The men who taught the world how to beat England at their own game
by Rory Smith
Simon & Schuster, £18.99
Reviewed by Andy Brassell
From WSC 353 July 2016
Mister is the story of England’s (and its coaches’) role as a football missionary, spreading the gospel across the continent and beyond until the point when the pupils overtake the master – and keep going until the latter is a mere dot in the distance.
by Maarten Meijer
Ebury Press, £14.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 333 November 2014
“When you traced the roots of the successful teams at the 2010 World Cup, every clue pointed back to one man: Louis van Gaal.” Maarten Meijer’s carefully researched biography is not afraid to make big claims for its subject. While conceding that credit is also due to Joachim Löw, Bert van Marwijk and Vicente del Bosque, Meijer argues that the controversial coach’s influence, through his work at Bayern Munich, Ajax and Barcelona, principally shaped the personnel, playing style and tactics of three of the four semi-finalists in South Africa. The book was finished before Holland’s unexpectedly barnstorming campaign in Brazil this summer and Germany’s victory (albeit also the Spanish collapse), which might serve as additional support for Meijer’s thesis on the extent of Van Gaal’s impact on European football.
It remains to be seen whether Van Gaal’s tenure at Old Trafford will provide further proof of the genius of “one of football’s most gifted architects”. The brief coda which deals with his United appointment, while stating the obvious that the £200 million “war chest” supposedly on offer “may have been an additional attraction” for Van Gaal, goes on to make the equally obvious observation that “he needs a new defence and a new midfield”. The final paragraph speculates that United will be his last management job and “he will want to go out with a bang, knowing that this is how he will be remembered not only in Manchester but in the entire world of football”, but reserves judgment on what sort of explosion Van Gaal will cause.
Meijer’s primary purpose in writing this heavyweight, thoughtful study, following his two previous biographies of Dick Advocaat and Guus Hiddink, is to balance the media caricature of Van Gaal, the crude stereotype of a lumbering, bombastic, dictatorial ex-PE teacher, ranting at the press and indulging in eccentric and bizarre behaviour (trouser-dropping, self-penned, excruciating poetry-reading) occasionally deemed akin to madness. Like Alex Ferguson, Meijer argues, Van Gaal is a man so out of style that he has become a “poster boy for the old-school, omnipotent, teacher-knows-best style of management”. So often following the boots of Johan Cruyff, as both player and coach, he has been cast as the anti-Cruyff, whereas his work should often be seen as complementary, Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona being an amalgam of the philosophy of both coaches. In consequence there has been serious underestimation, if not misrepresentation, of Van Gaal’s talents and achievements. The real Van Gaal is more flexible and democratic in management and tactics, more humane and caring one-to-one.
Not that Meijer’s generally sympathetic account whitewashes over Van Gaal’s failings, or the barrage of criticism he has received, dealing with both at length. The most entertaining chapter predictably concerns Van Gaal’s fractious relations with the press. As boss of Ajax, he received a deliciously pompous letter from the Dutch Reporters’ Association, complaining press conferences were being “disgraced by vulgar shouting matches. This aggressive approach perhaps guarantees success with young, docile players but it is inappropriate at a press conference at which adult people are present”. At the next conference, in classic teacher mode, he asked those who signed it to put up their hands. Not one “adult” person did.
As a compatriot, Meijer could perhaps be forgiven his own excursions into national stereotypes. Van Gaal, he says, must be fundamentally understood as a typical Amsterdamer and Dutchman – hardnosed, unshakeably convinced he is right, highly focused, pig-headed, difficult to get along with and rebellious. Or as one journalist put it more succinctly: “An asshole, but certainly a competent asshole.”
Barcelona vs Real Madrid
by Sid Lowe
Yellow Jersey, £18.99
Reviewed by Dermot Corrigan
From WSC 322 December 2013
“Barcelona good, Madrid bad” is a pretty common idea among English-speaking football fans. Even those who question the Catalan club’s “football philosophy”, or its board’s financial dealings with Qatar and Brazil, still often see Barça as purer than, and morally superior to, their rivals from the Spanish capital.
This idea can be traced all the way back to George Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia – and is just plain wrong, according to Sid Lowe’s new contribution to the growing pile of English language books on Spanish football.
Fear And Loathing In La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid takes a broader approach than most, looking closely at the impact of political and cultural trends on the game, including epigraphs from writer Antonio Machado and Swansea City attacker Michu. The early 20th century poet’s quote is of “the two Spains”, a famous line referring to the pre-Civil War right-left political divide. But Lowe appears to agree more with the modern player’s preference to avoid choosing one or the other.
The strongest chapters consider the effect of the 1936-39 conflict on football and turn over some pretty widely held preconceptions. Madrid (the city) was not Franco’s base, instead it suffered the fiercest nationalist attacks. This meant Real Madrid had to stop playing official games, their ground was ruined, and their republican club president Rafael Sánchez Guerra was imprisoned when the city finally fell to Franco’s forces. Barcelona was less directly impacted by the fighting, so FC Barcelona kept playing in the Catalan Championship and Mediterranean League, then toured North America.
During the first 15 years of the dictatorship the Catalan club were also more successful, winning five La Liga titles to Real Madrid’s none. In those years the Barça boardroom was stuffed with well-connected businessmen, just as it is now. Professional football clubs – in Spain under Franco, just as in England under Tony Blair – tend to go with the political flow. Which explains Barcelona’s current embrace of Catalan nationalism.
Lowe’s impressive list of interviewees includes Alfredo di Stéfano, Johan Cruyff, Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane and Andrés Iniesta. He uncovers new archival evidence about how Barça president Josep Sunyol died in 1936, and why Di Stéfano joined Madrid not Barça in 1953. There are also neat mentions of Barça’s (unwitting) role in the murder of Leon Trotsky, as well as Madrid’s links to the Beatles in the 1960s and Pedro Almodovar in the 1980s. It’s a rare book that discusses ETA (the Basque separatist organisation) and Michael Owen on the same page.
The weakest section is towards the end, as by now there is little new to say on José Mourinho the ex-translator versus Josep Guardiola the former ballboy. But that’s a minor quibble. We have already seen how closely Spain’s two biggest clubs have mirrored each other through the years. Real Madrid and Barcelona do not represent different strands in Spanish history, or competing political points of view, they’re just two sides of the same coin.
Football’s greatest rivalry
by Richard Fitzpatrick
Bloomsbury, £12.99
Reviewed by Andy Brassell
From WSC 308 October 2012
If there is a sign that Barcelona and Real Madrid’s gradual colonisation of the summit of world football is inexorable, then the fact that the pair are beginning to take a grip on the world of sports book publishing is it. El Clásico enters a crowded marketplace, with Graham Hunter’s fascinating access-all-areas portrait of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona recently released and Sid Lowe’s tome on the rivalry to come.
Fortunately, it stands up very well on its own merits. Joining the dots between the historical genesis of the rivalry between Spain’s two biggest clubs and El Clásico’s current position as the pinnacle showpiece of the club game, Richard Fitzpatrick chips away at a few myths, while maintaining genuine balance throughout.
Carefully positioning himself as an outsider, the author never lets ego get in the way of exploring the subject matter as thoroughly as possible. There is no streak of self-righteousness in an attempt to sound authoritative. Instead, Fitzpatrick gives voice to a huge range of opinions and personal stories from both sides of the fence.
One of El Clásico‘s main strengths is that it resists tired stereotypes in describing key figures such as José Mourinho and Guardiola. The Real Madrid boss is neither canonised nor demonised but presented as a rounded character – sometimes laudable, sometimes needlessly cruel. His erstwhile Barça counterpart is portrayed within his historical context at the club, from arriving as a skinny teenager at La Masia in 1984 through his development into Johan Cruyff’s on-pitch leader. Similarly, Fitzpatrick looks deep into the characters of Luís Figo and Vicente del Bosque, two figures often presented in cliche.
A lot of time is spent discussing the clubs’ present-day relationship but the author’s efforts in scratching beneath the modern marketing sheen to unearth the subculture of the two clubs are highly laudable. A chapter is spent analysing the main hooligan groups of the two clubs, Real Madrid’s Ultras Sur and Barça’s Boixos Nois. They may be niche – as the book acknowledges, partly due to the fact that away support is far less numerous in Spain than England, where the groups draw much of their inspiration from – but both still have a foothold in their respective clubs.
In the case of the Ultras Sur, this extends to tacit endorsement by current management and players, while Fitzpatrick gives a detailed description of Boixos Nois terrorising “normal” Barça fans at away matches, as well as the serious criminality within the group. As well as providing compelling reading on its own, it works well in further blurring widespread presumptions about political lines being the overriding definition
between the two clubs.
The leaps between concepts can be a little jarring and abrupt but this is generally a skillfully woven narrative of the clubs’ rivalry from assumed political opposition to global commercial competition. “This is a hypocritical world,” Mourinho says to begin a rant in one chapter. That Fitzpatrick acknowledges the nature of Real Madrid and Barcelona’s world as such is what makes El Clásico such a satisfying read.
A journey through Spanish football
by Jimmy Burns
Simon & Schuster, £18.99
Reviewed by Dermot Corrigan
From WSC 305 July 2012
The current golden era for Spain’s national team is also a boom time for publishers and authors producing books in English about the Spanish game. La Roja by Jimmy Burns is nicely timed for Euro 2012.
Burns has deeper links within Spanish society than most observers. His father Tom was a spy in Madrid during the Second World War and a Madrid metro station is named after his grandfather Gregorio Marañon. His closeness to issues outside sport soon emerges. Don Quixote shows up on page one and General Franco, ETA, recent president José Luis Zapatero and 19th century English travelwriter Richard Ford are all mentioned early on. None of them played much football, but they help argue that Spanish politics and culture shaped the country’s football team.
Whereas in Phil Ball’s Morbo you hear from taxi-drivers and local barmen, Burns draws in Federico García Lorca, Wilfred the Hairy and St Ignatius of Loyola. At times there are too many digressions into bullfighting theory and references to Quixote tilting at windmills. Another minor quibble is the recycling of anecdotes and interviews from Burns’s previous books on Barcelona, Diego Maradona and David Beckham. Ardal O’Hanlon’s thoughts on Catalan nationalism could have been left out.
But when a club president (Barcelona’s Josep Sunyol) can be shot for his political beliefs or a stadium can become the safest place for voicing political dissent (Athletic Bilbao’s San Mames), a broad approach makes sense. Many of the central influences on Spain’s footballing development, from Santiago Bernabéu to Johan Cruyff, were not shy about voicing strong political opinions. A paragraph in a football book that begins with the inauguration of Real Madrid’s new stadium and ends with a military coup is novel. The story of how Athletic players heard about the Luftwaffe’s bombing of Guernica while on a tour of France is moving.
Burns’s central point makes sense; Spain ditched its cultural and historical baggage, found its own football identity and suddenly became very, very good. For the entire 20th century, the national team was la furia Española – virile, aggressive and played by men with big cojones. When Luís Aragones changed the nickname to La Roja, some thought immediately of the losing “reds” from the civil war, but for Aragones it was just a colour like Italy’s Azzurri or Holland’s Oranje. Then Vicente del Bosque – from a republican family but a successful player and coach at Real Madrid – built his World Cup-winning team around a core of tiki-taka-loving Catalans.
The book is about this cultural shift. There are interviews with central figures, including Cruyff, Del Bosque, Jorge Valdano and Ladislav Kubala, but not much time is spent analysing tactics or youth systems. Burns’s central concern is not whether David Silva can play as a false nine, but how Spain’s football team represent the people (or peoples) found within its current borders. He succeeds in telling that story.