A rather interesting, if long winded, article!
IS CHELSEA'S MOURINHO NOW AN ARSENAL VOYEUR? 11-8-06
Calum Law
Greetings, and welcome to a column that I hope will run weekly or at least until such time as it's trounced by popular outcry. Since weekend work commitments presently prevent me from attending too many Boro games, my intention is to offer (I hope) an uncompromising, stimulating and occasionally humourous insight into the Beautiful Game in general – both for regular site users and happenstance tourists. For anyone who manages to plough their way through, thanks in advance. For those who get halfway through the first paragraph and vow never to click on my byline again: arrivederci peasants.
----------
John Major's 'classless society' was, of course, a mirthless joke. Social mobility in this country is lower than it's been for thirty years and becoming ever more difficult as the wealthy consolidate their grip on assets and institutions. We are entering a New Victoriana of haves and havenots which, in the prevailing climate of individualism, goes unchallenged.
As in society, so in football. In England, and in Spain, Italy and elsewhere, complete dominance of three or four teams is accepted as an immutable and wholly legitimate state of affairs. For those of us pressing our faces to the windows of the gilded ballroom, we can but wish for ever greater success to befall our betters for as we know, should they suffer an unexpected setback it means that one of our unwashed number (a Charlton or a Bolton) is getting his ill-shod foot on our necks and find themselves winning the battle for marginal preferment. Any such (fortunately rare) occurences should concern all true patriots.
Accordingly then I shall divide my pre-season analysis into two parts: a Court Circular and a Penny Post if you will.
----------
Ballack and Schevchenko arriving in the Premiership would ordinarily be a big deal. Both have been in the top three in the world in their positions for five or six years, and both have delivered consistently.
Admittedly such sturdy mittel-European archetypes don't make us pie-munchers swoon in quite the same way as the snake-hipped latin heroes we all imagine ourselves to be when we take take our hangovers down to the rec, but nonetheless, this is an authentic Galacticos buying policy from Mourinho. These are big names and yet so far, the British Press – not known for its restraint – has reacted less than feverishly.
Two reasons conspire to create this air of disinterest. Clearly, the wealth of Abramhovich is a kind of H-Bomb which renders irrelevant the natural shadowplay of speculation, intrigue and risk that makes football commerce a spectator sport in itself. In addition however, the football connoisseur has had her head turned eastwards towards an outfit that failed to land a single trophy last season and scraped into the Champions League by virtue of an auspicious bacteria.
Jose Mourinho, in a crass moment not entirely excused by the fact he said it in his third-best language, last season accused Arsene Wenger of being 'voyeur'. Were Wenger familiar with the raw hormonal power of early Ray Winstone, he might be tempted to send a text to his small-but-perfectly-formed rival along the lines of 'Who's the voyeur now?'
For though Mourihno's charges comfortably ground their way to a second consecutive Premiership title, the two performances that will be remembered were both orchestrated by the modest but determined Alsatian.
In February, Arsenal, after a winter of being relentlessly picked off by the premiership's Ugly People, went to the Bernabeu with a makeshift acne-ridden side, and so thoroughly mastered the star-studded opposition that despite winning only 1-0 the second-leg became a formality. In the next round, the scarcely less stellar (and hitherto nigh-on unbeatable) Juventus were so thoroughly disorientated that they ended up a nine-man ghost team.
In a three-man shortlist for the coach's job at Utopia F.C. both Ferguson and Mourinho would be casting lugubrious looks at the rubber plant because the nerdy-looking bloke's a shoe-in. Viera 1.5 million, Henry 4 million, Anelka 0.5 and sold three years on for 23!. We know the figures. The once-mighty Arsenal, in their desperation to realise Wenger's vision and elude the prosaic destiny of the 40,000 capacity team, became (temporarily) a 'selling club'.
Six months ago: Viera was gone, Henry was going, Bolton were dogged and pity was cheap. Then Eboue, Toure, Fabregas and Van Persie (combined transfer fees circa £6m) changed from risky replacements to talents coveted the world over.
It has to be said that, with Campbell gone and Cole seemingly certain to leave, Arsenal fans may well see an all-foreign starting XI in every game this season. Their ambivalence is likely to last up until the first flowing, twenty-pass ballet across the oxygen-rich Emirates turf.
English football owes Arsene Wenger a drink.
Ferguson, naturally, won't be offering. Left-leaning types like your correspondent have always been desperate to believe in the righteous blue-collar powers of the Son of Govan. But a squalid spat over some equine testicles, the blunt Monarchist sword on the cringing shoulder and the relatives in ill-fitting suits consorting with Ukrainians in Cheshire casinos (probably), have, in all candour, had a somewhat disillusioning effect. Fergie has cupboard groaning with silver and yet he resembles a busted flush.
With the Stretford End baying for his blood, he gambled on a precocious youth team and was canny enough to leave his lucky chips where they lay. He added some timely and masterful purchases (Ince, Keane, Stam, Yorke, Van Nistelrooy) that (consecutively) galvanised a team that at times was almost a force of nature – a team that almost forgot how to lose.
Unfortunately, the opposition, like one's intuition, is always there, and world-class performers are not easily replaced. To fall out with one is understandable: to fall out with all of the five mentioned above would, in any less 'exceptional' industry have a managing director collecting his cards – otherwise, the clunky (but valid) phrase 'man-management' becomes meaningless.
The treatment of both Stam and Van Nistelrooy - almost comically colourless and uncontroversial individuals yet virtually peerless in their metier - is the behaviour of a man cutting off his purple nose to spite his purple face. After a disappointing, injury-plagued season in 2004/5, Van Nistelrooy was last year outscoring everybody in the Premiership - back to his laser-guided best. Whilst a genuine legend with the Old Trafford fans, RVN has largely missed out on the medal-strewn years; yet Fergie, instead of counseling him in his tristesse chooses like a sadistic schoolmaster to go and make him stand in the corner. The contrast with Wenger, and the assured and un-histrionic way he dealt with the Henry (will he-won't he?) saga, is palpable.
Unlike many, I do not wish misfortune on Manchester United. Despite the jokes about their disparate fanbase, I remember the awesome support they received during their season in the old Second Division and appreciated the elan of their thrilling march to the European Cup in 1999. The legacy of that young and largely homegrown team however has been squandered, at least in European terms. As an Englishman, I hope the United regime can create a team that is able to live with, and develop Rooney's gifts. Rooney (after Gascoigne and Scholes) is maybe the last of the 'street' footballers – capable of the unschooled improvisation beyond the imagination of academy grunts: but what price to have seen him playing with Henry if, two years ago, the stadium-builder Wenger could have kept bidding?
In 'Chelski' however – an action-drama brought to you in association with the Russian Broadcasting Association – the question on all viewers lips concerns the character Frankovich Lampard: namely: is he actually crap?
To some of us, Lamps Jnr has always seemed to lack certain gifts that are necessary to place an individual in the VIP Lounge of the Hall of Fame. We doubters, however, had gradually been obliged to concede that Lamps Quarterback-like influence on (not-merely-routine-Premiership) games had begun to inch him towards the sort of status his paypacket would appear to glance at. Nonetheless, whilst it's always comforting to look in the mirror and see someone who is intellectually supple and mature enough to have their opinions changed, it's always nicer to look and see someone who was proved right all along.
True World Greats always want the ball, yet there have appeared times, in the highest level games, when the runner-up to Ronaldinho as 2005 World Footballer of the Year has appeared to come over all shy. On such occasions, I doubt I'm the only one in whose brainpan the cricketing phrase 'flat-track bully' has percolated forth. Whatever your opinion, it would be hard to hold fast to the sort of extravagant claims made on his behalf by Mourinho.
Being short of stature of course, it's possible that communal showers are apt to stimulate rare feelings of humility in the Portuguese; but Lampard must have been taken aback (to say the least) to find his manager staring upwards past his freshly-waxed pectorals and declaring: 'you are the best player in the world!' If he took it with a homo-erotic pinch of salt then, he'd blanch in embarrassment were anyone to repeat it after the World Cup. Like Beckham when he trained with Zidane for the first time, Lampard, when he first shares a pitch with the marauding Ballack may experience a quiet moment of self-revelation.
Mourinho's relentless hyping of his team's 'English spine' (all of which, naturally, he inherited) may be in for some scrutiny, as may the Special One himself. Mourinho has got to deliver the Champions League this season and whilst he probably has the strongest squad out of the contenders, has yet to prove he has the most potent blend. Capello and Rikjaard and Wenger have all bought well.
The other team at the Top Table remain an enigma. Consistent with his policy of buying odd-looking strikers, Benitez has snapped up Bellamy, whose lack of a neck has not prevented him from nudging his way into the top bracket. With Pennant and Gonzalez also recruited, Benitez has obviously concluded that pace is key. They already possessed a beautiful-looking balance in midfield with Alonso Sissoko and Gerrard, and if they get off to a good start I'd expect them to maintain it. They have the personnel to go closer than they have for years.
Though it was Chelsea's astonishing home form (two points dropped) that won them the title last season I believe that, given the ever-increasing dominance of the big four, away victories could well be crucial. Will Arsenal who lost nine times away from home last season, be bullied out of things again? Can Liverpool impose themselves on lesser opposition the way they used to? Can United score enough? Will Chelsea get distracted by Europe?
On the basis that it's boring to go for Chelsea, I'm sticking my neck and and saying that beautiful football can once more carry the day in England and Arsenal can do it.
----------
On to the lower orders then and, looking at the section of the league due to receive our devoted scrutiny it's difficult to see anything but a large blob. The promoted teams will head the betting for the drop but given a fair wind may escape and you can make a case for almost any team to impudently emerge (a la Everton) and challenge the plutocracy, or to suffer a bad run of form/injuries and subside (a la Birmingham).
For what it's worth, I fancy West Ham and Manchester City to push on a bit and Bolton and Charlton to slide somewhat. Boro I feel really need to start well – we've got more talent than most but our defence needed attention even before Gate donned the tracksuit. Accordingly it is important that from the off we're able to play without fear and Rochemback could well be key.
It's a sad fact that, for teams in our league, for at least two-thirds of the season the dominant sensation is fear. Expect every manager bar Martin Jol gives a nod to the 'magic fourty point figure', the lowest common denominator of 'success'. For fans of such teams, the usual character of the daydream has been inverted: hope now carries a negative value – you now hope not that you will win the F.A. Cup (just too fanciful) but that you won't be relegated.
The range of possibilities for one's team has essentially been commodified – a Chelsea voucher gets you this, a Crystal Palace voucher gets you that – and we ought to rail against such determinism. Despite the reckless, gamblin' Wiseguys that we are however, I can't help thinking there is something in the nature of the limited horizon of the football fan that prefers it thus.
For anyone who can be said, decisively, to have 'left youth behind', football (its moments, memories, emotions) often provides the strongest symbolic link to our childhoods. As such, its ritual, its predictability is, to a large extent, what recommends it. Anybody who has made it this far down this column for instance will, on any given Saturday afternoon for the next eight months be a/ at a game, b/ listening to a radio sportsfeed or c/ be painfully aware that (for whatever reason) the above options have been closed off. Football is a (comfort) blanket that harbours, one hopes, (like the marital bedspread) the odd euphoric surprise. Essentially however, it's for nuzzling in.
Like true-born pessimists everywhere I habitually self-flagellate with sadistic little hypotheses: F.A. Cup/Relegation/Bankruptcy vs Ten Seasons Consolidation/'Visible Progression' in the Premiership, for instance. Which one would you take? From 8 to 25 you'd probably opt for the former: from 25 to 40 you might lean towards the latter: from 40 to 75 you're liable again to favour the CrashAndBurn option: any other age and you might have difficulty understanding the question.
What you require from your obsession is essentially this: that it should call forth extremes of emotion when one is in danger of forgetting the feeling, and that it should mitigate life's passionate aspect when one is in danger of forgetting everything else.
Where will Boro finish? I'd hope that at this moment – it being summer an' all – you could care more (as they say). For experience tells me that the question will presently (and frequently inappropriately) dominate all others.
We'll be 6th or 18th. Crash 'n' Burn! er... Gareth.
