Ethan Dean-Richards

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The Champions League final has been about adverts since its inception. If you’re looking to be convinced to buy beer, a television sports package or anything else you can think of to help feel masculine, spending a couple of hours tuned in to coverage of Borussia Dortmund versus Bayern Munich will do you very little harm, aside from the fact that all of these are terrible, terrible products. But this year’s final has an added bonus: the game itself is actually going to be an advert this time, with most of Dortmund’s exciting young players being linked to other, less successful, but financially rolling in it clubs.

Pick a newspaper or television channel right now and their transfer roundup section will be full of Dortmund players. The Guardian’s football page is full of match previews and bland chatter about the game; alongside all that is the ‘buyer’s guide’ to Dortmund. Rather than being able to celebrate the moment – the brilliant achievement – of playing in the Champions League final, the most exciting team in Europe this season is being discussed as a set of assets, ready to move on to bigger things. Not bigger footballing achievements – they’re at the pinnacle there – but bigger pay-days.

Mario Goetze isn’t playing because he’s injured. Or ‘injured’, depending on how you want to think about the world. Dortmund’s best player, whether he’s not playing for this reason or because he really is injured, is playing for their opponents next season. Dortmund’s reward for bringing him up through the ranks is having him taken off their hands as soon as he starts looking a bit handy. ‘Let’s play a game. Us against you.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Before we start, we’ll have all your best players’ ‘That doesn’t sound like a great game’ ‘You’ve missed the point of this game.’

Watching Dortmund play tomorrow should be fun, but instead it’s miserable – spelt ‘F-U-C-K T-H-I-S’. I mean, Juergen Klopp spoke about the process he’s working against earlier on in the week: “Shinji Kagawa is one of the best players in the world and he now plays 20 minutes at Manchester United – on the left wing! My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes. Central midfield is Shinji’s best role. He’s an offensive midfielder with one of the best noses for goal I ever saw.” Kagawa was nicked from Dortmund last season, now he’s being wasted by United. The teams Dortmund are being picked apart by have so much money that they literally can’t spend it all on a first eleven, they’ve had to start putting together entire squads of talent made elsewhere. So rather than getting to see it every week at Dortmund, the talent gets bottled up. What fun!

None of this is new, it’s just an extreme example of a footballing culture gone bad. Teams like Dortmund take all of the risks on players, either developing them for years or picking them up when they aren’t certain to be worth the money, and then get no time to enjoy the reward when those risks come off , or rather when the result of careful calculations come off. Teams like United and Bayern, on the other hand, incur none of the risks, because they’ve got the money to buy guaranteed talent. Why’s this bad? Well, if you think things being this unequal and this unfair counts as bad, which I do, then it’s bad. But even if you don’t care about those things – even if you regularly masturbate over images of famous capitalists – you’re going to have to agree that this process is just boring, and that makes it bad too.

When Bayern play Dortmund we don’t get to watch Gotze, one of the most talented players in the world, maybe because he’s already been bought by Bayern. Worse, we don’t get to see this Dortmund team grow together, because it’s going to be picked apart by clubs who have been far less astute than Dortmund, but, largely, happen to have more money than them. And that all takes away from the spectacle of what, in terms of ball-kicking alone, could be a great final. It has to take away from it. We’re watching one long advertisement. BUT I DON’T WANT TO BUY A F*CKING ELECTRIC RAZOR.

Benteke

Christian Benteke is being linked with a move away from Aston Villa and the same principle as just described applies. When Villa signed him last summer, I remember people saying that he wasn’t even that highly rated given what Villa were spending on him. They got one season of reward for that risk and now a bigger club will take him off their hands. Booooorrrrriinnnng.

On David Beckham’s retirement, many words have been spoken – a large amount of these have achieved the important mark of being equally as bland as the man himself. But professional opinion-giver Chris Waddle managed the best opinion on Beckham. “You can go down a list of footballers since the Premier League and I don’t think David Beckham would probably be in the first 1000,” was what Chrissy said to the world so that everyone could hear. And he really did say that. I’m not lying. I’ve not taken him out of context here, stripping away valuable, clever thinking to make a sensible man sound silly. That’s what he said and meant.

What I think has happened here is that “Former England midfielder Chris Waddle has trashed the retiring David Beckham” essentially by mistake. Not that he didn’t mean what he was saying; but that he didn’t realise exactly what he meant. Something which regularly afflicts former football players. When Chris formed his opinion-which like all his opinions do have to be formed to happen at some point, they don’t appear from nowhere, despite all the evidence which suggests they do-he didn’t realise quite the implications of that opinion. He didn’t realise that he was essentially calling David Beckham a mid-table player.

You see, it comes down to maths. One thousand better Premier League players in the last 21 seasons: let’s try this out. Say that Top Four Player means Good Player. About 8 players start every single week for Top Four teams; that’s 32 Good Players per season. Multiply that by 21 seasons and you get 672 Good Players, except that number is meaningless because a lot of the Good Players in one season will be the same Good Players in the next season and the 672 figure counts them twice. My guess from this, anyway, is it leaves around four hundred Good Players in the Premier League era. Now, Chris Waddle has not only said Beckham wouldn’t fit into this 400 Top Four players, but he wouldn’t have him in the next 400 either. Or the next 200 after that.

I don’t want to say it, but I feel the question must at least be asked: has Chris Waddle, professional opinion-giver, got his numbers wrong? Because it feels like for someone to say that Beckham – however good exactly you think he is – is not in the best 1000 footballers to play in the Premier League requires one of two things: either 1. An extremely unusual interpretation of what the word ‘best’ means, or 2. A miscalculation, involving a large overestimation of the number of people to have actually played in the Premier League.

Now, far be for me to guess at what precisely Chris Waddle is thinking at any one time, but I think the second option is the most likely – the miscalculation. And if it is yet more Number Two from Chris Waddle, I think it might be, maybe, a little bit, good reason to question why exactly the people with camera lenses, tape-recorders and media jobs to fill keep going to ex-players for their opinions on the football. These are people who don’t realise what their own opinions are. Chris Waddle thinks David Beckham is outside of the top 1000 players to play in the Premier League. I’ve tried to contact him to ask just how many players he believes have played in the Premier League but heard nothing back, so have taken his answer to be “one squillion billion”. Chris Waddle has accidental opinions.

Okay, doubtless People Like Chris have some use. Laughing at them at fun fairs wouldn’t do, so sticking one of them on a panel as one of a few opinion-givers, with a very specific job talking about the ball-kicking bit in football, maybe, might be fine. But the deference to People Like Chris in football coverage should surely stop. Do I want to know how a dressing room works? A group of men coming together to do a job: I think I can guess. Is it interesting to hear an ex-pro’s opinion on how it must have felt so good to score that goal? I do not.

Where is this deference coming from? It’s got to be intellectual laziness from producers, because in terms of ex-player’s opinions, it goes two ways. Either it’s an insight which only they could give, on the dressing room or fame or how to kick a football, in which case we don’t have the exact insight but we have enough information to guess for ourselves or, in fact, it’s just not that interesting. Or it’s an insight which anyone could give, as is the case with Waddle on Beckham – because in terms of Beckham, Waddle is an outsider, just like anyone else. In both cases, we really shouldn’t value Chris Waddle’s.

Yet the people with money to spend on football coverage do. They choose to spend their cash on people who have opinions by mistake. David Beckham outside of the top 1000 Premier League players indeed, Chris. Well, you’re 1001 then, you idiot.

Neville Southall isn’t a good solution, either.

About three months ago the football season ended, albeit they have carried on playing the remaining fixtures out of a misplaced sense of pride and perhaps, more than anything, force of habit. The biggest European leagues were won in January and the Champions League was Bayern Munich’s as soon as we all realized that Barcelona and Real Madrid were a lot shorter in person. The result is that meaningful football has been replaced with plans for next season. And this is where it gets deeply serious. Because it’s not just the clubs who have plans for next year; it’s the fans who have too. And I think it’s time for a deeply serious discussion of these deeply serious opinions.

At the moment, Barcelona are the most obvious place to aim opinions at, of course, having just been hammered 7-0 by Bayern. Losing 7-0 is, we must accept, a legitimate reason to start thinking about the future—if you lose 7-0 you are not wrong to question yourself, because you have just lost 7-0—and I think it’s partly this absolute necessity which has brought the best opinions out of football fans this week. Asked the question, ‘Barcelona: where do they go from here after this humiliating exit?’, one genuine, real life, football opinion read like this, and was not exceptional:

“Two central defenders and a striker.

Play 4-4-2 and actually attack teams.

A new goalie wouldn’t hurt them.”
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The Jose Mourinho Style Guide

Whenever one is about to interact with another human being, it is worth considering that we are all naked underneath our clothes, especially my editor, Richard Whittall. My now incarcerated friend gave me that advice some years ago, and it has come in handy more often than I like to admit. It’s advice which football managers who come into contact with Jose Mourinho would do well to consider, so honed, these days, is his ability to psych opponents out merely with his dress sense. Most games Mourinho enters into were decided in the morning beforehand, when he stood in front of the mirror, in his pants, and selected his outfit. You may wish to step outside and take a moment to examine that image.

To explain the phenomenon fully, a brief history of how Jose has chosen to dress himself on the touchline for big games: I bring you The Jose Mourinho Style Guide.

At Porto, of course, there was the coat. What did it say? What did it mean? What was his angle? I’m not a psychologist (yet) but I do know (some) people, and I know what a fashionable coat means: it means, broadly speaking: ‘Sir Alex Ferguson, you are mine’. Specifically, though, the coat was a statement about power. In his first generally acknowledged act of genius, Mourinho concealed what was beneath the coat (i.e. himself), thus making him untouchable. It’s like this: the most powerful people are the people you never see; you can’t take them down because you don’t know enough about them. If you think Mourinho didn’t realise this when he bought That Coat, then you are tactically naïve.

At Chelsea, he continued with the Armani coat and it worked. At this point change for change’s sake would have been foolish. Ferguson struggled for two years to understand what was going on beneath the coat and Mourinho collected two Premier League titles whilst he was figuring it out. It’s what led to Ferguson’s infamous ‘I want to undress Jose Mourinho’ quote. Infamous only, of course, in that I made it up, and will soon be on the end of a lawsuit because of it. Then, in July 2007, Mourinho sold the coat, auctioning it off for charity. Only a sociopath would call that generosity an act of weakness, but for the good of in-depth analysis, I am willing to be that sociopath: giving away the coat was an act of weakness. Within months he was sacked as Chelsea manager.
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The state of things . The Men’s PFA’s footballer of the year shortlist is in, and it’s another indication that everything in the entire world is completely terrible. I want out. It goes like this: Luis Suarez (controversial because he’s a racist baddie), Juan Mata (loved by all because he is a cutie and a good player with a beard), Robin Van Persie (admired by all because he is greying at the sides), Gareth Bale (a divisive player: do you fancy him for the muscles or think he looks bizarre?), Eden Hazard (whom everyone forgot about after a while) and Michael Carrick, who errr, hold on, wait, Michael Carrick? Player of the Year? The state of things!

The first problem with this list doesn’t exactly involve its individual components. Apart from Michael Carrick. Rather the problem is, if these six players do, collectively, represent the best the Premier League has to offer—and they probably do—then that really does say bad things about the ol’ EPL. Of the six, only one could be defined in any sense as an interesting character, and that is Suarez, because he has been found guilty of racism, has bitten opponents, and has been accused of being the biggest cheats currently playing football, professionally or otherwise. The others are all quite nice, a bit egotistical but not in a fun way, and Michael Carrick. So, the list reminds us that the league is either bland or nasty, take your pick from the worst pick ‘n’ mix selection eva.

The second problem is that Michael Carrick is on the list. I’ve checked again and he definitely is on there. I’m checking again now and he’s still there. Michael Carrick has almost definitely made the list of the six best players in the league. It’s a trick of the light, it must be! No, it’s not, it’s really happened. Blind me now, I don’t want to go on any more seeing this list in my face like that. Get Michael Carrick’s name out of my damn face.

Look, obviously Michael is a really good player, playing in the best team this season, playing a crucial, consistent role in that team’s success as well, and playing some of his best football to date. But Michael Carrick’s best football remains, and this should be made clear, Michael Carrick’s best football. Michael Carrick’s best football will always be Michael Carrick’s best football. He is permanently tied to being Michael Carrick, via being Michael Carrick, for better or worse. And it is for worse. He passes the ball short-to-medium distances, usually to other midfielders, he makes useful interceptions and is very often in the right place at the right time. He’s even upped his tempo a bit this season, I think, which certainly marks out his better seasons. None of these things is high on my list of criteria for best footballer. And if they’re on yours then I don’t like you – cheers, bye.

All of the things that Michael Carrick does are useful for Manchester United, but the deal with deciding who the best footballer is is that it’s not an objective measure, it’s a value judgement which you get to make for yourself. You get to decide for yourself which attributes you value most and ignore the ones you don’t care about. So why oh why would anyone choose to value Michael Carrick’s work the most? Hazard scores spectacular goals, Van Persie does too; Bale’s pace has caused more existential crises than Woody Allen will ever manage; Mata’s hair is springy; Suarez is a bit of an arsehole but he is very good at nutmegs; what has Michael done to make you feel alive? Carrick’s inclusion rings the bell for football as the steady accumulation of points and—the next logical step—capital. Is that what you want?

On an even less fun note, there’s a third problem with the list. Suarez’s inclusion rings the bell for football as lacking a moral compass. The chairman of the PFA defended the inclusion of a player who has been found guilty of racial abuse by the FA with this: “This is a footballing award and Suárez’s footballing ability shines through.” It’s not quite convincing. Because, Peter, a footballing award, for footballers, does also require giving an award to a person. If that person has been found guilty of racism, then you are still giving the award to someone who has been found guilty of racism. The person and the footballer are one, Peter. If it is helpful, consider that it would be odd if my right arm tried to disown my left arm, because they are being run by the same idiot. Suarez apologised to Liverpool for how he acted, but never to Evra, I don’t think this footballer-cum-human being should be rewarded by the PFA.

The league probably likes these controversies and it might well be falling into a trap to run through them. Controversy is surely why Danny Welbeck made the young player list and Rafael didn’t—or, okay Nastasic. But just because a list is designed to provoke you doesn’t mean you’re wrong to be provoked. This season, the list tells you that the league has either been pretty bland or a bit nasty. The state of things! The only consolation is that no defenders or goalkeepers made either the main list or the young players list: one correct value judgement, then, because as we all know defending is innately boring. Michael Carrick? FML.

A note on

The newly introduced Women’s Player of the Year list was also out today. The candidates are: Gemma Davison, Toni Duggan, Jessica Fishlock, Kim Little, Jordan Nobbs, and Jodie Taylor. Not my area of expertise, but I consulted Georgina Turner, who is In The Know. Her opinion was that it will be close between Kim Little and Jess Fishlock. So if you don’t know, now you do know.

Writing about the forthcoming FA Cup final, the BBC’s chief football correspondent, Phil McNulty—Pip McNulty, to his friends—offered the following gem with regard to Wigan’s chances against Manchester City: “There is a wonderful ‘what side of the bed will they get out of?’ unpredictability about Martinez’s side that gives this final an enticing air of mystery.” With respect to Pip (except by calling him Pip) I am inclined to disagree. That is to say that unless Wigan get out of bed having murdered all of City’s players and coaching staff in the night, then there is not any air of mystery about who will win The FA Cup. City are second in the same league Wigan might get relegated from: City will win The FA Cup. Poor form, ~~Pip~~ Phil.

This is all the more reason why it would be ludicrous if The FA Cup helped save the Roberto Mancini’s job, as has been rumoured lately. Beating Wigan should not be a legitimate defense for a manager who has constructed the most expensive squad of players in history and then lost the league title to a never-entirely-convincing Manchester United side and went out in the group stages of the Champions League. Again. Which conjured appalling memories of his time at Inter Milan. There are two big trophies to compete for these days: the Champions League and the Premier League. Neither of these, if you read carefully, is The FA Cup. Mancini should be leaving City regardless of whether he manages to get his fringe and scarf combo up the stairs at Wembley.

It’s not just that winning The FA Cup will have involved beating only three Premier League teams this season—Stoke, Wigan and Chelsea—teams that haven’t done anything impressive this season. For all I know, knocking off Leeds, Watford and Barnsley represents as tough a run of fixtures as exists in football.

No, it’s that the FA Cup has been robbed of any value it may have once enjoyed. Observe a couple of facts about this year’s FA Cup: it began with Budweiser, the official sponsor, filling up Wembley FC with some old pros for the novelty of it, and it will end at 5.15pm on a Saturday, designed not to clash with league fixtures played on the same weekend and to drum up some extra cash from fans travelling on the day. These days, The FA Cup is a kitsch, corporate shell, filled with second elevens and empty clichés. And fat men in suits. No, that wasn’t a dig at you, Rafa.

That shouldn’t save anyone’s job. Mancini was brought in to win the league and the Champions League; this season, he has done neither. At another club which hadn’t outspent its opponents by several hundred million pounds this might be acceptable as a one off, but this is Manchester City, a club which has bought its way to the top of the pile; once you reduce football to being entirely about winning, as their spending does, why should any failure be tolerated?
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A final word on Paolo Di Canio being or not being a fascist: okay, I can’t make everyone else stop talking about it—I’m not a fascist!—but I can promise that this will be the only time you hear me talking about it. And that is to point out this: Di Canio has struggled to distance himself from the awkward idea that he is a fascist because, based on several well known expressions of it, he might well think he is one. But here’s the thing: self-identifying as a fascist doesn’t actually make you a fascist. Being a fascist is what makes you a fascist.

Plenty of people are fascists and don’t realise it. Every single person who has stood in front of me or behind me in the queue at a supermarket has, in my opinion, been a fascist. The crucial point is, the fact that these people didn’t realise that they were fascists didn’t mean that they weren’t and the fact that Di Canio thinks he is doesn’t mean that he is. If we gave him a quiz on fascism, beginning with his views on state control of the economy, rationality, and the cult of the leader, he might come out with some fascistic answers, but so would a lot of people. Where else would the Conservative Party get its membership? Let’s be reasonable here.

My guess is that Di Canio is a proud Italian, and so he doesn’t feel comfortable writing off the country’s medium-term history as something bad, and, yes, that he likes the stuff about togetherness and heroes that you get within the loose ideology which is fascism. Again, a lot of people share those views. Especially in football, actually, where funnily enough we hear a lot about leadership and myths and heroes and, conversely, collectivism being the just best, too. If we’re using that definition of fascist then I’m afraid Mourinho and Ferguson are in trouble.
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Ethan Dean-Richards

Recent Posts

Dean-Richards: Dortmund’s value not measured in trophies, but in the transfer market price of its players

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Football Finance, Uefa Champions League on May 24, 2013

Dean-Richards: Chris Waddle clocks in at 1001

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under David Beckham on May 17, 2013

Dean-Richards: 4-4-2 may not, in fact, be the solution to all of Barcelona’s problems

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under Barcelona on May 03, 2013

Dean-Richards: The Jose Mourinho Style Guide

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under Jose Mourinho on Apr 26, 2013

Dean-Richards: What went wrong with the PFA Player of the Year short list?

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under EPL on Apr 19, 2013

Dean-Richards: Mancini’s 2012-13 Man City season won’t suddenly be a success with FA Cup win

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under FA Cup, Manchester City, Roberto Mancini on Apr 16, 2013

Dean-Richards: A final word on Paolo Di Canio being or not being a fascist

Posted by Ethan Dean-Richards under Sunderland on Apr 05, 2013

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