Coaches battle Russian hangover
POOR PRESEASON Premier League will be first off the blocks on Friday late night and clubs are already fretting over their top stars who did World Cup duty
NEWDELHI:THESE days, Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho’s mood is somewhere between dark and darker. With some of his best players on holiday after the World Cup, he has had to prepare for the new season with a truncated squad.
The team he put out in the 4-1 pre-season loss to Liverpool last week was so depleted that Mourinho admitted he wouldn’t have gone to watch the game had he been a fan.
While the Portuguese tactician’s post-match comments did not go down well with the United supporters, Mourinho’s frustration at the beleaguered pre-season campaign is somewhat understandable. Following an appeal from Mourinho, Marcus Rashford, Phil Jones and Romelu Lukaku have agreed to shave three days off their holiday but United continue to miss 13 firstteam players with the first game of the new Premier League season just over one week away.
Cross-town rivals Manchester City have similar problems although manager Pep Guardiola has sounded less agitated while speaking about his missing men. Maybe because he has greater experience in dealing with this.
Eight years back, Guardiola had been in a similar situation with Barcelona when eight of his players won the World Cup for Spain. Barcelona made a less than convincing start in 2010-11, losing their first home game 2-0 to newly-promoted Hercules and drawing their third, 1-1 against Mallorca, at Camp Nou. But the Catalan giants ended the season with the La Liga and Champions League titles.
Four seasons prior to that, AC Milan became European champions with six players from the Italy team that won the 2006 World Cup.
These two examples are proof that the World Cup may not signifi- cantly hamper campaigns of clubs who have had a number of players involved in the quadrennial showpiece. City, United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Paris Saint-germain, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, Juventus and Bayern Munich all had more than 10 players each at this summer’s World Cup and come the beginning of the season, will be missing some of their stars.
How these clubs manage to negotiate the Russia hangover in the initial weeks is likely to have significant impact on how their domestic campaigns shape up.
Every season after a World Cup has seen another trend in European leagues — expensive signings on the back of impressive campaigns at the tournament.
Real Madrid have been among the most prominent clubs to have made a number of post-world Cup signings over the years: Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira in 2010, James Rodriguez and Keylor Navas in 2014, among others. They also signed Fabio Cannavaro in 2006 although he was already one of the world’s best centre-backs at the time of Italy’s World Cup triumph.
Transfers on the basis of World Cup performances haven’t always been the most successful, as former United boss Alex Ferguson pointed out in his autobiography. “He was an example of the risks associated with making a purchase in a hurry,” Ferguson said about the signing of Brazilian midfielder Kleberson, who impressed in the Selecao’s 2002 World Cup triumph but failed to make a mark at United.
So far, Aleksandr Golovin has been among the most prominent players to have switched clubs after a good World Cup, moving from CSKA Moscow to Monaco. The biggest clubs in Europe have been less enthusiastic this summer as far as signing World Cup stars are concerned.
The effects of the World Cup can be gauged a few games into the new season and Europe’s top clubs will hope their key players will have recovered by the time the campaign needs to pick up pace.