Good night Gawd bless. 

The meek ain’t gonna inherit shit… cos I’ll take it.

Quasimoto, “Basic Instinct”

It’s gonna be close this year. The two Manchester clubs, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal - they’re all either there, or a hop and a skip from ‘there or thereabouts’. So it stands to reason that with that many clubs boasting that kind of strength, it’s gonna go right to the wire - that four or five runners will still be in contention down the home stretch. No?

Well, no.

See, a squad might look strong as the season kicks off, with the salty recruits ready to eat their own guts and ask for seconds, but when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter how strong they look at the starting line. It comes down to how much they believe it belongs to them.

Those clubs I mentioned - I’d argue that only two of those genuinely believe the Premier League belongs to them: Manchester United and Chelsea. In one case it’s the secret sauce that fires them to success even when on paper they don’t look too hot. In the other, it’s the stone in their Adidas Predators - the thing that makes them point the finger of blame at manager after manager - never at themselves. But in both cases, it’s impossible to deny that sense of entitlement. It’s been fundamental to their recent success, after all.

But it wasn’t always the case.

Nearly Men

Sure, Manchester City and Liverpool haven’t won the league in longer than any of their supporters care to remember, and sure, Arsenal seem to have forgotten what it feels like to win a trophy, but broaden your timeline a little and you’ll see they’re not alone.

Cast your mind back far enough, and Chelsea and Manchester United were both teetering on the brink of sustained success, winning cups here and there, and inching closer to genuine contention in the league. But at that stage, both clubs were pimply, frightened teenagers. Sure, they could give the big boys a fright from time to time with their raw talent and desire, but nobody was backing them to take the big prize. But for Mark Robbins nicking a winner away to Norwich City, who’s to say Alex Ferguson wouldn’t have moved on? But for Costinha’s late winner at Old Trafford, who’s to say Mourinho would have ever washed up at Chelsea?

In both cases, the clubs had followed a well-trodden path in pursuit of success. Spending unprecedented sums to build the quality and depth of their squads, they’d grown and grown, but the belief wasn’t quite there yet. They could. They might. But will they? There was never that certainty - that was the sole province of the clubs at the very top of the tree.

So what was it that cultivated that certainty.

The Rite Of Passage

In every case, there’s an intoxicating blend of blind luck and charismatic leadership. But like the teenager, powers and feelings start to grow that were lacking before built on a sudden bedrock of defiance and certainty.

Blind luck? Look at Joe Cole at Anfield on New Years’ Day. Charisma? Look at Kenny Dalglish at Blackburn’s helm. Defiance and certainty? With each of these teams, a moment came when they truly bound as a group and on some level started to believe it was their year. Until that point arrives, all the money and quality in the squad counts for next to nought.

So it’s here that clubs ought to focus their resources to gain that edge - putting the catalysts in place that help a team complete its rite of passage. And it’s this that, in respect of the clubs listed above, lets us sort the wheat from the chaff.

The Question Marks

Manchester United could almost field a youth team and still contend for the league. Why? It’s simple. Institutionally, they believe they’re entitled to win. And not only that, enough of the rest of the country and of Europe shares that belief. That takes care of a lot in itself. Yes, they’ve lost Van Der Saar and Scholes, but it shouldn’t affect them too much. It’ll take something big to knock them out of their stride - like, say, losing their manager.

Meanwhile, Andre Villas-Boas is the unknown quantity. He’s proven himself talented at binding a squad together, and his Porto squad broke all sorts of records both domestically and in Europe. But Porto’s not a dysfunctional club. Chelsea is. It’s run by a nutter and boasts a dressing room full of players who fancy themselves as the manager in their own right. Yes, they believe the league belongs to them, but it’s a bit of a tinder box to say the least. if Villas-Boas pulls it off, it’ll be a psychological masterpiece on his part.

The question marks lie at the other clubs. Can any of the three ‘teenage pretenders’ make the transition from the pimply teenager to the nasty assed bastard riding off into the sunset with the prom queen? Arsene Wenger and Roberto Mancini, for me, seem incapable of engendering the kind of spirit in their squads for this coming season that Kenny Dalglish can at Liverpool. All three clubs boast big strong squads and competition for players, but the edge the manager gives is crucial. Charisma is in the eye of the beholder, and I can’t see how either Wenger or Mancini can inspire the kind of defiance their squads need. They’re too happy to accept excuses.

I’ll put my head on the block - I think Liverpool will join the two existing incumbents at the top table - the teams who believe the prom queen’s only got eyes for them. The other two? I just think that when it comes down to it, the wheels will come off the cart.

1990 was a brilliant year for me. One of those years where I felt like the world was lined up on rails and I was some kind of unstoppable juggernaut - the salty joys of youth.

Let’s see. I had my highers (Scottish people do them instead of A-Levels) and they went like a dream. I had a part time job by a local golf course and we’d play 10 holes for free whenever we liked. My sister, a good bit older than I am, took me to Toronto on holiday - my first ever time on a plane. When I got to Canada, I helped myself to a triple helping of my cousin’s next door neighbour. She was like the local prom queen or something. The Simpsons were starting out on the telly, the Stone Roses were putting the finishing touches to their first album, 808 State were hitting the big time, Scotland won the rugby Grand Slam, and on the football front, things weren’t too bad either. Liverpool were the real juggernaut, Scotland were qualifying for World Cups, and Football Italia was about to get started on Channel 4.

In those days (and maybe it’s partly down to me being 17 at the time) Harry Enfield, still fresh from the grill on Saturday Night Live, was actually funny. And that’s what popped into my head this morning as I woke up - a Harry Enfield sketch. A sketch that, I think, sums up our summer pretty nicely. That’s if you’re a pretentious over-analysing fanny like me, anyway.

The sketch sees Harry sat, white haired and ridiculously tanned at a hotel bar with a choice cut of mutton (Kathy Burke caked in make up). He looks round the bar, fixes his eyes on a sluvenly looking fella in a Hawaiian shirt, and ventures “Excuse me Sport, but I couldn’t help noticing that I’m considerably richer than you”.

—-

There are a few little groups of football fans sat around our office at work, and it’s fair to say that sentence isn’t too far removed from the stuff they ping pong back and forth to each other over their morning cup of tea. The Spurs fan gets it from the Arsenal fan, the Arsenal fan gets it from the Chelsea fan, and the Liverpool fan? Well, I get some variant of it from them all. You see, overnight, after years and years of cultural groundwork, everyone’s suddenly become an expert in football finance, and in the concept of ‘value’ in the transfer market, and in a club’s ability to foot its wage bill and continue as a going concern. Quantity Surveyors, chefs, cleaners and Business Analysts - all of us talk endlessly about whether this club or that club’s been ripped off in the transfer market, and ‘where’s all their money coming from’, and the Financial Fair Play rules, and blah blah blah.

So forgive me for a double-pronged snook cocked back at 1990. In those days, as Liverpool quietly continued racking up trophy after trophy, none of us were ever that concerned with the fees we paid in the market, or who our scouts were looking at, or which slot in the side was being addressed before the others. People weren’t even aware that they could talk to other faceless fellow fans on something called The Internet. If people felt Kenny was ‘a disgrace’ for covating Glen Hysen, there weren’t too many people in close enough proximity to hear them. The club had funds, the club had fans, and the club and fans had faith in its manager and staff. 

—-

Anyway… the lad in the Hawaiian shirt - he turns round to Harry Enfield with a surprised smirk on his face and says “I doubt that mate”. Astounded, and after a few splutters, Harry replies “Alright then, how much money have you got?”. Mr Scruff replies “Er, I don’t want to talk about this actually, it’s a bit vulgar.”

—-

I think part of it’s the fact we had those years in the company of Twit and Twat. We’d lost the family silver and we felt like we had to back the winner of the 4:40 at Kempton Park if we were going to be able to pay the leccy next week, let alone keep our squad in any kind of competitive shape. So we became a little educated, and we became a little concerned, and over time we started understanding what a balance sheet was, and a profit and loss account, and what words like ‘amortisation’ meant in relation to player recruitment.

Then of course fate dealt us a tenable connection to Michael Lewis, Billy Beane and Bill James, and we found ourselves bought by Dustin Hoffman out of Rain Man, only without the personality problems, just the mathematical brain. And he turned out to be a diamond geezer - who’d have thought it? A diamond geezer in the dugout, and a diamond geezer at the helm. Diamonds.

So now we think we’re well placed to comment on whether our transfer and financial strategy’s a disgrace or not.

—-

So Harry continues. “Ok Pal, have it your own way, fair enough.” He pauses, but gets visibly riled and can’t let it go… “Forget the money - how big’s your house!?”

Mr Scruff replies quietly: “Which one? My house in LA, in Paris, on the Cap d’Antibes or my Oxfordshire mansion?”

Harry’s face reddens further, if it’s possible. 

Mr Scruff goes on… “or my hotel - the one you’re sitting in at the moment?

Harry of course has to have the last word, as our Hawaiian shirted friend smiles in bemusement. “Alright Pal, you’ve had your bit of fun, I hope you’re pleased with yourself. Some people eh? They get a bit of money and it goes straight to their heads.”

—-

We’ve become that accustomed to counting out each bean from the can that we’ve forgotten Twit and Twat have long since ridden into the sunset, penniless. The Fernando Torres of the financial world? He’s gone, and while he did his bit when it came down to it, he’s otherwise firmly disgraced. Meanwhile, Ian Ayre’s slowly laid the foundations for the kind of global commercial income that most other clubs can only dream of.

Yes, the stadium issue is the big stone in our collective shoe, but like everything else in the great scheme right now, it’s being addressed by people who seem pretty reliable, and whose interests broadly align with ours as fans.

It’s simply the nature of competition and the need for primacy that we fret about the prices we pay on wages and transfer fees. But one day soon we’ll find ourselves forgetting all that. 

One day soon we’ll make the collective mental transition back to where we were in 1990. Yes, there were richer clubs, and yes, there were bigger, swankier stadiums, but by God we weren’t that badly run, and by God we knew how to win a trophy or two.

Maybe it’s time we calmed down and let things unfold for a change?

—-

This article profiles the man currently linked with the Chelsea job: Andre Villas-Boas. Should he move, it’ll make England’s domestic game that little bit spicier again. A club with resources of that scale will have an interesting man at its helm. But it’s an unexpected development, and possibly this article will explain why. If Chelsea have any sense, they’ll stick with him for the medium-to-long term and let him grow as a manager. But we know how things work at Stamford Bridge nowadays, don’t we? If they’re lucky, Roman will recognise the error of his ways in the past and allow the kid a little latitude should things temporarily go awry.

The Young Pretender

Luís André Pina Cabral Villas-Boas was born on the 17th of October 1977. My God. He’s three and a half years younger than I am, for Christ’s sake. At his age, like me, he should be thinking about maybe getting a mortgage and developing his beer belly. He should be dead set on starting his day with a full English and finishing it with at least three pints of Stella. I mean, it’s not as if he actually played the game. Why would he bother subjecting himself to any kind of career in football management?

Is he mentally ill?

Well, no (in my view at least - bear in mind I’m no psychotherapist). Not in any clinical sense. But football might have something of a laser-guided prodigy on its hands. Andre Villas-Boas might well be the Doogie Howser MD of football managers.

The thing is, it’s not as if he’s just gotten started. His managerial career formally started 10 years ago - he was 23 years old - and he managed an International football team. It’s fair to say Andre Villas-Boas is a little smarter, and a little odder, than your average bear.

English Roots

It’s well known that Villas-Boas recently worked and lived in London for three years, and as his star continues to rise, it’s almost as well known that his Grandmother was a Northumbrian, and taught him English from an early age. As such, he’s another candidate with fluent English. But beyond that, it’s my suspicion that communication is what sets Andre villas-Boas aside as a manager, full stop. More on that later.

So How Did He Blag His Way In?

It’s well known that, when he was but a slip of a lad, Bobby Robson kept him in a cage in his Oporto apartment, much like a Mynah bird - in a manner of speaking, anyway.

“When Mr Bobby Robson came to Porto to be a coach in 1994,” Villas recalls, “he moved into my building. I was a small boy, but because I was so interested in football I went to his flat to try to meet him.

“He liked my passion so helped me to enrol at Lilleshall to take my FA coaching qualifications. He also arranged for me to do my Scottish qualifications in Largs and spend some time at Ipswich with George Burley to see the team train.” Villas was just 17. “I started very young in Lilleshall,” he says. “In fact, I shouldn’t really have been there, because the law doesn’t allow a minor to take qualifications. But Bobby [Robson] smoothed the way with Mr Charles Hughes [the former head of coaching at the Centre of Excellence] and I was allowed in to take my UEFA C badges.

“I was the youngest coach there by a mile, but I was so determined to make it that it didn’t bother me. I spent three weeks at each venue in the UK and then came back to Porto to do one year’s coaching with the youth teams. The following season I went on to do my UEFA B course and then, last year [2007], I got my A licence.”

So let’s stop and have a breather. It’s pretty astounding really - it’s goal-driven behaviour - Schwarzenneger-esque, in fact. As well as no doubt teaching the young Andre how to say “who’s a pretty boy then?”, the elder statesman of World football and the young prodigy got talking tactics around the apartment block, and Robson was so taken aback with this nipper’s insight into the game that he took it upon himself to mentor the lad as a coach. He described his role as Robson’s “assistant”. All at that pimply pubescent stage. It’s incredible really.

It makes you wonder what underpinned his decisions at that age. It can only have been a burning desire - a clear, all-encompassing vision of where he wanted to take his life. An Internationally reknowned manager happens to move into your apartment block? You go and try to meet him. You make it clear to him that you’re passionate about the game. Somehow, the conversation turns to going to the UK to start your official UEFA coaching tutilege. You impress him so much he takes time out to oil the beaurocratic cogs and smooth your entry into the coaching fold. You up sticks for Lilleshall and Largs on your own (never easy as a ‘standard issue’ 17 year old who’s more used to sneaking down the park with a bottle of Merrydown Cider or saving up our wages to buy the next Farm album). And of course, the ‘rules’ tell you that at 17, you’re young too much to complete the badges - but you’ll be damned if you let that stop you.

So what would you do then? From 17 to 21, you’re working your way through your UEFA syllabus, chalking up your hours and experience, all the time working at a massive club - arguably the biggest in your country - learning your trade from people who truly know the game inside out. What next?

Well, naturally you up sticks on your own and head for the British Virgin Islands. Oh, and I’ve missed a bit out there. When you reach 21, you think “right, I’m not gonna sit back and do the standard apprenticeship nonsense - I want a taste of what the real job’s really all about. I’m going for it. I’m going to apply for the next job that comes up that I reckon I can get. And they look at your application, and they ask you in for a chat, and next thing you know, you’re bulk buying Ambre Solaire (you’re a little bit ‘ginger’ remember) and heading for the Carribean.

When you read through that and stop to consider where you have to be mentally to make those decisions, and to take those actions - all the time at a tender age - you realise that this guy has set some kind of mission for himself. “By their fruits you shall know them”, as a man with a beard once said.

Villas-Boas continues, shedding light on this mission in the process.

“I would have loved to have played at the highest level,” he says, “but I wasn’t a good enough midfielder to make it so I turned to coaching. It did not take long, though, before I was hooked by all the aspects of management. It’s such a varied and demanding job. I love it and now I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. My ultimate dream is to be totally in charge of my own club soon.”

In between his various exams, Villas found the time to become the British Virgin Islands’ technical director of football in 2000. “I was basically the country’s coach,” says Villas, who was the youngest international manager at the time. “I was a kid, but they didn’t know that. I only told them my age the day I left the post. It was such a grand job for a 21-year-old. I was in charge for the 2002 World Cup qualifiers, and I remember Bermuda beating us very heavily, with Shaun Goater [the Reading striker] scoring five goals. It was a bad defeat, but still an unbelievable experience for a guy so young.”

The quotes in that excerpt betray vision, an appropriate and, in my view, healthy attitude to risk, and audacity. Not only that, but he’s brave. He’s not afraid of making mistakes if he feels there are valuable lessons that might be learned in the process. There are other managers throughout football’s history who have shared those qualities, and they’re the very men who have defined the game as we know it. But of course, it’s nothing if not coupled with talent.

Edutainment

Having completed his stint overseas, he came home and took a job coaching Porto’s under 19 youth team. At the time, Octavio Machado was manager, but it wouldn’t be too long before he was reunited with a kindred spirit, who happened to be taking the helm. It would herald the start of a tumultuous apprenticeship alongside one of history’s ultimate trophy-gathering sorcerers.

In 2002, Porto prised Jose Mourinho away from Uniao De Leiria. Now, it’s fair to say Villas-Boas’s career trajectory had been stellar to that point, but it’s no exaggeration to say this was the development that put him on the map. Much like others with vision in life, Villas-Boas is blessed by the Gods in terms of serendipity (or is it Mourinho who was blessed?). He happens to live in an apartment block? Bobby Robson moves in. He takes a job as a youth coach, in moves one of the few coaches whose entire ethos is centred around analysis, communication and education. And where is AVB more than a little exceptional? Analysing, communicating, and educating. He’s a lucky boy, you might say. But people with vision have a handy knack of being lucky at pivotal times.

As well as becoming a trusted member of Mourinho’s backroom team (Villas-Boas texted Mourinho’s instructions to the bench in Porto’s UEFA Cup 2nd leg against Lazio for example) Mourinho asked him to take on another challenging role, and him being him, he jumped at the chance. Self-belief is not an issue.

“Because Jose knew me well from his time as Bobby Robson’s assistant, he asked me to create the Opponent Observation Department.” In simple terms, the role of the OOD is to compile secret service-style dossiers on… rivals.

The role involved analysis, communication, and education. And it’s possible that this was the point when his potential started to really flower. Mourinho himself had been influenced by Robson (attacking play and planning of the coaching curriculum) and Van Gaal (actual training ground experience with some of the greatest players in the world). In turn, Villas-Boas would surely have been influenced by Mourinho. But the relationship would be a two-way street in that regard - Villas-Boas provided the key raw material for Mourinho’s work.

“Some managers prefer to concentrate more on fitness or mental,” Villas says, “but Jose likes to marry all aspects of coaching. He does a lot of physical and tactical work on the field, but believes that you can also benefit greatly from careful analysis and planning.

“My work enables Jose to know exactly when a player from the opposition team is likely to be at his best or his weakest. I will travel to training grounds, often incognito, and then look at our opponents’ mental and physical state before drawing my conclusions and presenting a full dossier to Jose.”

...“Jose is obsessed with detail… He will leave nothing to chance, even if his team are playing against the worst side in the League.”

Again, a pause to underline a few points. Aged 25, and with one colleague in the “OOD”, Villas-Boas was pivotal to Mourinho’s controlling approach. Of course there are two aspects to the exercise of control: you exert your own influence, and you take steps to address the things that can subvert that influence. Mourinho’s coaching methodology and core coaching curriculum would go a long way to enabling that kind of control; but it was Villas-Boas and his OOD that added a little extra ‘secret sauce’ - the kind that gives a team the edge it needs.

That’s a key input, and for Villas-Boas to have played such a pivotal role for seven years under the watchful eye of one of the most demanding people in the game, he must have proven himself exceptional.

In Mourinho’s biography, you read snippets that give some insight into the OOD’s output, and it’s here that the qualities I talked about in the introduction betray themselves.

As well as the planning aspects of the role, the technical expertise needed to compile effective dossiers, and the clarity to agree each game plan with Mourinho himself (you’d imagine this takes clarity and brevity in your presentations - he’s a busy man who won’t suffer nonsense), Villas-Boas actually went that extra mile or ten and thought about his ultimate audience. Who knows? If they’re football fans, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators might one day make him an honourary ‘fellow’.

As well as producing paper materials (four to six page dossiers) for each individual player, detailing the strengths and weaknesses of their direct marks and the opposing side, Villas-Boas would produce individualised DVDs. They would produce video and multimedia content for room-based tactical sessions.

Villas-Boas underlines how meticulous the process was.

...“It takes me four days to put an entire file together,” Villas says, “so it is very comprehensive. The reports are given to all the players as well as the manager. The idea is that when the players go out on the pitch, they are totally prepared, so there can be very few surprises during the game.”

But it was maybe less straightforward than it appeared. Again, from Mourinho’s biography this excerpt underlines how pivotal Villas-Boas’s work was - this was ahead of Porto’s UEFA Cup final against Celtic.

“After dinner, we finally held our most important meeting. I announced the team, and presented the game plan on PowerPoint, situation by situation, what to do, how to react, how to adapt, how to win…”

He was clearly in the vanguard on this front, as was Mourinho himself. A game plans isn’t often presented as a ‘how to guide’, but this team worked like technical communicators. And as we’ll discover shortly, things went further than that.

Of course, we know this work continued at Chelsea (and later Inter Milan), albeit the job title changed to “Chief Scout”. But as well as diligently churning out world class intelligence materials, provoking other managerial giants such as Frank Rijkaard, and completing his UEFA A License, the media, looking for fresh angles on Mourinho and his merry band of conspirators, started trying to unravel the enigma his role represented.

When reporting Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge shenanigans against Barca in 2005, Sam Wallace described the OOD as “Orwellian”.

The role of Villas Boas in the exchanges at the end of the match is likely to bring the charismatic 27-year-old, who is head of Mourinho’s Orwellian-titled “Opposition Observation Department”, out of the shadows.

So it was that Villas-Boas started worming his way into the UK’s footballing consciousness.

Lineage And Special Powers?

Alongside Rui Faria and Silvinho Louro, Villas Boas boasts the kind of technical specialism that Mourinho, with his forensic attention to detail, trusts implicitly. But unlike the other two listed, Villas-Boas has managerial ambitions of his own.

Given that Mourinho boasts that his methods can be fully transmitted to a squad within three seasons, it’s safe to assume Villas-Boas has mastered Mourinho’s methodology to a greater extent than any other person working in the game. So what does that give him?

Well, we could write a book on that, but Villas-Boas gives us a good starting point above.

“Some managers prefer to concentrate more on fitness or mental… but Jose likes to marry all aspects of coaching. He does a lot of physical and tactical work on the field, but believes that you can also benefit greatly from careful analysis and planning.

Mourinho’s biography extends this further.

Jose Mourinho is a coach who develops constantly. His ideas, training methodology and concept of play are systematically analysed and studied, and are continuously evolving. He clearly states that he is not the same coach today as he was at practices two years ago.

That development is fed not only by the methods and experience derived from his own formative years, but also by working with his own team. Faria is an innovator in physical training methods. Villas-Boas is a prodigy in the tactical, analytical and communication-based aspects of the game. Mourinho takes these inputs at the end of each season and works to further develop his methodology - a methodology that’s both genuinely integrated and focussed on tactical balance.

The ‘integration’ relates to the fact that all lessons are learned in two contexts - a full-size training pitch, and a 20m by 20m square area for smaller tactical exercises. All work is done with the ball. Indeed, on Revista De La Liga recently, Xabi Alonso stated that the 2010 pre-season was the first he’d ever encountered where all work was done with a ball at their feet.

Communication forms a central ‘pillar’ of Mourinho’s methodology. He talks about ‘guided discovery’ - a process that frames tactical questions for the squad on thr training pitch in a way that poses open questions, and encourages them to arrive at the right answer themselves. In this way they ‘own’ the realisations as their own, which helps habituate the behaviour. It also, in theory, helps the squad to ‘buy in’ to the methods proposed.

This has undergone constant development. It was reported during his time at Chelsea that Mourinho and his staff had developed abstract coded communications for their players, for example “Mourinho’s Drills” (a training aptitude curriculum each youth player must complete before joining the first team squad), and the “colour box system”, which involves passing the team coloured pieces of paper, related to these drills, to the team during games. In a 6 by 6 grid, there are 36 coloured boxes, each of which represents one of these tactical drills - a response to a particular tactical situation.

For example, if the opposing side starts moaning and retreating into its shell, then apply the Grey box. Up the intensity. Up the tempo. Kill them off.

To reinforce this, young players are encouraged to keep training log books related to these drills, and every player receives a copy of the club “Bible”, which explains these details and what’s required of them as professionals day-to-day. Interestingly, in his book “Winning”, Clive Woodward, the man who led England to the Rugby World Cup, proposed the creation of “Teamship Rules” as best practice for any sporting project. The content covered was completely analogous to the “Bible” concept - the key point being its production and refinement by high quality authors, bookbinders, and multimedia experts.

Think I’m making this up? The man who replaced him at Inter provides a little corroborating evidence. As well as doing their normal job, these guys have a genuine technical author’s workflow in place.

Note - we also get a little circumstancial evidence that Mourinho had agreed to ‘let him go’ that season, much as Van Gaal had encouraged Mourinho years before. Inter knew they were replacing him - it just wasn’t clear when. He stayed to make sure the handover was smooth for the club he left.

“The Mourinho rang me asking if I would be interested in joining the coaching staff as an assistant because Andre Villas Boas was about to leave.” ...But the mini-Mourinho, as he was called the English, left ahead of time for Academic.

...“Mourinho is addicted to high tech: the images speak louder than words, especially in a club… with five Italian players, four Argentinians, five Brazilians, two Slovenians, a Colombian, an Austrian, a Portuguese, a Honduran, a Frenchman, a Nigerian, a Dutchman, a Serb, a Ghanaian and a Cameroonian.

“With Photoshop, with images of opponents, I move our players into the correct positions. I put shadows in strategic areas and add arrows to indicate movement.”

I don’t think it’s too ridiculous a leap to suggest Villas-Boas had a massive role in developing and refining these techniques, as well as the actual artefacts that supported them. This is an impressive man who boasts single mindedness and audacity, and backs that up not only with his own natural gifts for communication, but with seven years’ refinement of those skills by arguably the best in the business.

In the Japanese Zen tradition, they say it takes seven years for a persimmon to ripen, just as it takes seven years for the seeds of enlightenment to bloom.

Seven years is an auspicious development cycle, you might argue, and it’s now that the seeds of this methodology are starting to bloom.

Taking The Sith?

There’s a compelling ‘dark side’ to this story, isn’t there?

Polite convention tells you that you don’t bother the famous old man who lives across the apartment block, especially when he’s a footballing institution.
AVB - stuff that.

UEFA says you can’t do your C licence at 17 years old. AVB - stuff that.

The Virgin Islands might not employ a candidate if they realise they’re in their early 20s.
AVB - stuff that.

UEFA say your boss can’t communicate with his players.
AVB (and others) - stuff that.

You get the pattern.

Andre Villas-Boas has a healthy disregard for conventions and the letter of the law. Football’s a game, lest we forget, and its rules are fluid. Get caught offside and nobody’s going to give you the Electric Chair. So why not bend the rules? Corinthian Spirit? Stuff that. There are no fairies at the bottom of the garden - not unless you’re off your tits on mushrooms anyway.

However, at his core, Villas-Boas seems to have strong control over his Macchiavellian tendencies. He’s loyal,  he’s prepared to fight for his group when he feels it’s under attack (just ask Rijkaard and Samuel Eto’o), and he helps build the team bond. For example, on leaving Inter to move to Academica de Coimbra in the Autumn of 2009, he went to the training ground and hugged each of the staff and players - he’s as warm and cuddly as it gets.

If he has control over those two ‘forces’, then coupled with his gift for communication, he has something very powerful on his hands. 

Phil Minshull’s recent blog on the subject suggests this.

Villas-Boas has also shown himself to be a superb psychologist. The Dragoes coach has managed to convince, and sound sincere even to the sceptics, that everyone is special at Porto, allowing him to get the best out of both the established first-teamers and fringe players…

“Every player in the squad is an important player. They all have a place,” said Villas-Boas last week. “I have praised both Andre Castro and Ukra (Andre Monteiro) publicly and privately. I don’t want to lose them. James has incredible potential and I intend to make him realise it. He will have opportunities (in the Portuguese Cup and Europa League) against Juventude Evora and Sofia, which will be good opportunities for him and they won’t be his last, that’s for sure.”

But you suspect praise is but one tool in his locker. With the apprenticeship he’s served, and the ‘darker’ moments he’s capable of, you’d think there’s little doubt that he can manipulate and balance his rapport with his group. Do that well, and you can lead them wherever you want them to go.

That ‘mentalist’ edge is, again, the thing that sets him aside. His communication skills are said to be supremely refined. In discussing who the Portuguese coach of the year should be, Portuguese journalist Luis Freitas Lobo said the following about Porto’s new man.

Dealing with ‘pressure’
What’s special about Andre Villas-Boas, the coach who invented FC Porto 2010/11? As with Mourinho, he believes that the next game starts when the referee’s whistle blows for the end of the preceding game - in the press conference. It is an understanding that results from awareness of the power of communication. At this point, he plants seeds in the minds of fans, journalists, his own players, and his opponents. For 90 minutes, the way you play has the power of projecting an image. But in football today, this image and the communication that supports it dominates over 50% of its content.

An emerging rivalry with Benfica’s manager Jorge Jesus is betrayed in the text that follows this, and it’s fair to say Villas-Boas is comfortable mimicking his mentor here, because the mind games have begun.

[Villas-Boas’s] tactical knowledge (and training) is also increasingly evident.

[Jorge] Jesus said he still needs to deal with peer pressure. ...I do not think it’s going to be a problem for Villas-Boas. On the contrary. This ‘external pressure’ is what he likes best and, win or lose, he’ll cope well with it. The real pressure he needs to deal with is ‘internal pressure’ - pressure that comes from within the club itself (the club’s supporters and direction). This is always (as for all managers) the greatest test of his strength… (tactics, communication and image)... Your club seems ‘unbreakable’. Right now, 2011 seems to be made in his image. With or without pressure.

This comfort with ‘pressure’ leaves him free to apply it to others. We already have a clear case study. Porto’s biggest rivals being Benfica, Villas-Boas has been only too happy to go toe-to-toe with his managerial counterpart. And he’s coming out on top - results tend to help on that front.

At the start of the season, after losing their first game, Jesus said Benfica would retain the league. And naturally, Villas-Boas was magnanamous about it, right?

“Without meaning to criticise others… Porto, Sporting, and Sporting Braga also want the league.

“The journalist Jorge Jesus said it and how many other people were there?

...“Monologues… are easy to pass, because they’re not confronted with questions from journalists. So in that monologue, Jorge Jesus said [Benfica] would be champions… We agree on one aspect - losing in the first game doesn’t mean anything. What matters is the regularity. Benfica are starting weak, but Sporting won’t delay their fight.”

Shortly afterwards, with Porto making its unbeaten start and charging into an early lead, Benfica raised complaints about the refereeing establishment, in steps Villas-Boas to bat it back to his rival. Not only that, he did it with a little headworm that would, no doubt, have wound them right up for some time.

“Do Benfica feel sufficiently hard done by to demand the repetition of the game? Then why not ask for that? Guimares did exactly that last year, after they played against Braga. Are they ashamed to ask for that? In my opinion, they did not dominate the game [in question] in such a clear manner.

...“Nobody should take merit away from FC Porto for what we have achieved. The game in which we played least well was against Naval, but even in this one we created enough opportunities to justify the victory. The solace of others is always the same and it’s convenient to feed this solace. FC Porto doesn’t go in for solace - its solace is its organisation and the organisation is strong.

“Institutionally if others refer to us, it seems to be an obsession. FC Porto does not make mistakes in its organisation. If people did not see our games they are just drawing unjust conclusions.

He then turned to Jorge Jesus himself, who had earlier commented “those at the top of the table will look to Benfica and start trembling”.

“I can’t distance myself from what I have always said… I am a fan of the teams set up by Jorge Jesus and the quality of their game, because he is a coach who emphasises giving a show. But I realise that in competition there are no friends. There are adversaries who use the weapons that they have.

“Jorge Jesus can put pressure on the FC Porto coach, just like the FC Porto coach can put pressure on Jorge Jesus. In this sense, it’s a war fought at a distance.”

So the marker was laid down.

An interesting aside here is to compare Villas-Boas’s words here with those of Mourinho. Mourinho wrote the following.

“I believe that when we are mentally strong, those people who seek to intimidate and disturb us have exactly the opposite effect. Instead, they give us the strength and courage to carry on our way.”

In the bolded section above, Villas-Boas is saying pretty much exactly that, along with it’s counterpoint - the man who resorts to this kind of pressure maybe betrays an insecurity of his own. But we digress.

It wasn’t too long before Villas-Boas’s team thumped Benfica 5-0, and we’ll come back to that later, but after the match, not unlike another manager we know, Villas-Boas described the tactical approach that he felt had unravelled their rivals. And we know how other managers enjoy that, don’t we?

Later, when the media began speculating that the result was partly down to poor performance on Jorge Jesus and Benfica’s part, Villas-Boas was quick to reassure people it was nothing to do with their weakness. It was down to Porto’s strength. While softly spoken as ever, he used an ironic tone when making his point.

“You have short memories in relation to a man who last season showed mystique and strength and whose Benfica side played a footballing dream, and quality of attack… This is a slight to those who work there every day… [trying to] fool people, but not fooling anyone. People in football never go to sleep.”

...”[This was a] clear attempt to discredit what FC Porto has achieved, ...a 5-0 win against the league champions is not a normal result.”

“This result should be seen in the same light as Barcelona 6-2 Real Madrid.”

The feud still rolls on. In December, Villas-Boas was quoted as follows, again in response to words from Jorge Jesus.

“I do not expect any kind of solidarity from the coach of Benfica. I have sympathy for the man and football coach who has achieved the target that Benfica sought for many years. The man who represents Benfica will always be a direct opponent… I did not expect anything different from what he said.

Actual Managerial Experience And Tic-Tacs?

In October 2009, Villas-Boas took the manager’s job at Academica de Coimbra in his native Portugal, on a contract until 2011. The club announced his appointment as follows.

“The success of Mourinho in all his clubs is closely linked to the work of Villas-Boas in his observation and analysis of teams, which has been acknowledged on numerous occasions by Mourinho himself.”

So no pressure then. But this is Villas-Boas we’re talking about. Pressure? Stuff that. One thing though - you can bet he thought “one day they’ll talk about me without mentioning Jose Mourinho”.

Starting seven games into the league campaign, he led the club to 11th in the league, and it’s clear the big guns in Portuguese football were pricking up their ears, as Phil Minshull confirms.

On paper, 11th place in a 16-team league does not look much to shout about. But when you consider Academica were looking like certain relegation candidates, lying at the bottom of the table and without a win to their name before the arrival of Villas-Boas, his success raised plenty of eyebrows in Portugal and brought him to the attention of the Porto president Pinto da Costa.

He opened his account with a narrow 3-2 loss away at Porto. After an early 2-0 win at home against Vitoria Setubal Villas-Boas was keen to keep his team calm and make sure they focussed on the season and their cohesion as a group.

It didn’t take long before Porto and Sporting were bickering over his signature. Sporting had tried to hire him very shortly after his move to Academica, but didn’t have any joy. The mere speculation of his moving sent Sporting’s shares up 1.6%. On the 15th of November, the Porto president denied that Sporting’s failure was due to him having a pre-contract agreement in place with Porto. The truth or otherwise of that rumour isn’t out in the open, but what’s significant is that Villas-Boas didn’t move. He stayed put and finished his season. And in that respect, he behaved exactly as Mourinho had at Uniao de Leiria.

A couple of months into the job, ahead of their game against Benfica, he said the following about his squad’s progress.

“Hopefully, these wins are a source of inspiration for the players. ...Of course there is always progress to make. We have legitimate ambitions… We are aware that… with enormous concentration of effort you can achieve anything.”

But hey - Ian Holloway comes out with stuff like that. In itself, it’s insignificant. The proof of the pudding is how the team performs on the pitch. And clearly they performed ‘above their station’.

After a 2-0 win against Naval, Villas-Boas gave some insight into his game plan.

We have always had control of the game, we were always higher, with more possession and play in midfield than our opponent.

That’s much like he’s had his team do at Porto in fact.

Talking of Porto, it emerged that they’d gotten their man in late March. This despite stories the previous day saying he was moving to Sporting Lisbon.

Regardless, Academica finished the season strongly enough.

We know what happened next. He moved on to Porto with another standard two year contract. Once more, he followed the same trail as Mourinho. He even made an appropriately bold statement on his ‘unveiling’.

“I am not the clone of anyone… Bobby Robson was very important to me in the beginning when I first came to this stadium as a coach at the age of 17, and José Mourinho too. People are always mentioning how young I am, but what matters when it came to my appointment was my ability.

I want to leave my mark on this club.”

The fact he resisted pressure to move mid-season to Sporting again mirrors Mourinho’s precedent (at Leiria). It’s likely that, like Mourinho, he feels it important to keep his promises to the group he’s assembled. After all - Mourinho makes a pre-season ritual of setting group goals for each season, and talks about his group of players as if they’re his second family. You’d imagine Villas-Boas is much the same in that respect.

Porto had finished the preceding season in third, but won the Portuguese Cup. The previous manager, Jesualdo Ferreira, had previously attained three back-to-back titles. So it’s fair to say that, despite half a decade passing since their last glorious era, expectaitons were still high.

Only days ago, Mourinho endorsed the appointment on Portuguese TV (TV1).

...the results don’t fool with FC Porto. The team is leading the league, still unbeaten. “Many may ask why they chose someone who has never coached in life, other than those two or three months at the academy. Everything depends on the games and the results. If you win everything, he’s the perfect coach. Now I will make comparisons to me, because when when I went to FC Porto I had already done field work”.

In pre-season, Villas-Boas commented that he was happy with the side’s early progress, and his words echoed the early quotes during his time at Academica.

“We continue to improve, but we shouldn’t be euphoric. It was a brilliant display, and we created lots of chances. But what counts most right now is the growth of players and minutes of use, “he said…

“My interest is to generate as many chances as possible and we created countless opportunities today. We do not live obsessed with heavy defeats. What We’re obsessed with is a new style of play and a new method, “he concluded.

So hints that maybe this side would have a healthy attitude towards risk. “We do not live obsessed with heavy defeats”.

He continued to provide interesting quotes in pre-season.

“Everything involves a change of habits, a new way of training and of understanding the game. There are things we’re going to do to try to impress, but they’ll take too long to assimilate. Step by step we will get there.”

Shades of Mourinho’s “methodological beating” there. Fernando commented on pre-season as follows.

Porto’s Brazilian footballer Fernando Francisco Reges today praised the methods of new coach, André Villas-Boas, and explained that their adaptation to them was “optimal”.

“I am prepared for everything asked of me and if I have to change and become more offensive I won’t have any problems” said the player, who last season was one of the pillars of Porto’s midfield.

Fernando found that the pre-season training sessions to Villas-Boas are “very dynamic” and said that “improvements are evident"throughout the team.

On August 12th, he came close to emulating his mentor.

“We want to end the season with the title in our hands.”

However, there’s a subtle difference, and it’ll be interesting over the course of his career to see if it persists. Rather than using the imperative, Villas-Boas talks of his team’s desire. Mourinho, perhaps significantly, talked as if it was a certainty. But then, Mourinho’s opponents at the time weren’t as strong as those that Porto face now.

So what kind of squad did he inherit? Well, they finished third in a league won by a very strong Benfica side last season - and we know first hand how good that side was. They gave us quite a fright and but for a brief moment of footballing clarity from our squad, would have knocked us out. Benfica lost Angel Di Maria and Ramirez, so you might say their squad took a blow. But arguably Porto took just as much of a blow, if not more.

They sold two key players in Raul Meireles and centre half Bruno Alves. So how did they fare with incoming players? Significantly, they signed Joao Moutinho, who was the captain and talisman of Sporting Lisbon, despite being 24. But that’s it - he was the only real first team addition.

Whats maybe more significant is this - the players sold included Meireles, Alves, and Farias. Their average age? 29.3 years.

The average age of the six players bought? 21.88 years.

Other than Moutinho, these new players haven’t been ever present by any means, but it seems a good decision. As always with European clubs, you’re not sure just how much responsibility and credit the manager can take for transfer business; but given Villas-Boas’s relationship with the club and his background as a scout, it’s an educated guess to he had some input.

Porto are very well managed. This practice ties in with Mourinho’s plans made several years before, where the club’s working methods were aligned. Mourinho had persuaded the Porto president, Pinto Da Costa, to realign the club in line with his “Bible”.

“...the basis for the whole programme: ‘The concept of club is more important than any player’. This concept… is a belief that must be taken on by everyone in the club, especially in the junior ranks.”

We gained some insight into this earlier, but Pinto Da Costa signed off on that document and sponsored the programme personally - and he remains the Porto president now. So it’s maybe fair to say things are well aligned behind the scenes. That being the case, it’s easier to understand the confidence Villas-Boas has had in relying on players within their squad. Not only is it strong - they’re drilled in what’s not gonna be a million miles away from his preferred methodology.

Anyway, we digress (again). The squad. How is it? Well, this was the most interesting part to research. Mr Dilkington of RAWK was patient enough to both accomodate my questioning and provide an in-depth analysis of the way the side functions. Most of what follows is his work. On reading it, I trundled off and found two full games’ footage - Porto at home to Leiria and the big result at home to Benfica. It made for impressive viewing, and I’m resolved to watch as much of them as I can for the remainder of the season. 

The squad fits his modified 4-3-3 nicely. (Or was it the other way round? There’s not enough evidence to say.)

Their keeper Helton’s form has apparently improved this season, but he was never a diddy by any means. Back four? Big lads all - all over six foot, with two strong centre halves in Rolando and Maicon (the latter particularly silky), strength on the right in Sapunaru (strong defensively, gets forward well) and a hare on the left in Pereira (regularly pops up in and around the opposing box). Having watched them twice, they seem to have strong backup at right back in Fusile.

Holding midfielders? They’re very strong again, with Fernando and Guarin both physical players with a lot of quality on the ball. On top of that, Moutinho can play this role comfortably, as well as on both the wide midfield roles, and to a high standard. Moutinho and Beluschi are not only energetic and committed defensively - they burst their lungs to support the attacking trio, and have great quality in their passing. The three work nicely as a unit, and as with the front three, set up in an interesting way. More on that shortly.

The front three are nothing short of formidable, both in the English and the French sense. The front man and reference point for the side’s attacking play is Falcao. He’s strong, good in the air, an excellent finisher, and when balls are fired in his direction, they either fall one touch to a runner, or stick. That’s a big part of their build-up play.

On the left, Varela hugs the touchline. He’s like greased lightning, to the extent that any player stationed in his vicinity’s nerves are gonna be a little ‘piqued’. Meanwhile, on the right, is Porto’s star man - the Hulk. This guy was a good player already, but this season he’s on fire - all but unplayable.

Now. Here’s the interesting bit. It’s not your bog-standard symmetrical 4-3-3. Fans of “Inverting The Pyramid” would enjoy the tweak, and, oddly, it’s reminiscent of the football I grew up with, watching Jim McLean’s Dundee United through the 80s. Variance in depth and a slight lop-sidedness rather than symmetry in both the midfield and forward lines, a high defensive line, intensity in their pressing, and wide forard players who stay posted high up the pitch, giving their defenders something to think about.

So how does it look on paper?

The big weapon in the side being Hulk, it obviously helps if he has space to wreak his merry havoc on the opposing side. Well, that’s a key aspect of how the side’s set up. Varela has searing pace, and he’s like greased lightning from a standing start. Posted wide left, and staying high at almost all times, he’s like a magnet to a side’s defensive iron filings. The mere fact he’s there out wide gives you something to worry about at the back of your mind, both in terms of space out left and of the gap in behind. Then, of course, you’re dealing with a big, muscular speciment in Falcao, and an even bigger powerhouse of a speciment on the right in Hulk. Hulk, however, tucks in. He takes up a narrower position, closer to Falcao.

So - if you’re defending against this, what do you do? Do you post a man on Hulk full-time? The centre halves have their hands full with big Falcao, so to deal with him and Hulk effectively, do you post your holding midfielder or one of the other midfielders? If you do, guess what? The hare on the left is gonna find himself with more space. And he’s the kind of player you don’t want to cede too much space to. Porto emphasise this regularly by the way - as time ticks on, the centre halves or holding midfielder will ping a long diagonal to Varela and he’ll receive the ball isolated against the right back. Porto like to post a reminder that he’s there from time to time.

Varela unsettles the defensive set-up and draws them right, and while it’s speculation, the stats back up the idea that Hulk and Falcao are the direct beneficiaries of this set-up. Both players have 17 goals for the season, while Varela has 7. Meanwhile, in the midfield ‘3’, Moutinho plays narrow, and Belluschi plays wide. This is a point supported by Zonal Marking’s analysis of the Porto v Benfica game (the 5-0 win above). Hulk gets attention, so from time-to-time Belluschi gets to sneak off with the Prom Queen. Moutinho and Fernando have one goal for the season, while Belluschi has two. You’d expect the assist stats to correlate.

The midfield three, though, work well as a unit. It’s not often, even in that offensive set-up, that the defensive four find themselves isolated, and it’s down to the energy and coherence of that three.

Mr Dilkington makes the point that there’s something refreshingly old school to the side’s set-up.

“In Villas-Boas’s team, the defenders defend, the midfielders link defence and attack, and most importantly assist, and the forwards stay high up the field and put the ball in the net. Can’t be more simple than that, can it? This is further backed up when you consider that Porto’s front three have contributed just four assists between them to date this season. Is that a bad thing? Well, Villas-Boas just wants them to snap the net in two as many times as they can.”

Amongst all this, Villas-Boas is quietly active on the touchline. He stands in his technical area, shouts instructions at his players just like most managers do - but he’s assured and calm. There’s a poise to him.

They started well, winning the Portuguese Super Cup against Benfica, and the side have remained unbeaten, save for, shock horror, being knocked out of the Portuguese League Cup a few days ago. Recognising the start he’d made and the fact that his profile was now sky high, Porto extended contract for another year. Villas-Boas commented as follows.

“[It is] a privilege to receive this kind of trust…”

The 33-year-old… has committed until 2013 having made a big impression since joining from A. Académica de Coimbra. “We are on a long road and hope to be successful… I know if we all stay together we will always win.”

In signing his contract, Villas-Boas reinforces the same team building message we constantly hear from Mourinho. He never misses an opportunity.

Game Done Change?

Gabriele Marcotti says it’s tempting to compare Villas-Boas to Theo Epstein of the Boston Red Sox. An unusually young man who hasn’t played the game himself, and who has a healthy disregard for convention and ‘rules of the game’.

Youth, in itself, isn’t that unusual in itself. Many a player has taken on a player manager role after hanging up his boots, and a few have gone on to be very successful. Then there are the likes of Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola, who played the game themselves, but spent years learning their trade before taking a top level job of their own and excelling.

Increasingly we’re seeing managers enter the game with a more ‘academic’ background, and with marginal to no playing backgrounds of their own, whether due to injury or inability. Hugh McIlvanney once said managers who didn’t boast a successful background of their own in the game are fuelled by a greater hunger in management than their peers who have enjoyed success. In the cases above, there are examples in both camps. There’s very little Guardiola didn’t achieve in the game as a player, for example.

What’s clear is that the barriers to entry as a manager are in the process of being challenged before our eyes. It’s an interesting process. Villas-Boas comments on this as follows.

“I guess it is because I started coaching when I was very young,” explains the 26-year-old going on 50. “Despite my age, I have a lot of experience.”

It’s likely his example will blaze a trail for others to follow. It’ll be interesting to watch that unfold.

Conclusion

So is Andre Villas-Boas suitable for Chelsea? Well, yes - as much as any manager is suitable. But it depends on one thing - his ability to manage his one key stakeholder: Roman Abramovich. Give this kid time and all the signs are that he’l work wonders. But who gets time at Chelsea? The club is a swirling maelstrom of ego and power jostling. You’d expect at some stage for him to demand stability - the kind of stability that needs to be underpinned by genuine authority and control. The question is, can Abramovich cede that kind of control? All the evidence points at the answer being “No”. Mourinho, a talented man himself, thought he was getting it - but ultimately learned his authority was founded on shifting sands.

What is clear is that Villas-Boas has an affinity with England, and that he’s spent enough time there to understand who the big ‘players’ are. It’s important to remember he’s spent a great deal of time working with Mourinho; but it’s equally important to remember this fella’s headstrong. He’s his own man. So it’s difficult to second guess how his story will unfold.

Pedro Pinto, in World Soccer recently, had this to say on the subject.

“You get the feeling… that winning in Portugal won’t be enough for Villas-Boas; he craves continental acclaim. After getting a taste of International success working as a scout and assistant for Mourinho in England and Italy, he wants to make his own mark in Europe.”

In his mind, Chelsea represents a chance to make that kind of mark. It’ll be interesting to watch the drama unfold.

That said, it can sometimes be a pleasure for a geek such as myself. For example, only yesterday a debate kicked off as follows.

Is it a disaster if your club misses out on its top transfer targets?

The answer, as always, surely depends on context. You see, for me, at certain clubs, it matters a lot less if you miss out on your top targets. So what sets those clubs aside?

Jumpers for Goalposts and Wonderboy Reliance

At some clubs more than others, there’s no real thought given to systems. These clubs don’t have a ‘way’ we all identify with - their fortunes rise and fall depending on the success they’ve had in the transfer market, or the chance arrivals of mercurial talents from within their youth ranks. If football is cyclical, these clubs don’t manage the cycles. So for these clubs, it can be a disaster if another club niks in at the 11th hour and steals their promised wonder boy from under their noses. It affects their whole strategy for the season to come, and sometimes beyond (but probably not given the lack of planning in place).

These are the same clubs whose fortunes vary wildly depending on who’s available and who’s injured. The whole thing depending on the individuals involved, when you take those individuals out of the mix, things get tricky.

Systems and Fungibility

On the other hand, if your club bases everything on its ‘way’ of doing things, and on the patterns it follows on the training ground and during games, there’s a chance that things will become far less volatile. Of course, it depends on the approach being right in the first place. A bad strategy is a bad strategy is a bad strategy, after all. But assuming it’s just about right, it matters far less who the individuals involved are going to be.

In that context, every player’s role has more chance of becoming an interchangeable component - you can swap in the understudy for the leading man, and the overall machine doesn’t function that differently - the players become ‘fungible’.

Fungibility (n)
The property of a good or a commodity whereby individual units are capable of mutual substitution.

When a club does things in that way, the players develop a deeper understanding of their roles, and it’s almost more important that they understand the underlying principles of the approach than it is they embody the minute detailed requirements for their position. Indeed, at its pinnacle, this approach makes it more difficult for new players coming in, no matter what their quality, because they have to adjust to the footballing culture of their new club, and that takes time - and often while under relentless pressure.

Look at David Villa for example. There’s barely a club in the world who wouldn’t want him as a player. But he’s taken time to adjust to life at Barca, hasn’t he? Nobody would doubt his quality, but some within that club would no doubt argue it’s better to promote someone from within the ranks - someone steeped in the process - in the ‘Barca way’.

There are other clubs throughout Europe who are following much the same model, and it’s fair to say these clubs are far more resilient to their fluctuating fortunes in the transfer market.

The Middle Ground

Of course, things are never quite that simple. Even if your systems are rock solid, when your very best players are missing you’re still gonna suffer. And if your rivals steal a march on you to the players best suited to your system, then they gain an opportunity you’ve missed. But nothing’s certain. A Phil Jones, while talented, isn’t the only decent young defender in the modern game. A Jordan Henderson, meanwhile, isn’t the only decent young midfielder. There’ll be another tranche along next year on the “Yo Sushi!” conveyor belt that is the tranfer market. So why fret?

If you’re clever, of course, you’ll hire a chef and start work on your own conveyor belt. That way, when the big opportunities do come along, you’ll have more cash sitting around and less distraction.

The Max Weber Model and the “Personality Cult In A Box”

The first article was built on a framework set out by a prominent sociologist and legal philosopher called Max Weber. His framework is pretty simple really. He asserted that to truly run the show in any organisational context, be it a nation, or a company, or by extension a football club, you need to boast one of three types of authority.

Option 1. Traditional Authority
You’re in control because that’s the way it’s always been (be it through regal succession, feudalism, or whatever). Not that practical at Real Madrid really - well - not unless Juan Carlos decides he fancies a go.

Option 2. Rational-Legal Authority
You’re in control because the law, the constitution, or whatever collective formal contract governs things says you are. This has a lot of relevance at Real Madrid of course - the club has to operate against the backdrop of periodic presidential elections, and when they’re elected, they’re the ones who carry the can. At least, that’s usually the case. So it’s relevant, albeit not directly to the club’s manager.

Option 3. Charismatic Authority
Bingo. If you harbour any ambitions towards a long-term stay as the manager of Real Madrid (or any other club for that matter), you need to have, or to have had at some stage, genuine “Charismatic Authority”. The sort that leads those in your charge to believe in your mandate to lead. It’s this type of authority that Mourinho manipulates so well, and so predictably. And it’s this type of authority he has to move beyond if he’s to stand any chance of bedding in at Real Madrid.

Of course, my first article was mischievous, illustrating Jose’s recipes with reference to maniacal figures from history such as David Karesh and Adolf Hitler. I could just as easily have drawn comparisons with Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger. But it was more fun doing it the first way, wasn’t it? And it provided clearer illustrations of how Jose goes about systematically ensuring his Charismatic Authority. If you sign him up, sit back and watch, because you can be sure he’s going to establish it toute de suite.

So what happened next?

Well, that was the point at which we left the issue. Jose had the players and the staff largely on board, save for a few notable dissenters (more on that in a moment), and a few notable process-related stones in his shoe. He’d gone toe-to-toe with Pep’s Barca, and save for the 5-0 gubbing, he’d demonstrated the effectiveness of his methods. His team were steaming through domestic round after domestic round, after all, and they’d looked increasingly effective and impressive in the Champions League - the one trophy the club covats more than any other.

To bed that in, and to keep those who sustain his Charismatic Auythority on side, he would need to a. persuade them they’d achieved some degree of footballing success (in terms acceptable to the craziest club on the planet), and b. begin the process Max Weber says is crucial in this context if you fancy extending your stay - Routinization.

You see, Charismatic Authority, the kind a football manager enjoys, is inherently unstable. Look at Carlo Ancelotti. Last year he was the mutt’s nuts according to all and sundry. But when it came down to it in the tunnel after the game at Goodison the other week, the Charismatic Authority was gone. It exists in the eyes of peculiar and crucial beholders, and in each case, and at each club, those beholders may be entirely different people (or groups of people). Rafael Benitez would no doubt agree. The fans might love you one year, and might march in the streets for you the next, but if enough men in suits behind the scenes aren’t feeling it, you can quickly find yourself out of a job.

So in that inherently unstable context, if you’ve managed to somehow convince those crucial beholders that you’re truly ‘Charles in Charge’, you’re well advised to add some structure to that authority - to dig your trench and build your ramparts. To “Routinize”.

We can only speculate of course, save for occasional anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. The aforementioned Rafael Benitez, for example, played this game beautifully, using his support amongst the fan base and in the mainstream media to negotiate better and better terms for his contract, and to garner more and more control over operations at what had become an increasingly fragmented club. On the day he was ‘mutually consented’, he might have believed he had control of the whole shooting match. But one crucial aspect of his authority wasn’t quite routinized - the acquiescence of the men in pin striped suits. Had he enjoyed their support, it’s possible he would have still been in charge at Liverpool Football Club.

Look at any manager who’s been in charge at a football club for more than five years and you can be certain he’s been through this Routinization process, either actively or passively. Something’s happened to keep him there. It helps, of course, to win trophy after trophy, but in Mourinho’s own case we’ve seen that sometimes that’s not enough. His demise at Chelsea was dramatic enough that we can remember the fine details, after all - erosion of support from key figures in the dressing room, and arguments about, well, why his authority wasn’t being Routinized. Jose wanted to know - why is Avram Grant in control of X, Y and Z? I thought we’d agreed that was all in the past after Arnesen left? He demanded total control, and when he started to kick up a fuss about it, some would argue that his exit was a fait accomplis.

So trophies alone sometimes aren’t enough. Routinization involves a degree of either power struggle, or artful balancing of your stakeholders - the ‘peculiar beholders’ your authority depends upon. If you’re good at that, then maybe you’ll come out of it like Shankly, or Ferguson, or Wenger. If you manage it, you end up like Clough at Forest. If you don’t, you’re more likely to end up like Clough at Derby. Or worse, you fall before the Charismatic Authority hurdle, much like Clough at Leeds. 

Routinization at Real?

Jose faces the toughest of tasks to bed himself in at Real Madrid. It’s possibly a Perfect Storm in terms of difficulty. But in spite of that, he’s somehow navigating his way through it. How? Well, let’s see.

1. Collect silver, buy time
First, You need to win trophies if you’re going to stand any chance of staying. That’s hard enough at the best of times. But when you’re up against arguably the best side in living memory, it’s a tough ask. So Jose can thank his lucky stars he managed to get that Copa Del Rey in the trophy cabinet a few weeks back. It’s bought him time - precious, precious time. Whether it’ll buy him enough long-term understanding depends on other things, such as…

2. The Nights Of The Long Knives
At some stage, unless you’re operating in the most benign of environments, you’re going to come to a point of crisis. If there are other parties with any claim to being in charge, and you want to assert yourself as the “Mister”, you’re eventually going to have to confront the issue. And if you’re managing at Real Madrid, you’re going to have to do it repeatedly. Through manager after manager, we’ve tuned into Revista De La Liga and heard the panel regale us with near Shakespearian tales of political intrigue and back stabbing from the corridors of the Bernebeu. And time and again it’s involved one man more than any other - Jorge Valdano.

A former manager of the club himself, and self-appointed philosopher for the footballing cognoscenti, Valdano has for some time been the poster boy for disruptive influence at Real Madid. When he’s not commenting on the quality of football elsewhere (“shit on a stick” anyone?), he’s whispering sweet nothing in the President’s ear in the club’s private jet, or briefing journalists off the record about things they ought not to know. This guy had generally become a manager’s worst nightmare - the “peculiar and crucial beholder” from hell - smiling to your face while he dresses your grave behind your back.

In the article a few months back, I mentioned Simon Talbot’s excellent article on this very subject, “Friend Or Foe?”, which described the power struggles taking place behind the scenes at the time at the Bernebeu. In it, Talbot recognised the seeds of this conflict. Describing a post-match press conference where Mourinho recited a litany of errors made by the match referee, printed on official Real Madrid headed paper, Talbot cut to the heart of the matter.

“There was something familiar about Mourinho complaining about the referee: it forms part of his armoury, another tactic for a master tactician.

And yet, as he waved the piece of paper in the air, revealing that he had been handed it by someone from the club on his way in, it became clear that this was different. It was not really the referee he was complaining about. It was Real Madrid. This was another us versus them; only ‘us’ was the team, ‘them’ was the club hierarchy. And one man in particular: director general Jorge Valdano.

...This was less press conference, more a declaration of war.”

Mourinho proceeded to air all that was dirty in the labanderia of the Spanish media, stating “I don’t like hidden wars… If I have wars, I have them in the open.” So in Scottish parlance, Jose was offering Valdano and those who supported him outside for a square go. And as someone with little to lose, he must have fancied his chances.

At the time I suggested that Mourinho was going to have to prove himself a master of the ‘dark arts’ to get his way, because he was a long way from claiming possession of the keys to the factory. In the absence of the kind of trophy haul that generally satisfies the club and its fans (just ask Vicente Del Bosque if you doubt their insatiability), you’re gonna have to wheel out some serious smoke and mirrors.

But it seems Jose’s done just that. One cup against the backdrop of Barca’s league and Champions League ‘paso doble’. Ordinarily that’s tough for your average Madridista to follow. But for some reason, the Madrid ultras defiantly chant Mourinho’s name, while the Madrid-friendly media photoshop Barca players out of images to claim offside, and take every chance they can to reinforce the walls of Mourinho’s siege. And despite his evident sway with the Spanish journalistic and footballing establishment, and despite Mourinho’s perception outside Madrid as a mouthy upstart whose very presence brings their game into disrepute, Valdano now finds himself on the outside looking in. So how? With access to the worldwide media on a twice or thrice weekly basis, Mourinho set about undermining the pillars of Valdano’s authority. “If I can talk to the numer one”, he said, “why would I talk to anyone else?”. Suddenly people were asking the question - what value is the middle man adding. This went on and on, to the point where he put himself on the very brink, saying “I want to leave”. The club’s bluff was being called.

3. Detonating the Charges
And oddly, in that context, Barca’s month-long assertion of dominance over their rivals on the field played into Mourinho’s hand. If people had started the Spring asking themselves what value the middle man brought to the party, surely they ended this period demanding to know the answer. If Madrid could spend hundreds of millions of euros assembling the most expensive squad in football history, and if they boasted the most celebrated manager in the modern game, then why weren’t they the ones dominating? The charges had been laid over the months, and all that was missing was the detonator. We lack a striker, complained Mourinho, despite having a squad replete with striking talent. I don’t have full control, complained Mourinho, in response to subtle challenges from the Valdano camp relating to Mourinho’s (and several of his players’) relationship with the Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes. Suddenly, despite having won the cup, they were out of the league and the Champions League, with Barca being hailed as possibly the greatest team of all time.

The charges having been laid, results provided all the detonation needed, and so Valdano was removed from his post. You see, having already gone ‘balls deep’ in investing in Mourinho and his coaching entourage, and having followed his plan and given him hitherto unimagined control over the club’s footballing operations, Florentino Perez and those truly empowered to make the big decisions at the club found themselves with a dilemma. Do they do what they’ve done throughout every false dawn at the club for the last decade and get rid of Mourinho, with massive expense and loss of face, or do they simply light the blue touch paper on the charges Jose had already laid, reinforcing his position at the club, and removing his main rival for control behind the scenes?

In the end it can’t have been that difficult a decision. And so Madrid finds itself (and this is echoed by Simon Talbot) with three powerful men in the mix. Florentino Perez, the President, fresh from reinforcing Mourinho’s position, and the two allies of the Portuguese axis. Mourinho and his agent, Jorge Mendes.

Valdano had quietly questioned the growing Portuguese flavour in the squad, and Mourinho’s ongoing links to the “super agent”, but with Valdano now departed, the club suddenly finds itself linked with more Portugues players, such as Fabio Coentrao. Valdano would have no doubt rankled at the idea, but here we are with Mourinho bedding his influence in yet further.

So has he really pulled this off?

Well, here’s the thing. Mourinho’s presence and charisma is such that his recipe works not only on his players, but also on a good sized chunk of the worldwide media. He lives large enough that his words in a post-match press conference can cause ripples at UEFA, and at FIFA, and Christ - even at UNICEF! That’s quite something, and it’s all down to his raw hypnotic allure, allied to his ongoing trophy haul. People are fascinated by him in the same way they’re fascinated by the wiley little Orca murdering the Great White Shark on National Geographic. He’s the Count Dracula of the modern age. The audience is afraid, but secretly aroused, and maybe even infused with blood lust.

And so, having succeeded precisely where he failed at Chelsea, Jose Mourinho finds himself with a management vacuum to address as he sees fit. And with it his Charismatic Authority gets one step closer to being truly routinized.

Early in the season, Mourinho had said “Real Madrid does not have a structure in accordance with his size”. He now has an opportunity to do something about that. But of course, that opportunity only exists within clearly defined limits - limits he might not have faced at Porto or Chelsea or Inter Milan. Ultimately, Real Madrid is at the whim of its fickle sociis. Whoever rides in on the next presidential ticket will propose whatever floats their boat the most, and if Barca continue to win the lion’s share of pots, no matter how well structured he feels the club is, Jose might find his designer coat’s on a wobbly peg.

But does he even want it?

Jose’s proven himself happy to play a high stakes game. What’s he got to lose, after all? He had the perfect routinized role at Porto and he could have stayed there for decades, but instead, he chose to move to Chelsea. Arguably Porto continue to reap the benefits of the changes he put in place there, and clearly he brought long-term benefits to Chelsea too. But throughout his career, he’s been something of an iconoclast, claiming he doesn’t see himself in the role of football manager into his old age, and that he’d still like the Portugal job when he’s still young enough to truly make a go of it.

As such, Real Madrid, with the seizmic changes being put in place, may find its equilibrium disrupted yet further. It’s a tricky time for them right now. If they cut his programme of change short, they may find themselves trailing in Barca’s slipstream for longer than they really want to countenance. It’s yet to be seen whether Mourinho has the appetite for the truly long haul, and arguably that’s just what Madrid need from him right now.

Things have changed fundamentally at the club, and it’s going to be interesting to see if they have the collective stomach to see this boldness through.

Sunderland fans will be waking up this morning wondering what Steve Bruce has gotten them into, so after receiving a question from @anorthernbullet on Twitter on the subject, here’s a brief profile of the big man by way of an introduction.

Liverpool fans first set eyes on N’Gog at Ibrox in the pre-season of 2008. He came on late and promptly frightened the life out of David Weir the Rangers defence, throwing in an ‘elastico’ before rifling one just past the t.c., powering past Andy Webster to bullet a pacey cross at goal, and scoring a neat debut goal from just outside the area. On the train home, the Rangers fans were asking me who this centre forward was. He had quite a purple patch in pre-season, and then naturally fell back into the reserve set up.

From there, he got sporadic substitute appearances and very occasional starts, but it wasn’t until the Spring of 2009 that he scored his first league goal - oddly enough against Sunderland. First team appearances were hard to come by that season with Liverpool involved in their first genuine title push for years, and it was only after Robbie Keane’s departure back to Spurs that opportunities started to come his way. One memorable moment before Keane’s departure was the away tie to PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League, when three of the reserve lads got a rare run out - Spearing, Kelly and N’Gog. N’Gog raced clear on to a through ball from Robbie Keane, and slotted it home before betraying his nerves and delight with his celebration, patting his chest as if to say “Christ my heart’s going like the clappers”. See the goal from 1m 12s here: http://youtu.be/X0lEMf77M_c

In the meantime, however, Liverpool’s reserves were hitting form, and for me the most memorable moment of his early time at the club was a reserve goal, again away to Sunderland at Hetton-Le-Hole, the home of Bob Paisley. Receiving a long clearance from defence, and under pressure from his marker - I’m not 100% certain who but it was a first teamer for Sunderland at the time - he muscled off the defender’s attention, showed genuine raw power and pace to break into the box, and cooly slotted it past the onrushing goalkeeper. At the time, rumours were doing the rounds about Rafa Benitez fancying Kenwyn Jones, but here was a kid showing all the hallmarks of Jones at his most effective. All he needed were a few more steaks and a weight training programme, some felt.

From there he started getting more and more chances in the Liverpool first team, as for one reason or another, the options in the front line started to thin. He took a bit of stick and it’s probably down to just that - he wasn’t ready to lead the line quite yet and lacked self belief and strength, yet increasingly he found himself coming on late to make a difference. And fair play to the lad - when the chances came, he tended to take them. That’s one thing you can say about the guy - he can finish. It’s the other aspects of his game you hope will develop with more consistent first team football in a genuinely progressive set up.

You see, for the remainder of his time at Liverpool, he tended to play his football in an isolated role. There were memorable moments, sure - the goal at home against Man United for example showed his potential in one neat clip. It’s in the clip below, from about 1m 14s on.

But for many, despite his age and the tactical set up we were increasingly seeing, he frustrated. You see, he’s quick, but he’s not that explosive. He’s big, but he doesn’t tend to use his frame to his best advantage. He’s strong, but again, he sometimes allows himself to be dominated. He’s got nice close control and a box of tricks, but sometimes lacks concentration and loses the ball.

So the raw materials are largely there - you just get the feeling he doesn’t believe he’s there yet - he’s not got that angry streak in him that brings out the extra 5-10%. So he’s an interesting one. Is Bruce the kind of manager to get in between his ears and coax that out of him? Bruce may have his faults, but over the years he’s arguably shown he can do that. This is a kid who’s enthusiastic and plays football with a permanent smile on his face, so hard work’s not going to be a problem - not in training, nor during games. Managers like that in a player.

On top of that, he’s likely to spend less time isolated in the Sunderland side than he did at Liverpool. Not that Kenny Dalglish has Liverpool playing that way - it’s just that his first team chances came in the later days of Benitez’s reign, when counter attacking football became more prominent, and of course during Hodgson’s time, where it was downright chronic on that front. Any striker leading Liverpool’s line during those horrible months might as well have taken the field with a survival sac and a stache of Kendall Mint Cake - they were gonna spend long long spells isolated from their team mates.

Sunderland on the other hand, when they’ve had a few strikers at their disposal, will field those strikers together. Playing alongside Gyan and whoever else Bruce manages to rustle up this summer (who knows, maybe Wellbeck?) will hopefully be a different kettle of fish for the big Frenchman. But Bruce has to coax a nasty edge out of him and help him understand how to use his frame.

I just hope there are plenty of decent butchers up your way.