Why Zinade will not miss Real Madrid.

Few, very few, managers seem to be interested in the Real Madrid job, thrown wide open with the sudden, unsurprising surprise resignation of Zinedin Zidane. Sisyphean jobs, which the position has become, are hardly appealing. No sooner do you roll the huge, taxing stone of success to the top than it rolls down and you start all over again, heckled to heavens by a mean, taxing, vociferous crowd Charles Dickens himself would have found confounding. For a start, the manager is a workman whose tools and parts, horribly expensive tools and parts, had been assembled by the workstation and he is expected to perform miracles with what he has been provided. It might be that the parts may not fit in with the design and machine he has in mind, it may be that a part may turn out bigger than the whole, the disharmony does not really matter, he is expected to proceed pell-mell. After all only a lazy or uninventive workman complains about his tools. And if he sets about his task with zeal and determination and eventually wins a trophy, his situation even gets the more complicated. Another tournament, another competition is just around the corner and he must reprise the whole regimen of success again, as if he was in continual duel with competitors in eternal slumber or inertia: folks not facing the pressure of winning from their own supporters too. And if you think that is the end of the intricacy, you aint seen nothing yet.The definition of success itself, among the fan base, may turn out to be very maddening. For some, it may be Zidane winning the La Liga, or winning the Champions League three times in a row, or winning the World Club Cup. A combination of all that may still not assuage some sections of the crowd. Zidane won the eternal enmity of some fans who vowed never to forgive him for that chaffing 3-0 home defeat to Barcelona in the league. It does not really matter that Real Madrid loses to a team at the 19th position of the table, it may not matter that they have not won a trophy for three seasons, the cardinal sin might be losing to bitter rivals, read enemies, such as Barcelona or Athletico Madrid. At the Bernabeu, there are so many segments of the crowd to appease. The New York Giants, a team of comparative size in American or gridiron football have not been NFL champions since 2012 and no major upheaval have been recorded at the club as a result of this. Real Madrid have been champion of Spain and three times master of Europe in the same period and that is not appeasing many fans. It was just like appeasing Hitler: the more territories dignity you conceded, the more his appetite got whetted for greater capitulation. Heavens will not fall if the same New York Giants loses to city rivals, New York Jets, it will not fall too in Madrid if Real loses to Athletico, but the coach will certainly feel something very heinous falling on his head.
Zidane might have felt it was not possible for him to go beyond his unprecedented success at the club and so decided: not to throw in the towel, or quit when the ovation was loudest, but to simply shock the shockers. Many other great managers: Mourinho, Ancelotti, Benitez have left under less propitious circumstances and one could conveniently argue the club is getting its just desserts. More so that many big names being bandied about such as Pochettino and Loew do seem to be all that eager to be associated with the job. The logic is very simple. Many of them may just feel that replicating Zidane's  achievements at the club may be tasks too tough for health. And after that? Still being put against the ropes by an insatiable fan base.
The latest is ex-legend, Raul Gonzalez. Why not?  Doing another Zidane might be the only option left for the club? But even then many are already thinking Gonzalez might be too fragile for the job. Every manager, in any sporting club, works under one pressure or the other. The urge to win is what drives sports, especially football. Hence he is virtually working in a cauldron, the fire continually stoked by fans. In Real Madrid, it is an inferno that they stoke.
  

New York Giants

Raul Gonzalez

Zinedin Zidane

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.

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.