The Archive

Theirs is still the only South American team never to qualify for a World Cup, but things are looking up for the football fans of Caracas as they emerge from the shadow of baseball. Rodrigo Orihuela explains

Since the iconoclastic Hugo Chávez became Venezuelan president in 1999, the country has become a fixture in the international political and financial press. Chávez’s fiery anti-American discourse, his friendship with Cuba’s ailing Fidel Castro and his recent drive against privately owned business corporations have cemented his place as one of the world’s ­leading maverick heads of state. Until recently, Venezuela made few football headlines. But Chávez is likely to use this year’s Copa América in Venezuela – the first played in the country – as a showcase for his policies, while the national team may give their baseball-mad president genuine cause for celebration.

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Without leaving his desk, Ian Plenderleith enjoys the finest and funniest views of football in Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and beyond, in his latest look at sites that highlight photographs of the game

It must be at least a matter of months since this column lauded football photographers on the internet but, in the absence of many inspiring new sites in prose, we’re compelled once again to recommend images over words. Just for a change, though, we’ll make it a condition that the sites must have a Benelux connection.

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With the autumn crisis all but forgotten, Glenn Roeder’s side face up to one of his former clubs against a backdrop of takeover rumours that could make one man, somewhat undeservedly, even richer. Harry Pearson looks on

The experienced approach Newcastle on the penultimate Saturday before Christmas with caution. The city is the scene of such frenzied shopping that the unwary football fan can easily find himself swept away by a tidal wave of present-hunters outside Central Station and deposited without warning in Fenwick’s ladies’ gloves department.

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It’s time for a little optimistic thinking. Six WSC writers say how they would shake up the game this year, if the football genie appeared to them and granted them one wish

Downgrade Managers
Think of any Premiership manager: you’ll probably be able to hear his voice too. Sam Allardyce, for example: “We have a problem in this country playing to our traditional strengths.” Stuart Pearce: “Maybe I’m too honest, but that’s just me.” Rafa Benítez: “We play technical very good first half.” Even proven duds such as David O’Leary (“I’m not criticising those players in that dressing room”) and Graeme Souness (“Was it a penalty? You tell me”) have an easily recognisable presence in the white noise of football sound bites. It’s easy to forget that it hasn’t always been like this; and that one of the most consistently irritating side-effects of 15 years of Premiership overexposure has been the revolution in the public profile of managers.

The abnormally high profile of the current crop adds nothing to the spectacle of going to a match. Even their physical presence is a distraction, creating a compelling case for abolishing the “technical area”. What form of entertainment wouldn’t be ruined by the intrusion of an angrily gesturing Portuguese in the corner of your vision; or, on TV, the back of a fiery Ulsterman’s head repeatedly popping up at the bottom of your screen? Exhibitionist, embarrassing dad-style “coaching” from the sidelines should be classified as ungentlemanly conduct and deemed a bookable offence. Volleying the ball back, putting your arm around the fourth official’s shoulder, getting in on the goal celebrations: these are all very new and deeply undesirable things. Only the reintroduction of proper dug-out dugouts, populated by scowling men in horrible coats, can put an end to it all. Not to mention a three-day embargo on any form of managerial public comment before or after a game. They’d soon stop doing it.

There was a time when managers barely got a look in. Walter Winterbottom was England manager for the catastrophic 6‑3 defeat by Hungary at Wembley in 1953.There wasn’t a single reference to him in the hand-wringing press reports the following day. The national press singularly forgot to morph his head into a cauldron of goulash. So little-regarded was the job of “trainer” that Winterbottom’s name simply wasn’t mentioned. This state of affairs lasted until the appointment of his successor, Alf Ramsey, but even the celebrity managers that followed were really only on TV very occasionally compared to, say, Carlos Queiroz or Alan Pardew. Brian Clough’s celebrity gained its momentum from the impressions of Mike Yarwood and a million playground mimics.

In recent times, the need to manage “the media side of things” has led to appointments, and even whole careers, that would otherwise barely have got off the ground. Nobody can be good at everything; the general standard of nuts-and-bolts football management is bound to have suffered as a result. Can anyone even remember what Bob Paisley’s voice sounded like? As recently as the early 1980s, talking a lot on television just wasn’t in the job description. Paisley still seemed to do all right for himself. Imagine how much more interesting, and how much more widely respected, José Mourinho might be if he just kept on winning things without feeling the need to make a daily public pronouncement.
Barney Ronay

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The financial muscle of Bundesliga clubs is hurting Germany’s lesser lights in unexpected ways. As Paul Joyce explains, ill‑regarded but well funded B teams are squeezing out lower-league sides

In December, José Mourinho dismissed English reserve competitions as “not good enough” for his starlets. “This country should look to other countries, to France and Spain,” where second teams compete in the professional leagues, he declared. He would “love to see” a Chelsea B side play in the Championship. If Mourinho looked to Germany, however, he would see that such an integration of reserve sides has proved deeply unpopular.

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