Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 55

Infantino’s call for Pelé stadiums everywhere is a monument to folly | Jonathan Wilson

Fifa president has utterly failed to grasp how football allows communities to celebrate their local heroes

There are times when you wonder whether Gianni Infantino has ever interacted with an actual human being, somebody who might tell him how ridiculous he sounds or do something about his white trainers. Maybe this is how he has always been, gabbling away in the language of the football wonk, involuntarily spewing out inane statistics and ludicrous proposals.

Even by the standards of the kneejerk populism of modern political figures – Build a wall! Tax cuts! Universal … err… maths! – Infantino’s suggestion that was absurd even if Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau have fallen into line. Perhaps he was paying some sort of tribute to Pelé by saying something ridiculous he thought local media wanted to hear.

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Graham Potter must be given time at Chelsea or aspiring coaches are doomed | Jonathan Wilson

Perhaps Potter can hack it with a superclub, perhaps he can’t, but these would be difficult times at Stamford Bridge for any manager

The problem for any coach when they step up to a big club is that, until they have been successful at that level, the suspicion will always linger that they cannot be successful at that level. It’s one of the difficulties of the modern game: managing an elite club, with the huge budgets, the vast expectations, the array of egos needing constant maintenance (which these days seems to apply to fans as much as players), is a very different job to managing on a shoestring down the leagues.

As one Premier League director once put it to me, saying his club should have immediately replaced the manager who had just led them to promotion, you don’t put the bloke who runs the corner shop in charge of a multinational. Which is true, even if the thought that football is somehow too loyal takes some getting used to – a function, as much as anything else, of the financial stratification that exists within the game. Corner shops don’t become multinationals overnight; there is no retail outlet equivalent of winning the playoffs.

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Liverpool at risk of vicious circle as problems escalate at Brentford | Jonathan Wilson

Mistakes on the pitch could spell bigger worries as not reaching the Champions League would hit the transfer budget hard

If football really was the simple game of cliche, it would be easy for Liverpool to identify a single issue, work out a solution and put it right. This, after all, is the team that have, for five years, been consistently the second-best side in England. Yet, after a shambolic defeat at Brentford, they lie 15 points behind the leaders, Arsenal, and, more pertinently, four points off Manchester United in fourth, having played a game more. What must be most troubling is the sense of plates across the stage stopping spinning as Jürgen Klopp dashes frantically between them.

Klopp, addressing rumoured interest in Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo, had warned that the club are not able to play Monopoly. What has been especially impressive over the past few years is the way Liverpool have achieved that level of consistency without ostentatious spending. And that is also why Champions League qualification is so essential; if revenue drops, so too does their capacity to spend and, with the club in significant transition, that could have serious consequences. It doesn’t take much for virtuous circles to become vicious.

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Pelé’s shimmering legend was forged in the heat of the 1970 World Cup finals | Jonathan Wilson

The displays that brought worldwide affection came in a tournament that has a mythic place in the collective memory

Football is rarely just football and footballers are rarely just footballers. Pelé was a brilliant forward, a player of grace and imagination, of explosive pace and extraordinary balance, but that is not why his death on Thursday caused such a widespread sense of loss. Nor is it the three World Cups or the two Copa Libertadores he won. To respond to the question of why Pelé mattered with a list of attributes or medals is to miss the point: he mattered because of what he represented.

But to define what he represented is almost impossible, not least because, particularly once his playing career was over, his capacity to represent almost anything made him an advertiser’s dream. He existed in a perfect commercial space, somebody of stature and charisma who was somehow also a blank canvas, capable of promoting almost anything, from Puma to Pepsi, Viagra to under extreme pressure.

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Graham Potter faces only chaos until Chelsea accept there are no quick fixes | Jonathan Wilson

The club’s owners must see that a fascination with celebrity and glamour is no way to build the systems that make a team tick

It has not been entirely easy as the Premier League has got going again to pick up the threads. Is that manager still on the brink? Are they in crisis or resurgent? Who’s that bloke with the beard again? Perhaps most disconcerting of all was the way Chelsea swept into a 2-0 lead against Bournemouth inside 24 minutes. Weren’t they supposed to be faltering? Wasn’t there dark grumbling about Graham Potter? Hadn’t they slipped eight points off fourth?

And then Reece James, in his first game back after the knee injury that has kept him out since early October, was forced off eight minutes into the second half. The nature of the game changed, first gradually and then suddenly. Without his thrust down the right, Raheem Sterling looked far less effective.

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Haaland leads the way for Manchester City – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Robyn Cowen after more midweek Premier League action

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

Today: incredibly, despite the break for the World Cup, good teams with good players remain good. Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea all win fairly comfortably in their respective midweek fixtures.

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Premier League and its players enter unknown territory after World Cup | Jonathan Wilson

Usually there’s a month off for players to reset but this time it’s just days for those coming off Qatar’s highs and lows

It is late at night when the four hobbits arrive at the Brandywine Bridge. They are shocked to find it barred and they have to plead with the Shirriffs to let them in. The Shire has changed since they went away, trees chopped down, old buildings swept aside, the inns closed. Sandyman’s Mill has been replaced by an ugly new building, full of noisy machinery that pollutes the air and the river. This is not the homecoming they have dreamed of.

Merry blows the horn given him by Éowyn of Rohan and they raise the Shire then scour it but, still, there is a sense of anticlimax. After everything they have been through on Mount Doom, there is an unavoidable bathos about such mundane concerns and, after a time, Frodo, still grappling with the physical and psychological consequences of his quest, departs, granted passage to the blessed realms of Valinor.

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Tackling your questions from the Christmas mailbag – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and John Brewin for a special festive Q&A

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

Today: the panel open the Christmas mailbag and answer questions on Qatar, getting it launched and Macclesfield’s most famous sons.

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Julián Álvarez evokes Argentina’s spirit of Kempes and can resurrect old glories | Jonathan Wilson

Before Sunday’s World Cup final, the striker has become part of a proud lineage who broke cover on the biggest stage

The oddity of this Argentina side is that it arrived in Qatar having gone 36 games unbeaten and yet has still found itself making it up as it went along. For once there seemed no questions about selection. There were few doubts about how Argentina should play or who should play up front with Lionel Messi, even after the injury to Giovani Lo Celso. There was a sense of stability and a quiet confidence. They had won the Copa América last year. There was no need to change anything. Then they lost to Saudi Arabia.

Argentina are habitually poor starters at World Cups. In 40 years their only really impressive opening performance was the 4-0 win over Greece in 1994 and that culminated in Diego Maradona failing the drug test that would end his international career.

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Argentina v France: where the World Cup final could be won and lost

Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé loom large but other tactical elements, including the role of Rodrigo De Paul, may be crucial

For better or for worse, this was always going to be the tournament of Lionel Messi. If he fails to win the World Cup, the shadow lies across his career, a sense of destiny unfulfilled. If he wins, it is a glorious culmination. So far, no side have really been able to stop him and there’s a sense that, paradoxically, it is harder to know how to combat him now as he does less in games. For long spells he is not involved; it would seem absurd to man-mark him as Louis van Gaal had Nigel de Jong do in the 2014 World Cup semi-final; that would be to lose a player for the sake of three or four minutes in the game.

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