferior. Running circles around us, showing tactical acumen with possession and combinations in attacking postions, the North Korean women gave us a lesson, and we were fortunate to come away from that game with a point.

At the end of the day, you can’t fake what you don’t have and something has quietly happened to the WNT that nobody is talking about.

For years, the WNT was superior to the world in every facet of the game – technique, athletic ability and competitiveness. Later, as the world began to develop equal or in some cases superior technique, the sheer athleticism and competitiveness of our women was often (but not always) the deciding factor. Our women are well accustomed to developing all kinds of physical skills and competitiveness through many sports growing up (Boxx herself was a 4-letter athlete in high school), and in the past, it showed.

But today we are no longer more skillful than many of these countries, and we’re not even more athletic – some of these Brazilian women charging up and down the field were supremely athletic, and much more so than the Americans. They showed a balance and an ease on the ball far superior to the Americans who, by comparison, appeared to struggle with the most basic of skills both on the ball and otherwise.

It may be time to start considering that girl’s soccer in the US needs a redesign, just as boy's football in the UK does, because the technique is just not there. We can no longer rely on those faithful mirages of grit, determination and competitiveness as the key to victory on the big stage. We can no longer pretend that we're the best in the world, because we're not. Those days are long gone, and I, for one, am not expecting much from them in Beijing. This is a project that could take years.

Maybe, they’ll have Solo and Scurry around to distract us while they figure that out.

2007-12-05T17:15:00.000-05:00

DORRANCE – TOO GOOD FOR HIS OWN GOOD?

Sexual harassment may seem like a strange topic on The Soccer Column, but the Anson Dorrance sexual harassment trial, scheduled to take place April 7th of 2008, is a strange case indeed. I provide a link to the details of the case and an old summary judgment in favor of Dorrance, which has since been rejected on appeal, thus the trial date.

http://www.sog.unc.edu/pubs/electronicversions/slb/slbfal04/article3.pdf

The case reveals that not only did the coaching staff appear to condone under-aged drinking, flippant sexual behavior and banter by their players, but that they also responded to or participated in the banter from time to time. Perhaps more damning is that they appear to have inquired, both informally and formally, about the sexual activity of their players on a regular basis, in a context from which a player could interpret that a refusal to respond/participate would put her at a competitive disadvantage to those teammates who did.

How Much Should You Get to Know Your Players?

Looking back on my personal experience in male team sports, my coaches did not engage in these kinds of personal discussions with players. I don’t recall a coach ever asking me about my sexual exploits in college – not that I would have had much to tell him. I doubt that I would have been offended if my coach had asked generally how things were going with me personally (they did not). I wouldn’t have told him anything – I was never one to feel that a coach was supposed to be my friend – but I don’t believe I would have taken offense to the question.

I also don't think that, if I had been asked about my sex life, I would have extrapolated that, if I reveal myself more to this guy, maybe I’ll gain an advantage over the other midfielders in the team…maybe he’ll cut me some slack in practice, if he knows I’ve been wandering the Sahara Desert, so to speak. More likely, I would have been more offended that my coach thinks I’m on the verge of becoming a eunuch, or that he thinks such inquiries pass for coaching.

I’ll let the court decide if Jennings has to demonstrate that similarly prudent team members, who performed as poorly as she did both athletically and academically, received similar treatment – or if the mere actions of the coaches constitute a hostile environment for which she should be compensated, but it is the coaching question that applies to this column.

The Case for Dorrance as a Coach

I once suggested, in a team website editorial years ago, that Anson Dorrance would be a good candidate for the US Men’s national team, because of his record of success, and his psychological acumen. He consistently extracted superior performance from his players. (Originally, he was the men's coach at UNC, then doubled up as the women's coach as well, before dropping the men's program to focus on the Lady Heels.) In particular, I was fascinated with Dorrance’s ability to both keep women extremely competitive in training, and still foster an atmosphere of camaraderie and team spirit.

In an ESPN SportsCentury program, Mia Hamm described the liberating effect the atmosphere in the women’s soccer program at UNC had on her athletic performance and her personal growth. In particular she talked about how in her childhood she often felt apologetic about her competitiveness, whereas at UNC it was encouraged – even required. Dorrance used an explicit point system where players’ micro-competitive results in training were scored, and at the end of the week the players with the highest points for their positions were in the starting eleven.

It comes as no surprise that coaches evaluate a player's performance throughout the week, and come to a general conclusion about their place in the starting 11. But the knowledge that every single competitive encounter in training is recorded and used to evaluate who plays and who doesn’t, would likely create a steel-caged death match atmosphere in a men’s team. You might not have anyone survive long enough to reach the matches. However, on the evidence of UNC’s success, perhaps it merely created optimal competitive aggression in training with women.

Some would suggest that in women you generally have to raise the level of competitive aggression to get better performance, whereas in men it’s already there, and needs only to be channeled. Other men’s sports don’t support this theory – American football teams regularly beat the hell out of each other 5-6 days a week, only to unleash their fury on their opponents at the week-end. Infighting is often encouraged by coaches – a bit like fight dogs so keyed up by the time they’re unleashed for an actual fight, they’re likely to kill anything in their path, much less another dog.

I think the key to training women is to have the same end-game as you would with men, but perhaps you arrive at it by a different path.

Separately Hamm also painted a picture of a heightened sense of camaraderie at UNC and in the national team, and how she felt comfortable excelling individually because it was encouraged by the coaches. Her teammates reacted positively to her success, rather than resenting it. Her success was in the context of team success, which the coaches made sure they all sought. Perhaps this was the result of just recruiting like-minded competitive women, bringing them together and being evaluating them objectively from week to week, rather than subjectively choosing when to cajole one player, while hammering another. But even in Hamm’s case that doesn’t tell the whole story.

In the national team Hamm often went to her coaches crestfallen that she hadn’t scored in a few games, buckling under the weight of expectation for her to excel. Dorrance, DiCicco, Foudy and Akers all had to constantly reassure her that she was allowed to have an occasional dip in form from time to time – in other words her competitive instincts had to be controlled. I doubt many male athletes would go to their coaches asking to be benched because they weren’t performing – most would probably hope the coach hadn’t noticed. Most would resent being benched even if they knew they were under-performing, such is the so-called male ego.

Sports Psychology by Gender

Sports psychology is a funny thing – stranger still when comparing men to women. On the face of it, there would seem to be a double standard: if Roy Williams takes a interest knowing the personal lives of his basketball players at UNC, he is lauded. But when Anson Dorrance does it to the girls at UNC, some how he’s a disgusting letch, damn-near a pedophile, and is violating their civil rights. However, there’s a big difference here.

While I’m sure Williams knows who his players are dating and what they do in their spare time, I doubt he’d be dumb enough to openly discuss a player’s proclivities in a shoot around, or bring it up in an official player evaluation. Certainly he’d have the good sense to do it privately, just in case the player doesn’t want to discuss it in front of his teammates. And it's one thing to know who your players are dating, and another to keep tabs on who they're having sex with!Furthermore, alluding to the “my coach is my best friend” phenomenon – very few successful coaches of men are of this philosophy. They may show they care in the way a father will, from time to time, but they rarely cross the line into intimate details of the personal life unless it manifestly affects performance (e.g. Billy Ray hasn’t hit any 3-pointers since he found out his girlfriend is pregnant).

For the most part, while coaches of men want their players to feel comfortable coming to them with problems/issues, they will rarely directly ask about the who’s, what’s and where’s of their personal life. They'd much rather spy on their players from afar. First of all, if they don’t hear what they don’t want to hear, directly from the player, there’s plausible deniability for any wrongdoing. Furthermore, most men respond positively to some measure of fear of their leaders, and too much intimacy might sacrifice a coach’s ability to scare the piss out of his boys from time to time.

But does this same psychology work for women? Is there a mutual lowering of the walls between the coach/player relationship required to bring the best out of women to an extent, or in a way that would either backfire with a male athlete. With men, would it make them feel like the equal of their coach, and thus less likely to do as he’s told? Do men respond better to the father figure than women, and as such, is Dorrance’s friend/mentor approach more palatable to his female athletes? Is it a competitive advantage? Is the sexual harassment case against him an incidental result of an overall winning formula for women, or an unacceptable breach of the “in loco parentis” covenant between parents and universities?

Am I a sexist just for asking the question?

Coaching Girls vs Boys

Before you say yes to the previous question, I should mention that I know a (very) little bit about coaching women. Now, full disclosure - yesterday, Anson Dorrance forgot more than I'll ever know about coaching women - there's absolutely nothing I know that he doesn't. I first became interested in Dorrance during the summer of my sophomore year in college when I coached both teams and individual training sessions, mostly in technique, but plenty of fitness as well.

I found that the overwhelming majority of my clients were the parents of girls dissatisfied with the coaching they were getting. While the parents of boys were equally loyal customers, I got much more unsolicited positive feedback from the parents of girls. It seemed to me that parents of boys simply took my training methods, and the level of expectation I had for the trainee, to be normal. There were some exceptions.

A few rich parents with ill-tempered boys, loved to watch me drop the hammer them. (Frankly I always found that to be a bit pathetic – I mean, no coach could drop the hammer on me as hard as my own father, and if any of them ever wanted to scare me straight all they’d have to do was tell my father I was messing about at training.)

But the parents of girls seemed to go buck wild over my sessions – not because I treated girls appreciably differently, but because I treated them appreciably the same as boys. I never allowed any non-soccer related banter of any kind during training. I treated side-conversations as a sign personal disrespect to me, and kicked more than one player out of a session that wouldn’t concentrate – it didn’t take long before everyone (including the offender) fell in line. I also never backed down from telling a girl that she was lollygagging, and I didn’t ask her to pick it up either – she either did or she’d go do the Cooper test, or got the hell out of the session.

I had one parent, before I trained her team, ask me not to get “cutesy” with her girls – I assumed she meant she wanted me to be tough on them. “No problem,” I said. 2 weeks later, she came back to me and asked me to let up a little – through gritted teeth I agreed. But soon enough, a couple of girls came to me and asked why I wasn’t pushing them any more, and it was back to business as usual.

I had read a few articles about Dorrance at the time, and recall his pontifications on the differences between the psychologies of male athletes and female athletes. I found his thoughts to be insightful, but I didn’t buy them entirely and made no genuine attempts to emulate him. If I had, maybe I'd have had a career in coaching!

I knew only one way, and whether coaching boys or girls, my sessions were efficiently executed (I started on-time, had few breaks and stayed on a schedule until the hour or two was up), and I didn’t change my exercises in any way whether I was coaching girls or boys. But maybe this wasn't what Dorrance was talking about.

I did, however notice a few glaring unintended differences in the way I both interacted with and coached boys and girls. My conclusions with both were always the same, but the way I reached them often differed significantly.

Coaching to the Same End, by a Different Path

For example, in shooting the fundamentals don’t change by gender. To hit a powerful and accurate shot, foot speed and an optimal point of contact on the surface of the ball (i.e. the sweet spot) are critical. Foot speed is usually sought by swinging harder at the ball, but this often sacrifices control, because at higher speeds, it’s more difficult to hit the sweet spot.

To combine these two concepts, you can achieve foot speed through continuous weight transfer through the point of contact (i.e. keep your body moving forward through the strike), while simultaneously not swinging your foot as hard, making it easier to hit the sweet spot.

Typically boys and girls differed in technical errors in their shot. Boys tended to do everything too hard and too fast – weight transfer was rarely a problem, but accuracy often was, so my instruction was to swing half as hard, find the sweet spot, then through muscle memory, keep hitting the sweet spot, but simply accelerate through the strike.

Girls tended to be timid on their shots – they didn’t seem to have much momentum at all at the point of contact. So I would encourage them to focus on landing on the shooting foot, after the shot, thereby transferring their weight forward through the strike, and generating more foot speed. Because they don’t swing as hard anyway, it’s easier to hit the sweet spot either way, but the added weight of their momentum makes the shot more powerful and accurate.

The point is this most girls I trained preferred to be treated strictly as an athlete and responded positively to being asked to train hard (very hard) or suffer the consequences. More than one parent came to me and commented on their girl's sudden manifestations of a new competitiveness. Psychologically, I could invent theories that shooting is an innately aggressive act, and if boys tend to be over aggressive in shooting, it is because boys are naturally more aggressive while girls are innately more timid, and their tendency is to under-hit their shots.

Frankly, none of this matters much to a good coach – a good coach evaluates each individual player, boy or girl, aggressive or timid, competitive or needing nurturing, perfectionist or sloppy, and appropriately deals with each side of each dichotomy. A mistake would be to assume that because you’re coaching a girl, she’s timid – let her show that she’s either timid or aggressive, and coach her accordingly.

The Hubris of Victory

Perhaps the biggest problem with the Dorrance sexual harassment case, from the coaching perspective, was that treating all his players through the prism of his own psychological acumen (and his success as a coach would certainly support this) may have cost him a chance to coach Jennings differently, and in a way that would have served them both a little better.

Dorrance has had, in 28 years in charge of UNC, a .930 winning percentage – an unbelievable success rate in any sport for either gender. Perhaps in getting it right 9 out of 10 times for 28 years, he developed a hubris that colored his perception of his own behavior, and that of his assistants. I’m sure if the parents of his girls’ players were video taping his training sessions, he wouldn’t have been asking who was Jenning’s shagging out loud. I don’t know whether this alone rises to the level of sexual harassment, but it’s pretty clear that Jennings was that 1 out of 10 that he got dead wrong.

It is more than mildly ironic that the man who may have done more to make use of Title IX than any coach in America, through his success as both a college and WNT coach, could very well have put his career in jeopardy by virtue of his own success. While his coaching method that may have worked 9 out of 10 times, that 10th time may cost him his career – and what a career it’s been.

2007-11-28T09:56:00.000-05:00

THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ENGLAND

Losing to Croatia, and failing to qualify for Euro2008 was the best thing that could have happened to the England team. Losing in such close matches so many times for so many years has given the country a false sense of belief in their place amongst the best teams in the world, and it has done nothing to change the direction of their football development which seems to produce players who, in the clutch, cannot perform.

Take a look at the end of the game between Brazil and France at the World Cup in 2006 – the Brazilians were on the verge of going out as defending champions with arguably a stronger team than four years earlier, but you did not see them resort to the kind of panicky, route 1 style that is the English hallmark any time they are under pressure? When the going gets tough, the Brazilians possess more, they combine more, and they basically try to work their way into a goal in the same way that they would in a normal situation only they do it with a little bit more energy.

Contrast that with what the English do when they get under pressure – Beckham and whoever else is on the field at the time deluge the opposite goal with a never ending stream of "dumb" bombs, hoping for some collateral damage that will result in a goal. Defenders madly charge the net, bulldozing their way into the penalty area, commit all kinds of atrocious fouls that under any other circumstance would probably see them cautioned or worse.

The situation is even more bleak when England are holding onto a lead – not because the play is any less sophisticated, they basically play it the same way, and as a result, they give away possession as often as the keep it, (if not more often) giving their opponents one too many looks at their net. You don’t see the calm and assertive passing that is the hallmark of the Brazilians, Argentines, French, Italians and Germans when they are in a similar situation, and as such you get pretty atrocious results. This is one reason why the players, perhaps subconsciously aware of their lack of technical and tactical acumen, are in full panic mode – charging their way through reckless challenges, and oh-so-useless clearances that do nothing but delay the inevitable next chance on their own net.

The English problem at its base is a technical problem, that manifests mainly when they are under pressure. The tendency of athletes is to do what is in their nature when the situation is most challenging, and so it's best to be sure that your nature is to play your game fundamentally correct. The nature of English players is to go route 1, run faster, tackle harder and scream louder. But this creates a perfect storm of panic that always sends them packing at the major tournaments. You run faster and just get out of position quicker. You tackle harder and you give away dead ball situations, get yourself sent off or injured. You scream louder and you just create more panic. Screaming is good if it has a purpose, but can it honestly be said that there is some purpose in the cacophony of red-faced shouting?

They have just as often failed at penalties, and this is merely a question of nerves. Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Jamie Carragher have all successfully taken penalties for their clubs, yet they all missed in the 2006 World Cup against Portugal. I think it’s fascinating that even though the generation has changed, the results seem to be the same – clearly there’s something in the English character that prevents them from doing the job when the pressure is really on, and I think it has something to do with a general absence of a sense of proportionality. Players from other countries are under just as much pressure to perform as the English, but they know the world won't come crashing down around them if they lose. More importantly they know that they're more likely to lose if they lose their head. Not so with the English.

Even when they do something right, they seem to celebrate as if they’ve won the entire tournament. These elaborate celebrations, and chest thumping histrionics are a tell-tale sign that you’re pumping yourself up to compensate for an underlying lack of belief. All their gesticulating and howling, whether positive or negative, belies a lack of belief that they can win when it counts, and the record supports this conviction.

So what’s the solution?

From the beginning English players need to develop the fundamental technique necessary to succeed under pressure. From an early age English players are still playing on full-sized pitches, emphasizing a win first strategy of kick and run. The basic technical level of an English player is not very good for working out of tight spaces and keeping posession. Finally, their method of selecting talent is not nearly as scientific as it is in South America, France or Holland. As a result, other characteristics like grit and determination are over-valued in a player from a young age. It's nice that a kid has heart, but heart doesn't get you anything if you can't kick straight, and heart is something that can be developed through cut-throat competition and a rigid selection processes. What the English need is more skill, so they can do the things that everyone else does when they are under pressure, the same way they do when they are not.

The English also get too excited about players like Joe Cole or Shaun Wright Phillips who show just a little bit of technique, when in other countries you’ll find a hundred players just like them who would never make it to the national team. That's because the English view technique as a bonus - the real values of heart, toughness, leadership (manifested as bellowing, teeth gritting and fist-pumping) supercede the value of being able to work their way out of tight spaces and keep posession, a key common characteristic among all quality international teams.

But under pressure, technique is not an added bonus – it is the bare minimum a player needs to function at the top level because there, pressure is a big factor in technique. English players look great when playing meaningless friendlies against minnows, but on the big stage, against the big teams, they revert to their basics, and if your basics are sorely lacking, you get the results the English have gotten for 50 years.

I sincerely hope that the FA will change everything – mostly themselves – and bring in a Technical Director for England that understands how to find and build quality players from the lowest level. Forget about the manager for now, because that's not the problem.

It's the players, stupid.

Gerard Houllier has been mentioned as a manager, but he ought to be considered for a Technical Director position, and given his history in English Football and facility with the language, he could probably do a good job. Just ask the French Football Federation, since he is currently in that post for the FFF.

More than anyone, Houllier is responsible for building the basis of French players who now dominate European football (along with Brazilians and Argentines) even more so than the Dutch, because they build and produce better players technically from an early age, and focus their efforts on making their fundamentals so solid that when the pressure is on they perform better instinctively. The French don't care if a player has heart if he can't kick straight and has no balance, unlike the English who seem to thnk of these handicaps as a virtue. If a kid lacks the technique in these other countries, he will never in his life progress to the national team. If he lacks the heart he will probably develop it through the ruthless selection process - remember that 20 year old Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet easily converted their penalties in France 98 against Italy.

Doing the same in England may put more English players in English clubs, but that has nothing to do with how well they do in internationals. Building a better player from the ground up is the key to turning around the fortunes of the national team. Building a team that can keep possession and control their own fate when times are tough is the only way the English will ever win anything. And failing to qualify for Europe is just the tonic they need to make such a radical change, because now that their failure is complete, there’s no false hope left to hold onto. You're no longer "right up their with the best". You suck, and you know you suck because you didn't qualify - deal with it.

As such, failing to qualify for Euro2008 could be the best thing that has happened to the English. I hope for their sake they figure that out in time for South Africa 2010.

2007-11-26T13:20:00.000-05:00

YANKS TO BENITEZ: SHUT UP AND COACH

An interesting thing has happened in Liverpool this week, and it looks like the marriage of Benitez, Parry and Gillette/Hicks is entering some tough times. The gauntlet has been thrown down by Benitez to his Yank owners that the time for signing players in the transfer market is now, and not a week before Christmas. Benitez seems to be callinng out his American employers, which is a stunning development, given they have spent already $100M on players this year alone.

While Torres seems to be a sure thing, the other major signings in Benayoun and Babel have been tame by comparison - even before his injury, Benayoun seemed more like a player adjusting to a league he has already played (his hat trick against Fenerbache notwithstanding). Babel for his part is still adjusting, and is probably at least a year away from being a real impact player.

The truth is that Liverpool have underachieved - there is no way that with the turmoil at Chelski, and the derth of quality players at Man City, they ought to be behind either of those teams. True, they have a game in hand on each of them, but so does Arsenal, and they're 4-5 points clear of that lot, so what's Liverpool's excuse? None that I can see. There's no excuse for the points they've dropped, both in the EPL and now this underachieving seems to have spilled over into the UCL losing at home to Marseille, and dropping points in Turkey to a team they would go on to drill for 8 two weeks later.

They simply can't get results when they need them, and it's costing them a chance at both titles months before the hard part of the season gets underway. Droppping points to Portsmouth, Blackburn, Birmingham and Tottenham (on their current form) is just unacceptable - I guarantee that no other team in the "big 4" would ever drop points to each of the same lot. And this is the difference between Liverpool and teams that have actually won the EPL in the last 10 years.

People keep pointing to big matches like Man U, Chelski and Arsenal, but the fact is that all 3 of those teams drop points against each other every year - the key is picking up what should be AUTOMATIC points. This is where the season is won or lost, and this has been Benitez's undoing this year, and in fact, every year he's been at Liverpool. When you have a crap team in front of you, the worst thing you can do is take your foot off the pedal - and this is precisely what Liverpool do every other time they play against a second-rate team. There's something about having quality men step up to the brutal responsibility of punishing the weak, but unfortuantely at Liverpool, it seems that responsibility is not a word in the vocabulary of most.

So why would Benitez go on a rampage about transfers and money when he seems to be sitting on a pile of talent? Maybe because he needs a ready-made excuse for when the wheels come off in the spring? Maybe not.

The bottom line is that money talks in soccer, and if you believe in your manager, you give him money to spend even when times are tough. So Benitez is clearly sensing a lack of confidence in that they have not given him an AMEX Platinum card to go and buy players. A vote of confidence, like the one Sam Allardyce just received from the board at Newcastle is the sporting equivalent of Michael's kiss on the mouth to Fredo. Thankfully, Benitez hasn't received that yet. But why would anyone expect the owners to open up their wallet to a man who has one of the most expensive team's in England, and only a solitary Champions League and FA Cup to show for it?

From the Yanks' perspective, why would they give him money to piss away another EPL season if they're already dumped out of the EPL and the UCL by December 16th? Why not keep the funds in abeyance until he can prove that it wouldn't be wasted, or even better for a new manager in the summer? What quality player worth buying is going to come to Liverpool if there are no Champion's League games to play anyway? There are some big name players who have already appeared for their teams in the UCL, but are they like targets at Liverpool? I doubt it.

So Benitez, seeing the writing on the wall, and probably feeling the pressure to get a result on Wednesday against Porto and on December 16th against Manchester United, has expertly deflected the attention back on the Americans by claiming they don't know the market, and need to start looking. But you don't become a billionaire by accident, and they're not dumb enough to waste their hard earned money on a guy who can't deliver - so they're waiting to see if he can.

At the end of the day, both have played this by the book but my objection is that neither should have made any public comments at all. If I'm the owner, I really don't care what anyone thinks of me - when the time comes to spend, I'll spend, and all the fans who question my committment as an owner will forget their issues when the next big name player comes to town. And if I'm Benitez, you're not doing yourself any favors with American owners who likely value loyalty and workmanship above all else - all else except the dollar, of course.

The bottom line is that it's in everyone's interest to shut up and do your job - Benitez needs to find a way to unleash his players who all appear tentative and afraid to make mistakes, with the exception of Gerrard and Carragher who seem to be untouchable. It's true that if he doesn't have the money ahead of time, no player will commit to come in January, but has he earned that money yet? Only Tottenham and Newcastle spend as much for so little as Liverpool, and look what that's gotten them. A nice hot cup of jack squat.

Parry and Gillette/Hicks should not be responding to petulant comments in the press - when the time comes to spend, they should spend, until then, the less heard from the owner the better. All this does is create an atmosphere of uncertainty that only adds to the players' angst, and will do nothing to help them through the UCL fixtures coming up and they EPL games through holiday season. If Liverpool drop any more points between now and February they can kiss the EPL goodbye.

The players need to get ready for the 2 biggest games of the season - Wednsday and Sunday. A loss in either, and the whole enterprise starts looking like a huge waste of time for everyone involved.

2007-10-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

REFEREES AND THE ILLUSION OF OMNISCIENCE

An addendum to the previous post, and a brief one.

Dateline: Saturday, October 27th, 2007. Juventus is playing at Napoli, and chasing league leaders, Inter Milan. A win would put them in sole posession of 2nd place in the league, and a mere 1 point deficit behind the defending champions in the chase for the 2008 Scudetto (which would be overturned by a victory in their first fixture). After trudging through a workman like goaless draw at the interval, Juve get the second period off to a dream start with a goal by Del Piero in the 46th minute. 3 minutes later, Napoli score a well deserved equalizer through Gargano, but the match is still in the balance with 40 minutes left on the clock.

So what happens? Mauro Bergonzi -that's what happens.

Rather than admitting to the masses that he may not be (god-forbid) all-seeing, he calls a spot kick on one of the cleanest penalty area tackles you'll ever see in soccer when Giorgio Chiellini clinically picks the pocket of Ezequiel Lavezzi. Unfortunately unbeknownst to Chiellini is that Lavezzi is also an acrobat, and managed to turn contact with the ball into a leap of 4 feet in the air and a somersault - making the challenge look like an infringement. It was nothing of the kind. And so, because we have a referee who cannot bear to appear to have "missed" a call, we have instead a penalty, and an unjust one-goal defict to the visitors.

And as though he sensed the opportunity to exploit the referee's insatiable appetite for these ridiculous illusions, Marcelo Zalayeta, the man who was unceremoniously dumped after 7 years of service to the Old Lady of Turin, got his revenge on his former club by performing a similar (albeit les acrobatic) somersault - this one resulting from no contact at all. And Bergonzi promptly obliged with yet another undeserved penalty.

This is the worst kind of injustice for two reasons. First, because these calls by implication are the worst kind of error a referee can make, because it injects him into the result in a way that a missed call does not. Errors of comission are always worse. But also, because Claudio Ranieri took this as an opportunity to create the appearance of bias against Juventus, following their fall from grace in the match-fixing scandal. That memory should remain for years to come, as Italian football must remain vigilante against the unsporting influence of managers and directors, and as such, his "woe are we" act is totally inappropriate.

But that doesn't erase the culpability of Bergonzi. These were calls he didn't see (we know this because they didn't happen) but he made them anyway. And he's cost Juve the game. Even criminals deserved the proper execution of justice.

PREDICTION: Even though Pierluigi Collina (the bald-headed one) has properly disciplined him, to cover for the unconscionable error of Bergonzi, the Italian FA will ban Zalayeta for simulation, just so the real culprit - the illusion of omniscence - will go unscathed and unfortunately persist.

Now that's just wrong.

2007-10-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF WE DIDN'T EXPECT REFEREES TO SEE ALL?

The worst mistake a referee can make in soccer, indeed in any sport, is to make a call by implication - making calls they haven't actually seen, but are implied based on other impressions, including, but not exclusively, the reactions of players, managers and the crowd.

In England and at UEFA in general, there seems to be a body of consensus claiming the problem is with players and managers over-reacting. The thought goes something likie, "If we can just get everyone to stop pressuring the man in black, he would be free to make the correct calls."

But there are a few glaring problems with this claim: first, how many of us have played in a game where a referee blows the whistle, and the resulting silence from dumbfounded players on either side of the ball, is enough to hear a goal-keeper breathing heavy after a sprint. It happens also in the professional game, which leads to the following conclusion. Sometimes referees make calls under no pressure at all that are completely erroneous - so erroneous that even the offending team is not looking for the whistle. So the idea that the problem lies entirely with those applying pressure is absurd.

The real problem is that there is this thought that a good referee has to see everything that happens on the field. That's why so many referees are wont to admit that they've actually missed something. A foul, a ball over the line, a ghostly infringement that some how, in merely one of the 324,000 seconds that constitute a 90 minute match, has somehow changed the result - never mind missed open goals, and general bad play from the losing team. But this is really ridiculous isn't it?

Can the referee, even with one or two missed calls, really be held responsible for a result? If you're the losing team, the answer is always yes, but if we look at ourselves honestly, we all know we have a lot more to do with winning or losing than the referee. Even for underdogs who do (presumably) everything they can to win a match, only to have a bad penalty given "cost" them the game. Let me say this - if you were hanging your hopes of winning on the unlikely proposition that the referee is omniscient and catches every infringement against you, then you've got a whole other problem on your hands. Frankly, if he were, you probably wouldn't get away with what you have to get away with, to beat the favorites.

Because television announcers and producers are desperate to play up the drama of a match, in order to ensure your attention, they create this absurd aura of "a game of inches" and more of this sort of non-sense. They convince you that at any moment you may miss a game changing call or play, so much so, that we've deluded ourselves into thinking that if a referee misses a call, that he's responsible for the result. The bottome line is that a referee can't change the result any more than some crap defender, or profligate striker can, and to place the blame on a missed call for a result is absurd. I don't only say this as a former referee, I say this as a player and an observer of matches who's tired of everyone and their brother looking for excuses for bad results.

There is only one place I make an exception - that's when a referee makes a call that he didn't actually see. Take the England v. Russia match that just occured in Moscow. If Rooney did committ a foul on the play, only a blind man, or a veritable imbecile would insist it occurred in the penalty area. The video replays show clearly that it occurred outside the area, so why on earth was a penalty given? Because the referee has to be omnisicent, and if everyone in the stadium thinks it occured in the area (including Rooney who looked like a schoolboy who's just broken in his mother's favorite vase) then he has to call it otherwise he's - dare I say it - limited by human physiology and cannot see every single thing that happens on a pitch.

Now, instead of us saying that Russia should have done better to score a second goal, to keep their Euro hopes alive, we're saying the exact same thing of the English - only the English didn't do anything wrong on that play (in particular). It's true, the English could have scored again, and one wonders why they didn't. It seems the evil stench of Erickson-ian conservatism is not easily washed away by a buck-toothed English manager, and England tried to hold onto a one-goal lead rather than going for and getting the kill. What a shame.

But because the referee insists on making himself as important as the players, he can't resist making a call that he thinks he missed (which is unacceptable in today's climate) even though he would have been better off admitting his human limitations and saying, "Yes, there may have been a foul, and it may have been in the penalty area, but...I didn't see it." In that case, all he does is admit what we already know to be true, so no harm there, and in the process he avoids giving an unwarranted penalty, which gifted Russia a chance to stay in the race for the final qualification place in the group.

The bottom line is, it's much worse for a referee to call something that didn't happen (like the penalty given Florent Malouda when Liverpool played Chelski in September) than to simply miss a call. There's a built in excuse for missing a call - referees can't possibly see everything. But there's no excuse for simply making up an infringement that never happened. That's the result of a referee trying to look infallible, which is impossible, and nobody should expect that in the first place. Missing calls for referees is like players missing open goals, or making a bad pass - this happens because we're imperfect, and so is the referee.

Is that so wrong?

2007-08-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

PARDON THE INTERRUPTION: SURPRISINGLY GOOD ANALYSIS

This is fascinating: I just saw a segment on the popular ESPN talk show, "Pardon the Interruption" with (Mr.) Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, where they discussed the injury of David Beckham, and his absence from the line up for LA Galaxy games.

Now this isn't particularly interesting given that in the US, there seems to be only 3 occassions when the (above) average sports fan seems to care about soccer: (1) During the FIFA World Cup, (2) During the FIFA Women's World Cup and (3) Whenever the discussion involves David Beckham.

What amazed me about this segment was a fascinating insight into the reasons behind Beckham's absence from the lineup: his desire to play for England. We've all heard the stories of how Steve McLaren made a special trip all the way to the US, just to see how Beckham was doing, and to evaluate his potential to play for England in some crucial upcoming Euro qualifiers. As a result of this absurd news, Kornheiser brought up a point that would otherwise go unnoticed if we weren't so star struck by Golden Balls.

If Beckham were still playing for Real Madrid, do you think he'd be skipping games like he is here in MLS? In my estimation: yes. Kornheiser intimated that Beckham is saving himself for England, and that he should be applauded for doing so - I couldn't disagree more. I'm all in favor of players who will never turn their back on their country, but I also believe they are professionals and have to earn their paycheck - no matter how big or small it is. So in Beckham's case, I'm of the opinion that if Mr. Tony is right, and he's playing "eenie-meenie-minie-moe" with his MLS games, he should be tarred, feathered and sent back to Beckingham Palace, along with his intolerable wife and children.

But I seriously doubt that Real Madrid, had they retained the rights to Beckham, would be playing him whilst carrying an injury. Furthermore, I don't think Beckham is any longer important enough to England to merit playing for the national team if he is not playing regularly for his club, no matter how big or small the club is.

But I am happy to observe that Mr. Tony, and increasingly more of the national media in the US, are beginning to understand what makes footballers tick, and what questions to ask of America's newest sporting star, even though his analysis is probably off the mark.

2007-08-10T12:07:00.000-05:00

BECKHA-MANIA IN DC

So I was in attendance at David Beckham's MLS debut, and I have to say that it was a very successful night. Although MLS has no sense of history, the Football Gods never forget; they have smiled on DC United for many years now, so it makes perfect sense that that most successful club in the history of the league serves as the host for this watershed moment. And what hosts they were - a packed house, full of the most committed and diverse supporters in the league, with a high footballing IQ, appreciated the magnitude of the night.

Beckham was warmly received both when he stood to warm up, and when he entered as a substitute in the 70th minute or so, and while the bubble-gum crowd cheered his every touch, it was an interesting transformation the Galaxy went through, as his calm and measured passes clearly added a measure of quality to the side that had been sorely lacking. It was obvious that he was nursing an injury, but even by his own timid measure, he was feisty in his brief challenges, and seemed to slot into the side quite well.

Beckham faces an uphill battle to help transform the Galaxy into a side worth watching beyond the interest in his own hero worship, but anyone who has actually watched him play over the years knows that what he lacks in pace and ability to run at defenders, he more than makes up for with his vision, passing, composure on the ball, and of course dead ball execution. By my count DC United allowed only one free kick in a dangerous area while he played, but he certainly made it count with a quality curling ball challenging the keeper to either stay on his line or punch it away - in this case the United keeper did neither and was fortunate not to give away a silly goal.

We cannot underestimate the quality of DC United supporters - there are 3 types at any United game. There are the Barra Brava, "Brave Fans", who derive their name and spirit from the supporting masses at South American matches, that operate more like a collective organism than individual supporters. They are unmistakeable in their never-ending up and down motion in the transient stands, and will certainly have pleasantly surprised their newest guest. They are accompanied by the Screaming Eagles, a home-grown collection of American fans who have become as much a part of the lore of the club as the great players and managers over the years. Their support is vocal and I have to say, impressively committed. They're all over the DC area - at bars, restaurants, in homes, and even on the metro when there isn't a game in sight.

The third kind of supporter is one that may or may not be wearing a jersey, may or may not screan and shout, but loves quality soccer and can genuinely appreciate the quality of DC United's playing style. An attractive pass and move game, that relies on posession, vision and generosity with the ball. There's only one player at the club who is a hold over from the original league winning side - Jaime Moreno - and to this day, you still expect that something extra from him. But it's amazing to see the DNA of DC United firmly embedded in the newer players, and for me personally, a member of this third category of supporters, I'm really never disappointed watching a game because I feel I either learn something new, or remember something I've forgotten, every time I watch them play.

Ultimately, what really filled me with pride is demonstrated by two things: first, every time one of the LA players feigned injury and returned to play within minutes, he was rightly booed. No polite silence as you would at an American football match, where there is no pride taken in milking a collision for sympathy from the referee, and most injuries are presumed genuine because a player feigning injury would never see the inside of the field again. These are, after all, grown men - a fact and commensurate behavior we in the US are quickly learning to expect from some of these clowns.

But nothing gave me greater pride than the merciless abuse directed towards yesterday's news, Landon Donovan, who embarrassed himself with tireless complaining and gesticulating towards teammates, and countless minutes of absolute indifference. Every time he touched the ball, United fans seemed less worried about what he'd do with the ball, than they were with letting him know that as American soccer fans, we've had just about enough of the cult of personality the league and US Soccer has pathetically tried to create around his boundless underachieving. This is precisely the sort of thing you'd get in Beckham's native England (listen at any old video clips of Liverpool away after the 1990 World Cup, and you can hear John Barnes being booed relentlessly in response to his paltry summer performances.)

If there is one hope for Beckham's arrival that we all share, it's that through his acquisition, the money he brings the league will help bring players of a quality, one step up from the likes of Abel (the Abominable Snowman) Xavier, and help bring up the level of play to one that merits the level of support from fans like those of DC United.

2007-08-01T09:54:00.000-05:00

FC BARCELONA ALREADY IN TROUBLE

If you're an FC Barcelona supporter, the news in the following link should concern you:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=reu-spainbarcelonatour&prov=reuters&type=lgns

Essentially, Zambrotta and Thuram, and probably a few other players, are complaining about having to do a pre-season tour of Asia, as impinging on their preparations for the upcoming season. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly these players will bite the hand that feeds them - one of the reasons why players at big clubs make so much money, is because there's no shortage of Asians desperate to get a glimpse of their stars in a meaningless series of friendlies against run-of-the-mill opponents.

What really burns me up is the idea that somehow they're problematic. You never hear Manchester United players complaining about the tour, and they're coming off an EPL title season, which included an international trip to South Africa. All the big clubs do it, and this belly-aching from seasoned professionals is disgraceful. Laporta rightly points out that they won La Liga and the European Cup two seasons ago with an international tour, so what is the difference?

One word - complacency.

These guys thought they could just show up and win everything under the sun last year, and they were rudely awakened to the fact that it doesn't work that way - not in Spain, and not anywhere in the major European leagues. You have to come to play every game of every competition, and that includes a silly pre-season tour of Asia. It's enough already with these complaints, because they don't amount to much other than a few prima donas who want to have their cake and eat it too. Unbelieveable.

I tell you what - here's a good solution: let's all agree for everyone to take a pay-cut (players, manager, staff and administrators), cut the ticket prices (giving the fans a well-deserved break) and we can forgoe these ridiculous tours if they're so intrusive. Do you think Thuram and Zambrotta would be willing to make $5M instead of $10? Would their sponsors (Nike, Adidas, Puma, whatever) agree to fewer promotional events as well? Because that would also eat into what they take home.

The bottom line is this: a man should have some professional pride, and not complain at the first sign of trouble. True, they've just come off of a disappointing season, but at the end of the day, the best tonic for that is to roll-up your sleeves, put your head down, and get to work on the pitch - even if that pitch is 10,000 miles away.

SIDEBAR:

I just got through watching a friendly at Old Trafford between Inter Milan and Manchester United, and it never ceasees to amaze me how biased is the coverage on MUTV. They have their own announcers, doing their own analysis, and it is so delusionally weighted in favor of Manchester United it's comical.

First, the first goal scored by Inter was clearly not off-side. Suazo, the Inter striker, was onside when the original ball was played in. But when it was mangled by Evra and Vidic in an ill-advised attempt to do God knows what, he was in an offside position, but since it came off of Vidic, it's not off-side. But every time they replayed the goal, the announcer would say, oh-so-cunningly, "They should have given off-side, but it doesn't matter..." as if they're being generous about it because it's a friendly. Friendly or no friendly, the rules don't change just because you work for MUTV, and you're at Old Trafford. And I don't want to hear any non-sense about, "Well, it's MUTV, so what do you expect."

It's not presented as brainless sycophancy for an audience of unconditional supporters of Man U. Some of what I want to see Inter as well. And if that's the route they wish to take, then they should pull a FanZone, and put some hooligans in the booth - otherwise, they should maintain a shred of diginity and have unbiased commentary. No chance of that for Man U(re).

And yes, I'm a Liverpool supporter, and yes I hate Man U(seless).

And then, after Inter Milan started with half their regular 11 and took a 2 goal lead, they took off their remaining big names, gave up an own goal, and suddenly the announcers are talking like Man U has made a come back. You mean a gift-back, don't you? Suazo, a Honduran whose been playing in Italy for years, and was named best foriegner in the Serie A two years ago (along with Kaka, whom you may have heard of) scored a brace, and looked positively mercurial. So imagine my surprise when at the start of the second half, one of the announcers mentioned, "Suazo will be thinking he could get a hat trick at Old Trafford on his debut - not a bad start."

Well, excuse me for being realistic, but I'm quite certain Suazo has played in more intimidating venues than a pre-season game at Old Trafford; places like, say, the San Siro, Olympic Stadium or Estadio del Alpi to name a few. And, not to make assumptions about his general footballing knowledge, but I would be surprised if he even knew the name of the stadium he was playing in was, in fact, "Old Trafford". Later, when a substitute Jiminez, who had just signed with Inter earlier in the day came on, the announcer said, "What a life; you're signed by Inter in the morning, and in the evening you make your debut at Old Trafford."

Who do these people think they are? Old Trafford may be a "hallowed ground" in England, but nobody gives a dump about it on the continent, and nobody that's played in Italy would particularly care about making his debut at Old Trafford. In fact, I would venture to guess that if he had his choice he'd rather make his debut at the San Siro, if he even cares where he first gets on the pitch.

Oh, and by the way - is there anything more ironic than giving the captain's arm band to a bandit like Marco Materazzi in what is supposed to be the homeland of fair play? "Matrix" (as he is referred to by the lunatic fringe of the Nerazzurri supporters) has been booed mercilessly on Inter's tour of England. More so by the francophile Arsenal supporters at the Emirates for obvious reasons, but even at Old Trafford. And rightly so - that man is the single worst sportsman in professional soccer, and he deserves every moment of derision he gets.

A year on from Materazzi's despicable behavior in the 2006 World Cup final, Zidane still refuses to meet with him to, "clear the air", and I don't blame him. I don't know if I would have reacted the way he did, but if Materazzi were talking about my mother and sister the way he did to Zidane, I'd certainly want to. To be honest, there is something appealing about a footballer who is first and foremost a man that won't stand for someone insulting the women in his life, as did this intolerable rogue. Sure, a professional should know better, and we'd all probably just grin and bear it if someone came into our office and started spouting off about, "Your mother this....and your sister that..." even though we'd really want to pop him once good square in the chest.

...well it would be nice.

2007-07-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

THE FOOTBALL GODS HAVE QUITE A SENSE OF HUMOR

I’m an agnostic – which means I claim no particular knowledge about God – but if there is one theological consideration to which I’m very close to converting, it would be that of the football gods. Why, you ask? Not because they are beneficent, or because they are just – often they are neither. I could believe in the football gods because, man, have they got a wicked sense of humor. Consider these snippets:

Two years ago, when he was first bought by Liverpool, Djibril Cisse’s tibia exploded in a collision with Blackburn defender Lucas Neil. The break was so severe that the doctors who initially reviewed his x-rays were forced to inform him that they were considering amputation. 6 months after this sickening injury he returned to score a crucial penalty in the shoot-out vs. AC Milan in the European Cup Final. A year later, playing in an ill-advised friendly for the Les Bleus against China, he shattered his other leg and missed the World Cup. Wicked.
Two years ago, Carlito Tevez was playing for Corinthians in Brazil – already a distinct persona non grata as a $20 million Argentine playing in Brazil - he did his reputation no favors by showing up at a press conference after losing a critical Paulista derby against Palmeiras, in a Manchester United jersey. His explanation, “My sponsor is Nike, they give me shirts to wear and this is one of them.” He was promptly fined a week’s wages. A friend of mine mentioned that perhaps it was a signal to Manchester United that he wanted to talk, and I was so dismayed at the idea that I dismissed him as a Neanderthal in cleats, incapable of such a subtlety and that the risk reward was far too heavily tipped towards risk (given the fines and disenchantment of the Corinthians supporters). 2 years later, he’s signing for Manchester United. Wicked.
Fabio Capello was brought to Real Madrid to rescue a dishearteningly under-achieving collection of prima donas from another year of futility, with the club suffering from its worst barren spell in years (no trophies in 3 seasons) while their more humble rivals in claret and blue seemed to be gathering them in buckets. So Don Fabio comes in and completely changes the way they play – no more trying to force the same set of galacticos into ever-more futile combinations and getting the same crap results. They were so bad on the field, and so bad to watch that it almost became a reason to tune in by itself. Beckham was relegated to the practice squad for announcing his departure to MLS, and Ronaldo was sent to Milan - not that Milan, the other Milan - to the dismay of legions of his fans. However, by the end of the season Becks was in the form of his life, Capello's mid-season Argentine buys were playing their socks off, and Robinho was making people forget the gap toothed assassin like so much of yesterday’s news…oh and by the way, they won the league. So how did they reward their Don – by sacking him for playing unattractive football. Wicked.
Gerrard Houllier spent 7 years at Liverpool FC playing second fiddle to Man U and Arsenal – so they sacked him after finishing 4th in his last year in the league and a whopping 30 points behind the record breaking Arsenal. Liverpool brought in Rafael Benitez who figured out a way to pip Barcelona and Real to La Liga twice in three years, to see if he could bring that kind of handicapped success back to Merseyside. A year later, Houllier is at Olympique Lyon, not to win the league (which they had already done 4 years in a row before him) but to win the European Cup (which no French team other than Olympic Marseille have ever done). So what happened? Liverpool finished 5th the next year AND won the European Cup and reached a final 2 years later, while Olympic Lyon won the league two more times but got dumped out of the only competition they truly cared about out in the first round of the knockout stages 2 years running. Wicked.
Chelski were thought to be such an immoveable object in the EPL, they chose to completely upset the balance of the team by buying a $30 million Ukranian striker named Shevchenko (though they had just paid $30 million for Drogba the year before who after 15 goals his first season, cost them about $2 million per goal) and a big German named Ballack who just oozed style and skill. So what happened – Shevchenko's 4 goals cost them about $8M each, while Drogba doubled his goal tally from the previous season and won the golden boot, and Ballack was injured so often that he couldn't play in the semi-final against Liverpool who beat them (AGAIN) in the very European Cup they sought to win by buying him - although it's questionable whether or not at this point Ballack would have been much help. Oh, and they lost the EPL title to Man U. Wicked.
Cristiano Ronaldo made himself a pariah by becoming the victim of an ill-advised act of aggression from his hot-headed common street rogue of a teammate ('es fat, 'es scouse, 'es come to rob yer 'ouse) Wayne Roo-ney in the World Cup against England, and he had his ticket booked for Madrid this summer to escape the derision. This is the same Real Madrid who was in the process of abandoning its galacticos era of “Zidanes and Pavons”. Man U made it clear to anyone who would listen that he wasn’t going anywhere – ever. So what did he do – he scored 16 goals (led his team) and won the Players’ and Football Writer’s Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year awards ALL IN THE SAME YEAR – 2007. Oh, and by the way, Man U won the EPL. Wicked.
Dunga is beleaguered by the Brazilian press for almost everything he does – even his choice of touchline attire. Brazilian coaches who wear suits are considered to be out of touch and arrogant (essentially a sell-out), so this poor guy decides to do his daughter a favor and wears one of her designed shirts at a friendly against England – he’s brutalized for it on both sides of the Atlantic for being to "flash". Then they complain about results, selection and style, and how he could allow Ronaldinho and Kaka to skip the Copa America. So what does he does he do? He plays a team full of players you’ve never heard of, tells his stars to go jump in a lake, and beats the vaunted and hated rivals, Argentina, in a final that wasn’t close from the start. And as he ran onto the pitch to share in the victory with his teammates, one photographer made the mistake of getting in his way - and Dunga promptly shoved him out of the way with more than a little glee...metaphorically I might add.

Yeah, the football gods have a wicked sense of humor.

2007-07-07T15:44:00.000-05:00

DOES TORRES KNOW WHAT HE'S GETTING INTO?

The last time Liverpool had 2 good strikers that consistently scored, they won the League Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup. Robbie Folwer and Michael Owen in their respective careers with the club combined for over 300 goals between them (not necessarily playing together), but Owen's intense dislike for anyone challenging his supremacy as the club's top scorer initiated a period of reliance on single source goal scoring that has cost the club the chance to win the EPL ever since.

That Fernando Torres is quality is not in doubt – by himself (i.e. with no quality forwards surrounding him) he has been the leading scorer for Athletic Madrid for 5 years, including two 20+ goal seasons in 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. A player with good balance, pace and strength, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll have difficulty scoring in the EPL, where all three are critical to success. Where Morientes failed on Merseyside, Torres may flourish, and give the Reds the much needed attacking boost they’ve sorely lacked in their three EPL campaigns under Rafael Benitez.

But the question remains unanswered – is Torres the answer for Liverpool? Is this all they need to break the barrier that has kept them from matching the bona fine top quality levels of Arsenal, Chelski and hated rivals Manchester U(seless)? Defensively Liverpool have always been strong. Not prone to making adventurous mistakes, and with young defenders of a high quality in abundance, it doesn’t seem that they’ll give up more goals than they score any time soon – but the sum total of goals is less significant than their timeliness, and a review of some rather atrocious attacking displays against run of the mill opponents last year, more than accounts for the gulf in EPL results between them and the other big four of English football.

On the first day of the season, a disgraceful display saw them drop two points against a team, in Sheffield United, that had no business in the top flight of English football. Steven Gerrard, just coming off one of the greatest match winning performances in the club’s history, scoring 2 belters in dying moments of their FA Cup final against West Ham in May of 2006, failed on several occasions to apply the winning touch, and as all teams with great players, Liverpool’s weakness of depending too much on individual performances was laid to bare for all to see. In the past it had been the heroics of Robbie Fowler (who ironically scored the penalty that salvaged a point on the day), before the torch was passed (begrudgingly) to Michael Owen.

But the lure of the galacticos was too great for a player never short on self-belief, and the responsibility then fell on their inspirational captain Gerrard. Unlike Chelski, however, Liverpool are not built for consistent goal-scoring form their midfielder, and the arrival of Craig Bellamy and Dirk Kuyt was thought to be the tonic needed to boost the timely but sparing contributions of Luis Garcia and Tim Crouch in attack. Unfortunately for Reds supporters Crouch and Bellamy were unbearably lazy and unproductive for long stretches this year, and while Crouch is impressive in spurts, you just don’t get the feeling that he’s a player that can carry the goal-scoring load on his spindly shoulders. Bellamy, for his part, never appeared to care too much. An incessant moaner, his productivity was directly proportional to the faith the manager showed in him, neither of which was very much, and both of which diminished progressively as the season came to a conclusion. For all his talk of being a lifelong supporter of Liverpool, he certainly didn't look like it. While his more industrious Dutch partner Kuyt, who although not prolific in scoring, but prolific in working, made it impossible to ignore Bellamy’s lack of both.

There are few midfields that can boast the current quality Liverpool enjoy – Alonso, Mascherano and Gerrard have an embarrassment of riches in technical ability, both with and without the ball. They're all astute tacklers, and what Mascherano lacks relative to Gerrard and and Alsonso in technique, he more than makes up for in pure determination and discipline. You’ll rarely find a midfielder that doesn’t have two clubbed feet, more willing to do the running than Mascherano. Interestingly left in the lurch in this regard is Momo Sissoko – while no one can doubt his effort, his lacking technical ability, and clumsly challenges became an increasing liability and was duly sent to the substitute’s bench for most of the second half of the season. His paltry claims for first team football are laughable for the man some (prematurely) compared to Patrick Vieira. Vieira may be tall, black and aggressive, but to compare him to Sissoko is like comparing a Ferrari to a Mustang by saying they’re both fast. Arsenal know better than anyone that you build championships off of Vieira's arsenal of skills as they, Juventus and Inter have all experienced – you could build a house with the bricks this man Sissoko regularly lays with his feet.

The only other glaring weakness of Liverpool is on the wing – a half fit Harry Kewell good for 2-3 season ending injuries per season is the only one with the technical ability to really put fear in his opponents, although he has rarely done so in his 4 years with the club. As for Mark Gonzales, he’s on his way to Betis, since they were not relegated, and ruthless Rafa probably couldn’t wait to see him go. The staff spent 2 years tracking this kid before he came to Liverpool, and he turned out to be one of the worst purchases of Benitez tenure, second only to Mauricio Pellegrino. It’s hard not to like Fabio Aurelio for all his qualities, but even harder to see him being the answer they’re looking for in terms of consistent and quality wing play. But the biggest problem on the wings for Liverpool is on the right – other than Jermaine Pennant, Liverpool are desperately lacking in this department, which answer the question of why Gerrard is always stuck playing out there. Clearly, they quality of the wing play has affected the quality of the goal-scoring, and as such, even Fernando Torres will have problems making something out of nothing if they don’t address that problem promptly.

Most strikers are only as good as the quality of their service, and there are few exceptions in the history of football, let alone in the modern game. For Torres’ move to Liverpool to be a success, he’ll need to develop more than just his own strong aerial game, his shooting, his pace and his hunger – he’ll need to develop a relationship with Liverpool’s current crop of wingers, and on the face of it, or at least until more action is taken on the transfer market, he could be in development for a long, long time.

2007-01-12T14:06:00.000-05:00

DO THEY WANT MLS AND BECKS TO SUCCEED?

Yesterday MLS and David Beckham announced a 5-year, $250M deal to bring him to the LA Galaxy, and make the pop-idol the face of MLS. Now there’s plenty of cynicism surrounding MLS, and perhaps even more surrounding David Beckham, but I doubt that anything will have the nay-saying sports writers around the globe salivating with anticipation as much as this dog and ponytail show certain to arrive at a stadium near you in June of this year.

But before you purists poo-poo, consider this theory: David Beckham is the best thing to happen to MLS in its history - full stop. No single player has or will bring more money to the league, as he will the day he dons the green and gold jersey of the Galaxy, the most profligate franchise in the league, I might add. No single event will do more to raise the profile of the entire league than the first ball he strokes over the wall and into the back of the net - it will be replayed on every newscast in the world the day it happens. In fact, if Zinedine Zidane came out of retirement to play for DC United, it wouldn’t mean as much commercially as the peroxide-blonde boy from London, via Manchester and Madrid. The truth is that despite the whopping sum of a quarter of a billion dollars, in its majority tied to advertising and promotional considerations, and as such commercially sound, I’d be hard pressed to bet against this guy alone doubling the leagues advertising revenue in a year.

But before the man stroking a golden comb through his hair has even set foot stateside, questions are already being raised about his ability to raise MLS to NFL level popularity in the US. I have to say that this is the single most disingenuous question that the enemies of soccer in the US have raised in their 30-year old quest to block the importation of the world’s favorite game, to the world’s favorite economy. Make no mistake about it – there are people both within the US and in the global sports writing community that would love nothing more than to label this venture, and MLS altogether, an abject failure. It hinges on one thing: setting the expectation of the league so high that it could only be reached if Jesus Christ blessed himself wearing the black and red of DC United, before entering the pitch at RFK. It makes you wonder if they don't think it will work, or if they really don't want it to?

Sporting vs. Commerical Considerations

When signing a player like David Beckham, there are two considerations – sporting and commercial. On the balance, MLS has made it pretty clear that this deal has been driven by commercial interests. But for a moment, let’s examine the sporting decision first. Before you flippantly dismiss Beckham as a has been who can no longer cut it at the biggest club in the world, ask yourself if anyone else in MLS today could have? For that matter, neither could Ronaldo or Luis Figo, but you'd be hard pressed to find a team in MLS that wouldn't take either of those so-called rejects. In fact, can you name 3 midfielders in MLS, right now, without going to web, that are demonstrably better than David Beckham? From a sporting perspective it’s a good move for the Galaxy.

To date, they have on their books one Landon Donovan – the single most overrated player in America, Santino Quaranta – a DC United reject who lost his place in the team to Freddy (Much) Adu (About Nothing), and Cobi Jones, who to this day, still looks like he just recently learned how to kick straight. Will Beckham make them contenders in just one year: absolutely. Why? Because the regular season means nothing in a league where all but two teams make the playoffs, and there a player of Beckham’s qualities can make a game-breaking contribution with one swing of his foot. In fact, MLS may even suit Beckham in his current incarnation better than most leagues. He doesn’t have the quality of players to target with his crosses and through balls from the wing, and he himself lacks the pace and close control to be a threat running at defenders and scoring goals from the run of play. But if he can eek out a role as a playmaker whose sole responsibility is to enable his teammates, I could even envisage Beckham playing so well that he'd be considered for the England team – maybe for a friendly or two, if nothing else to thank him for his past contributions.

Truly great players inspire us, and if Beckham weren’t married to Posh Spice, or play for one of the two richest clubs in the world, he wouldn’t. But for MLS, and particularly for the LA Galaxy, he’ll do just fine, thank you very much. That’s not a knock on the league, but a statement of the obvious – Beckham’s sporting value is in enabling his teammates, and while enabling the likes of Ruud van Nistelrooy, or Raul is not likely to be on the cards in MLS, he will certainly make his teammate’s lives a lot easier. Furthermore, by all accounts, Beckham is a model professional who, aside from his extra-curricular distractions, practices as diligently as and even more so, than most professionals today. That alone will have a great impact on the young players who will come into contact with him. If he plays at full capacity, there's no doubt he’ll be a big success in MLS.

Okay, Let's Just Get to the Gettin'

The real reason for this transaction is commercial - I mean, let's be honest. Even if there were no quality left in his game, he would still certainly be a good draw. Beckham’s enormous global branding, particularly in Asia, really makes the advertisers drool, where his midas touch make tours and television rights lucrative. Consider that today, the most heavily spectated game in the history of the English football was between Everton and Fulham FC in 2003? That’s because each team had a single Chinese player on the roster, and if 3% of the Chinese population tuned into the game, it would have meant more viewers then there are people in the UK. Today, interest in the EPL in China remains, even if the Chinese players do not. That, in a nutshell, is the commercial appeal of Beckham in Asia.

As a part of a large contingent of world class players at Real Madrid, commercially Beckham completed a package that was unrivaled in football. At one time, Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo, Roberto Carlos and Beckham all wore the Real Madrid jersey. It seems now, only Roberto Carlos will remain. At the LA Galaxy, the story will be a team of Beckham and everyone else, and one has to wonder how many times a team like that can tour the US or the Asian continent profitably.

As such another consideration has to be included in the analysis – can Beckham begin to draw other well known stars to MLS in similar arrangements? Could Ronaldo follow? How about Luis Figo? Could even Zinedine Zidane be drawn out of retirement, as was Pele in 1974? In all likelihood, the answer is no, but a single MLS team with those types of marquee players on the roster, touring the country, could be very lucrative indeed. This, however, is unlikely given the structure of the league, and the so-called Beckham rule, that allows a team to max out the MLS contribution to their salary cap at $400K on just one player, and the team can kick in the rest. More likely such players would be dispersed throughout the league, rather than concentrated in one team. But could Beckham alone be enough. Let’s analyze the numbers, shall we?

$250M over 5 years is a figure that’s been bandied about, but most of this money would come from endorsements and a share of profits, conditional on his performance and ability to draw advertising revenue to the league. The first season will certainly bring in the attention they want, but without the addition of other marquee players, it will be impossible for MLS to have that kind draw. I doubt that at the end of his contract, a 36-year old Beckham will continue to draw the numbers required to justify $1M per week potential contract. As such, I think it's pretty clear that MLS are betting on the Beckham's ability to draw more marquee players as well as fans.

Consider the numbers: in order to make sense, giving Beckham $1M per week, would require that the league bring in, as a direct result, at least as much in advertising, with additional money coming from ticket, concessions and merchandising, otherwise it’s a net zero transaction. Imagine for a moment that there are only 1 million avid soccer fans in the US – myself included. It’s not hard to imagine that advertisers such as Gilette, Motorolla, Adidas and Pepsi would collectively be willing to share the burden of paying MLS a dollar a week to advertise specifically to me, just in the hopes that Beckham’s image will generate more than $52 a year in additional sales to their companies. That's not a very high threshold given the existing margins on all of their products. Much of the cost would be covered in renegotiated TV rights, which advertisers would pay to the networks anyway, and possibly redistribute to advertising during MLS games. It's more than plausible, and ultimately the difference between MLS and the other successful leagues around the world is TV rights.

Or how about this scenario – a tour of the US and Asia with two MLS teams, each with two of the following four players on the roster – Beckham, Ronaldo, Figo and Zidane drawn out of retirement. Now that would put assess in the seats. It harkens back to a time when Pele, Cruyff, Best and Beckenbauer all played in the NASL at the same time, but let’s be honest – 3 of those players were broke and needed the money (Beckenbauer excluded) and that’s not the case with our modern wish list. Nevertheless, it would be interesting, and it’s possible now that the first step of buying Beckham has already been taken. While an avid fan will be relatively unmoved by such a setup over the long run, the avid fan never seems to be the concern of the cynics who want to destroy soccer in the US. Somehow, the idea has become ingrained that soccer needs to pull fans from other sports, namely the NFL. As if NFL fans don't also watch baseball, basketball or hockey. I mean, it's not like you have to go to three stadiums in a day to watch the Redskins, Nationals and Wizards. I believe they've invented something called television, where you can enjoy any of the above in the confort of your own home.

The Haters

I have always been of the opinion that this expectation, that MLS compete directly with the NFL, is merely the result of a two-pronged attack on soccer in the US by those who cynically set absurdly high expectations hoping that it will fail. Why in the world does MLS have to reach NFL level popularity, anyway? To date, the richest NFL franchise is probably the Dallas Cowboys, and with their new stadium coming, you couldn’t sell that team for less than $2 billion today. Real Madrid, on the other hand, the richest club in the world is worth barely more than half that sum – about the same that a rather average NFL team like the Washington Redskins is worth today. So why does MLS need to reach NFL levels in order to be a success, when the richest football clubs in the world are worth less than one of least successful teams in the NFL?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Malcolm Glazer, the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, certainly not one of the marquee teams in the NFL, just buy Manchester United - the second richest club in the world? So I ask again, why is the NFL the standard for the success of MLS? I'll tell you why: because there are enemies of soccer in the US that want to see it fail who are putting these ridiculous expectations on MLS with the full knowledge that they can't even be matched by baseball, basketball and hockey. And there are those outside the US who want to see soccer fail here because they enjoy the fact that despite all our power and might, we still have one of the worst national teams and leagues in the world’s favorite sport. It’s just one (of the few remaining) ways to feel better about their economic inferiority to everyone's favorite villain. Sure, they're rich and they make good movies, but we've got the best cheese and soccer team in the world!

Deep down inside, they want this to continue, because they fear that if soccer ever really did reach NFL levels in this country, that the collective buying power of our economy would rob them of their favorite players domestically. And they’re right. If you don’t believe me, just ask our neighbors to the north how they feel about NHL, and all the Canadian teams who have relocated to the US. So, to sabotage us, and setup the headlines they love to run, they set the bar at a level that no soccer team on earth has reached, much less any MLS team, waiting gleefully to savage our efforts when ultimately we don’t reach that pinnacle.

Remember which World Cup sold the most tickets in history? It wasn’t Spain82, Italia90 France98 or even Germany2006. It was USA94. Why? Because no place on earth has as many 70,000 seat stadiums to fill that could even host an event like the World Cup, much less sell them out. And that was before we had a league of our own or a national team to speak of. Today, we’d easily surpass the records of 1994, and if players like Beckham and Ronaldo, or even all these players from S. American willing to play in places like the Ukraine, start to think they can get a piece of the action, both in sporting and commercial terms, on this side of the Atlantic, it’d be a brave new world in which the cynics have no interest. But the possibility has them shaking in their boots.

But there are enemies within our borders as well. Those who don’t understand the appeal of soccer, the ones who tell you there isn’t enough scoring – which is basically their only argument against the game. These are the same people who crap their pants at the sight of a double play in baseball, or a 1st down in football, but somehow can’t understand how we get so excited by a string of 10 one-touch passes resulting in a great shot and save. But I digress…

These people fear what they don’t understand, and worse than that, fear their jobs will one day require that they diligently cover a game they are incapable or unwilling to understand. And as such, they also set the bar at the NFL level, in the hopes that when MLS doesn’t reach that level they can call our endeavor a failure, and just be done with it.

Despite the paucity of premier teams and players, average MLS attendance is similar to that of the big leagues in Europe, because most of the stadiums are comparatively small, even if they are full. The difference is revenue from television rights, which some star quality would bring up to a level high enough to start bringing quality players to the US. And it doesn't get any better than Becks for star quality in soccer. If MLS could get, say, $1B over four years in TV rights, that alone would justify the Beckham rule, and make the league a resounding financial success. 10 years ago, German soccer had to experiment with television blackouts because their games on TV were unattended. Even in England, where the fans are admittedly more passionate than anywhere else, you can still get walk up tickets for a game between Manchester United and say, Watford, for less then the price of lunch at TGI Friday’s.

To that end, commercially, the Beckham deal makes all the sense in the world, not to take MLS to an NFL level (a level that baseball, hockey and basketball have not acheived financially) but certainly to the level of say the French Ligue 1 or Dutch Eredivise. It’s disingenuous to suggest that MLS would be a failure if doesn’t reach the interest of the NFL, or say the Champions League – even the EPL can’t measure up that.

MLS and Beckham were made for each other – a league that needs a marquee player, and a marquee player that needs a league. Commercially it’s is a low threshold considering the structure of the agreement, and the potential for other players to follow. In sporting terms, Beckham will immediately become one of the best midfielders in the league, if not the best, and will likely remain so for the remainder of his playing days, unless more marquee players follow him. and that wouldn’t be a bad problem to have at all, now would it?

On the whole, if you’re an American soccer fan, and want to see better games with better players in this country, then put your money (literally) on Beckham and the MLS.

I certainly will.

2007-01-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

YOU CAN STILL CRY FOR ARGENTINA – BUT...

In case you hadn’t noticed, a beautiful thing happened in Argentina last month. A team you’ve probably never heard of, with a rich history in Argentine and international football, won its first title in 23 years, and in so doing, provided a path to redemption for a few fallen heroes.

With their 2-1 victory, resulting from an 84th minute match-winner against Boca Juniors, Estudiantes de la Plata won the Argentine Apertura as a result of a long run of memorable matches (including a 7-0 drubbing of their their arch-rivals Gimastica de la Plata) culminating in a play-off match against the men from la Bombonera, which cost Ricardo la Volpe his job, and a few Boca players their reputations. With a seemingly insurmountable 4 point lead with just two games remaining, la Volpe insisted (probably without really meaning it) that he would quit if Boca squandered the lead - but squander they did, and the 70's porn-star throwback looking, chain-smoking, trash-talking manager got the hell out of Dodge.

Outside of Argentina, little is known of the club in the sub-urban Buenos Aires province city of la Plata. It’s been said that while Boca are considered the team of the people, and their rivals, River Plate (arrogantly and at once derisively referred to as los Millionarios) are the team of the well-to-do of Buenos Aires. But it poses an interesting challenge for someone outside of Argentina, and probably Buenos Aires, to accurately capture the demographic make-up of the supporters of this club. One thing is certain – this is not one of the big four of Buenos Aires and Argentina (Boca, River, Racing and San Lorenzo), and certainly not one of the most successful Argentine teams of the last 20 years (Boca and River). For their victory over this handicap, we should all be thankful, because it proves that money, although it drives so much in football, can be overcome by heart, grit, determination and loyalty.

For if nothing else, football is a drama of the highest order; a suspenseful interlude of controlled madness where the result isn’t known until the final whistle, and while we may have an idea, based on the quality and pedigree of the teams and players, all too often, in recent times, domestic Argentine football has looked more like a Greek tragedy. Death, violence, riotous fans, match rigging, player strikes and corruption are the stuff of telenovellas (soap opera) and football in Argentina and it’s no wonder that so many of its greatest players ply their trade anywhere other than their home country, returning only to play for the last remaining source of pride: the national team.

When they return to their domestic leagues, great Argentine players have been received like prodigal sons, with rare exceptions for the likes of Juan Sebastien Veron. But there is one more thing we love about football - there is such a thing as redemption. It happens when a disgraced and discarded hero returns to the summit from which he has fallen. And for Juan Sebastien Veron, once the most expensive midfielder in the world, disgraced at the 2002 World Cup, and discarded by the two biggest clubs in English football (Manchester United and Chelsea), closer to the end of his career than most of his teammates, the victory is all the more sweet.

Unfairly singled out by many Argentines for their dismal performance in Japan/Korea 2002, Veron returned to unrelenting jeers and taunts on his travels. But for la brujita (the little witch ), turned big star, returning to "El Leon" where his father, Juan Ramon Veron (la bruja) made his bones as a footballing sorcerer, the jeers turned to tears for all the right reasons when he addressed the supporters on the field after the final as a beloved champion for the first time in a long time. And all the more important of this victory was the fact that domestic football in Argentina has done little to inspire anything other than match disruptions and violence. The fact is, football in this footballing giant of a nation, needed the boost, and Veron and Estudiantes have given it to them.

There are so many reasons for neutrals to applaud the accomplishment of this relatively small club outside the footballing dominance of the aforementioned big four. First, they are one of only two teams outside the biggest city in Argentina to win the title for several years, the other being Velez Sarsfield. Second, their manager, Diego Simeone, a man loved by his teammates and supporters, and probably nobody else in professional football, who is best known for his less than gracious, imaginary card-waving, knife-in-teeth, and incindiary approach to the game (e.g. getting David Beckham sent off in the 1998 World Cup) has won a major title in his first season at the helm of the club. And finally, the prodigal son, Juan Sebastien Veron, who played only one year for his native team before moving (briefly to Boca Juniors and then) to the Serie A.

The Argentine Football Association and press have openly welcomed this diversion from what has become an ugly truth of Argentine football. So poorly managed is the league that its best players will go to Mexico (for god's sake) to make a living, rather than play in their own country, along with any European country where they can tangentially claim citizenship. This after all the hullabaloo surrounding matches that had to be terminated due to fan rioting, and years of mismanagement which has reduced the league to that of a spring board for young talent, and a graveyard for old hands. Ever since Argentine football professionals went on strike in 2001 over unpaid wages, one has had the feeling that the league, while professional, has been run by amateurs, driving more and more talent to ply their trade anywhere in the world that they can make a reliable living. It’s hard to imagine that with all the transfer fees coming from so many players going to Europe, that somehow the clubs could be short of the cash required to pay their players, but that seems to be the norm. And yet, somehow they seem to turn out great player after great player, a never-ending supply of talent that has only a few youth titles to point to, aside from the Olympic Gold in 2004, since their World Cup victory in 1986. If ever there were proof that football fortune is in the soul of a country, Argentina are it.

Spanish speakers will know that the name, Estudiantes, refers to students. This comes from the history of the club’s inception, where medical students, fed up with the way their eventual local rivals, Gimnastica de la Plata, were running their club, decided to start their own, hence the name. To this day, a player or supporter of Estudiantes is called a “pincha” (not to be confused with the Mexican expletive "pinche") or “pincharratta” , which loosely translates to “rat-stabbers” referring to the laboratory rats their students regularly sacrificed in the name of science.

In all likelihood, if you’re not a historian of football, and don’t watch Argentine football on the FSC, you’d never heard of Estudiantes, and you certainly wouldn’t know that they won 3 Copa Libertadores in a row between 1968 and 1970 (a feat bested only by the 4 in a row of the great sides of Independiente from 1972 to 1975.) It’s true that in those days, the champion was not required to work their way through the group stages, as they are today, but the club can also claim some of of the most important figures in Argentine football in their history as well.

Carlos Salvador Bilardo, the World Cup winning manager from 1986, captained Estudiantes during their glory years (one of two physicians in the club, by the way) and returned to manage the club years later to a title in 1982. Jose Luis Brown – a defender, and goal scorer in the World Cup final of 1986 (where he, in fact, dislocated his shoulder and was unable to lift the trophy he had just won) was also an important player of this club. The manager, Diego Simeone, was also a pincha long before he wore a suit on the touchines, and Juans Ramon and Sebastien Verons are probably the second most famous father son combination in football history (after Cesare and Paolo Maldini). There are other names of note on the list of alumni, but most you’ve probably never heard of, and yet Estudiantes truly are a club with great success in their history. It seems they’ve always been a team of men battling against the odds, and there is something mesmerizing about that in football.

If anything is going to save Argentine football, it’s moments like these. True, there will probably be no end to the assembly line production of the great players coming out of this country, and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t win one of the next 3-4 World Cups, but a domestic league, while not the engine of national teams, is still a source of pride for countries, and can be again for Argentina. For that to happen they need a few things:

The big teams whose directors regularly pilfer the coffers to their own ends need to lose and lose painfully
The revolving door of the same old coaches, kissing the assess of the same old directors needs to be welded shut.
The teams that exhibit all the qualities that we love in football, and none of those we hate, need to start winning – preferably as dramatically as Estudiantes.

For now we can take solace in the joy of watching those pincharrattas in their underwear, taking a lap of honor. But if those things can happen, there just might be a reason for these old hands to turn over the reigns to a new generation of leaders who actually give a damn about the game: then and only then will we stop crying for Argentina.

2006-12-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

MUCH ADU ABOUT NOTHING

First they made a big deal of his showing at the U17 World Championships, but history tells us that Landon Donovan and DeMarcus Beasley were beasts in this competition, and look at them now. Then they made a big deal of his signing for DC United at 14 years old – with many questioning the veracity of his age – but then “the hard men of the MLS” (never thought I’d use that expression in a sentence) revealed his physical and mental limitations. Finally, he went on trial with Manchester United for 2 weeks, and we didn’t hear a peep about how it went, or any interest in signing him.

Yesterday Freddy Adu became the first unofficial casualty of the MLS and US Soccer hype machine, when it was confirmed that not only has he been traded to Real Salt Lake for a draft choice and a future marquee selection from the league, but that it was he himself who requested the trade. This is not to say that Adu is not a quality player, and won’t have a good career, but one thing is certain: comparisons of Adu to the game’s greats, and the predictions that he would become the world’s first football star from the US, are looking less and less like coming to fruition.

That Freddy Adu is talented, is without question. He has pace, excellent ball control and he strikes the ball better than anyone in MLS. At first glance, it’s all the more reason to question what’s wrong with him, and why he hasn’t been more successful. But in reality it’s just proof of two things – he is 17 years old, both mentally and physically, and skills and physical ability aren't the only things needed to become a great footballer. Far from it. And the fact that DC United have given up on him, and that he has given up on DC United, is a clear indication that he’s just not all he’s cracked up to be.

Can you imagine Zinedine Zidane walking into the office of the manager at Cannes and requesting a transfer to a bigger team? How about Pele going to the directors at Santos and saying, “I need more playing time in a role that suits me”? Would Maradona have ever requested a transfer from Boca Juniors? Never. Of course there are exceptions, but those are restricted to the likes of Johan Cruyff, and Freddy Adu is no Johan Cruyff.

The fact of the matter is that the hype surrounding this kid’s precocious prowess, aged 14 years when he joined the league’s most illustrious team in 2004, was as big as that of the aforementioned greats of the world’s game, but he was never up to the task. One always had the feeling watching Adu, that he seemed to lack a certain fire. As a striker, his goal-scoring rate is laughable, and as a midfielder, although his skills are sumptuous, his lack of impact in that position made him as much a liability as an asset, cancelling out his value with the cost of playing him in a man’s game, with a boy’s physique and mentality. If there were any doubts about whether he’s actually 17 or not, his performances for DC United show that he is definitely not a man in a boy’s body.

One lingering doubt on this subject is the fact that he basically hasn’t changed, physically, since he joined the league. I don’t know many 17 year old kids who look the same as he did when they were 14, but then again, Adu could have peaked (physically) a lot earlier than most kids – which may explain his success at the U17s. If you saw a team photo of Brazil in 1999, when Brazil won the Confederations Cup, you’d be hard pressed to identify Ronaldinho if he weren’t smiling. He’s now a ball of muscle, whereas 7 years ago he was a gangly 19-year old kid, with an uneven gait. No such change from Adu.

The worst and most revealing moment in his stint with DC United came when Adu announced to the world that he felt his MLS Player of the Week award merited more playing time, just a week prior to DC United’s foray into the MLS Cup competition in 2004. Ill-timed and ill-advised, it revealed two disturbing facts about him: that he began to believe in his own hype (neglecting that his award was as much a promotion for MLS, as it was recognition of his performance) and that his commercial value far outweighs his sporting value. The weight of expectation that went along with being over-hyped and over-paid, stripped bare the truth: he is not a player around which a team can be built.

The truth is that clubs build teams around great players, they don’t fit them in. When Zidane when to Real Madrid, he joined a team full of stars, but it didn’t take long before he himself became the focal point. When Cruyff returned to Ajax in 1981, they had Riijkaard and van Basten at their disposal, but they both made room to appease the Dutch Master. There has never been a case of a great player who was sent to a club just to fit in – invariably they either force the remolding of the team in their own image, or play out their remaining days as a bit part player when their skills do not meet expectations. Adu is too young for the latter, and just not good enough for the former.

So when we read in reports today that Adu felt he was better suited for a role already filled by other players in the team, and that the team refused to mold the team in his image, it was clear that they didn’t consider him worth the effort. This may have been impacted by the fact that Adu is unlikely to remain in MLS for the remainder of his 6-year contract, and as such molding a team around him makes little sense. That means that getting the most out of him while he is here is more important than rearranging the furniture for him - hence the trade. But let’s be honest – if DC United thought they could win 2-3 more titles with him before he leaves, they would have moved the entire house, never mind the furniture.

One thing you can be sure of where DC United is concerned, is that they know what they’re doing, and they don’t make emotional or PR decisions when it comes to sporting matters. First, they shipped John Harkes off to the New England Revolution, after they failed to win the MLS Cup in 1998. Later, in explaining his decision, Kevin Payne proclaimed that, as far he was concerned, there were only 4 players at DC United who he would never trade under any circumstances: Etcheverry, Moreno, Agoos and Pope. To date, he kept his promise on Etcheverry alone, and never made any such comments about Adu. Bottom line: Adu was sent packing because he just isn’t worth the money. Jaime Moreno and Cristian Gomez (both 32 years old, by the way) earn their pay, and it didn’t make any sense to move them around a 17 year-old who thinks he’s bigger than the club but doesn’t deliver.

You have to ask yourself about the wisdom of Real Salt Lake giving up so much for Adu when it’s clear to anyone who can read that he wants to play overseas as soon as yesterday. Maybe, as a struggling expansion side, they felt they needed the marketing boost, and they’ll surely get it by signing Adu. In sporting terms, building a team around a precocious young talent makes sense if the kid’s going to stick around, but who thinks he will? As such, we can only conclude one of two things: either Real Salt Lake think it’s worth the 1 year boost to their MLS profile to sign Adu or, they don’t think he’ll actually be going anywhere, because neither Man U(seless) nor Chelski FC will come calling, and Adu won't go play for some second-rate European team. If that is the case, it means they don’t really believe the hype, but aren’t averse to benefitting from it.

When Maradona left Boca Juniors in 1982, it wasn’t for sporting reasons, it was for money. At £5M he was the world’s most expensive player, a sum akin to paying $60 in the inflated market values of 24 years hence. If Boca could have figured out a way to keep him and make £5M in a day, they would have. His time in Barcelona was largely seen as a failure, since they didn't win anything of significance (except the Copa del Rey), but when he moved to Napoli in 1984 for £7M, another whopping sum of money, what they realized in Italy, which they didn't in Spain, is that when you have a great player, you build a great team around him, and don't simply slot him into the side. Barcelona did as much when the bought Ronaldinho in 2003, and they now reap the benefits of building a team around the world’s best player (with no due respect to Fabio Cannavaro).

There is no hedging of bets in football, and when you’re prepared to break the bank on one player, you better be prepared to do the same for the players that must complement him. 9000 square yards is a lot of room for one man to make an impact, but it may as well be 9 million if he hasn’t got the quality around him. Added to the sum they paid for Maradona, Napoli shelled out handsomely for Antonio Careca and Alemao, a pair of Brazilians whose hearts he would ironically go on to break at Italia 90, when Argentina dumped their nemesis out of the competition at the round of 16 stage.

Ultimately, Napoli, a team now mired in the Serie B, never had it so good, and won an Italian Cup, Italian Supercup and two Serie A titles with Mardonna, after spending an incredible amount of money on him and his partners in (dis)organized crime. But what is important to remember from this, where Adu is concerned, is that as soon as they got their hands on a player that could lead them to titles, they built a team around him to achieve that aim. With Adu, DC United could have done the same if they felt he was worth the effort. They didn’t and now he’s gone.

I hope I’m wrong about Adu, because nothing would please me more than to finally have a player of great international quality from the US. I just don’t think Adu is that player, and I am joined in that sentiment by the most successful club in MLS. It seems that DC United felt that his time here truly was much Adu about nothing.

2006-09-07T15:13:00.000-05:00

HOW THE BOSMAN STOLE EUROPEAN SOCCER

In 1990 a run-of-the mill Belgian defender named Jean-Marc Bosman was at the end of his contract with RFC Liege, then in the Belgian 2nd division. He had his heart and bank account set on a big money move to France with Dunkerque (Dunkirk for you Angolophiles), but the frogs didn’t pony up enough cash to satisfy Liege and the move broke down. Now, had Liege kept paying Bosman his established wages, he probably would have taken it on the chin, like every other player in those days. But two things made that impossible: first they cut his wages, and second the European Court of Justice was the 800 pound gorilla in the room with a big crush on European Labor, and the rest is free agent history.

The Bosman Ruling

Citing "restraint of trade", a law that voids portions of any contract that unfairly restrains trade within the European Union, Bosman sued and won a decision against his club, and a decision against all European clubs that has slowly but surely created the transfer bonanza we have today, that makes a third world flea market look like the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The Bosman ruling, as it came to be known, eliminated the right of a club to demand a transfer fee for a player out of contract trying to move to another team within the European Union, and thus, such a transfer becomes a free transfer, today known as a Bosman free. This is not to be confused with a regular free transfer, which has always occurred in the past, but always at the discretion of the club. The Bosman ruling gave the player at the end of his contract the right to a free transfer with or without his club’s permission, and more importantly, at a time when his club might otherwise receive a transfer fee for a valuable player.

The Bosman Playbook #1: Time the Negotiations Just Right

It seems someone wrote a playbook on how to handle the impact of the Bosman ruling that every club, up until this summer, seemed to buy hook, line and sinker. It starts with the "current" club (with the player in question under contract) beginning negotiations for an extension of the current contract of a valuable player long before that contract expires. Any resistance to extending the contract, and they know where a player’s head is – if he doesn't play nice, rather than lose him on a Bosman free, the play books says, sell his arse, right away, to the highest bidder. The trick is to start the negotiations early enough that the guy can't smoke and mirror himself right into playing out the existing contract. The risk with this practice is that if you start renegotiating contracts too early, you may find yourself renegotiating every time a player becomes more marketable (like if he has a nice Euro/World Cup). Most clubs in the "current" club situation haven't budgeted for that, and would create an untenable vicious cycle of renegotiating contracts years before they expire, making financial management of the club impossible.

Buying teams, on the other hand, budget a certain amount for the transfer fee, plus salary, but if there’s no transfer fee, the salary can go much higher, while the overall budget for the player is lower, which is a big plus for the player, and the buyer. For example, if a team budgets 25 million for the transfer fee, and 15 million over a 5 year contract, their overall budget for the player is 40 million. But if you eliminate the transfer fee on a Bosman free, the player can be given a much more lucrative deal (in this case, 30 million on a 5 year contract, doubling his salary) and the buying club still save 10 million on the overall budget for the player.

The only one out on their arses is the "current" team, who pay the remaining salary and get nothing for the player when he leaves. For a player who comes from their academy, there is a significant opportunity cost, but for a player that had been purchased and then leaves on a Bosman free, there is no way to recover any of the transfer fee they paid for the player. That's called a Bosman big problem.

Steve McManaman made Liverpool look like the biggest idiots in Europe when he told them for 18 months that he would negotiate an extension in 1998 – it’s easy to forget that at one point, McManaman was once regarded as the best young English midfielder in the EPL, on par with Ryan Giggs, and the Reds were keen to keep him beyond the end of his contract in 1999. But as soon as they sat down to talk, he insisted on a huge salary that Liverpool would never pay. Liverpool wondered when the hell he became the 6-million dollar man? Enter Real Madrid.

Real saw it as a bargain to offer McManaman $100,000 a week, because they would have paid at least double that much just for his transfer fee (amortized weekly over the course of his contract with them). McManaman was so close to the end of his Liverpool contract when they began to negotiate an extension, it didn't make any sense to accept an early transfer and give Liverpool money that he would otherwise get from Real. Contrast this with the case of Michael Owen, who was 12 months from the end of his Liverpool contract, and would normally have gladly gutted it out to ensure a huge salary increase from Real.

But Liverpool had an ace in the hole - the World Cup was two years away, and Owen didn't want to go to Real in a year on a Bosman free, with the very "Real" prospect of riding pine 12 months before the 2006 World Cup. So Owen was willing to forgoe a Bosman free by transferring before the end of his Liverpool contract, two years before the World Cup, which gave him enough time to leave Spain to find first team football back in England if needed - exactly what happened, in fact. In retrospect, with his broken foot and no first team football for six months, he still made the World Cup squad, so one wonders if it was all worth it, but he did still make good money at Real, likely more money than at Liverpool.

Liverpool did get 8 million for Owen, but can you imagine another Golden Ball winner going for 8 million? On the whole, Real Madrid got a great deal, but Liverpool definitely got the shaft. Frankly, they were lucky to get anything at all for him, and if it weren't for the looming World Cup, they very well may have.

The Bosman Playbook #2: If He Won't Play Ball, Don't Play Him

Now before you cry a river for the "current" team, remember that they do have a recourse, although it comes at a cost. The current team can refuse an early transfer, forgo the transfer fee, and punish the player, as a warning to others who may choose the same path, by never playing him again. That may be hard to imagine, given the mad gold rush at the end of the most recent summer transfer window, where every chairman and his brother seemed to be willing to sell anything at any price, including the physio or the office furniture.

But there are foreboding examples to the contrary.

Mark Bosnich was an Australian goal-keeper who joined Manchester United in 1999, following the departure of the great Peter Schmeichel. United had bought him 11 years earlier, but let him go to Aston Villa, when it was clear that the big Dane was their man. Later, when Schmeichel left Man U for Sporting Lisbon, United returned to the Bosnich option, but after one good year with Man U, he was back on the transfer list. Now, United had in mind to sell Bosnich to Chelski, but having come to United from Villa on a Bosman free himself, Bosnich tried to play out his contract and make the big money move on his own.

The Man U response? Bosnich was banished to 4th choice goal-keeper, forced to train with the youth team, and play in the reserves for 18-months, and as a result he lost his place in the Australian team. Eventually he moved to Chelski, but for a smaller salary than he would have had they gotten him for free (although some of it is made up in the transfer fee percentage he bagged), and by then he was an also ran, who was run out of the West End quicker than Boy George can put on his mascara.

And then there is the tragic case of Winston "Winnie the Pooh" Bogarde. In the past I’ve been critical of Dutch players as being argumentative, over-valued and driven by the dollars, but aside from Johan Cruyff (excluding being over-valued), there’s never been a better example of this than Bogarde.

He began his career with the Ajax wunderkinds who won the European Cup in 1995, and nearly defended it a year later. But like all Dutch players, he took the money and ran, first to AC Milan with his serial rapist compatriot Patrick Kluivert, where he clashed with Don Fabio Capello for...well, being a typical Dutchman. Soon thereafter, the Godfather shipped him to a popular Dutch colony: FC Barcelona, under the soul-stripping tutelage of one Louis van Gaal. There he disgusted the "Cules" with his clumsy, brick-foot style, to the delight of Real Madrid fans, until he was duly transferred to the moneybaggers at Chelski. It was there that he wrote his name in Bosman free (non) transfer history.

At Chelski, Ranieri, probably on the advice of Capello, told Bogarde to take a long walk of a short plank, but Bogarde, sitting on a 5 year, 10-million pound contract was in no mood to actually earn his money, so he stayed, to the dismay of his employers. Bogarde was also made to train with the reserves and the youth players, passing his more illustrious colleagues to and from training every day, but unlike Bosnich, Bogarde being Bogarde, he just took it. He “played” out his contract, and promptly retired from soccer, never to be heard from again until he wrote his Dutch Worst Seller Deze Neger Buigt Voor Niemand, which loosely translated means "This Black Man Bows to Noone". True, Bogarde’s career was destroyed, but Chelski paid him 3 million pounds a year for an unnecessary 3 additional years while he flipped the bird to all potential suitors, so it came at a cost. Under Roman Abramovich that may seem like pennies from heaven, but in the Ken Bates era it was quite a stance to take.

The Black Hand and the 800 Pound Gorilla

I firmly believe there is a modern day transfer saga archetype, and it always involves at least 2 clubs, a player, a Black Hand and an 800 pound gorilla. Bear with me.

The madness of the most recent and unusual player swap, of Ashley "Simpson" Cole and "Slick Willie" Gallas + 5 million quid of Chelski cash, is a good example. This was clearly the most drawn-out transfer, but player assessments aside (both teams have several players in the positions of players they sought) it does make you wonder why all the fuss? They’re both staying in London, and the 5 million premium on Cole is about what most teams pay for English talent, so what’s it all about?

The clubs, Chelski and Arse-nal, had been doing a dance of seduction over Ashley Cole for more than a year, but when Chelski took the other man's wife to dinner without permission, the swinging promptly ended. Then Slick Willie Gallas started grumbling about playing left back and wanting to play overseas for a year as well, and so the dance continued.

Chelski and Arse-nal both had a stake in selling these two-timers before the value of a Bosman free outweighed the value a current transfer - that's the 800 pound gorilla in the room that everyone knows is there, and considers when making any moves. But lurking in the darkness were two black hands: the first is Cole's and Gallas' agents, who stand to gain 10-15% of the players' cut of the transfer fee, and as a result will shop these guys around like a New Jack City pimps even if the transfer makes no sense.

Being an Arsenal academy graduate, likely stuck in a deflated, long-term contract, Cole (and his agents) stand to make way more at Chelski than he did at Arse-nal, and because Gallas is coming with 5 million in cash, so too will he at Arse-nal. It’s a dirty (not-so) little secret that money is the underlying motivator of all these moves, and not this non-sense about Cole feeling “betrayed”, or Gallas wanting to play overseas. That brings us to the other black hand in all of this: the Bosman buying club. We should all know by now that players don't just pull the names of clubs/countries they'd like to play in out of a hat. These oily snakes sidle their way into the picture by well-placed leaks to shabby newspapers, and airport lobby conversations with unsavory agents.

A quiet phone call from Don Galliani to Gazetto Sport, and suddenly Slick Willie wants to learn another language. Unless, by another language, he means North London cockney, he’s either geographically illiterate or a bold-faced liar. My guess is the latter, but one thing you’ll never hear him or any other player say is, “I’m leaving for the money, and I don’t care who knows it!” That's because the black hands really want to unsettle him and see if they can pressure his club into making a rash transfer before the transfer window deadline, the other 800 pound-gorilla.

Wenger had a great point when it came to players like Jose Antonio Reyes and Real Madrid’s Ramon Calderon. Calderon used Reyes as one of many pawns to get himself elected President of the club, prompting Reyes to announce his desire to leave Arse-nal. For a long time he was left holding his (soccer) balls as the titanic struggle resolved itself, hoping like hell he hadn’t turned down the loveable geek, only to be stood up by the homecoming king. But Reyes miscalculated: being so far removed from the end of his contract, Arse-nal were not about to sell him under duress and for less money. They took another road, which brings us back to the Bosman playbook.

Bosman Playbook #3: When In Doubt, Loan 'em Out

Instead Arse-nal called his and Calderon’s bluff, and stuck to their guns, agreeing in the end to a loan deal. Capello had no interest in Reyes, but Calderon had to deliver on at least one of his promises, so he agreed to this ridiculous loan, but I think this doesn’t have a snowball's chance of becoming permanent. Arse-nal wins because they’ll still be able to transfer him for big money when Real doesn’t want him any more, to another Spanish team. But after sharing the expense of his salary, for a year, Arsenal will be able to afford a lower transfer fee for him. Reyes on the other hand may think he’s going to be a hit in Madrid, but I honestly don’t see where he’s going to fit into Capello’s plans. His best hope is that he transfers to another Spanish team in time to be considered for Euro2008, assuming of course, Spain qualify.

In fact loan-deals are all the rage, with Mido going on loan to Tottenham from Roma a year ago, where he became so popular that after going back to Roma this summer, Tottenham were prepared to shell out big bucks before the end of his Roma contract. Roma dumped him out on loan for a year, and split his salary with the Spurs, then got a nice fat transfer check when they got him back just to send him back. With the salary reduction and the transfer, that's certainly going to be a net income for Roma. Mido, meanwhile, on the strength of his season with Spurs, is back in the Egypt team, and Spurs have their hero, so this one is a win-win-win.

Another option is the Man U model with Cristiano Ronaldo – no matter what gets said by a disruptive externality, like, oh, I don't know, say…Real Madrid, stick to your guns and make the player fulfill his contract until you’re ready to sell him. That's easier to do when you have a Mark Bosnich card to play, and it may seem easy to say when you’re a cash machine like Man U, but not so fast – a 30 million pound transfer would go a long way to help them pay down their debt. But allowing a player and the black hands to create the perfect storm of pressure (the end of the transfer window, a few misplaced comments in the papers, and the Bosman ruling) and force your hand, is bad news. Sure, you may get stuck with a smaller transfer than you wanted, but Liverpool and Chelski have shown that a smaller transfer fee is better than no transfer fee, or no principle.

The bottom line is that the Bosman ruling has had some strange effects on European soccer, namely that contracts are all really 2 years shorter than they say they are, because that's about when teams decide to negotiate an extension, and if they don't get the answer they want, they're selling, for fear of losing everything on the Bosman free. Whether the 800 pound gorilla is the end of the transfer window, or an impending World Cup/European Championship, the player, the club and the black hands now all have to figure out when is the right time to pretend they want to explore new challenges, or bring in fresh blood, or whatever. Given the complexity of the Bosman ruling and the new transfer windows, the new Nash equilibrium is anyone's guess.

And for all this chaos we have a player you've probably never heard of until today to thank - one Jean-Marc Bosman.

2006-08-17T09:18:00.000-05:00

A Friendly Way to Waste Our Time

Two years ago, discussing the problem of coping with the loss of essential players at Newcastle, Graeme Souness uttered the words that FIFA fear the most:

“International friendlies are a waste of time – full stop.”

That sentiment has been echoed many times over the years by many managers, and for a long time it seemed like a convenient excuse for managers with huge coffers to explain to the supporters why despite enormous investment in internationals, they still couldn’t get results. This year, Jose Mourinho and Rafael Benitez have taken opposite approaches to the question, abjectly negative and mutedly positive respectively, but one suspects their underlying sentiments remain exactly the same, and not dissimilar to that of “Chop” Suey.

The results of this latest round of scrimmages makes it hard to argue against them. It makes little sense that players who are scarcely fit enough to play 90 minutes for their club (who pay their wages we might add) are obliged to attend a call-up to their national teams, less than two months since the World Cup, for a meaningless pre-season friendly. This after the EPL season last year was shortened by a few days to meet FIFA’s special World Cup requirement of ending all league competitions a full 2 weeks prior to the World Cup. If FIFA are so concerned about over-burdening the players, then why have they allowed this nonsense to go forward?

Club vs Country

Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger made the club-versus-country row famous in England, by creating phantom injuries to reserve key players for important club matches, when their preparations were interrupted by meaningless international friendlies. Nolberto Solano was axed from Newcastle due in no small part to his insistence on playing for Peru. This after assuring Robson, then Souness, during contract negotiations at Newcastle that his days of playing for his national team were over.

Later Sven Goran-Eriksson, ever the wily weasel, made agreements with club managers to use his England stars sparingly to avoid over-exertion, which resulted in the even more absurd practice of unlimited substitions. He once replaced an entire team with the exception of the goal-keeper to keep his promise. Later when he (was convinced) he needed Wayne Rooney for England’s World Cup chances, he went back on his agreement with Man U to allow them to determine Rooney’s fitness and date of return to action following a broken foot sustained 6 weeks before the World Cup. Without concern for club retribution, since he was leaving the post, “Slick” Sven couldn’t have cared less about breaking his word. Nothing like sabotaging the next manager by going back on your word, eh Sven?

Today, the practice continues, but players going on suspension seems to have solved some of the problem, while the lack of intensity in these matches mitigates the risk of injury. It is that lack of intensity that makes the games all the more useless, but clubs still face stiff penalties if they refuse to allow a player called up for national team duty even for friendlies. The respective FAs make a pretty penny from these dressed up training sessions. Players want to play internationals; some for love of country, but most for love of money. The black hand of big transfer fee percentages awaits a run-of-the-mill player who can call himself an international when he's sold to another club, so they can't resist. The only ones that lose are the clubs who can lose a player to injury or fatigue, and the fans who are subjected to these "games".

Results? What Results?

But it’s the utter meaninglessness of these latest results that really opens the eyes to the absurdity of it all. All seems to be well for the McVenables era with a 4-0 drubbing of current European Champions Greece (boy that’s hard to say with a straight face). Given that the victory came in a half empty stadium at Old Trafford, it seems even before the match England fans were taking this game with more than a grain of salt. At the very least, McVenables showed the fallacy of their predecessor’s English galacticos policy, dropping Becks, and being forced into omitting (Joe) Cole, Rooney and Owen due to injury. But if anyone in England thinks this is some kind of harbinger of success, remember that England went to the World Cup with a 6-0 drubbing of Jamaica and promptly put on one of the worst performances in recent memory.

Goals from Terry, Lamps and a pair from the praying mantis Tim Crouch suggests that improvements have been made, but all it shows me is how foolish English hero-worship is and how bad Greece truly are (casting their miraculous victory, and their more illustrious competitors’ inexplicable failures in Portugal, in a whole new light). Aside from Frankie "Four Finger's" blooper-reel goal, which was clearly an own-goal, but was surely “adjusted” to boost the poor man’s confidence, the England goals were down as much to unbelievably poor defending, and a Greek team that was clearly there to pick up a nice pay check for their FA. But that's what you get when the money is guaranteed and nothing is at stake. And while this will no doubt lead to absurd expectations in England, what it ought to lead to is a re-examination of the value of these games.

Spain went all the way to Iceland to waste our time with a 0-0 ballet, highlighted by the shocking revelation that there are at least 12,000 people in Iceland dumb enough to pay money to watch this dog and pony show. The only news from this match was Raul's 100th match for Spain, and based on his performance, hopefully his last. Then again, if you haven't got comic/tragic drama in these games, then you haven't got anything. A free trip to the hot springs of Iceland, and a pay check for the Spanish and Icelandic FAs, yes, but as my father has always told me, “You can always make more money, but once you’ve wasted time, that’s gone forever.” Gone indeed. Does anyone for a second think that Iceland are the equals of Spain? Even Eidur Gudjohnsen couldn't bring himself to play in this game, and he probably could have gotten on the same plane that the Barcelona players did, but most of them had the good sense to avoid this farce.

Holland went all the way to Landsdowne Road to dress dow Ireland 4-0, billed as a grudge match for the Irish exclusion of the Dutch from Korea/Japan 2002, even though only 1 of the 22 men that started the match were even on the rosters at the time. And Dirk Kuyt has once again proven that the friendlies are meaningless because despite his abject inability to produce yesterday, he’s still on the verge of a 10 million pound transfer to Liverpool. Will he become their Ruud van Nistelrooy, or their Baudenwin Zen…wait a minute, they already have Zenden, so I guess that's their Jan Kronkamp...sorry, their Erik Meijer (anyone remember him?) Clearly the Liverpool staff have taken nothing away from this match, and we’ll be seeing Dirk “Diggler” Kuyt, smearing the Anfield cinema-plex with his 8mm game. True Ireland are a quality side, but without Robbie Keane or Shay Given, are we to take this game seriously?

But by far the most ridiculous result, is the 1-1 draw between Brazil and Norway. With a “new-look” side, that excluded the so-called “magic” quartet, the the press-stopping headline reads: “Norway Maintains Its Unbeaten Record Against Brazil”. Now this isn’t a women’s international headline, but the absurdity of it, and/or drawing any conclusions from it, serve as a reminder that in football, the only thing that counts is results in the current competition. Since there is no current competition, it follows that this result is meaningless. No doubt some Swiss bank accounts have been replenished following this highway robbery, but the real surprise is that, given Brazil’s abysmal performance at the World Cup with their “best” players, it would have made more sense if they crushed Norway with their reserves. But even they couldn’t bring themselves to take this more seriously than a pick-up game with shiny red and yellow pennys. If, say, Brazil and Norway played in the final match of the first round of the World Cup in 2010, and a place in the next round were at stake, does anyone think the vaunted Norwegians would maintain their "unbeaten" record? Please.

The Solution

Do away with international friendlies altogether. That's right, just get rid of them. The schedule is already so congested, these games just pose a risk that an important player won’t be able to earn his wages for his club. That FIFA have reduced the weight of these games in their world rankings (and the fact that the rankings aren't used for World Cup seedings anyway) shows just how laughable is the manufactured meaning of these games. The argument against this is that managers need time to “experiment” prior to their Euro2008 qualifiers, but wouldn’t the games be more interesting if real players played with something at stake, without the physical burden of all these other meaningless games. Wouldn't that be a better basis for managers to judge their players? And if all the teams qualifying for Euro2008 didn’t play in these games, wouldn’t the effect be universal, so nobody would be unduly burdened?

There’s only one reason the show must go on, and it’s not so that the teams can “gel”, or to "vet" new talent, who are never used when it counts. They play these games to make some money for their FAs, which they promptly use to either buy vacation homes, promote themselves, or their football - probably in descending order of frequency. This may be good for youth teams within those FAs, or the women's game, but if that's the objective, then let’s really put something at stake. Then the value of these games, both sporting and monetary, would go through the roof.

Set aside a week in the summer of the off-year (2007) for a series of 1-week round robin charity competitions, the money coming from national team sponsors, of which there are plenty, with $10M going to the winner’s FA, to go directly to a fund managed by charities chosen by the players. That way the reason for the games is transparent (money) something is really at stake (money) the games have some bite, the FA’s save money on travel because they all go to one site for one-week only, and we don't waste our time watching these "River-Dance" exhibitions.

Another option would be to play only games that mean something. For example, CONCACAF, Asia and South America would have qualifers for the Gold Cup, Asian Cup of Nations and Copa America, each to be held every 2 years, but restricted to only the 4 teams that qualify, then have a 3 game round-robin, plus a final and a 4th place game. African nationals already do this, but that doesn't stop them from taking the money and running from these international friendlies either. Certainly the big money clubs in Europe, currently in love with young, cheap African talen would welcome the elimination of friendlies that take players who are exploited by their clubs, and exploit them for their FAs.

FIFA and UEFA will never accept this, of course, because they control the FA’s of the world through money, and so they need to offer the guarantee of these friendlies to ensure that the respective FA get their gratuities. Hence the stiff penalties for clubs refusing to allow players to attend. Frankly we’d all be better off if everybody took a little less money (clubs, players and FAs), and eliminated these games altogether. They use up players, they fail to deliver quality soccer, and they’re a big thorn in the side of club teams trying to prepare for their seasons.

Which, by the way, until the next real international competition comes around is all we really care about anyway.

2006-08-15T15:17:00.000-05:00

The English FA: Bringing the Game Into Disrepute

There’s a saying that a fish rots from the head. Truer words were never spoken when it comes to the real culprit for the never-ending string of international disappointments for the England team – the English FA.

The English FA are the only FA that refers to itself as the FA – no doubt invoking its historical importance as the founders of the rules of the modern game, and the hosts of the oldest football competition on the planet, The FA Cup. But given their unbearably asanine decisions and influence on the England team over the years, it’s become clear that delusions of grandeur are not restricted to history.

It’s hard to comprehend how, since 1966 (40 years in the wilderness) the FA from the country with the richest league on the planet, have managed to miss out on any international success, while comparative world football minnows with no pedigree to speak of like Denmark and Greece (yes, that’s Greece) have a European Championship each to their credit. But then again, it’s hard to imagine the same three-ring circus at any other national football association.

The Rub: PR vs Results

The problem boils down to the following – while other football associations are concerned primarily with results, the same cannot be said of the English FA. The FA is run by PR whores who are only concerned with promoting English football and will do anything for publicity, up to and including creating the worst possible environment for success. The irony is that nothing would promote English football more than an international victory of some kind (any kind), but that of course, is the least of their concerns.

If there is any doubt, consider the extent to which meaningless friendlies are hyped in England beyond the limits of credibility, and it comes as no surprise that results, whether or good or bad, and are exaggerated by media, managers and players alike. Is it any surprise then that the friendlies are treated as either dressed up training sessions (with limitless substitutions) or monumental clashes of the titans (like those with Germany and Argentina)? The relentless stream of absurd records and streaks that strain common sense (“England haven’t conceded a first half goal to S. American opponents outside of Wembley since 1963”) says it all. Listen for them in any Sky Sports studio broadcast (the FA's co-conspirators in this sordid tale), and you’ll see just how far out of context the FA and the English seem to put everything. The result? More hot-air than russian sauna and absurd expectations like, "We've really got a chance to win the whatever", that makes England players choke when things are really on the line. Nobody but Jerry Seinfeld cares so much about nothing.

As the FA Turns: The England Captain”cy”

If you’re not convinced, consider the role of the England captaincy in the FA. First off – who’s ever heard of a captaincy? What’s that like, a presidency? And how many times have we had to listen to meaningless interviews from David Beckham or Alan Shearer over the years, just because they’re the England captain? People act like the England captain is the prime minister, with the unheard of “vice-captaincy” recently given to Steven Gerrard as a kind of consolation prize for losing out on the “honor” to John Terry. Have you ever heard of a “vice-captain”? Of course not – only the English. The reason of course, is that in their never ending effort to promote English football, rather than go in search of real results (which is the base of the popularity of the Brazilian, Argentine and French) they’ve taken the easy way out and promoted English stars. How? They take the most popular EPL Englishmen, and trot them out as the stars of the England team, and attempt to pass off this band of under-achieving chokes as a star-studded line-up.

As such, the role of the captain has taken on a meaning all its own – completely out of context. Attaching all these contrived statistical "accomplishments" to it is just another way for the FA to say how great English football is – and that’s how you get a vice-captain named Steven Gerrard. Look, every team’s got to have a captain, and Steven Gerrard is as good as any, but when you get Steve McLaren paying a visit to Gerrard at Melwood to “inform” him of this “crucial” (which loosely translated means “important only in the eyes of the delusional English”) decision over which he’s pondered since taking the reigns, you get a dog and pony show that Barnum and Bailey would be proud of.

Have you ever heard of a captain “resigning” at a press conference, and then announcing to the world that he still wants to play for England (David Beckham 2006)? What's next? He gives us the V sign before boarding Air Force One and opening up a "captain-ential" library? How about a captain announcing before the competition that this will be his last in a shameless attempt to “good-will” himself into a permanent place in the tournamen (Alan Shearer Euro2000). This is all part of the surreal hype-machine that is the English FA, and makes coaches in other leagues do double-takes when they get the feeds from Sky Sports. Only in England my friends, only in England.

Eriksson and the FA: A Match Made in PR Heaven

And how about the 6-year reign of Sven-Goran Eriksson? He himself is a shameless, albeit tireless, self-promoter. That’s how he got caught betraying everybody including Aston Villa (a team with which he had no association, mind you) on an imaginary Arab oil-sheik’s yacht, while positioning himself to become the next manager of the club. This was nearly 5 months before David O’Leary got his bum off of that titanic. In fact, in their pathological obsession with self-promotion, the FA and Eriksson was a match made in PR heaven. The Swede never saw a microphone he didn’t like, made a deal with the devil called Becks, and even came up with the brilliance to drop Jermaine Defoe for Theo Walcott, who (surprise, surprise) didn’t step on the field once for England at the World Cup. This was right around the time when the rub on Eriksson was that he didn't take risks. All the while he's saying, “I know it’s a risk - a big risk - but sometimes in life you have to take risks.”

Yes, I’ll take “grabbing the headlines” for 1000 Alex.
This Swedish born manager, grabbed this headline, but took no actual risks, when he took 17-year old Theo Walcott to the World Cup, and never bothered to play him.
What is “Sven, the Risk-Taker?”
Correct for 1000 imaginary credibility points!

The truth is that in their obsession to promote the game, by building up their players beyond recognition, the FA created an unhealthy atmosphere of obsession with individuals, and this started long before Eriksson took over.

The Untouchables

We all remember that Alan Shearer, the anointed one, scored some goals at Euro96, but does anyone remember that he hadn’t scored for 20 months before that competition? So why was he an automatic selection for the next four years? Only the FA knows.

In 1996 there were 4 English players who had scored 25 goals or more in the EPL: Alan Shearer, Robbie Fowler, Kevin Phillips and Andy Cole. Guess how many featured at Euro96? You guessed it – 1 Alan Shearer. Why, you may ask?

Yes, I’ll take sucking up to the anointed one for 800 Alex.
Terry Venables did this in Euro96, because it was the only way to fulfill the FA’s dream of their poster boy lifting the trophy on home soil.
What is “picking Teddy Sheringham?”
Correct for 800 fleeting publicity points!

In fact Fowler and Phillips each had 3 season of 30+ goals in all competitions in the 90s, but in the Shearer-worship era of the modern FA, none of them got a serious chance to play for England, and so England’s results went as Shearer did. If he scored, they did well, if he didn’t they lost – no substitutes, no third strikers, they just lost.

Then it became Michael Owen’s turn to occupy the untouchable chair, following his publicity gold mine goal against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, and he proceeded to give England plenty of goals in friendlies, and exactly nothing at all when it counted. I think Graeme Souness said it best when he stated, “International friendlies are a waste of time, full-stop”. Full-stop indeed, because when it counted, Owen was about as useless as a one-armed man in a push-up contest. But didn’t he make the English proud when they beat Argentina in that “crucial” friendly against last year?

And how about David “the King of the media-whores” Beckham? Why, oh why was it so “crucial” for him to play every minute of every game in Germany 2006? Other than a few nice free-kicks, what did they get from him? When Aaron Lennon went into the game, and made Beckham look like he was playing with lead shoes, his wife Sven stood by her man, and moved Becks to…right-back? And when the English needed a spark in the quarterfinal against Portugal, they had to do it 10 with men, due in no small part to its obsession with an ill-tempered (is there any other kind) Wayne Rooney just coming off a six week vacation. Absurdity - pure absurdity.

Why did he do this? Because after promoting Captain Beckham to cabinet minister status, and Michael Owen as the “next” England captain, and Wayne Rooney as the second coming of Zeus, they couldn’t possibly drop all of them even, if it were in their best interest, because the manager, and by association the FA would have taken all the heat if they lost.

See, losing with a mix of "stars" that every team has, and workers that every team need, there is always the lingering question of, "Did we give it our best chance?" But when you lose with a team full of stars, the stars underperformed. Either way, if they lose, which they had to know they were going to lose, the heat's off the FA because they're doing what everyone want them to do - put the 11 biggest stars on the field at once and have at it. Never mind that any Guinness drinking imbecile in the UK could manage, if it were so simple. Managing is about preparation and then getting the chemistry right - that's what the manager is paid to know because it's hard to know. That's where the risk-taking comes in.

Well, as it were, they rolled with dice and they lost anyway, but luckily for them they had a welcome scapegoat in Cristiano Ronaldo, who I’m sure will be “bringing the game into disrepute” some time this September. As they say, watch this space. If Ronaldo doesn’t break a bone or bleed profusely from wounds caused by any tackle that sends him to ground, you can bet the FA will trot out their, “bringing the game into disrepute” bag just to show how tough they are on ill-disciplined players.

Never mind that Rooney and Scholes are now serving a 3-match bans for violent conduct in Amsterdam. Never mind that Rooney gets away with cursing visibly at every referee in the EPL, and never get so much as a caution. Never mind that he gets a way with shoving and intimidating anyone with a 3-yard radius every week in the EPL, but as soon as he mouths off in Europe, or steps on somebody’s groin in the World Cup, he’s rightfully sent off by referees who don't care that he's the English golden boy, just as the referees in England shouldn't. The FA take no responsibility for that absurdity, or the complicit referees who have one set of rules for foreigners, and another for British players. But say one bad word about Mike Riley, who somehow winds up refereeing and awarding phantom penalties to Man U every time he’s on the whistle, and it’s a 3-match ban for “bringing the game…”, well you get the point.

The Left Midfield Problem

Google it and you’ll (literally) get a million hits, most of them from English IPs. What’s this all about, you may ask? Well, an obsession with star quality, fomented by the FA, created a masochistic obsession with the left midfielder that never was – one Ryan Wilson Giggs. Giggs was the most popular young player in the EPL in the years 8-1 BC (that’s “Before Captain” Beckham) and actually turned out for England schoolboys before becoming an EPL star, a fact the FA wasted no time in pointing out over and over again - I'm sure it's still on the FA site. All the while hoping some of his popularity would still rub off on the England team, no doubt.

This created the unintended consequence of focusing the country’s attention on the “who is our Ryan Giggs problem” disguised as the “left midfield problem”. Sven tried everyone in that position, a bunch of clowns with good promo value, but no quality, and of course somehow the English convinced themselves that this was the missing piece of the puzzle.

7 years AD (“Anno Disastrum”) Joe Cole seems to have cemented that position as his own, but has it resulted in any international success? So what happened to the “left midfield problem”? Well, as Giggs aged, all that hot air about the left midfield problem dissipated, revealing what was obvious – that the problems with the England team go a lot deeper than some twinkle-toes and a permanent 5’clock shadow.

Manage England? No, O brigado!

When they had a chance to hire a real international manager with a proven record, and the England team’s number, I might add, they found a way to blow that too. It was all on the cards to sign Big Phil Scolari – a World Cup winner with Brazil, and the man responsible for the resurgence of the Portguese national team to greater international success than the English, with a much worse league, I might add.

But the FA being slaves to publicity, which also means being slaves to the British media, were so obsessed with looking like everything was in working order, insisted that Scolari announce his intentions before the World Cup, after embarrassingly having to sever ties with Eriksson 2 years before the end of his contract. Now, the hyperbolic media maelstrom that ensued aside, imagine you’re Scolari, you’re managing Portugal in the World Cup, and you come up against an England team you’ve announced you’re going to manage after the World Cup? What questions would be raised about your professionalism if you lose? What if your players foul the hell out of the English players, sending a couple of players to the MRI booth, “ruining England's World Cup dream” as it would have undoubtedly been portrayed in the media?

Only an imbecile or PR slut would welcome that situation, and if the roles had been reversed, I’m certain Eriksson would have obliged. But even the prospect of being the highest paid national team manager in history wasn’t enough to lure Scolari to soccer’s version of the cirque du soleil. And for that matter, rather than admitting that Eriksson was the wrong man for the job mid-way through his term and hiring A.B.E (anybody but Eriksson) the FA couldn’t resist the need to appear to be the wise and steady hands, and stuck with Eriksson through fornication with their secretaries, crap results, and no entertainment value to their football. In fact the only thing that forced their hand was, not six years of missed opportunities, but an MTV real-world sting operation by some hacks from the tabloids. And the rest they say is history.

Just like the FA’s importance.

New Manager, Same Story

And the signs are as clear as day that McLaren, who although he made the obvious decision to drop Beckham, is falling down the same path as his predecessor. No sooner was he picked, than the immediate label of sloppy-seconds was splashed all over him. Five minutes later they were asking him who would be his next captain? The FA, trying to look like they’re just keeping the ball rolling, have picked an international manager with a dubious managerial record, and whose only international record is that of being Eriksson’s number two…pun intended. And with all the changes that he’s making, one wonders what the hell those two geniuses talked about in the boot room?

Further more, rather than taking the obvious decision to drop Lampard and play Gerrard in the middle with Hargreaves, he’s chosen to play Gerrard on the right. On the right! At Liverpool that may make sense some of the time. But they don’t do it all the time, and certainly wouldn’t if they had Aaron Lennon available (insert Jermain Pennant at Liverpool). Instead he puts Gerrard on the right, and keeps Lamps in the middle, and voila – you’ve got your headlines!

“Come watch this meaningless friendly for England with EPL stars, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and the current English flavor of the month ____! (Enter appropriate flavor of the month: Shaun Wright Phillips, Andy Johnston, Dean Ashton, etc.)”

The circus comes to Old Trafford this week, until the other FA brainchild – the new Wembley stadium – completes its design phase. Frankly I could give less than a damn about the England team, because my interests are only in the EPL, which I can’t get enough of, but that is no thanks at all to their albatross: the English FA.

The sooner heads roll at the FA, the sooner England will have some silverware to show for all their resources.

2006-08-10T17:50:00.000-05:00

Soccer’s Greatest Myth

The biggest myth in the game of soccer is the presumed relationship between the quality of a domestic league and the quality of a national team. Nowhere on earth is that myth more zealously purported than in the US. And given the quality of results we’ve seen last month from MLS teams against international opponents, the inevitable round of nonsensical predictions about the impact these results will have on the US Men’s national team is in full force.

From the MLS All-Star victory over Chelski, to DC United’s 4-0 shellacking of Celtic and 1-1 draw against Real Madrid, the unbearable punditry postulations are flowing like unruly away supporters from a tear-gassed section of the stands. An unfortunate side-effect of the current deluge of soccer available on US television, is the commensurate barrage of idiotic commentary from American analysts who are either ignorant of soccer's greatest myth, or just plain ignorant.

The theory goes as follows: in order to have a strong national team, you need a strong domestic league that serves as a convenient feeder of quality players, which translates into to success in international competitions. This theory, which upon examination is so vigorously sold around the world, not just in the US, one wonders who is responsible for its perpetuation and for what purpose.

Let’s start with the supposed best leagues in the world today in no particular order:

The EPL (England)
La Liga (Spain)
Serie A (Italy)
The Bundesliga (Germany)
Ligue 1 (France)
Eredivisie (Holland)

At first glance, the myth rings true, since next to the names of the leagues are some of the best national teams in the world. But curiously absent are a few countries that are perennial favorites for every international tournament they enter, as well as a few notable absences that have actually won something with rather mediocre leagues and a few anomalies to the theory that bear explanation, and we'll get to later.

The following is the first installment in a series of posts that dispels the greatest myth in soccer, provides an explanation for why it isn’t true, and concludes with some ideas of what actually makes a great footballing nation that consistently or even just periodically, challenges for international titles. Ultimately, the last post will examine MLS, the US national team, and what, if any, ought to be the relationship between the two, and why it’s currently so out of synch.

The Problem with England

The problem with England is that it's probably the only country in the world whose media and out of control PR black hand, by their hype of anything they can get their hands on, contribute to unreasonable epxectations, unbearable pressure and one big failure after another. By far the biggest example of the league to national team myth is the EPL, the old English First Division, and the England team. Remember that England haven’t won anything in 40 years (1 World Cup on home soil - nothing before and nothing since), while the EPL, according to an audit by Deloitte & Touche in 2002 accounts for 25% of all profits in European football. One explanation of why England have failed so miserably internationally, despite having the most financially successful league in the world, is that the EPL, in terms of footballing quality is simply over-rated.

Now anyone who’s ever suffered through 90 minutes of an EPL classic between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Southampton may commiserate. But inconvenient to this explanation is the fact that Manchester United and Liverpool have both won the European Cup in the last 7 years, and English teams have been in the European Cup semi-finals or quarter-finals every year since the 1996-1997 season. Modern economic considerations aside, it is on historical analysis that this theory really falls on its face.

Consider that between 1974 and 1985, long before the EPL began, English teams won an astounding six European Cups in a row, 7 out 11, and an equally impressive 9 final appearances, between Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Leeds United (Liverpool won 4 of 5 finals in which they played, while Leeds played in and lost their lone final in 1974 to the great Ajax team). So from all that interational pedigree and all that success, what exactly did the England team win in that period? You guessed it, a nice hot cup of jack squat.

Now the cynic would suggest that the best players in those Liverpool teams weren't even English. A sampling of the Liverpool stars from that period suggests as much (Kenny Dalglish, Alan Hansen and Graeme Souness are Scottish, John Toshack and Ian Rush are Welsh, not to mention all the Irishmen). You may also say that the EPL is currently overloaded with foreign talent, English players don’t make up the best teams in the EPL, and thus the national team doesn’t stand to benefit from the success of those teams. But take a look at the following list of players, and ask yourself what international manager wouldn't like to get his hands on the following players:

Wayne Rooney
Paul Robinson
Gary Neville
Ashley Cole
Sol Campbell
Jamie Carragher
John Terry
Rio Ferdinand
Steven Gerrard
Frank Lampard
Joe Cole
Jermaine Jenas
Aaron Lennon
Peter Crouch
Michael Carrick

What do these players have in common? They were all regulars in the top 5 teams in the EPL. In fact, that list doesn’t give the entire picture, there are more players not included, in this list, that either came from the EPL (David Beckham) and/or are in teams not in the top 5 (Michael Owen), or just weren't even included in the National team at all (Jermain Defoe, Shaun Wright Phillips). You could argue that this is, in fact, an embarrassment of riches - and you'd be right.

Curiously, the best English players on the best English teams, are precisely the players who have miserably under-achieved for England. Frankie “Four Fingers” Lampard didn’t see a shot he didn’t like in Germany – he also never saw his name on the scorer’s sheet, despite playing every minute of every game for England, and literally taking more shots than anyone in the tournament. And while Gerrard made a good account of himself in the first 3 games, he faltered in the knock-out stages. For that matter, who can forget his ghastly give away to Thierry Henry that cost England a point against France in Portugal 2004. Joe Cole looked great for about 15 minutes against Sweden, and Becks was his usual useless self for all but the 60 seconds he spent taking every free kick awarded to England for 5 games. Rooney got himself sent off when it counted, as did Beckham in France 1998. In fact, thanks to the extraordinary David Seaman’s very ordinary positionary sense (a la Peter Shilton in 1990) in Korea/Japan 2002, England squandered a chance to overcome a 10-man Brazil team. This is by no means a complete list; it's merely a taste of the littany of failures for the England team at major international competitions.

Frankly, what looks like a choke, acts like a choke and sounds like a choke is…well a choke. And that’s precisely what England players have given us since 1966. Don’t believe me? How many penalty shoot-outs have England won in international competition? How many England players regularly take penalties for their clubs? The answers: none and a lot, and 2 of them missed theirs in Germany 2006 against Portugal. Here a choke, there a choke; choke, choke everywhere.

Ol’ McEngland had a team that can't pull it off when it counts – and that’s why, despite having some of the best players, in the best league in the world they haven’t won the big one. Any big one. Can that change? Sure, but does it have anything to do with the quality of the league? Absolutely not: it has to do with the character of their players, or more precisely the lack thereof in the clutch. Every great international team has had one or more great players that rose to the occasion and lifted their team to the promised land – every great international team except England’s, that is.

2006-08-01T15:29:00.000-05:00

Musical Clubs: The Transfer Market Winners and Losers of 2006

Until Lucky Luciano Moggi got pinched talking dirty on the phone to the referess, many of the transfers resulting from the Italian job were unimaginable just six months ago. But in the 40 days and 40 nights since the announcement of the scandal verdicts, we have been and will be treated to one of the most surreal transfer seasons in recent memory.

Van Nistelrooy to Real Madrid

Undoubtedly the most notable transfer of the season is Ruud van Nistelrooy to Real Madrid. There is no doubting the quality of a striker, who has, in 5 short years with United, scored 3 goals in 4 games on average, but all good things must come to an end, and this one is (finally) over.

With service from Beckham and loads of possession to keep the chances coming, this is a good move for the player, whose untouchable status at United dissipated like a Dutch fog towards the end of last season. Highly motivated to prove his worth, and in need of performances to impress a stern boss, Ruud will have everything to play for, including Euro2008, and it’s likely that Capello will find it as difficult as Ferguson not to play him.

Showing incomprehensible dedication to Ibrahimovic, who gives the ball away as often as he keeps it, the harsh exterior of the man at the helm of Real belies a keen sense of pragmatism, and nobody can ignore the Dutchman’s scoring rate and obvious synergy with the qualities of David Beckham, who will likely stay put under Capello, on the right to serve his signature balls into the area. Now he won’t have to aim for a gap between two enormous teeth (Ronaldo), or a midget whose nose is longer than his legs (Raul).

For United, the loss of van Nistelrooy will be difficult, given the sporadic scoring of their current strike force (including Rooney) and no comparable replacement in sight. Look for United to struggle early on as they come to terms with the absence of an average 30+ goals per season from one of the most selfish players in the world.

Sheva and Ballack to Chelski

I’ve always wondered how long Frankie “Four Fingers” Lampard can go on scoring 20 goals a season for the Blues, and now I know that Mourinho has wondered the same. At 30 million pounds, Andriy Shevchenko is worth every penny, and has given Chelski the chance to win the Champions League as well as repeat as EPL winner the third year on the trot. While Drogba is a blunt instrument, Shevchenko can give Chelski the clinical finishing they need to win tight matches they’ll surely have in Europe and the EPL, and can there be any better option for a single center forward strike force than Sheva receiving crosses from Robben and Cole? For the club it’s a big win.

It’s hard to imagine that Sheva could have it better at Chelski than at Milan, but the 3 million he pocketed from the transfer will do his bank account no harm. From a footballing perspective, he’ll have just as much possession and service as he had at Milan, and there’s no better scorer in European competition. Strong, fast and relentless, he’ll have no problems adjusting to the Premiership – really there’s no downside for him either.

In Ballack, there’s no better passer in the world, and his age and form make him a great pickup for Chelski both domestically and in Europe, where his goal scoring could add to a paltry total from Lampard on that stage. The style of play and professionalism is similar to what he had at Bayern, and he is unlikely to have any problems adjusting to the style in England. However, there is a small question of a partnership with Lampard – I see Lampard being just as selfish as he was with England. Never seeing a shot he doesn’t like, Lamps is likely to clash with Ballack tactically, and that could make things hard for Ballack. Not to mention how they’re going to fit him in a center midfield with Essien and Makelele – who may find himself at stopper to make room.

For Chelski, it’s a brilliant move – tactically and in terms of what he brings to the team, Ballack is a perfect fit. Tight defenses in the EPL will put a premium on the quality of long pass to the wings, a Ballack specialty. Any injuries to Essien, Makelele or Lampard could see him becoming very prominent very soon. Question: will Mourninho be able to drop Lamps if he still playing as poorly as he did in the WC? I have no doubts, but for this transfer it’s the only question mark as any team in the world would love to have him.

Juventus Exodus

So far they’ve lost Cannavaro and Emerson to Real, Thuram and Zambrotta to Barcelona and Vieira to Inter, with Ibrahimovic and Trezeguet likely to follow. Frankly, I’d be surprised – no shocked – if they made it back to the Serie A next season with a 17 point penalty. Cannavaro and Emerson give Madrid the one thing they’ve lacked since the departure of Makelele: steel in the spine of the team. It remains to be seen how long Emerson will last with injuries, but Cannavaro is a no-brainer for Real.

Zambrotta may be the best right back in the world, so for Barcelona to be able to replace the likes of Belleti and Oleguer with a World Cup winner like him, is brilliant. The Thuram question is a little trickier – the Spanish game is a little faster than Italy, and while his pace has dropped off, at the World Cup he had Gallas at his side as a minder, and did pretty well on his own. Who will he displace in the center of defense: Puyol or Marquez? Tactically there’s no question that Puyol should take a long walk off of a short plank, but it’s hard to see Riijkaard dumping his captain. Look for Thurman to share time with Marquez until a Puyol injury makes the decision for him and then the proper combination will emerge of its own momentum.

Vieira to Inter is interesting – Cambiasso should make sure his parka still fits, because there’s no way you can play him before Vieira, but Inter have an amazing knack for getting it all wrong when it counts. Interestingly, midfield is probably where Inter are weakest, and his arrival could give them their second scudetto in 2 years – maybe this time they’ll be able to celebrate it. BTW – do you think there’ll be any fireworks between Vieira and Materazzi (the animal) in training? You better believe it.

Carrick (not) the New Keane

At first glance the 14 million pound transfer seems on the high side, but consider a few things: he’s 25 years old, his tepid performance at the World Cup lacked bite, but not quality, remember the premium Man U pays on all major transfers, and Ryan Giggs, a converted winger, probably wouldn’t make the first 11 as a center midfielder on any of the other top 5 teams in the EPL. As such, the price for Carrick makes a lot more sense. Clearly the weakest link at United is the center of midfield, and they will need a steady production of quality passes (where Giggs is more adventurous than needed in that position by nature) to spring their strikers and wingers. Let’s not forget that with Scholes and Giggs past 30, this is a move as much for the future as it is for the coming season.

Carrick wins big both financially and professionally. Reportedly bagging a 50,000 pound a week salary, he’ll make just a bit less than Roy Keane did before he moved to Celtic. Truth be known, Carrick is one of the best kept secrets in English football, with only Tottenham fans truly recognizing his talent. It may be the spring board Carrick needs to finally be considered for a place in the England midfield, something he was rarely afforded in the reputation-laden Eriksson era.

The key will be how quickly he can gain an understanding with Scholes and Giggs, as they will certainly take up a majority of the play through midfield. If Carrick can add some steel to his game, with hard tackling and tracking a desperate need for United with the departure of Roy Keane, he may very well turn out to be the best transfer of the EPL, and given that he’s likely to be the only big transfer for United, he will need to be.

Ruthless Rafa

The rap on Benitez is his penchant for buying cheap from the markets he knows. And with the majority of his signings coming either from the EPL, or La Liga, that assessment isn’t far from the truth. But if nothing else, Benitez is ruthless. In the two years he’s been at the helm of the would-be title contenders, Benitez has signed and dumped Morientes, Pellegrino, Nunez and Josemi. All highly praised upon arrival from Spain.

Nobody would dispute the wisdom of those decisions, which demonstrates a double edged-sword – he may not get it right, but when he gets it wrong he’s not afraid to admit it. Add to the list the litany of Gerrard Houllier’s sloppy seconds, and Benitez has given the chop to more people than the French revolution. Gone are Owen, Baros, Cisse, Diao, Cheyrou, Kirkland, Le Tallec, Sinama-Pongolle, Vignal, Biscan, Whitbread and Mellor. This list is by no means complete, but gives you an idea of how willing he is to bury players while they’re still (professionally) breathing, although the Owen decision was out of his hands. What isn’t so well known is his willingness to buy British talent. With Fowler, Crouch, Bellamy and Pennant, Liverpool have bought more British talent than Chelski, Man U and Arsenal combined, and shows his appreciation for players that can function in the strange EPL environment, which for all it’s foreign talent, retains the characteristics that distinguish this league from those on the continent – fast, fast and faster. To do this he’s had to take huge risks.

This year we’re treated to unknown foreign transfers Mark Gonzalez, a Chilean who recently received his work permit, and would have had an easier time crossing the Rio Grande than the English Channel, Fabio Aurelio a Brazilian who excelled at Sevilla and Gabrial Paletta who will be the best defender at Liverpool in 2 years time. Of the 3, Gonzalez is the most likely to feature in the first team, although his arrival may light a fire under Harry Kewell in a way only the risk of being dumped can. I would be surprised if Aurelio lasted 2 years, because Riise will push, and if Traore can’t find a new team, it could be very crowded at left back.

But it is the two British transfers that will be the difference this year. In Bellamy and Pennant Benitez couldn’t have bought two faster more aggressive attackers in England, but he has also taken a huge risk given their disciplinary records. Both will benefit enormously from the move, as they’ll get better service/finishes than their previous teams, but Liverpool would be the clear winner if Pennant puts in as many crosses as he did last year (more than anyone in the EPL) and if Bellamy continues his impressive goal every-other-game scoring rate.

The biggest problem I see is how to put Gerrard, Sissoko and Alonso on the field at the same time while playing 2 strikers. With just one, Bellamy could find himself on the right, something he hated about Newcastle, and Pennant would have too much time on his hands for my taste. This midfield trio may be the best in the premiership after Chelski’s, but playing all 3 at once may force off a striker, making life very hard indeed for Liverpool’s strikers. If a formula is found, such as playing a 4-3-3 , we could see more goals and a real title challenge from Liverpool this year.

2006-07-27T10:24:00.000-05:00

Good Bye and Good Riddance Mr. McBride

Today it was announced that Brian McBride, striker for Fulham FC and the US National team, has retired from international football. My take on it is: good bye, and good riddance.

Why, you may ask, do I say good riddance to Mr. McBride? Oh, let me count the ways. Let's start with a basic premise on McBride that seems to go unnoticed. He is a very limited player. Even at his own club, Fulham, he is used primarily as a substitute. The reason is that he's only useful in very specific situations; namely when a team lacking in resourcefulness and ideas resigns itself to dumping a century of crosses into the area, and hoping that a big, strong player, who's not afraid to get smashed in the face (enter McBride), will get onto the end of one of them.
He knows this, and is more than happy to collect an EPL style check for an MLS style player, with no complaints, mind you. And if you were as lacking in skill and ability as he is, you probably would too - so he's the perfect substitute. Never complains about being a bit-part player: never should, and never will.

That's great for Fulham, because they're a small team with little quality and one path to success. Gone are the swashbuckling days of Jean Tigana's men that supporters of other teams actually enjoyed watching, to be replaced by the likes of Brian McBride, and whoever else steals a paycheck from them from week to week. But for the US National team, a team that needs to build, combine and create their way to goals, he's been utterly useless. As evidence I would enter his performance in the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

As such it makes you wonder why, then, did he have to start and play 90 minutes every game for the US in this World Cup, and for that matter, seemingly every game of consequence for the US in the last 4 years? Only one reason: reputation. Watch one of his "brilliant" performances for the US in Germany and I'll bet you can't count a single time that he strings together more than 3 passes in a row without giving it away. Why? Because, as I noted, he's very limited. The truth is, anyone who has suffered through watching him plod his way through 90 minutes of futility can see that the man can barely function with the ball at his feet, which you'd think is a rather essential requirement of a professional footballer.

If you disagree, ask yourself these questions: does he run at defenders? Does he create his own shots? Can he even keep posession? And for all the time he used up in the World Cup this year, did he score? And what did he do when he wasn't scoring (which was all the time I might add)? You guessed it - absolutely nothing.

His career record for the Columbus crew was 50 goals in 137 games, that's barely a goal every 3 games, and that's playing 90 minutes because he's none other than the great American hope, Brian McBride. What kind of scoring rate is that? Nowhere else would a player scoring once every 3 games be an automatic starter - not even Fulham FC. And as for his 24 goals for Fulham - that's a goal every 4 games! Even worse and nothing to shake a stick at. Even Eric Wynalda, who was hardly the most prolific goal-scoring international that ever played, and spent a third of his games on the wings, had more goals for the US national team. And he did a hell of a lot more than score with headers. Hell, if being the leading scorer for your national team is the measure, then I give you Bruce Murray (remember him?) who was the all-time leading scorer for the US for 10 years, with a gobsmacking goal-scoring rate of 16 goals in 91 games. Point well taken.

Let's be honest, McBride is a glorified squad player who through marketing, and a couple of goals in Korea/Japan 2002, has been annointed the greatest thing in US soccer since Hugo Perez. His limitations, combined with his inclusion in every game has meant that quality strikers are all merely vying to play along side him, and even so are really only playing with half a player and as such he becomes a drag on them too. So not only do you get nothing out of McBride, but you get very little from whoever is stuck playing along side him. Yes, we've heard all the platitudes about "the little things" and, "in the trenches", etc. That may help a team full of stars when there's nobody to do the work (a la Claude Makelele at Real Madrid, or Chelski), but that was certainly not the case with the US. And for the record, what exactly did the US get from all the "hard work" McBride put in - 3 games and 1 goal (on purpose).

In fact I can't recall a single shot this guy took in Germany - never mind a shot on goal. Rumor has it that he took a few in training, but those are as yet, unconfirmed. Whereas Eddie Johnson, on the other hand played 20 mintues against the Czech republic had 2 and (heaven forbid) ran at defenders! What a concept. Let's take a look at the coaches who used their strikers effectively: Germany used Neuville, Podolski and Klose for 9 goals in 7 games - not bad. Italy rotated Totti, Gilardino, Inzaghi, Iaquinta, Toni and Del Piero for 5 goals between them, and given their defense, was more than enough to win the entire tournament. France used Henry, Trezeguet, Saha, Govou and Wiltord for 3 goals (granted they all went to Henry) but their contributions got them to the final, and how many goals do you need from your strikers when you have Zidane, Ribery and Vieira bagging 6 between them?

Now look at the teams that stuck with one or two strikers no matter what: Brazil stuck with Ronaldo and Adriano for 4 games and got 3 goals out of them put together. England used Owen, Rooney and Crouch and look what that got them - 1 bloody goal in 5 bloody games. Bloody hell!

Here's the rub. Nobody is indispensible in any team, no matter how good they have been in the past (and McBride has never been THAT good) and those coaches who insist on sticking with certain players because they are assumed to be the best do themselves no favors. The US with McBride is a great example of that. They had players available and never used them because they just assumed that McBride had to be used, and look what it got them - no goals, no posession, no setup, no combinations, and no-second round qualification. Honestly, in retrospect, given his performance, could Brian Ching or Eddie Johnson possibly have been any worse?

McBride leaving the national team is the best thing that could have happened to it. Just like Shearer leaving England, it paves the way for others who actually score from time to time to have a shot. But thanks to Eriksson, that theory went right out the window in Germany - the genius from Sweden simply replaced Shearer with a half fit Michael Owen, to the extent that rather than bringing Jermaine Defoe, or Darren Bent along, in case they were needed (and of course that didn't happen, right?) he brings Theo Walcott who would have been better served taking his learner's permit exam this summer. One wonders if Eriksson's intent was to give the kid the experience (something his own club manager doesn't think he's ready for) or if he simply didn't want to pressure himself with the decision to replace Owen and/or Rooney if the need arose (which of course it never did, right?).

And how about Brazil relying on Fat Albert Ronaldo, who if he just got the hell out of the way they might discover they've got a few forwards in Brazil who can play. Unfortunately Carlos Alberto Parreira's faith in him cost Brazil a chance at the semi-final, and he has left in his (rather large wake) a graveyard of would have/could have forwards who score every week for their club teams, and no obvious successor to the gap-toothed phoenomenon from Rio de Janeiro. Lesson learned: no matter what his name is, if you have to make changes, make them, or you'll be watching the final on the telly, and coaching from the cheap seats.

Blind faith in players, like McBride, that don't do the basics because they've got a reputation gets you nothing. Which is exactly what we got from McBride this year - nothing.

Good riddance.