Good read.
Martin Samuel
Martin Samuel
From The Times
January 16, 2008
Hope in your heart? Not when axe falls on Rafael Benitez
Martin Samuel
As revolutions go, the one conducted by Captain Valentine Strasser in Sierra Leone in 1992 was pretty damn funky. After he seized control from the 23-year dictatorship of the All People Congress led by Major General Joseph Momoh, Strasser intended to make the disco classic Ain’t No Stopping Us Now by McFadden and Whitehead the new national anthem.
You do that sort of thing when you are 25 and the youngest head of state in the world. It’s a bit like getting your best mate to be your deputy, which Strasser did, too. The regime lasted about four years. Strasser’s party, the National Provisional Ruling Council, proved no more adept at dealing with guerrillas from the Revolutionary United Front than the previous government and large swaths of the country, including the crucial diamond reserves, fell into enemy hands.
Strasser also developed a penchant for executing opponents – 26 of them after trial – and even though he was deposed more than a decade ago, many, including Amnesty International, want him brought to justice for alleged crimes ranging from torture to arbitrary killing. He is relatively harmless now and has more recently been found living back home with his mum. He recently claimed to have been beaten up outside a London Tube station in a racially motivated attack.
What unfolded at Liverpool these past three years has not, of course, been a revolution but a Rafalution, yet has followed much the same path. It was launched to a trumpet blast of unshakeable optimism, looked at first to have swept away the canker of a failing old regime and is surely destined to end in chaos, with blood up the walls.
Liverpool’s lurch from champions of Europe to Hicksville, USA, is another chapter in the book called “How Not to Run a Football Club”, which started off as a slender paperback but must now stretch to the size of a full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. It contains volumes on Leicester City, Coventry City, both Sheffield clubs, large stretches of Wales, East Anglia, South London, Kent and the South Coast, plus dear old Newcastle United, Leeds United and what remains of Luton Town. Liverpool is a tentative addition, but under the present ownership it will surely one day get a sizeable entry of its own.
The departure of Rafael BenÍtez appears no longer a matter of if, but when, his only hope of survival being that the owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, beat him to the door. And if BenÍtez goes, the club goes with him. Not the name or the history; there will still be a Liverpool Football Club and they will still play in red at Anfield, in the short term at least. But the philosophy that has defined the past four seasons, the way the club has been managed, the squad that has been constructed, the methods on which a fifth European Cup win, and almost a sixth, were built, would all have to be redesigned.
Liverpool are showing what can happen if the Arsène Wenger battle plan is allowed to go off at halfcock. It is a mess and it could set the club back years.
The board at Arsenal has had two brilliant ideas in the past 12 years. The first was to appoint Wenger, the second to empower him for far longer than the average managerial lifespan. If a man is being allowed to restructure a club from the foundations up, it’s always sensible to bow to his vision, otherwise what is the point?
The key to success at Arsenal was that, having given Wenger a form of executive power that far exceeded his status as an employee, the directors did not fear that he would abuse his freedom. Wenger tore down what Arsenal was and created something new based on his philosophies. Had he been blocked at any turn it could have been disastrous. At the height of his revolution when his captain was French and all his best players were French, Manchester Untied remained in the ascendancy and there were occasional rumours that Englishmen at Arsenal felt neglected or ostracised, there must have been a small temptation to reclaim some control. There would surely have been whispers in the boardroom, fledgeling conspiracies to curtail his transfer policy, his vision of a cosmopolitan academy, to return Arsenal to its preFrancophile traditions.
If there was, it was never realised. To oppose Wenger would be to risk losing him and the directors sensibly accepted that this could precipitate a departure of half the first-team squad and the destruction of all the club had become. So the board continued to back the manager as he restructured the training ground and even allowed him a measure of control over the new stadium, although he met them halfway by agreeing to it in the first place.
And now the vision nears completion. The first team at Arsenal is still a melting pot of nationalities, but the next generation of Arsenal youth players are exciting and largely home-grown. It has taken more than a decade and even when Wenger leaves, his values will endure. It will be expected that Arsenal retain a level of creative flair; players who possess that talent will be appreciated there. He has changed the culture of a football club; more importantly, he was encouraged to do so.
A catastrophe is brewing at Liverpool because the club, having given BenÍtez his head for the best part of four seasons, is about to switch riders midway through the race. If BenÍtez is forced out now, he takes modern Liverpool with him and leaves a crumbling shell. He is the glue that keeps the club together and, without him, it will have to be rebuilt.
He has been permitted to turn Liverpool into a Spanish colony that without him will not make sense. Just as Arsenal’s squad owed its shape and character to Wenger, so a number of significant players at Liverpool would be lost without BenÍtez. Take Javier Mascherano. Does anybody seriously believe that after the laughable way he was treated at West Ham United, he would have remained a second longer in Premier League football had it not been for a coach who could communicate in his mother tongue?
A natural parting of the ways is looming and it begins the moment BenÍtez hits the road. The biggest clubs in Spain would certainly make Fernando Torres a target as well as just about any of BenÍtez’s imports from his homeland, not least Xabi Alonso, Jos� Manuel Reina and �lvaro Arbeloa. The nucleus of Liverpool’s first team would be under threat because BenÍtez had been allowed to exercise his personality so thoroughly.
Hicks and Gillett have to appreciate what is at stake. It could be argued that the equally mesmeric Jos� Mourinho left Chelsea and the ship sailed on, but Mourinho’s personnel were not as plainly rooted in national identity. He imported two defenders from Portugal, Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Carvalho, one of whom was not always in his best team. His backroom staff were loyalists, but his assistant coach was a longstanding club servant, Steve Clarke.
Mourinho’s greatest influence was on the pitch, with his pattern of play. For all his pride in his native land, the red and green of Portugal never flew over Stamford Bridge. BenÍtez is different. He has placed Liverpool under Spanish influence, the way Wenger made Arsenal a French club according to players such as Tony Adams, and that is increasingly the modern way.
It is not just the first team at Liverpool that has been overhauled by BenÍtez. His head of scouting, Eduardo Macia, has worked hard at attracting 20 or so of the best young players from abroad to Liverpool’s academy, a mid-range investment that it was hoped would insulate the club against stagnation while the new ground was developed.
What will happen to that plan if its mastermind departs? Indeed, what was going to happen had Hicks got his man in J�rgen Klinsmann? Liverpool were still unbeaten in the Premier League when Liverpool’s owner made contact, yet would he have let the Germans take over this Spanish resort, just as an Iberian culture under BenÍtez had replaced the French influence of G�rard Houllier (in his first season, much of the dead wood removed by BenÍtez consisted of French or French-speaking players introduced by Houllier but barely used), each change beginning with the wholesale rejection of the last.
Every managerial alteration brings upheaval – Roy Hodgson at Fulham is struggling to get to grips with the weaknesses caused by the transfer policies of Lawrie Sanchez – but to lose the vital presence in a revolution as substantial as that taking place at Anfield is to risk a directionless mess.
With clubs such as Manchester City and Aston Villa at last finding their feet under capable managers in Sven-G�ran Eriksson and Martin O’Neill, to have their club’s rationale inviting comparison with the military juntas of Sierra Leone is something that Liverpool’s owners can ill-afford.
January 16, 2008
Hope in your heart? Not when axe falls on Rafael Benitez
Martin Samuel
As revolutions go, the one conducted by Captain Valentine Strasser in Sierra Leone in 1992 was pretty damn funky. After he seized control from the 23-year dictatorship of the All People Congress led by Major General Joseph Momoh, Strasser intended to make the disco classic Ain’t No Stopping Us Now by McFadden and Whitehead the new national anthem.
You do that sort of thing when you are 25 and the youngest head of state in the world. It’s a bit like getting your best mate to be your deputy, which Strasser did, too. The regime lasted about four years. Strasser’s party, the National Provisional Ruling Council, proved no more adept at dealing with guerrillas from the Revolutionary United Front than the previous government and large swaths of the country, including the crucial diamond reserves, fell into enemy hands.
Strasser also developed a penchant for executing opponents – 26 of them after trial – and even though he was deposed more than a decade ago, many, including Amnesty International, want him brought to justice for alleged crimes ranging from torture to arbitrary killing. He is relatively harmless now and has more recently been found living back home with his mum. He recently claimed to have been beaten up outside a London Tube station in a racially motivated attack.
What unfolded at Liverpool these past three years has not, of course, been a revolution but a Rafalution, yet has followed much the same path. It was launched to a trumpet blast of unshakeable optimism, looked at first to have swept away the canker of a failing old regime and is surely destined to end in chaos, with blood up the walls.
Liverpool’s lurch from champions of Europe to Hicksville, USA, is another chapter in the book called “How Not to Run a Football Club”, which started off as a slender paperback but must now stretch to the size of a full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. It contains volumes on Leicester City, Coventry City, both Sheffield clubs, large stretches of Wales, East Anglia, South London, Kent and the South Coast, plus dear old Newcastle United, Leeds United and what remains of Luton Town. Liverpool is a tentative addition, but under the present ownership it will surely one day get a sizeable entry of its own.
The departure of Rafael BenÍtez appears no longer a matter of if, but when, his only hope of survival being that the owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, beat him to the door. And if BenÍtez goes, the club goes with him. Not the name or the history; there will still be a Liverpool Football Club and they will still play in red at Anfield, in the short term at least. But the philosophy that has defined the past four seasons, the way the club has been managed, the squad that has been constructed, the methods on which a fifth European Cup win, and almost a sixth, were built, would all have to be redesigned.
Liverpool are showing what can happen if the Arsène Wenger battle plan is allowed to go off at halfcock. It is a mess and it could set the club back years.
The board at Arsenal has had two brilliant ideas in the past 12 years. The first was to appoint Wenger, the second to empower him for far longer than the average managerial lifespan. If a man is being allowed to restructure a club from the foundations up, it’s always sensible to bow to his vision, otherwise what is the point?
The key to success at Arsenal was that, having given Wenger a form of executive power that far exceeded his status as an employee, the directors did not fear that he would abuse his freedom. Wenger tore down what Arsenal was and created something new based on his philosophies. Had he been blocked at any turn it could have been disastrous. At the height of his revolution when his captain was French and all his best players were French, Manchester Untied remained in the ascendancy and there were occasional rumours that Englishmen at Arsenal felt neglected or ostracised, there must have been a small temptation to reclaim some control. There would surely have been whispers in the boardroom, fledgeling conspiracies to curtail his transfer policy, his vision of a cosmopolitan academy, to return Arsenal to its preFrancophile traditions.
If there was, it was never realised. To oppose Wenger would be to risk losing him and the directors sensibly accepted that this could precipitate a departure of half the first-team squad and the destruction of all the club had become. So the board continued to back the manager as he restructured the training ground and even allowed him a measure of control over the new stadium, although he met them halfway by agreeing to it in the first place.
And now the vision nears completion. The first team at Arsenal is still a melting pot of nationalities, but the next generation of Arsenal youth players are exciting and largely home-grown. It has taken more than a decade and even when Wenger leaves, his values will endure. It will be expected that Arsenal retain a level of creative flair; players who possess that talent will be appreciated there. He has changed the culture of a football club; more importantly, he was encouraged to do so.
A catastrophe is brewing at Liverpool because the club, having given BenÍtez his head for the best part of four seasons, is about to switch riders midway through the race. If BenÍtez is forced out now, he takes modern Liverpool with him and leaves a crumbling shell. He is the glue that keeps the club together and, without him, it will have to be rebuilt.
He has been permitted to turn Liverpool into a Spanish colony that without him will not make sense. Just as Arsenal’s squad owed its shape and character to Wenger, so a number of significant players at Liverpool would be lost without BenÍtez. Take Javier Mascherano. Does anybody seriously believe that after the laughable way he was treated at West Ham United, he would have remained a second longer in Premier League football had it not been for a coach who could communicate in his mother tongue?
A natural parting of the ways is looming and it begins the moment BenÍtez hits the road. The biggest clubs in Spain would certainly make Fernando Torres a target as well as just about any of BenÍtez’s imports from his homeland, not least Xabi Alonso, Jos� Manuel Reina and �lvaro Arbeloa. The nucleus of Liverpool’s first team would be under threat because BenÍtez had been allowed to exercise his personality so thoroughly.
Hicks and Gillett have to appreciate what is at stake. It could be argued that the equally mesmeric Jos� Mourinho left Chelsea and the ship sailed on, but Mourinho’s personnel were not as plainly rooted in national identity. He imported two defenders from Portugal, Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Carvalho, one of whom was not always in his best team. His backroom staff were loyalists, but his assistant coach was a longstanding club servant, Steve Clarke.
Mourinho’s greatest influence was on the pitch, with his pattern of play. For all his pride in his native land, the red and green of Portugal never flew over Stamford Bridge. BenÍtez is different. He has placed Liverpool under Spanish influence, the way Wenger made Arsenal a French club according to players such as Tony Adams, and that is increasingly the modern way.
It is not just the first team at Liverpool that has been overhauled by BenÍtez. His head of scouting, Eduardo Macia, has worked hard at attracting 20 or so of the best young players from abroad to Liverpool’s academy, a mid-range investment that it was hoped would insulate the club against stagnation while the new ground was developed.
What will happen to that plan if its mastermind departs? Indeed, what was going to happen had Hicks got his man in J�rgen Klinsmann? Liverpool were still unbeaten in the Premier League when Liverpool’s owner made contact, yet would he have let the Germans take over this Spanish resort, just as an Iberian culture under BenÍtez had replaced the French influence of G�rard Houllier (in his first season, much of the dead wood removed by BenÍtez consisted of French or French-speaking players introduced by Houllier but barely used), each change beginning with the wholesale rejection of the last.
Every managerial alteration brings upheaval – Roy Hodgson at Fulham is struggling to get to grips with the weaknesses caused by the transfer policies of Lawrie Sanchez – but to lose the vital presence in a revolution as substantial as that taking place at Anfield is to risk a directionless mess.
With clubs such as Manchester City and Aston Villa at last finding their feet under capable managers in Sven-G�ran Eriksson and Martin O’Neill, to have their club’s rationale inviting comparison with the military juntas of Sierra Leone is something that Liverpool’s owners can ill-afford.
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