If Jose can’t see this cringeworthy football, he’s not just a man out of time but one soon to be out of a job
THE warm embrace between Maurizio Sarri and Jurgen Klopp as the whistle blew at Stamford Bridge said a lot about where the Premier League is today.
Here were two thoroughlymodern, highly sought-after managers genuinely happy the teams they had sent out for that 1-1 draw had played with the quality and intensity they demanded.
And the Chelsea and Liverpool bosses had much to be happy about. Their players delivered superb attacking entertainment and left both sets of fans applauding as neutrals caught their breath.
It was a far cry from the mid-Noughties when these sides, managed by Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez, played each other six times over 10 hours in the Champions League and scored just three goals between them.
After the 2007 semi-final, Argentinian “Football Philosopher” Jorge Valdano wrote that watching those games was like watching “sh*t hanging from a stick.”
He added: “If football is going the way Chelsea and Liverpool are taking it we had better be ready to wave goodbye to any expression of the cleverness and talent we have enjoyed for a century.”
Harsh words served no doubt with a sour grape side-dish from the former Real Madrid manager, but written out of despair at the absence in those games of all that was good about Saturday’s: Individual expression, risktaking, attacking verve and sheer joy.
Had Valdano been watching that game, and the style Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs play with, he would surely admit that English football has moved on from the “stick of a sh*t” era. Indeed UEFA’s technical report into last season’s Champions League singled out Klopp’s side for special praise.
It pointed out Liverpool’s attackers put in way more high-intensity sprints than the Champions’ League average and scored their record-breaking 47 goals at an average 2.56 passes over 7.68 seconds compared with the competition average of 4.03 passes over 12.26 seconds. “Liverpool’s modus operandi provided a prime example of effective, high-intensity, collective pressing by a compact block,” said the report, arguing that these are the modern tactics the best teams aspire to.
Whether we’ll see much of that at Old Trafford on Saturday when Mourinho and Benitez renew old rivalries, this time in charge of Manchester United and Newcastle, is doubtful.
This won’t be an attacking classic that will leave both managers hugging and laughing at the end.
Manchester United have scored only 10 league goals this season – the secondlowest of the top 11 sides – while Newcastle have scored four – the second-lowest in the division.
Whereas Benitez (left) can offer the defence that he has to make do with a mostly Championship-standard squad, Mourinho has spent £370million in two years and has a wealth of attacking talent to call upon.
Yet his team are way off the pace of their rivals.
Last weekend, in their defeat at West Ham, Mourinho’s side made the lowest number of sprints, 59, of any Premier League club.
At Stamford Bridge Liverpool players made 154 to Chelsea’s 119. Stats almost as damning as United’s record signing Paul Pogba questioning why his side don’t “attack, attack, attack.”
Mourinho alludes to Pogba when he says the problem with some of today’s big players is they won’t listen because they don’t care.
But they’re clearly listening to Klopp, Sarri and Guardiola, maybe because they buy into their attacking ethos.
Maybe, unlike the Claude Makeleles or Didier Drogbas of a decade ago, today’s stars don’t feel they need to be inhibiting themselves playing the kind of stuff that was hanging off Valdano’s stick.
Paul Scholes believes Mourinho is embarrassing his old club with his mouth but to many outsiders it’s the football being played in Manchester United’s name that is more cringeworthy.
And if Jose can’t see that, then he’s not just a man out of time but one who’s soon to be out of a job.