Ally
Active Member
Right all, a simple question today. What makes a good football team? By 'good', I mean effective. Really effective.
It's the Champions League Final tonight. Honestly, I don't hold out much hope for 90 minutes of freestyling, fast, sweeping attacking play. I believe they call Serie A “Tactically demanding”. To me, that means managers who, if asked who was their inspiration in football, would answer Graham Taylor. Serie A promotes a very strange style of football, so we'll go back to basics – there are two schools of thought on how to play football, at the most fundamental level possible.
School 1 – To win a football game, you must score a goal.
School 2 – If you do not concede, you cannot lose a football game.
How on earth an entire league can survive on the second principle is beyond me. Even when Arsenal were crap, we had Ian Wright, and for all the Steve Morrows and Glenn Helders in the midfield we'd create. We had the defence, of course, and they were the basis for any success that might have been on the go, but not in a negative way. The nature of the English game saw to that – you can't have two teams trying to defend each other off the park. It's not on. It doesn't happen.
Take an Arsenal team with a strikeforce of Trezeguet and Del Piero. Say that instead of Bergkamp, Rioch had managed to pull off a major coup, getting the wonderkid of Europe at the time in for seven million quid. Say that four years down the line, Rioch is gone and Arsène Wenger's team is looking suspiciously familiar to how we know it. Instead of Bergkamp, we had Del Piero feeding Anelka and scoring sublime goals himself. Then, Anelka throws his toys out and wants away – a striker is needed. French? Speedy? Powerful? Ach, Henry's in Juve reserves. What can he do? We'll get in Trezeguet instead.
Now, with our style of football, those two up front would be absolute dynamite. In a different way to how Bergkamp and Thierry operate. In the Premiership you're talking, maybe, 50 goals a season between the two? Defensive concerns suddenly become that much less important, because the first school of thought is so dominant. Defence? Pap, we'll play Wiltord at centre half, gives us more attacking option.
Italian football's more insular. It operates as if there's no other league about – look at the transfer market. All it consists of is the top teams selling players to each other. Need a goalkeeper? Fine, Ivan Pellizoli is available. A snip at thirteen million. What's that? Kahn or Rustu? Nah. He'd suit our style better, y'see. We're lacking up front, you say? Fine, instead of going into Europe and bringing back a well established and respected forward for the same money, we'll get Cassano for £18m. Investment. He's more tactically aware. Honestly, it's like the NFL draft.
The stage where Italian football suddenly reached the nadir was when it became so stagnated within itself that all the teams had either forgotten, or had just not been aware in the first place, how the other leagues were moving away from them. We were at the stage where Arsenal could go to Rome with John Lukic in goal and come out with a 1-1 draw.
Now, we're merely in some sort of transitional phase where Man Utd reserves can go to Turin with half their team missing, bring on two half-fit substitutes and thrash Juve 3-0. If Italian teams were more prepared to take the plunge and gamble on players who haven't yet earned the seemingly mandatory credentials for Serie A, we'd possibly be looking at a match for La Liga. Think of van Nistelrooy alongside, say, Shevchenko.
What's even more astounding is a talent for letting some of the best young players in the world rot away in the name of backup. Purely from an Arsenal point of view, we're looking at Bergkamp, Vieira and Henry. Those three in the Inter Milan team on top form now, say alongside Vieira, Crespo, Recoba, Cordoba, Toldo et al would result in one hell of a force to sit up and take note of. On paper.
And that's the whole problem. Teams on paper can land you in a veritable patch of quicksand if you're trying to predict how they're going to perform as a whole. Serie A's one and only prioirty is the impact of the individual. When AC Milan bought Inzhagi off Juve, I just wonder if they gave the slightest thought to how well Shevchenko was going to adapt to having such a player alongside him. Just as the Ukrainian was on fire last year and whoever was alongside him wasn't (Can't remember who now), the new signing, still carrying a novelty value of sorts, is banging them in, and Andriy can't adjust. The old partner will be packed off to Chievo or Udinese or Piacenza and a new one brought in for his short term worth, and so the vicious circle goes on and on and on. The same team infamously snapped up Rivaldo on a free, presumably for the sake of having him. He now warms the bench, completely unable to find his feet. Seemingly he comes on and scores a penalty now and again.
You take a player out of Serie A and put him in the Premiership. And again, it doesn't happen too often, because the players are normally priced completely out of the market, so I have to use the examples of our signings again – Vieira, Bergkamp and Henry. Vieira, Bergkamp and Henry. Collectively they cost £21m. Probably less, but those are the figures I've been familiar with since the deals were done. Ten for Titi, seven for Dennis and four for Patrick. We're at the stage now where they're actually beginning to sound a bit expensive – the collapse of the market kicking in. Basically, you're talking about either having Anelka or having all of them under 1999 prices. Anyhow, setting those three as primary examples, it makes the mind boggle as to exactly what is currently in Juventus reserves. Maybe they were three of a kind, but of course we can say that now. At the time each was signed, they were each considered surplus at their own clubs. In effect, each carried a certain gamble with them. There were comments made about Arsenal's youth system last season which amounted to “If Rooney was at Arsenal, he wouldn't have made his debut yet.”. Makes you wonder. If Pires had repeated his stop-start first year at Arsenal in Italy, he'd have been out the door.
And then you get the slightly bizarre situation where hoofers and journeymen find themselves as regulars in teams going full pelt for the Championship and European Cup. Nelson Vivas is deemed good enough for Inter Milan. Funny, I seem to recall him looking a bit ****e for us. Likewise, Reno Gattuso, former Rangers reject and player who was once laughed off the pitch by the St Johnstone fans when he was substituted for being garbage, is now the anchorman that pins together everything AC do. This works for players facing up to these teams as well - Oleg Luzhny deputising for Lauren as a flying right back against Roma was absolutely sublime, if I recall correctly. Maybe because these players don't have the same arrogance, the same selfishness that the megastars do? Maybe because they put in consistent performances as opposed to being up and down all the time? I wonder if Stepanovs could do a job for Juventus - £5m sound OK?
I've been giving a bit of thought as to how such incredible pools of players can produce utter rubbish on the park (Eurosport's Italian coverage also doubles as a rather nifty solution for insomniacs – at least Gazzeta on Channel 4 filtered out the vast majority of midfield scrapping suitable only for recovering lobotomy patients). The obvious answer is when awesome attacks meet awesome defences, things rather tend to grind to a halt. You put Nesta on Crespo, Costacurta on Recoba and -Bang-, you can hope that one of your individually-minded forwards gets a rebound off someone's ankle at the other end, because you've shut down anything coming from the opposition.
Alternatively, you can throw in two strikers who know each other, who like each other, who trust each other, who pass the ball – the original telekentic partnership was Raul and Morientes, and we grew used to Dennis and Freddie's connection via. some variety of ESP – back to basics again, if you can pass the ball properly, defences can generally be carved open. Celtic had kept Liverpool out, Blackburn out, Celta Vigo out, Boavista out, but they couldn't deal with Porto. And the reason? Because Porto are the only one of those teams with a creative forward who understands and appreciates another more direct striker – Deco's interplay with Alienichev resulted in two of the goals. Liverpool don't have that, for sure (HOOOF!!!!). We do. And that, I suppose, is why it's OK for me to sit back and start banging on about how others should. It is rare, but when it exists, boy do you know about it.
To find and develop such a partnership takes time. And there is the downfall of Serie A. Thierry Henry got something like 11 games for Juventus plus subs appearances, because he wasn't fitting in. Vieira never got near the AC first team. Bergkamp was one of Europe's brightest young stars before Inter took him, decided they didn't have the time or inclination to help him add to his game, and promptly palmed him off onto someone else (Cheers, it was really appreciated by the way). The Italian way doesn't involve settling-in periods, transitional phases or extra time to rebuild the squad. Change is usually immediate and brutal, and usually involves substantial amounts of money. And under those conditions, understandings don't evolve and tactical revolutions aren't given more than a couple of weeks. Wenger would have been sacked after season 99/00 if Arsenal had been Lazio, if you see what I mean.
I said that Arsenal with Trezueguet and Del Piero would dismantle most other teams. Actually, that might have been wrong. Arsenal with Henry and Bergkamp could see off the majority of opposition from Italy as it is (Roma, Lazio, Juventus, all in the last three years). Why would we improve with the other two instead? They're impact players, and might well work for a season. What we have between TH14 and DB10 is intricate, perfectly defined and precisely the opposite. England and Italy are two very different leagues. But at the moment, England is streets ahead and not just in terms of entertainment. I just mentioned Roma's defeat at Thierry's hands – but aside from us, Liverpool and Leeds have both beaten the less-fascistic side of Rome's football makeup in the past couple of years.
Two teams who look to me to be pretty average are going to play for the Champions League this evening. I reckon Arsenal could take either. On that rationale, why couldn't we win the Champions League? Because there's not the same urgency, the same impact, the same pressure to succeed. The desperation of the manager to keep his job and that of the players to keep their places (And, it follows, their presumably hefty appearance fees) is the only reason AC are against Juve tonight. Given the choice between that, and long term stability with a consistent squad playing consistently brilliant yet under-rated football, I'd choose the latter. I'd choose Arsenal.
Define a 'good team', then. Fine. Juve and AC are 'good' teams. In their own way. Speaking purely as an arrogant and self-centred Arsenal fan, I'd say we go beyond good. We're great. And I hope that we never go down to their level. I prefer what we already have, thank you.
Ally Winford
It's the Champions League Final tonight. Honestly, I don't hold out much hope for 90 minutes of freestyling, fast, sweeping attacking play. I believe they call Serie A “Tactically demanding”. To me, that means managers who, if asked who was their inspiration in football, would answer Graham Taylor. Serie A promotes a very strange style of football, so we'll go back to basics – there are two schools of thought on how to play football, at the most fundamental level possible.
School 1 – To win a football game, you must score a goal.
School 2 – If you do not concede, you cannot lose a football game.
How on earth an entire league can survive on the second principle is beyond me. Even when Arsenal were crap, we had Ian Wright, and for all the Steve Morrows and Glenn Helders in the midfield we'd create. We had the defence, of course, and they were the basis for any success that might have been on the go, but not in a negative way. The nature of the English game saw to that – you can't have two teams trying to defend each other off the park. It's not on. It doesn't happen.
Take an Arsenal team with a strikeforce of Trezeguet and Del Piero. Say that instead of Bergkamp, Rioch had managed to pull off a major coup, getting the wonderkid of Europe at the time in for seven million quid. Say that four years down the line, Rioch is gone and Arsène Wenger's team is looking suspiciously familiar to how we know it. Instead of Bergkamp, we had Del Piero feeding Anelka and scoring sublime goals himself. Then, Anelka throws his toys out and wants away – a striker is needed. French? Speedy? Powerful? Ach, Henry's in Juve reserves. What can he do? We'll get in Trezeguet instead.
Now, with our style of football, those two up front would be absolute dynamite. In a different way to how Bergkamp and Thierry operate. In the Premiership you're talking, maybe, 50 goals a season between the two? Defensive concerns suddenly become that much less important, because the first school of thought is so dominant. Defence? Pap, we'll play Wiltord at centre half, gives us more attacking option.
Italian football's more insular. It operates as if there's no other league about – look at the transfer market. All it consists of is the top teams selling players to each other. Need a goalkeeper? Fine, Ivan Pellizoli is available. A snip at thirteen million. What's that? Kahn or Rustu? Nah. He'd suit our style better, y'see. We're lacking up front, you say? Fine, instead of going into Europe and bringing back a well established and respected forward for the same money, we'll get Cassano for £18m. Investment. He's more tactically aware. Honestly, it's like the NFL draft.
The stage where Italian football suddenly reached the nadir was when it became so stagnated within itself that all the teams had either forgotten, or had just not been aware in the first place, how the other leagues were moving away from them. We were at the stage where Arsenal could go to Rome with John Lukic in goal and come out with a 1-1 draw.
Now, we're merely in some sort of transitional phase where Man Utd reserves can go to Turin with half their team missing, bring on two half-fit substitutes and thrash Juve 3-0. If Italian teams were more prepared to take the plunge and gamble on players who haven't yet earned the seemingly mandatory credentials for Serie A, we'd possibly be looking at a match for La Liga. Think of van Nistelrooy alongside, say, Shevchenko.
What's even more astounding is a talent for letting some of the best young players in the world rot away in the name of backup. Purely from an Arsenal point of view, we're looking at Bergkamp, Vieira and Henry. Those three in the Inter Milan team on top form now, say alongside Vieira, Crespo, Recoba, Cordoba, Toldo et al would result in one hell of a force to sit up and take note of. On paper.
And that's the whole problem. Teams on paper can land you in a veritable patch of quicksand if you're trying to predict how they're going to perform as a whole. Serie A's one and only prioirty is the impact of the individual. When AC Milan bought Inzhagi off Juve, I just wonder if they gave the slightest thought to how well Shevchenko was going to adapt to having such a player alongside him. Just as the Ukrainian was on fire last year and whoever was alongside him wasn't (Can't remember who now), the new signing, still carrying a novelty value of sorts, is banging them in, and Andriy can't adjust. The old partner will be packed off to Chievo or Udinese or Piacenza and a new one brought in for his short term worth, and so the vicious circle goes on and on and on. The same team infamously snapped up Rivaldo on a free, presumably for the sake of having him. He now warms the bench, completely unable to find his feet. Seemingly he comes on and scores a penalty now and again.
You take a player out of Serie A and put him in the Premiership. And again, it doesn't happen too often, because the players are normally priced completely out of the market, so I have to use the examples of our signings again – Vieira, Bergkamp and Henry. Vieira, Bergkamp and Henry. Collectively they cost £21m. Probably less, but those are the figures I've been familiar with since the deals were done. Ten for Titi, seven for Dennis and four for Patrick. We're at the stage now where they're actually beginning to sound a bit expensive – the collapse of the market kicking in. Basically, you're talking about either having Anelka or having all of them under 1999 prices. Anyhow, setting those three as primary examples, it makes the mind boggle as to exactly what is currently in Juventus reserves. Maybe they were three of a kind, but of course we can say that now. At the time each was signed, they were each considered surplus at their own clubs. In effect, each carried a certain gamble with them. There were comments made about Arsenal's youth system last season which amounted to “If Rooney was at Arsenal, he wouldn't have made his debut yet.”. Makes you wonder. If Pires had repeated his stop-start first year at Arsenal in Italy, he'd have been out the door.
And then you get the slightly bizarre situation where hoofers and journeymen find themselves as regulars in teams going full pelt for the Championship and European Cup. Nelson Vivas is deemed good enough for Inter Milan. Funny, I seem to recall him looking a bit ****e for us. Likewise, Reno Gattuso, former Rangers reject and player who was once laughed off the pitch by the St Johnstone fans when he was substituted for being garbage, is now the anchorman that pins together everything AC do. This works for players facing up to these teams as well - Oleg Luzhny deputising for Lauren as a flying right back against Roma was absolutely sublime, if I recall correctly. Maybe because these players don't have the same arrogance, the same selfishness that the megastars do? Maybe because they put in consistent performances as opposed to being up and down all the time? I wonder if Stepanovs could do a job for Juventus - £5m sound OK?
I've been giving a bit of thought as to how such incredible pools of players can produce utter rubbish on the park (Eurosport's Italian coverage also doubles as a rather nifty solution for insomniacs – at least Gazzeta on Channel 4 filtered out the vast majority of midfield scrapping suitable only for recovering lobotomy patients). The obvious answer is when awesome attacks meet awesome defences, things rather tend to grind to a halt. You put Nesta on Crespo, Costacurta on Recoba and -Bang-, you can hope that one of your individually-minded forwards gets a rebound off someone's ankle at the other end, because you've shut down anything coming from the opposition.
Alternatively, you can throw in two strikers who know each other, who like each other, who trust each other, who pass the ball – the original telekentic partnership was Raul and Morientes, and we grew used to Dennis and Freddie's connection via. some variety of ESP – back to basics again, if you can pass the ball properly, defences can generally be carved open. Celtic had kept Liverpool out, Blackburn out, Celta Vigo out, Boavista out, but they couldn't deal with Porto. And the reason? Because Porto are the only one of those teams with a creative forward who understands and appreciates another more direct striker – Deco's interplay with Alienichev resulted in two of the goals. Liverpool don't have that, for sure (HOOOF!!!!). We do. And that, I suppose, is why it's OK for me to sit back and start banging on about how others should. It is rare, but when it exists, boy do you know about it.
To find and develop such a partnership takes time. And there is the downfall of Serie A. Thierry Henry got something like 11 games for Juventus plus subs appearances, because he wasn't fitting in. Vieira never got near the AC first team. Bergkamp was one of Europe's brightest young stars before Inter took him, decided they didn't have the time or inclination to help him add to his game, and promptly palmed him off onto someone else (Cheers, it was really appreciated by the way). The Italian way doesn't involve settling-in periods, transitional phases or extra time to rebuild the squad. Change is usually immediate and brutal, and usually involves substantial amounts of money. And under those conditions, understandings don't evolve and tactical revolutions aren't given more than a couple of weeks. Wenger would have been sacked after season 99/00 if Arsenal had been Lazio, if you see what I mean.
I said that Arsenal with Trezueguet and Del Piero would dismantle most other teams. Actually, that might have been wrong. Arsenal with Henry and Bergkamp could see off the majority of opposition from Italy as it is (Roma, Lazio, Juventus, all in the last three years). Why would we improve with the other two instead? They're impact players, and might well work for a season. What we have between TH14 and DB10 is intricate, perfectly defined and precisely the opposite. England and Italy are two very different leagues. But at the moment, England is streets ahead and not just in terms of entertainment. I just mentioned Roma's defeat at Thierry's hands – but aside from us, Liverpool and Leeds have both beaten the less-fascistic side of Rome's football makeup in the past couple of years.
Two teams who look to me to be pretty average are going to play for the Champions League this evening. I reckon Arsenal could take either. On that rationale, why couldn't we win the Champions League? Because there's not the same urgency, the same impact, the same pressure to succeed. The desperation of the manager to keep his job and that of the players to keep their places (And, it follows, their presumably hefty appearance fees) is the only reason AC are against Juve tonight. Given the choice between that, and long term stability with a consistent squad playing consistently brilliant yet under-rated football, I'd choose the latter. I'd choose Arsenal.
Define a 'good team', then. Fine. Juve and AC are 'good' teams. In their own way. Speaking purely as an arrogant and self-centred Arsenal fan, I'd say we go beyond good. We're great. And I hope that we never go down to their level. I prefer what we already have, thank you.
Ally Winford
