Communism and Capitalism of Football - Part 2

You can find part one of this article here.

Arrigo Sacchi

Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan was constructed along the same principles as Lobanovskyi’s Dynamo Kiev, perhaps without going to the extremes that Lobanovskyi did. Sacchi was famous for his ‘shadow play’ training methods, a method which famously bemused spies from other teams in the league. Sacchi had ingrained the concept of teamwork and of the collective in his players. For zonal marking to work, it needed every player to be working in unison. One player out of position would mean the delicate balance of the state of play would crumble.

While this works in theory, reality is often different. The reality for Sacchi was that he had two flamboyant Dutchmen in his team when he first took charge. Van Basten and Gullit were exceptional players, their talent surpassing that of those who sought to defend against them. The trouble was that they thrived on being given the trust to express themselves as individuals within the system. They showed creativity, which could not be restricted by any sane coach. Sacchi was facing a dilemma – whether to allow the Dutchmen to play outside of his system or to rein them in and force them to play within the confines of the system. Sacchi chose to do something else.

He brought in a third Dutchman – Frank Rijkaard – another flamboyent (less so than Van Basten or Gullit) player. Sacchi had chosen pragmatism and sacrificed his theoretical utopia of how football should be played. It was still a structured and collective orientated style of play, it just had a few restrictions lifted off the system. In essence, it can be said that Sacchi was more of a socialist than a communist. He never reached the final version of his philosophy. Reality had rendered it redundant and it was simply impractical beyond the point of trying.

Jose Mourinho

Real Madrid under Jose Mourinho is the modern version of Sacchi’s Milan. Mourinho is famous for his tactical organisation and attention to detail. He often talks about how the team needs to work as a unit in order to be successful. Samuel Eto’o is symbolic of his influence, playing on the wing instead of his preferred position as a striker in order to suit the team shape and tactics. At Madrid, however, Mourinho has the most talented group of players he has ever coached, and subsequently encountered the same dilemma Sacchi faced two decades ago. Cristiano Ronaldo, Angel di Maria, Mesut Ozil – these are the modern day equivalent of the Dutch trio – highly skillful players who need the freedom to express their creativity. Upon his appointment, the main concern expressed by people and media was that Mourinho would have difficulty successfully integrating these special players into a working system. Mind you, the pressure to play in a stylish manner was present from the beginning and added further complexities to Mourinho’s dilemma.

Much like Sacchi, the practicality of the situation meant that Mourinho opted to allow the positional freedom to Ronaldo and others by putting in place ‘compensation mechanisms’, as Andre Villas-Boas put it. To give freedom to a part of a team means that you must take away freedom in other parts in order to compensate and balance. Otherwise, you end up with a team which will become too imbalanced – usually over-balanced in the attacking phase. One such coach who exhibits traits for failing to strike the balance between allowing individuals freedom and organising an efficient collectivised system, is Zdenek Zeman.

Zdenek Zeman

Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa has a nickname - El Loco - ‘the Madman’. It pretty much sums up his whole career as a coach – unique, intense, weird. You could literally replace Bielsa’s name with Zeman’s and El Loco would describe this gentlemen perfectly. Like Bielsa, Zeman has built up a reputation for his beliefs about the game, training methods and his quixotic philosophies. His teams play in a brilliant but flawed way: with wild abandon, incessant offense and forward thinking, which combine to produce very attractive football.

Imagine being in the middle of Pamplona during the Running of the Bulls festival – that is virtually how Roma play today. The logic is to play in a manner that is so intense, direct and fast, that no matter how many goals the opponents score, they will simply concede more. The problem with Zeman’s love of attacking football is that it relies on the players to play, not the coach. But players are emotional. If you let the bulls run free, they will act irrationally and without reason. It’s easier to set a bull free than to tame a cat.

Sometimes the players will perform, but other times they will fail badly, and the result is inconsistency – Roma this season have been inconsistent. They have scored 47 goals – the most goals in the league, one ahead of Juventus. However, they have also conceded 38 goals – joint third most conceded. Roma are currently in 7th position. These numbers sum up the predicament of Roma under Zeman this season.

“Zeman really is a dreamer – always the same football, always the same defeats, and yet he never takes a step back.” – Massimo Mauro, former Juventus player.

To be labelled as pragmatic and practical is insulting to Zeman. He would rather leave a memorable legacy than a successful one. To play attacking football is like living with freedom and independence. To place restrictions would be to deny fulfillment of potential. Consistency is sacrificed for the sake of owning your talent. Games involving Roma resemble a free market economy, where a player has full ownership of their decisions, skills and decisions. They are not bound to playing under restrictions - they can decide how to play without the state governing how to do so. Even though Zeman is a capitalist at heart, he is bounded by the rules of reality. Like Sacchi and Mourinho and even Guardiola, some form of governance must exist, if only to avoid total chaos. In a similar way to many economies around the world, there is some form of state ownership involved – state capitalism. Only the essentials like healthcare, education, transport, etc are owned and operated by the state. Zeman still coaches tactical concepts like a high press, positional play and ball possession, but does not govern every little concept in detail like Bielsa or Mourinho would. Only the essentials are imprinted on the players; the individuality is still left quite open to expression.

Harry Redknaap

Mention Harry Redknaap and tactics in the same sentence and people would look at you in a funny way. Old Harry is known for being a dinosaur tactician when compared to modern coaches like Andre Villas-Boas, Brendan Rodgers and Michael Laudrup. On the flip-side , he is well-known for being a fabulous man manager who has that ability to extract good performances from his players.

“There are no long and boring speeches about tactics, like I was used to at Real Madrid. There is a clipboard in our dressing room, but Harry doesn’t write anything on it. It’s not that we do nothing – but it’s close to that.” - Rafael van der Vaart.

His coaching style relies on empowering and liberating his players – to give them encouragement to exploit their talents as they see fit. It is not so much a policy as it is a natural way of thinking. Perhaps being an Englishman who grew up during the Cold War made him suspicious of politics in the Soviet Union, China and Soviet-led East Germany. Of course, England have always been allies with the United States and it is quite common to agree on most issues with your friends, and disagree with your enemies. Perhaps it’s just that Redknaap believes in the individual making his own decisions, rather than them being dictated by someone else. Out of all the coaches in the current day, Redknaap is one of the most liberal and wild at heart.

Juanma Lillo

Juanma Lillo is one of the most theoretical coaches out there. A fanatical supporter of the phrase “there is no ‘I’ in team”, Lillo is like Karl Marx in his insistence that every action on a field by a player is only caused by, and affects, other players around him.

“If a player gets the ball in his own area, the opposition players all sit down on the turf and he runs the whole length of the pitch, dribbling round them and scores a goal…that’s still not an individual act because if they don’t sit down, he can’t do that. What the other guy does is what imposes upon you this decision or that one. People talk about ‘individual actions’, but there are no individual actions.” - Juanma Lillo

This is an example of communist ideology taken to the extreme – the last team Lillo managed was Almeria, which got relegated under his leadership. Lillo’s last game in charge was an 8-0 drubbing by Guardiola’s Barca. The irony is that, alongside Marcelo Bielsa, Lillo mentored and advised Guardiola when he was in charge of Barca B. Lillo is a symbol that theory alone will not be successful. Adaptation and realism play an important part in success.

Barcelona, Dynamo Kiev, AC Milan, Brazil, Netherlands, Roma and Real Madrid in some shape or form have all been at war – an often silent war – between two ideologies. Players, managers, directors, supporters and media have all been soldiers in this war, trying to win over everyone else with their arguments and speeches. It is a symptom of a perfect game – one open to interpretation and argument. Just like the Cold War was a battle of ideologies, football is at at war with itself to determine which is the best way to play the game. Unlike the Cold War, however, an answer will never be found. The Cold War in football is an endless war.