Archive for the ‘Morning Links’ Category

The Lead

What you won’t read about in the broadsheets this morning regarding the Premier League title race: no mention of ex-Villa players Gareth Barry or James Milner imploring former-Aston Villa manager Martin O’Neill to “do them a favour” against Man United next weekend. No mention of the pressure United have to keep pace with City by beating Sunderland. No calls from City players for Wes Brown to take revenge against his former club for the sake of Man City.

A month ago in the Premier League with United eight points ahead of Manchester City on the table with five matches to go, pundits everywhere declared the title race over in favour of the incumbents. There was simply no way Manchester United could possibly lose a single match, or draw enough to let City back on top the Premier League table. Yet with a loss against Wigan and a thrilling 4-4 draw with Everton and finally, the Manchester derby loss, it’s now City’s title to lose.

And here we are, despite City leading in every notable category in both defense and attack, with an impeccable recent form, and yet the media knives are out for the would-be champions with papers gleefully printing Sir Alex’s remarks over Mark Hughes’ doing them a solid next Sunday because he was “sacked” by City.

Any other manager does this, and it would be noted as unprofessional. Of course Sir Alex does it and it’s his charming mind games at work, with headlines proffered to boot. It’s an old double standard, but it’s getting old…
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The Lead

Every so often I have to do this, usually under the rules of “Bad Journalism.” Maybe it’s because I’m generally new to scouring hundreds of headlines, but I’ve noticed an increasing disconnect between quotes and headlines in English news. There are two examples this morning, notably on a Friday. That tends to the be the Dead Zone of soccer news, what with only match previews to post, which is the soccer journalism equivalent of utter bullshit.

Example the First. Roberto Mancini is asked about Gareth Bale. The Daily Mail unearthed a rumour that City had approached Tottenham about nicking the Welsh winger for £40 million. When asked about it, Mancini simply said Bale was a fantastic player but that he wouldn’t likely leave Tottenham. Then asked about his transfer plan for the summer, he said he spoke with the hierarchy weeks ago.

There are some obvious dots to connect, but this is hardly reflects the urgency in the headline: “Mancini admits interest in £40m rated Bale but thinks Spurs will fight to keep star.” For all we know, Mancini made a hypothetical punt to the powers that be. But thankfully the Daily Mail’s copywriters decided to paper over the thin cracks in this story to GET THE HITZ.

Example the Second. Telegraph headline: “Germans cast doubt on Roy Hodgson’s appointment as England manager.” But the line about the Germans got one German in particular riled up good:

telegraph.co.uk/sport/football…headline and quotes: total disconnect.

— raphael honigstein (@honigstein) May 4, 2012

Heynckes: “Don’t know him. Can’t say whether he’s a good or a bad choice”. Telegraph: “Germans say RH wrong choice”. #wtf

— raphael honigstein (@honigstein) May 4, 2012

Rafael Honigstein however politely neglected to note the normally less manic Guardian ran with a similar angle on less-than-accurate quotes: (“Fabio Capello and senior Germans cast doubt over Roy Hodgson’s chances”). You can read any anti-Hodgson press sentiment into this yourselves, but the simple fact remains this is poor, poor journalism.
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The Lead

Managerial and coaching appointments are high-stakes ventures, partly because the wake of managerial disasters can last in some cases for years (see Wolves, Toronto FC). Despite the cautious goodwill among the more level-headed pundits in the English press over his appointment to the England job, the mismatch between current England manager Roy Hodgson and Liverpool FC is still costing the club more than a year after the fact. Liverpool’s reported loss of £49.4 million included a contract cancellation payoff to the tune of £8.4 million.

Sometimes the pressure of the job can be simply too much to bear, as with the case of now former-Fiorentina coach Delio Rossi who was sacked yesterday by the club after he punched player Adem Ljajic for giving him an insubordinate and sarcastic thumbs up after taking him off the pitch.

So why does the cult of the manager still persist in Europe? Witness the incredible outlier that is Jose Mourinho. You’ll recall how many Madristas called for his head following Real Madrid’s loss to Barcelona in the Copa del Rey this past January. No matter that Real Madrid had an incredible point total, Barcelona were still clearly better. Mourinho had failed.

Now Pep Guardiola is gone, there are major doubts over Barca’s future as the preeminent force in European football, and Jose Mourinho has won his seventh domestic title in his fourth country. He has also consistently denied rumours he’ll be moving on at the end of this season, so Real’s dominance in Spain may have a longer shelf life. As managerial reputations and club empires crumble around him, Mourinho continues to win. Unfortunately, his success still beguiles club board members and chairmen into believing they’re only one good manager or coach away from unparalleled glory.
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The Lead

With the news tsunami that followed Roy Hodgson’s appointment as England manager, and with Manchester City’s crucial 1-0 victory over Manchester United to put them level on points in the Premier League, we’ve had a bit of time to reflect. Particularly Jonathan Wilson, who’s penned as lovely an article as he’s likely ever written, on the reality that in football, all good things must come to an end. He puts his remarks mostly over the end of the Guardiola era at Barcelona in the context of Greek tragedy:

Rather than just let his Barça wither away, rather than face the prospect of their philosophy being overcome, rather than risk the intervention of random events, Guardiola sought to stave off the entropic imperative by exaggerating what had made Barça great, by holding possession even longer, by getting even more men forward. It was failure, but at least it was failure on his terms.

While Wilson cites everyone from Joseph Conrad to Charles Darwin to Samuel Weber, the example I think here is from the popular HBO show The Wire. An almost certainly doomed Bodie, once comfortably nestled within Barksdale’s now crumbling Baltimore drug empire, realizes he’s a pawn. Rather than attempt to adapt to the new reality, he reverts to the exemplar of the perfect soldier, holding his corner even if it kills him.

Wilson’s piece is incredible read in any case, and matches his other column today for Fox Soccer, in which he details how Manchester City’s victory on Monday felt like “more than three points.” An imperceptible shift in the existing world order, perhaps, and a reminder that the the insubstantial pageant that is football will always fade and leave not a wrack behind.
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The Lead

I made the mistake last night, as I’m sure several others did, of listening to BBC’s Five Live directly following the Manchester derby, in which City beat United 1-0 at the Etihad to match them on 83 points and put them top of the table on goal differential with two games to go.

The last time I listened to that particularly grating sports call-in show was back in 2005, when Chelsea were well on their way to taking their first top division title in fifty years. Back then, you’ll remember, United finished third behind Arsenal and the champions Chelsea, 18 points off top spot (a considerably worse fate than the team is enduring now).

The complaints about United were exactly the same as the last time around. Some firmly believed that Manchester City, should they win the Premier League, will have bought the title, which the same aggrieved United supporters said of Chelsea seven years ago. The host of the show complained about aging players and openly mused about random European players United could simply go over and buy (Schweinsteiger in particular struck his fancy) to “get better”, as if the continental domestic leagues were a giant wholesale depot around the corner. And one United fan was audacious enough to call for Sir Alex Ferguson to quit or be sacked, exactly as several had called for in light of Jose Mourinho’s first Chelsea title.

In the intervening years between my two Five Live listen-ins, Manchester United won four domestic titles, three league cups, and a European Cup to boot. While reason urges me to point out that Sir Alex Ferguson is now 70 years old, at the age of 63 many thought in 2005 that Fergie would only last one or more years at the helm at the most, certainly not seven.

All of this is to say that despite Patrice Evra’s recent talk of revolutions in the existing order if City win their first title since 1968, United won’t crumble in post-Matt Busby fashion. As a City blogger (of all people) pointed out on the show, Sir Alex is already likely planning a return strategy, over the next two games, yes, but also for next season, and perhaps even the season after that. He also said, and I agree, that a City title win wouldn’t be the disaster for United many in the English media are claiming, but the motivation for Sir Alex to stay a bit longer to help transform, yet again, a team many are naively dismissing as past it based on a single, wayward season.
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The Lead

As of writing, the results of a Telegraph poll asking whether Roy Hodgson is the right candidate for the England job read 50/50, straight down the middle for and against. News of the FA’s approach to West Brom to ask for Hodgson’s hand was met largely with resignation, equivocation, and then, in roughly half of those interested in this story at all, the revelation there simply is no one currently better suited to manage England.

To wit, the inner conflict over a now-likely Hodgson appointment goes roughly like this. Hodgson has managed about nine hundred teams (well, 17, in earnest, in 8 different countries) since first haunting Halmstad’s technical area thirty-six years ago. Since that time, he has earned a 43% win rate (Redknapp’s is just under 41%, but then Shteve McClaren’s is 44%). His entire career is a testament to the fact that—as I’ve written countless times this past year—there is no such thing as a perfect manager for all teams across all possible worlds (unless you’re Jose Mourinho). With some clubs (Fulham) he made an excellent match; at others (Udinese), he lasted mere months in charge. If you knew nothing of Hodgson save from what you knew about him on paper, there would be no question over his candidacy for the England job.

However, there is the “Woy” factor. Hodgson is not exactly known as a technical sophisticate. Several English journalists speculated that part of his relative six month “failure” at Liverpool was down to his old fashioned training regimen, which didn’t align with the more modern practices which Liverpool’s continental players were used to. Then there’s that lisp, his odd personal quirks. His visage doesn’t fit the Greco-Roman mold, and so the England divas with their hand lotions and their Gaultier man bags will never listen to him.

Which sounds a bit…stupid, to me. English players, despite their considerable individual talents (and, all too often, egos), are not technically-gifted. There was also ample evidence that Fabio Capello-as-authority figure didn’t stop grumblings about the captaincy or team selection from the usual suspects within the England camp. No one is expecting Roy Hodgson will win things with England, but it’s hard to see how he won’t play to their strengths. Hodgson’s greatest successes came from taking unlikely and often-unloved teams to unexpected success in spite of their inherent weaknesses. In a country with 1/10th of the UEFA licenses as Spain, Hodgson seems even more than Redknapp the right guy at the right time.
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No more hipster knitwear for you!

Seinfeld. Remember Seinfeld? A wildly popular show that ran just under a solid nine years (1989-1998) before the co-creator Jerry Seinfeld decided in December of 1997 it was time to end the run after that season. The news blindsided NBC, particularly as it was one of their highest-rated shows and did well with that demographic that buys stupid shit. Despite begging him to stay on for another season at $5 million an episode, Jerry was having none of it. So why did he decide to stop the show right when everything was going so well?

Primarily to avoid that dreaded of all sitcom phenomena: jumping the shark (the odious and overused expression comes from the Happy Days episode in which Fonzie jumps over some sharks on skis, which is as awful as it sounds). Unlike the Simpsons, for example, which has been dreadful for the last twelve years plus, everyone remembers Seinfeld as one of the best shows in TV history, which, quite frankly, it is. I don’t know the numbers but I imagine the show still does very well in syndication, fourteen years after the final episodes aired.

Pep Guardiola announced this morning in an emotional press conference he will be leaving Barcelona at the end of this season (Tito Vilanova, now being universally referred to as “the man Jose Mourinho eye-gouged”, will replace him as coach). He apparently made his decision known to the higher-ups at Barca back in the Autumn of 2011 (which means, thank god, not everything is leaked by “sources”). His reasons, at least by which I can read in translation, are similarly inscrutable. He simply needs to “recharge his batteries.” His passion for coaching has diminished, and now it’s time to go and get that passion back. Sid Lowe wrote today he seemed dogged by a kind of “weariness,” which must come with engineering Barcelona’s continued successes.

And so, like Seinfeld, the series finale (title-losing El Clasico loss, conceding two away goals to 10-man Chelsea in the Champions League) was a bit shit and won’t be remembered much in the years to come. Even if Barcelona matches its future success, the team of Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Pique and Messi will be remembered as Pep’s team. He’s left us with what will be hailed for generations along with Arrigo Sacchi’s late 80s Milan and Rinus Michels’ 1970s Ajax—one of the best and most stylish purveyors of press-and-possess football in history, with Guardiola’s own signature adjustments. And for those who think Guardiola, who has only ever managed at Barcelona (first with the B team), simply “perfected” Frank Rijkaard’s team:

Pep Guardiola: Has won 77%, drawn 16% & lost 7% of his La Liga games in charge at Barcelona, while Rijkaard won 59%, drew 24% & lost 17%

— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) April 27, 2012

As for his future, he simply said “Sooner or later I will take up a coaching job, but not now.” Let the endless Summer of Speculation begin. And, in the meantime, read Sid Lowe’s column on Pep’s exit here.
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