At PSG, a coach’s vision clashes with the power of a star
Ultimately, a single wrong answer cost Rafael Benítez his job, the job he had longed for for most of his working life. The slight dip in results, the dissatisfaction of the players, the sudden loss of confidence of those who had chosen to hire him – all this, he believed, could be traced back to that one, relatively innocent misstep.
Not long after his ill-fated reign as coach of Real Madrid, in 2015, Benítez was asked what at first glance seemed like a simple question: did he consider the team’s star, Cristiano Ronaldo, to be the best player in the world? Maybe Benitez was trying to be smart. Maybe he was trying to challenge his star. Perhaps, unintentionally, he was honest.
Anyway, he didn’t really see the big problem. Ronaldo was certainly one of the best players in the world, he responded. But so did Lionel Messi. Benítez said he didn’t want to have to choose between them. “It would be like asking my daughter if she prefers my wife or me,” he said by way of explanation.
Just four months later, Benítez was out of Real Madrid. The contemporaneous reports indicated that he had struggled to bond with the players.
The reality was simpler as far as Benítez was concerned. His answer, all those weeks earlier, had displeased Ronaldo and the cabal of advisors, power brokers and hangers-on who surrounded him. They wouldn’t forget the little thing. From that day on, Benítez was toast.
There is a lesson in that context. Even the simplest question – the one that looks, looks and feels so much like a softball, so basic and short that it can’t possibly do any harm – is a test at best. At worst, it’s a trap.
You are a coach in charge of one of the most prestigious clubs in the world. You’ll be taking care of one of the game’s brightest stars. What you believe, what you feel, what the objective truth might be, is irrelevant.
Do you think your player is the best in the world? For the sake of harmony and unity and your own continued viability as an employee: Yes, you do.
So the fact that Paris St.-Germain coach Luis Enrique chose a different path last month when asked exactly that question was a risk. He had just watched Kylian Mbappé, not only his team’s undisputed star but also its most valuable asset, cornerstone and unofficial sporting director, score a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Reims.
Mbappe had spent most of the previous two summers threatening to leave his hometown. The club had at various times mobilized all its resources – up to and including Emmanuel Macron, the French president – to convince him to stay. The team’s hierarchy is said to have given him such extensive and unorthodox powers that it’s safe to say the leaders assume he’s the best player in the world.
However, Luis Enrique took even more risks than Benítez. “I’m not really happy with Kylian today,” he said after the victory over Reims. “Why? Because managers are strange. I don’t have to say anything about goals, but I think he can help the team more in another way. I told him that first. We think Kylian is one of the best players in the world. Without a doubt .But we need more, and we want him to do more things.”
To Mbappe’s credit, just as the storm was gathering strength, he did his best to quell it. Luis Enrique had said exactly the same to him, he confirmed. Even if he said so himself, he had taken the criticism ‘well’. “He is a great coach,” Mbappe said. “He has a lot to teach me. From day 1 I told him he wouldn’t have any problems with me.”
Whether that will last – and for how long – is impossible to estimate today, but it is yet another reminder of the inherent, inexorable tension between football’s two overriding urges – one that is far from unique to modern Paris St.-Germain, but perhaps more clearly drawn than anywhere else.
There’s one, set on the field, that argues that this is now firmly a coaching game, one in which strategy trumps all and players are cogs in a finely tuned wheel, each following complex and elaborate instructions about where to be. and what to do. In this vision, everything is subordinate to the big vision that is devised on the sidelines and in the data analyst’s office.
And there’s another – rooted to some extent in the sport’s traditional economics, but exaggerated by the devotional nature of fandom in the digital age – that puts individual stars front and center of a club. This theory has given these stars a weight and appeal greater than the institutions that create and pay for them.
None of this is new, of course – managers have always been forced to balance the needs of the team with the wants of the individual – but it has never felt more pronounced than it does now, and the two forces have never been more repellent . The system may be the center of the universe, but the stars exert their own gravity.
PSG has been struggling with that equation for some time. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that a team was named that included Neymar, Messi and Mbappe, none of whom were particularly keen to subject themselves to the kind of defensive duties reserved for lesser mortals.
Things have improved – Messi and Neymar have moved on, of course – but Mbappé remains: a wonderful, uplifting, irreplaceable talent, but still an entity that remains somehow distinct from the team itself.
Luis Enrique’s ethos, like that of all modern coaches, is based on collectivism, the complex interplay of eleven separate components. At times, especially in the Champions League – where it has now failed to beat Newcastle United twice, been dismantled by AC Milan and may not make it to the round of 16 – PSG has the air of a machine sputtering for acceleration to find.
It’s actually in a trap. Luis Enrique’s vision cannot last if Mbappé is an exception. Mbappé cannot be exceptional if he spends all his time dutifully following his opponents. The star cannot shine without the system, but the system cannot maintain the star’s shadow.
Luis Enrique will do well to find a solution to that riddle. Sometimes, as those who have been in his shoes can attest, there are no easy answers.
The knee-jerk reaction to the sight of André Onana once again standing with his head bowed and shoulders slumped after Manchester United’s gloriously childish draw against Galatasaray on Wednesday shows sympathy. Last year Onana was the standout goalkeeper in the Champions League. A few months at Old Trafford appear to have robbed him of all confidence.
However, it’s hard not to wonder what David de Gea must make of this. For ten years, De Gea was not only United’s first goalkeeper, but often also the saving grace and sometimes the best-paid player. That the club did not try to extend his contract when it expired last summer was no surprise – his form had declined and his wages were exorbitant – but the fact that he has not yet been snapped up by anyone now borders on the bizarre.
Is he pricing himself out of the market? Does he turn down offers hoping for the perfect opportunity? Has he lost the motivation to play? Or is it – and this could be Occam’s razor solution – that football tends towards a potent mix of recency, fad and groupthink?
This…could work?
At this point it would probably be a good idea if the board of the International Football Association – the faceless, inexplicable bunch of bureaucrats who seem to have decided that football should be played according to their wishes – would take a moment. After all, most of the board’s recent interventions, ranging from VAR to whatever the handball rule is this week, can be broadly considered a mixed bag.
The decision to investigate an “orange” card, which leads to a player entering a 10 minute sin bin for a range of specific crimes – does, however, have some merit. There are a plethora of incidents that feel too serious for a yellow card, but don’t deserve a red card.
However, that has only become a matter of urgency due to the increased unofficialness with which matches are refereed, the blame for which can be laid squarely at the IFAB’s door, but the fact that the board is solving a problem of its own making should not be underestimated. a disqualifying factor.
Some change can be good. This could be one of those moments.
Correspondence
This week a friend pointed me in the direction of something called a PANAS personality test, as endorsed (or created; I’m not sure) by academic Arthur C. Brooks. It struck me as flawed – it divides people into four emotional categories, and yet none of them are ‘Yorkshireman’ – but with five minutes to spare, it struck me as a harmless diversion.
My sunny attitude, it turns out, makes me a ‘cheerleader’, one of life’s optimists. Jim Murphy And Scott Rehr. would both, on the other hand, become ‘closer’, I suspect, with their tendency to dwell on negative outcomes. The NFL’s experience, Jim wrote, would suggest that a Premier League commissioner – the role mentioned in last week’s newsletter – would be “pretty much a lackey for the owners.”
If anything, Scott was more doubtful. “The idea of a Premier League commissioner sounds great until I think of FIFA and Gianni Infantino,” he admitted. “Would a Premier League commissioner more naturally fall into the autocrat role that Infantino demonstrated?”
That would of course be a risk. A Premier League commissioner would be vulnerable to manipulation by the people who paid the boss’s wages. However, it can be compensated a little by accepting the wise advice of S. K. Gupta. “The problem is the unenforceable and arbitrary rules, which can only be enforced retroactively,” he wrote, a reality that often results in cases being decided in courtrooms rather than in the league offices.”
He added: “Rather than limiting the losses a team incurs, a better system would be to have a transfer cap that teams can spend, based on the team’s winnings in all the competitions they have participated in .”
I’m not sure you even need to go as far as imposing a salary cap – something that is much more easily applied in sports played in closed competitions from up to two countries – but there is no doubt that real- time enforcement of the Rules would improve the situation. The Premier League should not be left to pursue deferred punishment; it should be able to impose immediate bans on teams that exceed financial requirements.
Exactly true Keith Kreitman would fall on the Brooks test is not for me to say, but I must admit that it is a creeping inspiration to people who are annoyed by trivialities. “I wonder how often the term ‘unlucky’ is used when a player hits a ball against the crossbar or crossbar,” Keith wrote. “It’s not like a stray bird or a sudden gust of wind affected the flight of the ball. The player merely missed the target. There is simply no luck.”
This is technically correct, which as we all know is the best way to be correct, and it’s a point I’ve made to several players over the years. All I can tell you is that they don’t like being told that they should have aimed better.