Hey @Nembo Kid -
This Sunday is a huge day in football with historically the biggest game in England between Liverpool and Manchester United and the Clasico matching the best in Spain. Setting out the four starting XIs, you would be hard pushed to get one outfield player from the Liverpool-Man Utd game into the Barcelona-Real Madrid match that evening.
Which is a sad indictment. When you tot up the money invested by Liverpool and Manchester United, spending power is not the chief cause of the Premier League’s slide in Europe, even if the Real Madrid and Barcelona attacking trios are so superior. Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale on one hand, and Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar on the other.
I came out of the Barcelona-Manchester City game thinking that Premier League clubs can’t go on like this. At the airport, City fans asked – “Were we that bad, or were Barcelona that good?” The answer was: “both.”
City are a good side. They have won two of the last three Premier League titles. Yet, when we line up our clubs in a discussion about top-class football, we are way below the peak. Only Chelsea are better-equipped to win in Europe than they showed by going out to Paris Saint-Germain.
Being in Barcelona offered a new experience for me. On one level It was magical, and here’s why.
Twenty-five minutes in, I remember saying: Man City are holding their own. Not playing brilliantly or controlling the game, but managing Barcelona. For the next 20 minutes I was taken to a place I had never been, certainly as a commentator.
Watching games I always think analytically. How a threat can be dealt with or a change made; how a team can win. I’m always registering the mood; whether one defence is on top, or an interesting duel is developing in midfield. For 20 minutes in Barcelona, though, I felt I was back in a sweet shop as a kid.
I’ll go further and say I’ve never felt that way in a football stadium. I’m referring to the 20 minutes Messi produced before half-time, which were out of this world. In the commentary box I exhausted my vocabulary of descriptive terms, even using the word ‘barbaric.’ It was certainly scandalous. Special. I just found myself unable to focus on the more detailed aspects of the game.
Lionel Messi was spellbinding against Manchester City in the Champions League
Messi made all my usual calculations irrelevant. In that moment I was pulled away from thinking about City’s defensive deficiencies, the space that was opening up in midfield, the fact that Manuel Pellegrini’s team were not creating chances. I was taken to that utopia others talk about. And I have never been a football ‘purist’ who looks for the beauty in a game.
My interest has always been with the team performance, the collective effort, and not letting one individual dominate 11 opponents. I always believed there was a way to stop someone. An answer.
Sure, in my playing days we made special plans for exceptional players. We made them for Zinedine Zidane or Thierry Henry. Or Cristiano Ronaldo for Portugal. But for 20 minutes before half time in Barcelona it felt as if there was no answer. You were watching something beyond superlatives. An incredible passage of play.
As Messi took City apart, though, we were witnessing the demise of English football in Europe this season, and my thoughts soon turned to that. It almost needed City to lose 5-0 to force us to face our problems.
In this round of 16 I watched the Arsenal-Monaco home leg, the Chelsea-PSG game and Barcelona v Man City. In those games I saw only five English outfield players. So we have arrived at a position where an enormous amount of money is being spent in the Premier League to accumulate players - yet no-one is happy, because the clubs are not getting value for their buck, and the home production line is falling short.
Watching Premier League games I’m still enthused, still entertained, but at times I despair when I judge them alongside the Champions League matches I see midweek. Most elite European teams are better organized and physically better – which is a scary one – and are certainly better technically.
We talk about intensity and aggression and toughness in English football. Stop saying English football is ‘tough.’ Jordi Alba, the Barcelona left-back, is as aggressive as hell. He would tackle anything. So would Javier Mascherano. We see Thiago Silva and David Luiz smashing balls into the net with their heads. Look at Barcelona’s determination to win the ball back. We must stop hiding behind the idea of our ‘toughness’.
David Luiz scored the decisive goal for PSG against Chelsea
In periods of uncertainty in games, too, the players at those European clubs are far better at adapting. Tottenham, last Sunday against Manchester United, had a problem with Marouane Fellaini, and where Ashley Young was playing, but there was no player adaptability on the pitch itself. Too often players have to wait until half-time when the coaches can get hold of them.
Player thinking is really poor. Problem solving is really poor. I have been appalled in the last season or two by some of the defending, collectively. In that respect Brendan Rodgers deserves great respect for reversing what was a negative trend towards poor defending by Liverpool. Even last season, when they were challenging for the title.
Now, they have much better resilience and defensive organization. Across the board, though, it is nowhere near good enough. Andres Iniesta was constantly taking the ball off City players. Barcelona’s instinct is – we have to win the ball back as soon as we lose it.
Sounds simple, but we are caught between having players who think they are too good to go and retrieve possession, and those who think just getting behind the ball is sufficient. Three or four yards off an opponent is not close enough. It’s a physical issue, a mentality issue and, with some, a question of willingness and desire.
Messi was probably unstoppable on Wednesday night, but I did wonder whether there was something those Man City players might have tried as a destroying tactic. I was thinking – slow the game down, break it up, think on your feet. But playing in the Premier League is like being on the Waltzer. You’re spinning around, it’s exciting, but you come off dizzy, and it’s hard to know whether what you just saw meant anything.
Steven Gerrard celebrates after scoring at Old Trafford
Liverpool v Man Utd will be full of entertainment, the fans will be up for it, the atmosphere will be great, it will capture our imagination. Relate it to the Clasico later in the day, though, and it will come a distant second, in terms of the technical and tactical aspects.
Is this cyclical or a pattern? I hope it’s only a phase. Yet recruitment is becoming a huge topic of concern for English clubs. The modern game is controlled by the big overseas agents. There are no prominent English ones I can think of. We are being used as mugs by middle-men who will happily ship over to England the talent they want to send while the prime stock is pushed into other clubs where they have better connections, and where the players would prefer to go.
We are not dominating the super-agent business – and I do detect a link. Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United have been principled, historically, in their use of agents, but these days we are having to pay high, high prices for players who left the selling club reluctantly. Mesut Ozil and Angel di Maria are examples.
Meanwhile we are forking out very good money for average, and extravagant money for good. But we’re still not getting the true elite. And if we do get them, they end up wanting to go back to Barcelona or Real Madrid.
The Premier League will not be happy with these trends. Nor will Sheikh Mansour at Man City, or Arsenal’s owners. There are probably a lot of unhappy people out there. We have to come out of this.
When the national team is not getting to the later phases of tournaments, and Premier League clubs are going out in the last 16 of the Champions League and the Europa League (Everton), it is incredibly damaging to our redibility in world football, and we have to arrest it quickly. It requires a joint-effort on all the issues I have mentioned – and more.
What we are left with, and what makes me so excited about being at Anfield on Sunday, is entertainment. Our last big card is entertainment, and we play it brilliantly, but we need much more than that beyond these shores.
