The Weekly Sweeper: Real Madrid Finally Grasps “Shit on a Stick”
Ye-Ye Legend, Alfredo di Stefano
The obvious big story out of this week was Jose Mourinho’s transfer to Real Madrid immediately following Inter Milan’s Champions League win. Not one for subtlety, perhaps the most memorable image was that of Mourinho exiting his car to weepily embrace defender Marco Materazzi, presumably on his way to a similarly weepy exit interview with Massimo Moratti.
In the midst of all the tears and poorly-guarded transfer details, the Times‘ Oliver Kay cleverly reminded his followers what Real Madrid general manager Jorge Valdano said about “the Special One’s” managerial approach with Chelsea back in 2007:
Real Madrid’s Valdano “Mourinho/Benitez don’t believe in the talent of players or ability to improvise to win matches” (2007)
Valdano: “If football goes the way Chelsea/LFC are taking it, goodbye to expression of cleverness/talent we’ve enjoyed for 100 yrs” (2007)
Kay intended for Valdano to eat his three year-old words (“I found Valdano’s comments re Mourinho/Benitez disrespectful at the time. Interesting that Real have “sold out” though”), but he inadvertently underlined a massive change in the European footballing landscape.
This past season was supposed to be all about Real Madrid. While spending millions upon millions of Euros on securing the talents of Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, and Karim Benzema in the summer of 2009 may have seemed preposterous in light of the success of the last generation of Galacticos, it followed a Madrista script that was written back in the mid 1950s: players are king at Real.
This was the ethos of the Yé-yé team that dominated the European Cup in the early days of the competition in the late 1950s, and it’s summed up best by Francisco Gento on the documentary, the History of Football, speaking of how Madrid beat AC Milan’s defense in the 1958 European Cup in Brussels: “we were Madrid, we broke down all systems.” No one remembers the names of the managers from that period; all that remains is Santiago Bernebeu’s collection of individual talents who worked together to overcome top-down tactical rigidity. This approach has marked Real Madrid’s player policy under president Florentino Perez.
It also sparked Valdano’s “shit on a stick” remarks back in 2007, which underlined his belief that talented players are still capable of winning games in the modern European game with cleverness, ingenuity, creativity. This was the ethos that led to a Madrid first team packed with wildly expensive footballing talent with the skilled but hardly world-beating Manuel Pelligrini at the helm. And it failed; Real didn’t win La Liga, and they yet again went out of the competition they first made famous, missing out on a Champions League final on their home ground. Real’s decision to acquire Mourinho is an admission of defeat. Player power is over; Mourinho’s Real Madrid signing caps the Age of the Manager.
Yet Valdano was wrong in 2007 to ascribe blame for the modern lack of individual creativity in football on Mourinho; he is a symbol (a fascinating one at that) how talented soccer players are molded in Europe in the 21st century. Hoovered up into academies or youth reserve teams at younger and younger ages, promising players aren’t given the space to improvise. They aren’t given the authority to make on-field decisions that will guide the team as a whole. They learn one or two on-field positions and are therefore incapable of variation. They play precisely to the manager’s wishes, or they are shunted off for good. Mourinho’s father-like embrace of Matrix on his exit from Inter Milan sums up the paternalistic philosophy of the modern manager.
This approach is also reflected in Mourinho’s remarks before the European Cup final last weekend that the Champions League is now bigger than the World Cup. This is a view increasingly held by journalists and managers alike, who reason that the motley collection of individually talented players thrown together every two years could not possibly be as good as the Europe’s big clubs, precisely because they have much less time playing under the national team manager.
Which is why the team to watch in the World Cup in South Africa will be Diego Maradona’s Argentina. Here is a manager with no discernible tactical approach but with a squad packed with some of the best players in the world, including Barcelona’s “Playstation player,” Lionel Messi. Maradona’s sincere belief in the talent of his squad—and his consistent lack of any and all managerial direction or authority—makes perfect sense considering his own individual footballing genius. Here is man who epitomizes Valdano’s football philosophy, using cleverness and ingenuity to give Argentina the World Cup in 1986. Their success in 2010 could be Player Power’s last stand. It will be fascinating to watch in any case.
It’s interesting that many still talk about 1986 as the last great FIFA tournament. It would too broad to blame the deterioration of the world’s most popular sporting tournament on the rise of the manager and the racehorse-breeding mentality of youth team coaches, but the two are probably not unrelated. Mourinho might be right: the Champions League could be the better competition, and the managers more than players are now the “Special Ones.” That other football philosopher, Eduardo Galeano, put it best:
In the old days there was the trainer and nobody paid him much heed. He died without a word when the game stopped being a game and professional soccer required a technocracy to keep people in line. Then the manager was born. His mission: to prevent improvisation, restrict freedom and maximize the productivity of the players, who were now obliged to become disciplined athletes.
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That’s — terribly cynical, Richard! Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I’m not sure if you meant to make this sound nostalgic – that Galeano quote at the end helped – and I wonder if you aren’t pushing this binary a bit too far. Surely it’s perfectly possible to see managers who, even without the enormous and polarising media narratives of a Mourinho or Maradona surrounding them, see it as their role not just to bring dour order to beautiful chaos, but to be catalysts, or to go one step further, philosophers, who can in fact bring out the best in their players? Is what is true for Dunga also true for Hiddink? And is what is true for Mourinho also true for Guardiola? If you mean to see this argument through, shouldn’t we then examine how the culture of learning football, or thinking about football itself has changed in prosperous countries? Surely the cult of the manager is merely a symptom – a saleable symptom – of that?
Hi ros.
I do have great sympathy with Valdano’s world view on this matter, as I do with Galeano. But as Jonathan Wilson might point out, they’re are both generalizing romantics, and you are right—the binary might go too far. But you have to push it a bit beyond the boundary to tease out the greater point. I probably could have written the same article back in 2007 with Capello at the helm, but to me Mourinho is a much more interesting example of the embodiment of the Manager as Star, and I think Valdano’s 2007 remarks about Chelsea make this summer’s move for Mourinho all the more symbolic.
I agree with you as far as good managers still bring out the best in their players, but that’s not quite the same thing as player power. Consider someone like Guardiola; he has often been credited with filling in the “leadership gap” left by Rijkaard, providing the sort of leadership needed to “pull Barcelona together.” The principle remains: the players are little children in need of a strong parent.
Watch any interview with members of the Ye-Ye team, especially Alfredo di Stefano. You can’t possibly imagine Messi speaking like this, or Torres, or even David Villa. They speak with the forcefulness of managers, and they way they talk about playing for Madrid, it was almost as if they were coaching each other on the pitch. Perhaps football was disorganized enough for a club like Real Madrid to take advantage. But these were clearly independent minds at work.
The same with many of the great footballing geniuses up to the present day. Sindelar was a womanizer and gambler; Meazza famously showed up to a match hungover and promptly scored three goals; Cruyff’s Adidas shoes, Panenka’s ridiculous penalty. Maradona. I guess Zidane feels like the last of this free-thinking generation. The head-butt might have been the last gasp of the independent minded footballer in Europe.
But you’re right, this is all going way too far. Of course you had the Chapman’s and Herrera’s and the Michels and Ramsays and Menotti’s, and their accomplishments can’t be understated. But would you rate Bearzot’s importance above Rossi’s in 1982? Or Michels above Cruyff’s in 74? Which player on Inter Milan would anyone rate higher than Mourinho in helping to win the European Cup?
I think Capello is about to demonstrate the limitations of the manager in a few weeks time. I also look forward to Valdano’s many anti Mou statements being dredged up at opportune times over the next few seasons.
Because of the point you make regarding RM’s “capitulation” to hire Mourhino, I think the Special One might find the going (at the Bernabéu) tougher than usual. He’s enjoyed tremendous latitude in his previous assignments, however, the level of interference from the President will be, at best, a challenge. Perhaps he will be the first Manager with the cajones to face up to Pérez and keep him in his place. If it works, it will be similar to the “press blackout” he executed with the Italian media, distancing himself and his team from overbearing scrutiny. I don’t envy him one bit.