This Ghost Won't Go Away.

Yesterday, Brazil defeated Germany 1-0 in a friendly played in Berlin, Gabriel Jesus of Manchester City scoring the only goal of the encounter. Before the match, the Brazilian coach, Tite said the encounter would have a lot of psychological significance. A victory for Brazil would go some way in pushing back the ghost of the humiliating 7-1 defeat suffered by Brazil at the hands of Germany in the semifinals of the 2014 World Cup in Belo Horizonte. Right on Brazilian soil. It was terrible, and that is putting it mildly. Tite himself said that his wife started crying the moment the 5th goal went in. It was a collective national impulse. Even many people all over the world, one way or the other supporters of Brazilian football, could not resist joining the crying fray. There was the eerie felling a horrible destruction was going on on the field. Something great enduring was being torn to shreds.
But in truth, the real damage had been done after the 4th goal. It was the last straw that broke whatever the camel had left of its back. At 3-0 down, there was the poor hope, very poor hope, that stirring miracles had happened before in football from such hopeless situations. The fifth goal ruthlessly dispelled such faint stirrings. The agony was just unbearable for many. Some had desribed it as Brazil's darkest hour and it is very difficult disagreeing with that conclusion. It had been very few in the history of nations that a 29-minute capitulation threw a huge mass of the populace into a dark, wailing abyss which they could not climb out from for a very long time.
Hence the victory in the friendly match in Berlin that incidentally ended Germany' 23- match unbeaten run couldn't have come sweeter. It didn't matter that Mesut Ozil, one of the prime architects of what became known as the Horizonte Massacre, did not play. Any revenge in this regard would do.
But nothing is ever going to erase the memories of that notorious ghost. Like Hamlet father's ghost, it will always keep on coming back, no matter the revenge gained. Nothing will ever replace it. Some human and natural events are so unique, so peculiar, so stirring and striking that they cannot be repeated. Even if Brazil and Germany meet again in the next World Cup and there is a reversal of the 7-1 scoreline, the occurence might not elicit substantially more than a sense of deja vu. With a shrug. We've all seen that before, hadn't we? Brazil won the football gold at the Olympics, by defeating the same Germany but it will be the most amenable that will suggest they gained satisfaction from it over the 7-1 thrashing. France was to later emerge victorious, sort of, in the 2nd World War and even was to later occupy parts of Berlin but there was simply no erasing the pain and agony of Hilterite armies racing through France in the early stages of the war.
Few incidents in history can be compared to that defeat but not far from the mind is George Foreman's reverse against Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle boxing contest in Zaire in 1974. Foreman was to become a very successful businessman and even later in life became the oldest heavyweight boxing champion in history by sensationally knocking out Michael Moorer but nothing would ever erase that defeat to Ali. Such events have such a powerful force of their own, such electricity, such magnetism that nothing will ever neutralize them. They insist on etching their memories alongside the stars in the sky.

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.

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.