My Euro hangover lasted longer than most, and not for the obvious
reason. Oh sure, there was no shortage of golden hops consumed amid the
communal bonhomie of a major tournament.
But after a while it became
less about the spectacle and more about simply coping with the
life-sapping tedium of watching teams sit back, tackle hard and spring
the occasional counter. In other words, they were all trying to
out-Leicester Leicester.
Granted, Iceland and Wales played with a heroic resilience and
unbreakable spirit that stirred the soul, but apart from Hal
Robson-Kanu's sick Cruyff turn and the Houdini-like ease with which
Aaron Ramsey made Eden Hazard and the rest of Belgian's ballyhooed
midfield disappear into his satin back pocket, did Wales really make
your nerves jangle? And did your pulse quicken more at the Iceland team
on the field or at their remarkably synchronized fans in the stands?
Presuming you're neither Icelandic nor Welsh, you probably joined me in a
state of near catatonia.
Which is why as we approach the new Premier League season, my most
fervent hope is not that Arsene Wenger will at long last come to his
transfer market senses before Arsenal finds itself starting the new
campaign with Yaya Sanogo as it attacking spearhead. That would be nice,
of course, but my chief concern is, believe it or not, less
Gunner-centric than usual. It's that the upcoming season provides a
glorious course correction to the gathering storm of turgid, smothering
tactics that sucked much of the joy and wonder out of watching the game
this summer.
So, Football Gods, please don't give us another miracle Prem season
featuring the Middlesbroughs, Hulls and Burnleys of the world defying
the stratospheric odds to once again send bookies scurrying to find a
new line of work. Show mercy on us and don't let the next eight months
become a celebration of clogged midfields and bunkered defenses.
Seriously: don't you dare. Portugal's Euro 2016 win was enough punishment for the next four years.
Thankfully, we are now living in a world where there are enough outsized managerial egos that want to put their imprimatur
on the Premier League. I doubt that the likes of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen
Klopp, Wenger and Mauricio Pochettino will set up their teams to simply
avoid defeat. These are men who value style almost as much as they do
winning -- though in the case of Wenger, I am not so sure about the
winning part.
Even Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, distinguished graduates of The
School of Risk-Averse Football, are making the right noises about their
teams playing with attacking swagger. It all points to a reversion to
the mean: the two Manchesters, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and even
Tottenham reasserting themselves after a year's sabbatical during which
Claudio Ranieri and his band of overachievers wrote their names into
legend.
Given last week's move of N'Golo Kante to Chelsea and the expected
decampment of Riyad Mahrez to a big European club willing to pay him an
inordinate sum of money, it looks like Leicester are very much a
one-and-done phenomenon. Unless, of course, the nicest Italian manager
in the Prem can make lightning -- or even better, Jamie Vardy -- strike
in the same place twice. Until then, we appear to be in for a
reassertion of the Prem's natural pecking order, starting in that grey
city divided into red and blue.
How great is it that the two biggest managerial godheads on the planet are now only a cross-town bus ride away from each other?
It's true that the two saviors-for-hire didn't exactly wax poetic
about each other when they butted their egos against one another for La
Liga supremacy. But that was then, this is Manchester and for now, they
are both on their best faux-diplomatic behavior, being careful not to
say anything that will antagonize the other until a ball has been kicked
in anger.
Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho are vying to make Manchester dominant again. Can they do it while remaining cordial?
Even though it was obvious early on that United's philosopher
emperor, Louis van Gaal, had no chance to last another year, the club's
brain trust (now there's an oxymoron) waited until after the
Dutchman had won the FA Cup to show him the Old Trafford David Moyes
memorial door. Enter Mourinho, a man who represents both an immediate
sartorial and charismatic upgrade, although these attributes don't
mitigate the pressures he now faces.
In their seething frustration with Van Gaal's tactics, United fans took to chanting "We're Man United, we want to attack."
This is not to say that Mourinho will turn United into the second
coming of Brazil's fabled 1970 World Cup team. He's too cagey to open up
the throttle and allow his players the freedom to express themselves
all over the field for fear they will be caught out at the back. But
he's also smart enough to know that he can no longer get away with
parking a fleet of buses and hope to endear himself to his new fan base.
His initial efforts in the transfer market bode well for a return to a
more attack-minded United side, if not necessarily a free-flowing,
swashbuckling one. In addition to bringing in everybody's favorite
man-bun rocking, bicycle-kick-launching 34-year-old legend, Zlatan
Ibrahimovic, the Portuguese signed the highly regarded Borussia Dortmund
midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan. And if he succeeds in luring back Paul
Pogba, this season's most coveted transfer prize, to his old stomping
ground for we-really-are-the-richest-league-in-the-world money, he will
have outwitted, among other frantic, high-profile suitors, his old amigo
Guardiola.
Not that the Spaniard, for his part, hasn't been busy trying to
transform City into a more technically assured side after a
disappointing campaign that saw them barely eke out a Champions League
berth. All Pep has to do this season to please his new Abu Dhabi-based
employers is win the Champions League, something he was unable to accomplish with a vastly superior Bayern Munich squad. No pressure.
ESPN reporters evaluate Antonio Conte's comments about his players' ability to reach the level of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Since Guardiola has figured out that he can't do that on the back of
stellar underachievers like Raheem Sterling and Yaya Toure, he has made
some significant signings, most notably the German international Ilkay
Gundogan, one of the 187 Arsenal targets that Wenger had flirted with
but couldn't crowbar open his transfer vault quickly enough (or at all)
to close the deal.
Any thoughts, however, that Guardiola and Mourinho would turn the coming season into a mano y mano
death match have been banished by the dynamic performance of Conte at
the Euros. A whirlwind of volcanic emotion on the touchline, the Italian
somehow guided his pedestrian team to the quarterfinals by surprising
opponents with his uncharacteristically positive tactics. If I were a
Chelsea fan (though I'll never be that desperate a human being), I'd be
giddy with anticipation. And this was before Conte captured Kante to
anchor his midfield. He had already bolstered the attack with the
addition of the young Belgian talent Michy Batshuayi.
Then, with a wink and a nod towards those supporters who need a
reason to live after their long-time captain and spiritual leader John
Terry announced he had played his last game for Chelsea, Conte offered
the noted humanitarian a one-year deal to hang around Stamford Bridge,
preferably on the bench. But restoring Chelsea to a position of
dominance it shockingly lost under the Decidedly Ordinary One last year
is a bigger job than simply changing a few pieces on the chess board.
Conte will need time and that, unlike money, is something owner Roman
Abramovich does not squander.
The guys answer your tweets about who will captain Liverpool, Chelsea's advantage and a new No. 8 for Jurgen Klopp.
The three elite clubs that stood pat in the managerial poker game
(Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool) realize that if they want to be part of
the free-for-all at the top of the Prem, they cannot sit on their
well-manicured hands in the transfer arms race. Still, they have gone
about their business with seemingly little urgency.
You'd never have known from the toxic atmosphere at the Emirates last
season that Arsenal enjoyed their most successful campaign in a decade
under Wenger. But the second place finish was deemed to be yet another
of the Frenchman's Le Grand Flops, and he has once again risked
bringing out the pitchfork brigade by dithering over reinforcements in
defense and attack while nominally strengthening his midfield with the
arrival of Swiss hard man Granit Xhaka (the best named Gunner since the
awesomeness that was Emmanuel Frimpong).
Liverpool's most notable action to date was to lock up Klopp for
another six years of gegenpressing, touchline theatrics and all-around
star wattage. At the same time, they have greatly reduced the stress
levels among their supporters by sending Martin Skrtel to do his howler
routine at Fenerbahce and have fortified their attack by yet again
plundering Southampton, this time to the tune of the $50 million
transfer of Sadio Mane. Of course, any squad that still boasts both
Christian Benteke and Mario Balotelli on their books, at least for the
time being, bears watching just for the comedy value.
As for Spurs, is it boorish of me to mention that five of their
players formed the heart of England's travesty in France? And that
perhaps they weren't in the most supremely confident frame of mind going
into the tournament on the heels of their spectacular collapse at the
end of the season that saw them finish behind Arsenal for the 21st
consecutive time.
To be fair to Tottenham (man, just writing that hurt), they played
the most eye-catching football of anyone up until the last ten games,
and if Pochettino can help them exorcise those choking ghosts, they
should be ready to mount another title challenge -- especially if their
new Dutch recruit, Vincent Janssen, can take some of the goal-scoring
burden off the beleaguered Harry Kane.
All of which brings me to this hopeful conclusion: it's Goliath's
turn to shine this season and I, for one, couldn't be happier about it.
Sorry, Claudio.
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