Germany, Ozil and Loew: The Clay Triumvrate.

Watching the FIFA 2018 World Cup match between Germany and South Korea that has just ended, it was damn difficult believing it was the same German team that thumped Brazil 7-1 in the semi-finals of the 2014 edition of the same tournament that was on the field. The

magnificent squad that later went on to win the cup at the expense of Argentina. It is charitable saying the team was a shadow of its former self. No shadow, no matter how miserable, would want to be associated with this pathetic performance. Is this not the same team that used to be called the 'German Machine' by admirers all over the world? A moniker earned for competence, ruthless efficiency, crisp passing and wondrous organization. The squad we've just seen rather looked like a chapped-out car, a contraption coughing badly and no amount of pushing was going to make it start. Plenty of pushing there was, as strenuous as hell, millions of German fans at home and abroad doing all they can to urge on their team to glory, but Joachim Loew's team was simply dire. It was a car they couldn't even get to the mechanic. The fire-high passion of supporters would eventually get damped by a performance nothing short of a damp squib.
The prime architect of the heinous 2-0 defeat  was Loew himself, World Cup winner in 2014, now diving steeply and very fast from hero to zero. If Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira played so poorly in the first match defeat to Mexico, and the team managed to win against highly-organized Sweden in the second match, why field them again in the final match? A crucial match that they had to win, take their own fate in their own hands and avoid the risk of depending on other results from the group. Perhaps he thought Mexico would beat Sweden. Perhaps he underestimated South Korea. Perhaps he has lost his gravitas for caution, shrewdness, alertness and judgment.
He had an able lieutenant in Ozil, the hero of 2014 that started Germany's precipitous slip in the current edition long before the tournament started by that notorious photo-op with Erdogan, the Turkish president, a rabble-rouser as loud and violent as they come. With Ilkay Gundogan, another German player of Turkish origins, it was not a little rumpus they caused team preparations by posing with Erdogan and calling him 'my president'. Only God knows the inspiration they hoped to gain from the pugnacious lout? And if they thought that muzzling opposition, clamping opponents into jail without trial and screaming at real or imagined threats were all going to be insightful, the idiocy of it all was ruthlessly exposed by Mexico and South Korea. Loew shouldn't have taken the pair to Germany. Just as he was with Arsenal, his performances were slow, lethargic and horribly sloppy and his body language bespoke that of a spoiled brat, a lout quarreling with team mates and himself. The upside of it all is that he knows he is finished in international football and needs a huge redemption at club level. He might have won the World Cup but hanging around his neck now is the unwanted medal of Germany exiting the tournament at a group stage since 1938, before the 2nd World War.
It is that bad. 

Jesus and Klopp: Iscariot and Karius.

The Champions League final in Kiev really produced a lot: a not-too-scintillating contest, there had been talks of Red Arrows, Ronaldo's Superman and Spiderman efforts and many other appetite-whetting epithets but what actually turned up in place of the anticipated fireworks were at best dull sparks; Mohamed Salah's injury, largely responsible for the just-mentioned damp squib; Gareth Bale' resurrection in form of a wonder goal, the Liverpool's goalkeeper confounding howlers. And a new word play. Loris Karius is now Lor isKarius. Clever but quite disingenuous as the source is quite familiar to everyone of us; the young German goalkeeper could be accused of so many things in the blunders that led to Real Madrid goals but by no stretch of imagination could he be tagged with perfidy. Karius has done fairly well in Liverpool's bright season and we could all see the genuine agony in his eyes after the final whistle but mischief is not always far from folks in an enterprise as passionate as football, especially in Africa where suspicions and conspiracy theories are dished out daily in cartloads. It is often that players battle with nerves, as well as genuine mistakes, and what Karius suffered from on the pitch was simply nerve failure and no other thing could be responsible. And he should take heart, after all our savior was accused of far weightier things, and in football, as in the larger life, there is always an opportunity for redemption. A second is all it even takes. Bale will easily attest to that.
Apropos of our savior. We will see greater substance in the wordplay by turning our attention to the principals of Judas Iscariot and Loris Karius. We know the two guys in question very well. Jesus knew someone was going to betray him and he could have saved himself by simply having the culprit seized by his disciples. But he did not. He had the greater duty of saving the whole world and the divine will must prevail. His blood must be shed and in that would be the redemption for all of us. And that is why we still look at the curvature of our neighbor's wife with covetous eyes without the threat of fire and brimstone, that fire and brimstone, doing things to our lustful hearts. Klopp was outright negligent in not seeing that his goalkeeper was not feeling all that comfortable in goal. We could all see that the moment Salah was carried out of the pitch. It was a simple case of getting scared knowing he faced a greater threat from the suddenly expanded breathing space Real Madrid players now roamed with the pressure the formidable Egyptian was exerting now attenuated with his removal. His coach should have seen this but then the usually passionate Klopp might have been too animated in his technical area. A similar thing happened in the second leg of the 2009 champions league semi final match between Arsenal and Manchester United. Arsenal were playing at home and everyone could see that the young defender, Kieran Gibbs, was feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of facing the Cristiano Ronaldo juggernaut. The tension, the size, of the occasion  simply overwhelmed him and his inexplicable slip in the box gifted the opposition a crucial goal. Arsene Wenger would eventually take him off, seeing he was coping badly with the weight of expectations, but by then the damage had been done. Klopp should have taken Karius off after that first howler. He wasn't Jesus Christ. Maybe then the outcome would have been different. Now he carries the unenviable tag of a coach that gets selections and tactics right except at the crucial moments: the finals.

The Fireman Hath Honor...

The firefighter hath honor, but only when the fire is raging. Few, very few people remember him the moment the inferno dies down. It is such a dispiriting job.
Mr Sam Allardyce, erstwhile coach of Everton Football Club, England should be the last person to be surprised by his recent sack by the club. He has said he is disappointed by the decision of the club but that is a feeling he should have inured himself against. In his storied managerial career, and few coaches, football or not, have lived through more interesting times, sacking has always been his lot. From Newcastle to Everton.
He knows he is a fireman, to be called in only in times of disaster raging or about to break out. He is the guy directing the water hose or wielding the axe to break down doors and hurl himself into a raging inferno. He is the muscular rescuer, savior, football's superman. He smashes into car doors to pull out the trapped and injured or dives into water to hold aloft the drowning, the sinking, give him something, even a straw, to cling on to. Even the drowned is not beyond his attention. He has led Bolton and West Ham from the lower rungs of British football back into the Premier League.
He knows he is not the elegant, sophisticated conductor directing an orchestra. Leave that to the Wengers and Guardiolas. Such sophistication, refinements are for Arsenal and Manchester City, clubs least likely to be entangled in the dangers of sinking or drowning. Therein the lines are already written and arranged, the only problem is for performance to be made perfect, flawless. Allardyce is the wild savage, body stripped bare save for a cluster of leaves covering essentials and streaked into a frightening motif, veins coursing wildly with blood, all too eager to plunge into battles torrid and enervating. The beats of calling are from the drums of the primeval tribe and elegance is so far away. He cannot be too chic and classy in the type of hero he wants to be. He was called in when Everton was sinking, sinking badly and he has done the job he was appointed for. It did not really matter how he went about it, if it involved pumping balls into the opponents' box and giving the devil free rein to less loose some of its most feral hounds, so be it. In a drowning, any straw will do. It is safety first and methods later. If anyone still cared about methods.
It is his lot. The job has been done, thanks and goodbye.. He should hardly harbor ill-feelings about his dismissal. It is a very ungrateful world in football. Fans are so demanding and besotted with ingratitude that after safety their next inclination is to bask in the luxury of questioning the methods that brought the result. The heroic fireman soon becomes the distressing, boring villain. And who can really blame them? They own the club, pay to high heavens to be entertained and in the new world, getting value for money is a quest folks don't hesitate to push to extreme limits. It is such an unfair world. He is the strange fireman. People eagerly accept his exertions, his drive and after safety, immediately turn around to question his methods. From their dissenting cacophony in the safety of dry land, you would think they would have preferred to drown in the first place.
But he should not be too dismayed. Drowning, sinking, is a very common accident in football, especially in the Premier League. Infernos break out at will. It won't be long before his services are required again. After all Everton did think they had enough life-jackets when they appointed Koeman as coach. It may be yet that the same club will come begging, cap in hand. Returning, as we say in Africa, to lap up their own vomit. 

Aristotle Mentors Wenger: But the Business of Football is no Business.

"Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves."
Poor Arsene Wenger. As a student of economics, he must have gushed over this ancient dictum: one day he was going to run a football club - forget Arsene who? - one of the biggest on earth, and he must have taken old Aristotle admonition as a tool to be taken far more seriously than a managerial wisecrack. He wasn't the only one: for ages, it was an advice that had saved many a business and businessman from collapse and ruin.
Wenger turned out to be an excellent master at tweaking costs. He would buy players dirt cheap and place them under salary structures that were not going to trouble club finances for a very long time and with his undoubted technical ability, mold them into stars that would eventually leave at enormous profits to the club. Aristotle must have beamed with delight in his grave. He also was an excellent salesman. His beautiful brand of football was to do all sorts of exciting things to British football, a brand hitherto notorious for long balls and hooliganism. His football tactics served him well, and so was the financial model that propped up the alluring brand. The pinnacle of his smart money moves was the construction of the magnificent Emirates Stadium.
But the business side of football wasn't going to remain the business of pizza or laundry soap for long. Strange competitors would enter the market. Rich guys with with oversized pockets and king-sized egos. Starting with the Russian oligarch, Roman Abrahamovich, football clubs became mere expensive acquisitions, like yachts, private jets and priceless arts and jewelry. Clubs became expensive toys that helped massage personal egos. In other words, costs no longer mattered, profits even less. Overnight, the double model of success: winning on a solid footing of financial prudence split violently, prudence cast into the abyss of immediate gratification. A satisfaction that could be bought by spending lavishly on the best footballers on earth. The Chelsea model was soon riding hell-for-leather on the increasingly limping Arsenal model.
Wenger's model wasn't going to gain traction too by the ever-changing nature of the game. There was no football during Aristotle's time but even this wisest of all men must have been a bit stretched imagining the business side of this sport: a product with a demand so maddening you could play the most absurd version of Russian roulette with its costs and still come out a winner. Football clubs like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Manchester United were incurring hefty costs in acquisition of players and were still making hefty profits. Talent was hemorrhaging at Arsenal under Wenger's watch and there was little he could really do about it. He could not bring new infusion of prime talents and it was inevitable the club would slip rapidly. No Messi or Ronaldo was coming down to Arsenal.
He would eventually bring in expensive talents like Lacazette and Aubameyang into the club but it was all too late. Inertia and rot had set in and such acquisitions were more or less panic buyings. Football has grown malignant. Even not watching the costs is no longer a guarantee that success, which has practically replaced profits, would take care of itself. Aristotle would have been amazed.

Fury of the Fans: West Ham is just the Beginning.

According to his own testimony, Mr Slaven Bilic, former manager of West Ham Football Club, sometimes after he was sacked as manager of the club, perhaps compelled by hurtful soul-searching, decided to place calls to some of his former players, inquiring about what he could have done to avoid the fate that befell him. It isn't a pleasant fate, being sacked from a workplace, and few places are as alluring and glamorous as a sports club, especially a football club. Especially a Premier League club. Nobody cares about the manager that produces his Coca-Cola, or his Mercedes or his Louis Vuitton handbag but all eyes are on Cristiano Ronaldo who manufactures the football the fans gush over on the football field: and Zinedin Zidane, the manager that designs the manufacture. And nowhere is sports scrutiny more intense than the Premier League, an arena filled with money, noise and hype. And emotions and passions so combustible they explode at the slightest ignition. Therein success could be so sweet and rewarding and, moving to the other end of the spectrum, failure that inevitably leads to a sack could be very bitter, painful. Especially for a coach who was certain he had put in a load of credible shift.
The unanimous reply Bilic got from his own former players is as shocking as it is telling: simply, he was not hard enough on them.
In other words, the modern-day football player no longer derive joy and elan from a sport that pays him obscene sums of money, that gives him instant world-wide fame, that helps secure his future. After collecting a fat pay packet every week, he still expects to be whipped in line to do his job. Like an expensive Bugatti that has stalled all of a sudden, he expects to be pushed before he starts.
Take a look at Paul Pogba, sometimes a world record holder not in terms of performance but in terms of the fees paid for his services. Ever since his arrival at Manchester United his services and performances have taken back seat to a whole tranche of issues dominated by speculations and counter denials, searing rumors and conjectures. Now his not being on the field seems more valuable than being on it.
Or Mesut Ozil, a gifted footballer who switches on and off at will. Plays sumptuous football when there is a fat contract to be signed and then slumps to the lowest depths of abysmal football immediately after putting pen to paper. But, be as it may, the Premier League is filled with fantastic performers who take enormous pride in the jersey that they wear and work their socks off to defend the honor of their club. Take the Brazilian Kennedy for example, a role model who decided to jettison the glamor and riches of Chelsea to jump at the chance to play regular football and whose heart-warming performances is one of the major reasons Newcastle is inching gradually towards safety. He is a fantastic example, quite in contrast to the off and on pitch body language we've been seeing at Arsenal, West Ham, West Brom of late.
Happily, West Ham players have gotten their wishes, the push they wish for provided by their own fans yesterday. The manager, David Moyes, was of the opinion the fans crossed literary and figurative lines by invading the pitch to protest their players' dreary performance. Sir Trevor Brooking, an ex-striker of the club echoed similar lines when he said the six home games due to the club before the Burnley game presented an opportunity that is now is in serious jeopardy. Both gentlemen are seriously out of tune with the realities of the modern game. Soccer is a game of passion and emotion, a combustible mix likely to boil over at any time, a game meant for the horde and not gentlemen for whom its rules are obviously drawn for. Everywhere, not England alone. It is telling that a little after the West Ham brouhaha, a similar scenario erupted in France where fans of Lille also invaded the pitch and aimed kicks at their own players after a below par league game. Brooking should have kept his opinions to himself. If you have six home games and you are losing the first of such like that, what assurance have you got that the rest will not go the same way? The rest can as well be moved to the doldrums. Burnley is a decent club and Sean Dyche has done a fantastic job on the players, but West Ham is a massive club, one of the biggest in the world and the fans were not going to take it lightly that the players were not losing to Burnley but have put themselves in a position where losing to Burnley would jar to no end. The defeat was therefore not the iceberg, but the tip of the iceberg that tore huge gashes in the hull of the fierce West Ham pride.
Another pitch invasion will happen, probably at West Brom. Another owner is going to have a coin thrown at him soon, a symbolic gesture towards the Shylocks in football. By fans who are the real owners of such enterprises.

A Letter to Laurent Koscielny's Boy.

Dear Lad,
Many of us who support Arsenal Football Club do not really care about the ownership of the club. As far as we are concerned, it could have been acquired by aliens from outer space. Neither do we worry so much about the board or what even transpires in the dressing room or on the training pitch. Involvement and commitment really grip our hearts when the players file on to the pitch in a match and the referee blows his starting whistle. For the next ninety minutes or so, we clap or cry, shout in joy, ecstasy or in pain and hurt. We could end up in delight or gloom. In short, it is the footballing aspect of the club that really concerns us and in that regard most of our attention dwell on the manager of the club, Mr Arsene Wenger, and the players we revere, almost worship, and whom we dedicate our money and effort and time to watch perform. Players led by your father, as captain of the club.
Good lad, you  must have seen images of that distraught young supporter during the League Cup final against Manchester City. In all likelihood, he is of the same age as you and I had no doubt you must have shared in his pain and trauma occasioned by a miserable defeat. At times, pain and hurt might be the strongest of all feelings that bond us together and I believe your young heart is too good not to be moved. Too young and tender to be oblivious of the fact that hurt and pain have been our lot of recent, young and old, hundreds of millions of Arsenal supporters all over the world. The club is one of the biggest on earth, some say the most elegant, and if only the goodwill and love it receives all over the world can win matches!
So the club has not been doing us a lot of good of recent but, young lad, you've done us a lot of good. More than, I'm sorry to say this, the players of the club led by your father have been doing us of late. By asking your father why the players have been playing so badly of late. During the ninety minutes or so that really matter, the manager is outside the pitch and cannot have too much control over the events that go on on it. He selects the eleven players he trusts will give him and the fans victory. What becomes crucial and goes on to determine victory is the tranche of skills, vision and passion, zeal and determination exhibited by the players in the match. Apart from the manager barking out instructions most of which is not heeded anyway and making two or three substitutions, winning a match solidly rests on the players. Led by their captain.
Hence it is very apt you should ask your father that salient question, apt that he is closer to you in space, time and place than Arsene Wenger. We don't know what he told you but it is an answer you yourself should have seen very clearly, the age being irrelevant. You could see it from outer space. You must have watched the Premier League match with Manchester United in which your father gave the ball away so sloppily that the much hated enemy scored instantly. It was a pure pass to the opponent. It wasn't a more heartwarming performance in the cup final and only on Sunday, Brighton scored their second goal after the captain, the same captain, inexplicably gave the ball away again. You would think that if the captain cannot marshal his troops, he would at least try to organize his defense, a department he was supposed to be a stalwart in and which has come for serious censure of recent in the downward spiral Arsenal has slipped into. In fact the defense is the culprit being fingered now in the continuous abject performances Arsenal has seen of late.
There is no doubt skills are abundant in the club. Your father and his troops have demonstrated that times without number. What has been in remiss is the tranche of zeal, skills, passion and determination. What sears the heart stronger than a sight of players walking so listlessly on a football pitch? Your father was given the honor of rallying the troops and that he cannot even do. That is why Arsenal is playing very poorly. The players have lost the motivation, but not the desire to collect their fat pay packets, and you've asked the right person why?
Did you see the way Aubameyang celebrated after scoring his measly goal against Brighton? He  seemed to be telling us that as long as he gets a goal now and then the huge money spent or being spent on him is quite justified. Leaving team victory and his paymasters, which include you and me, in the lurch.
Football is a ruthless sport and Arsenal players, in a perverse way,  are lucky to have a manager who is too trusting. A manager who expects a player to get up and dust his ass. When it is a very stout stick the ass needs to get hauled up.
    

Football's New Virus.

It might be too late, even quixotic, to rein in the present regime of outrageous transfer fees. Better to let it unravel, like all wildly-galloping schemes. Regulating imbalances in the salary structures of football clubs should be of more reasonable proposition. By this I don't mean salary caps, Lionel Messi could earn a million per week for all I care, but if Harry Kane is going to earn three hundred at Tottenham, as would undoubtedly happen one day, I see no reason why Son should not be earning two-fifty or why Eriksen should be going home with eighty. Alexis Sanchez certainly did not go to Manchester United for $140m but the mouth-watering salary he is going to earn may end up doing far greater, eye-watering damage. As matter of fact, most clubs, even those in the lower echelons of the Premier League, can afford to pay huge transfer fees now. Increasing revenue from broadcasting deals has seen to that. But such transfers also engender huge disparities in wages being earned by players and it is this imbalance that should be the focus of our concern. If I were Phil Jones, or Ander Herrera, or Anthony Martial, I would resent it a bit that Sanchez is earning such hefty money per week. Ozil's skills and contributions to Arsenal's victories are well-known but Bellerin's heart has crevices in which a sludge can naturally calcify that the disparity between his own wages and the $350k Ozil presently earns is not commensurate with the difference in values they add to the team.
My imagination might have been a bit on the effervescent but watching the Man U-Spurs match, it sort of occurred to me Sanchez would need a bit of  pandering to do to his teammates. He is a nice, affable guy, but when it comes to money, folks are far less accommodating.
Perhaps that's why Guardiola decided against taking him in. Perhaps Ronaldo's teammates in Madrid are beginning to feel the same way. Perhaps more Dembeles will still end up in Barcelona to effect a squad of players who believe what they are earning is not unjustifiably far behind that of Lionel Messi.
A team of grumpy players is a sulky team, not a silky team. Great performances can only come, at best, desultorily.
Apropos of things watering, grudges of fairness are one of human emotions that Russian master of salivation, Ivan Pavlov, must have understood too well. It would little harm Mourinho and Wenger to study a bit of human understanding.