When the Champions League resumed Tuesday, it brought good, solid evidence to suggest that Real Madrid and Chelsea will not be far away when this season’s top prize is contested at Wembley stadium in London next May.
It also brought a reminder than when Arsenal is on its game, its youthful élan can be pretty irresistible.
And it brought sad portents that Italy, despite holding the Champions League crown through Inter Milan, can at the same time look like a soccer nation in decline. The A.C. Milan side that lost, 2-0, in Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid had a careworn, aging and at times apparently disinterested appearance.
Roma looked even worse. Playing at home, in front of a pitifully small crowd in the Olimpico, Francesco Totti and company surrendered, 3-1, to Basel. “We started badly,” the Roma coach, Claudio Ranieri, lamented. “Approach was bad. We were too far apart and disjointed.”
In what sounded like a resignation speech, though he immediately insisted it was nothing of the kind, the coach said at his postgame news conference that he had asked his players why their performance was so sluggish.
“They can’t answer,” he said, “and neither can I. We have to figure out why we can give our best in some games and not in others.” Around the same time, in Madrid, the Milan coach, Massimo Allegri, was giving his own mea culpa. “Our approach was all wrong tonight,” he confessed.
“With all respect to Madrid, one of the best teams in the world, I think we made their lives very easy with a soft approach.” Their frankness might be commendable, but if the coaches are not responsible for the attitude of their teams, who is? When things are so wrong, when aging stars like Totti or Clarence Seedorf no longer seem to muster the urgency or the pace to compete at the highest levels, the coach has to react.
Of course, Seedorf, with all that he has achieved, and Totti, with all the gifts he was given, are the first choice on any team as long as they still can do it. Their experience, alone, is invaluable.
But it cannot be deemed irreplaceable. Sports are ruthless about that fact.
Athletes age, and there comes a time when they have to be replaced for the good of the team.
“Genius is great when it’s on song,” the former Manchester City manager Joe Mercer used to say. “But when it goes off, it contaminates.” Harsh judgment, but with a searing ring of truth.
But where, in these times of financial restraints, is the money to replace them? How can once competitive clubs compete with Real Madrid, Chelsea or Manchester City, whose wealth allows them to outspend all the rest and attract the very best? The answer has to be to nurture the next generation. And Tuesday gave an example of that, too.
Arsenal’s manager, Arsène Wenger, is an incorrigible cultivator of young talents. He trusts youth more than he does aging stars, and he at times almost willfully gives a young lad a chance at the expense, as many an Arsenal fan sees it, of spending a fortune on big-name players.
The youngster at the heart of Arsenal’s 5-1 crushing of Shakhtar Donetsk in London on Tuesday was Jack Wilshere.
Living and training with skilled midfield internationalists like Cesc Fàbregas, Tomas Rosicky, Samir Nasri and Andrey Arshavin must impress the 18-year-old English apprentice. Impress him, but not make him feel in the least bit inferior.
Wilshere - born 30 miles, or about 50 kilometers, from Arsenal’s home stadium - has been growing toward the first team for two years now. Arsenal has worked on his talent since he was 12, and the head of Arsenal’s youth academy, Liam Brady, has tried all he knows to keep the precocious youth’s feet on level ground.
Brady, one of the finest playmakers of world soccer, knows that such a talent is born. But attitude and aptitude, the very things experienced coaches were despairing about on Tuesday, have to be learned.
Wilshere has the best of examples right beside him on the field. He only has to remember how Fàbregas was thrown into Arsenal’s side as a 16-year-old, and how Fàbregas grew, game by game, into a young leader of the men around him.
But Fàbregas belonged to Barcelona before he arrived at Arsenal. And Fabregas, we believe, will go home to Barça one day - maybe even as early as next spring.
It seems to be a given that Fàbregas will go, and Wilshere will inherit his role.
In terms of that progression, we have just witnessed back-to-back examples of Wilshere’s initiation. Last Saturday, he was rightly red-carded for a reckless tackle in an English Premier League match. Unlike some senior pros who foul and then rail against the punishment, Wilshere apologized for his mistimed attempt to win the ball.
He apologized in person to the opponent, to the referee and to his coach.
Wenger told him to learn the lesson, and atone in the next match.
That came Tuesday. Donetsk has a blend of Ukrainians and Brazilians, but Wilshere left them in his wake. His ability to read moves ahead of time is exceptional — like Fàbregas’s.
His accuracy in making a pass, sprinting to receive a return pass, then going onward and upward into goal-scoring or goal-making situations is innate.
“Jack’s maturity is miles ahead of his age,” Wenger said Tuesday. “He can play in any position across the midfield, or he can play behind the striker, because he can penetrate.” Indeed he can. One of Arsenal’s five goals, the finest one, was Wilshere’s hallmark. He shaped the goal and scored it. He gave short passes to two willing teammates, and drifted into spaces between the Donetsk defenders to receive it back.
The coup de grâce was his ability — almost a sixth sense — to wait a split second until goalie Andriy Pyatov went to the ground. The instant the keeper did so, the kid gently lifted the ball over him into the net.
As easy as shelling peas.
Source: Rob Hughes, The New York Times on 20 Oct 10
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