Have you ever had a situation where the unrelated events of a day or a week start building and interconnecting? Synchronicity. Like, there are no accidents? Well that’s the kind of futbol week I’ve had.

Last Tuesday I was catching up on some Times Online podcasts. Co-host Guillem Balague’s was talking about the Valencia situation. To paraphrase him, Koeman had made a drastic mistake in getting rid of Canizares, Angulo and Albelda and the situation was becoming untenable. He pretty much told us the same when he was on with us last month. On Wednesday I was trolling through the blogs I normally read and found an article written by Guillem here. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find him answering one of the emailers. According to him, it was Soler himself who called for the purge and that may be, along with some dire financial instability, why Koeman hasn’t been rewarded with a firing. The chants that had gone up, “Vete (Leave) Quique!” have now turned on the Dutchman. Another interesting sidenote is that Balague believes that Koeman’s second mistake at Valencia was that he disrespected this opportunity, treating it as a stepping stone to a bigger and better position; most notably a return to Barcelona and succeed Frank Rijkaard in Catalunya. Alright, now you’re really going to think I’m stalking Balague, but on Thursday I finally got my copy of Balague’s, A Season on the Brink: a portrait of Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool from amazon.co.uk. I flipped through and added it to my huge list of books to be read, but the subject was just too strong to put down. I started reading it and I was just sucked in. Little did I know what kind of shadow Valencia would have over the whole book.

The book is ostensibly about the Rafa-lution at Liverpool FC and his first year on Merseyside, that saw them win the European Cup after only 10 months in charge. You get a very real picture of the man, a brilliant tactician and quiet leader of men. A true Madrileño: stoic and introspective, often to a fault. He reminds me of my dad in fact who comes from the same stock.

What you also get is that his years up to Valencia, the failures at Valladolid and Osasuna, not to mention the struggles with Extramadura and Tenerife, made him as a manager but his 4 years at the Mestalla marked him forever and it’s done a whole lot of damage to both himself and Los Che.

The popular opinion is that the Soler family is treating Valencia CF as a very expensive plaything, hiring the wrong people and managing it poorly, and that may be so, but as this book clearly shows the problems started even before the Soler’s won the election in 2004. During the 2004 season Benitez had some very public run-ins with his Sporting Director: Jesus Garcia Pitarch. It’s those heated exchanges that Rafa’s famous quote “I asked for a sofa and they brought me a lampshade” comes from. Sure, many of the problems were, like the quote says, over player acquisition or ironically about rotation of players, but he never felt truly appreciated for the monumental task he and his group of coaches had accomplished at the Mestalla: winning the league in 2001-2002 a mere 31 years after their last one, winning it again 2 years later and becoming UEFA Cup champions in 2001.

The often public exchanges between club President Jaime Orti and his manager couldn’t help but form divisions with the players. He left tearfully for Liverpool and the fractures between players (those that supported Rafa and those that supported the Orti and Pitarch were already there. Soler took over just as the train wreck of the previous administration was being whisked away. Soler did try to keep Benitez, offering to hike his pay, but he had already made up his mind.

Benitez’s Liverpool would be built with his Valencia model in mind. He soon found out though, that each club has its own internal life and what worked at Valencia wouldn’t necessarily work at Liverpool. Winning the Champions League was almost a distraction from succeeding in the league. What was also inescapable were the behind the scenes problems that harkened back to his time at the Mestalla: his relationships with star players, his prickly tendency to annoy his paymasters and the often public debate over his selection, tactics and transfer policy.

At Valencia in his absence, Claudio Ranieri took over, bringing a series of Italian signings like Marco DiVaio, Bernardo Corradi and Stefano Fiore. The fractures became huge chasms as the Italians were never really accepted by the club or supporters. The Ranieri era ended n a whimper, and ex-Getafe coach Quique Sanchez-Flores was hired with the intent to return the club to the structure under Benitez. Ironically, Quique and Soler’s Sporting Director Amedeo Carboni’s working relationship would also mirror his predecessor. Firing Sanchez-Flores at the beginning of this year and bringing in the much traveled Ronald Koeman has done nothing to stop the madness at Los Che leading them to consider the very real possibility of relegation. Players have been benched, new signings have been brought in, and the club has continued to lose.

We think that the problems at a club can be solved by removing a Coach, a Manager, a Sporting Director or a Club President, that the answers are short term, and the fortunes of a club can be turned by patching over the faults and turning over a new leaf. In Valencia’s case, and to certain extent Liverpool’s, much more needs to be done. I don’t have the answers, Los Che may be relegated if their current form continues, Koeman has two more games to right the ship or he’s gone as has been reported, and Liverpool owners have given Rafa the dreaded vote of confidence for his outbursts earlier in the year. We’ll see what the future holds.

I recommend this book highly, it is of course a minute by minute detail of an improbable Champions League run by the Reds, but it’s far more. Balague offers a portrait of a manager in crisis and a a Rosetta Stone to read the present situation at both clubs by.

 

Mando from FF 

The biggest story to come to England in the last few weeks has been the return of the “Messiah” Kevin Keegan as manager of Newcastle United just weeks after the firing of Sam Allardyce. Big Sam grew increasingly under fire at the Toon for what many supporters in the Northeast called a Neanderthaloid brand of football, especially after being compared to the high-flying sides Keegan himself led 12 years ago, and he was unwilling or unable to change his approach. Although he employed dietitians, and psychologists, used scientific training methods and ran a tight ship defensively, Sam was a squarish man, who preferred a squarish style, and couldn’t adapt to the culture of the club, or the expectations of the Toon Army.

What does this have to do with Serie A or La Liga? Well, if anyone followed the dour side that Fabio Capello ran out to the Santiago Bernabeu last year, no one was surprised that he was fired despite his winning the Primera Liga title. His replacement, Berndt Schuster, whose plucky, serviceable Getafe side was amongst the defensive leaders in La Liga last year, was inexplicably hired by the Meringues to deliver a more attractive, attacking philosophy. The press, the socios, and even club leadership are now more than a bit disappointed that rather than Joga Bonito, the club are winning with that same plucky, defensive style Schuster used to good effect at Getafe. Imagine that.

At Valencia, Quique Sanchez-Flores also drew a great deal of criticism for his boring brand of football, and his successor Ronald Koeman continues his misguided legacy, but it’s nothing new; there’s been an ongoing problem there at the Mestalla since before the time of Hector Cuper. In Italy, land of Catenaccio, there are still a few sides that play in the classic style of Il Grande Inter coach Helenio Herrera. While his old club Inter do tend to grind out wins without excelling, city neighbors Milan have also played tentatively, lacking offensive punch due primarily to injury and an uncharacteristic lack of quality in attack. Just look at the fate of one of the most successful managers in recent history: Jose Mourinho. He was essentially fired, because he wouldn’t bend to the pressure of entertaining the masses. His Liverpool rival, Rafa Benitez, is coming under similar fire. Finally, even with a “Golden Generation” of English talent, Steve McClaren was not able to qualify the English national team for Euro 2008 because he unable or unwilling to take the reigns off his squad against the minnows of European Football.

There’s a disconnect here. The clubs and the supporters groups are calling for one brand of football, football as spectacle, and the managers are teaching another brand entirely. They make excuses, that the modern game can’t be played openly anymore, that a team needs to be strong at the back and wait for an opponent’s mistake on the counter. They feel the pressure of results, the economic realities of relegation, so they play not to lose, handicapping their chances before a fan has even sat down for the match. You can guess which side I fall on.

Whether it’s by choice, or by necessity, it is rarely in a club’s best interest to grind out a 1-0 victory. A slight lead in a match allows a slim hope of belief in the opponent, the small mistakes get magnified, and all it takes is a faulty decision, under the duress and fatigue late in the game, to allow an opponent a late equalizer or worse yet a decisive goal. Worse than his oft criticized rotational policy, it is in this manner that Benitez’s negative tendencies that have hurt Liverpool most. They play a match close in the first half and wait to attack on the counter in the second, and have suffered disappointing results against inferior clubs, whereas a similar club with a similar talent pool like Arsenal, that play to their own strengths and exploit weaknesses in their opponent, are within a hair’s breath of a much more talented Manchester United side at the top of the table.

Close your eyes and think about which sides play beautiful, attacking football. Roma play 6 midfielders essentially, but they are bombs away from essentially all parts of the field. They are unpredictable, mercurial and when on their game, no side in Serie A can match the waves of offensive talent that they can throw at you. Barcelona, under Frank Ryjkaard, have some of the best attacking talent in La Liga. They have unprecedented skill on the ball, the dribbling skills of Messi, the powerful shot of Eto’o, the silky smooth runs of Henry and no one is more deadly on set pieces than Ronaldinho. In England, there is a reason why Arsenal and Manchester United have dominated the Premiership over its existence. It’s not just because they have more money and buy the best talent. The primary reason is that they play with confidence that their skill players can play better than your skill players and they will punish you for it. Other sides that play beautifully? Werder Bremen, Lyon, Sevilla, and Spurs are all taking the bait.

Do these clubs necessarily have more talent, and thus can afford to take more risks? Certainly if you’re comparing them to a recently promoted side like Derby, Almeria or Genoa, but a club like Valencia with top door quality should not be playing a mixture of 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 with the wingers tracking back. Neither should Liverpool, or Real Madrid, or especially one of the richest clubs in the world: Chelsea.

Is there a ground-shift happening as we speak? I hope so. With some managers playing two defensive midfielders and a man up front against non-league sides and drawing 0-0, I look at the re-appointment of Kevin Keegan as Newcastle United manager as a return to what Ruud Gullit called “Sexy Football”. Frankly, it’s about time.

Mando from FF 

Here's Forza Futbol's Best Eleven as mentioned on our week 12 podcast or Year End Review of La Liga!


Hannah my 11:

Top 11 of the Season 4-3-3~


F: Fredi Kanoute 
F: Ruud Van Nistelrooy F: Tamudo


MF: Leonel Messi
 MF: Ivan De La Pena
 MF: Jesus Navas


FB: Milito FB: Alves 
CB: Puyol CB: Javi Navarro


GK: Palop

Sub - F: David Villa


Mando's Top 11-

Top 11 of the Season 4-4-2~*

F: Fredi Kanoute

F:
Ruud Van Nistelrooy

MF:
Leonel Messi

MF:
Ivan De La Pena

MF:
Juan Arango

MF:
Ronaldinho

FB:
Dani Alves

FB: Goleo

CB:
Mophead

CB: Javi Navarro

GK:
Palop



Elisa's Best 11***

Top 11 of the Season 4-4-2~*

In goal-
GK Casillas(MAD)

In defense-
LB Miguel Torres (MAD)
CB Ayala (VAL)
CB Gabi Milito (ZAR)
RB Alves (SEV)

In the midfield-
M Ibagaza (MAL)
M Ivan De La Peña (ESP)
M Lionel Messi (BAR)
M Jesus Navas (SEV)

In attack-
F Van Nistelrooy (MAD)
F Diego Milito (ZAR)

Subs/Honorable Mentions- Palop (SEV), Pires (VIL), Tamudo (ESP), David Silva (VAL), Zambrotta (BAR), Kanoute (SEV), Cazorla (REC), David Villa (VAL)

Do you agree? What is your Best 11?  Let us know!  We want to hear from you!

Forza Futbol podcast week 12 is now available for your listening pleasure!

Special Edition - Vamos La Liga - our Yearend Review of the Spanish League

We review the Highs and Lows on a Team by Team basis.

At last! We roll out the red carpet and dish out our Best and Worst Awards!

Team of the Season - Best and Worst
Player of the season - Best and Worst
Best and Worst Signing or Transfer
Coach of the year - Best and Worst
Best and Worst Game
Best Goal
Best and Worst Rumor
Best and Worst Italian player playing abroad
Best and Worst Hair
Best and Worst Kit
Who's Hot and Who's Not
Top 11 of the Season

We also briefly highlight some Copa America games.

You can listen to Forza Futbol on myspace, itunes, or podbean.com. Check out our Facebook page or Oleole.com page.

Email us your comments at forza.futbol@yahoo.com

 

FORZA FUTBOL PODCAST WEEK 10 IS AVAILABLE FOR LISTEN!

In this episode we discuss-

La Liga Final Round 38-
We review the final round and crown the campeones of La Liga.  (Real Madrid v Mallorca, Nastic v Barcelona, Sevilla v Villarreal). We also review the relegation games and who is going down to Segunda. (Athletic Bilbao v Levante, Valencia v Real Sociedad, Celta Vigo v Getafe, Racing Santander v Real Betis)

Serie A and La Liga - It's silly season and it's getting sillier and sillier!

Gold Cup round up - quartefinals update and who will match up in the Semis.  Is a US v Mexico final destiny?

Up Close and Personal with Forza - we find out how Hannah got into the beautiful game.

You can listen to us on myspace, subscribe to Itunes or download the podcast on Podbean.com.

Be our friend on myspace, check out our forzafutbol page on oleole.com, or our facebook page!

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