LONDON
— The most popular soccer league in the world began its season on
Saturday, and along with the excitement and exhilaration about the games
themselves — not to mention the sheer wonderment over the eye-crossing suit that the golfer Rory McIlroy chose to wear
while parading his British Open trophy around Old Trafford in
Manchester — there was a fair bit of hand-wringing from many longtime
observers of England’s Premier League.
The
concerns were twofold. First, with another transfer period nearing its
conclusion, the shifting of the game’s truly elite stars away from
England appears to have continued. Now that Luis Suárez will be
attacking defenses in Spain — but not feasting on them, presumably — it is not a stretch to posit that none of the top 10 players in the world are currently playing in England.
That
is compounded by the fact that there are also not a lot of English
players playing in England’s top level (or at least playing very much).
With foreign players omnipresent at many clubs (Manchester City had a
starting lineup of all foreigners in the Community Shield last week),
another round of concern over the paucity of English players getting
regular minutes has cropped up. Last season, only about 30 percent of
starters in the Premier League were eligible to play for England’s
national team. Snarky fans, who surely watched England stumble in this
summer’s World Cup, are often quick to point out that these two concerns
— that is, a lack of the best players and a lack of English players —
are not connected.
Nonetheless,
there can be no disputing that one thing the Premier League does have
plenty of is drama surrounding its managers. Part of this is cultural:
Unlike athletes in American sports, players in England (and most other
countries in Europe) do not face much accountability to the news media
and fans during the season. There are no hard questions for players to
answer after games, and there are few public explanations given when a
player has made a costly mistake. The managers, in many ways, are the
only ones with a voice. And most do not hesitate to speak.
Consider what has happened in just the first week.
José
Mourinho, Chelsea’s manager, who brands himself the Special One, began
the season by pointing out that other coaches in the Premier League did
not face the same pressure to succeed that he did. In Mourinho’s
opinion, other coaches “have 10 years to win something; I have only
two.” That seemed to be a not-so-veiled shot at Arsenal
Manager Arsène Wenger, who last won the Premier League title in 2004,
and whom Mourinho previously described as a “specialist in failure.”
Wenger,
for his part, was displeased that his team was playing at all. With the
World Cup final having been played on July 13, Wenger said, the Premier
League’s opening day was at least a week too early. Mesut Ozil, Per
Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski, who all played for the World Cup
champion, Germany, did not play for Arsenal on Saturday as the Gunners
beat Crystal Palace, 2-1.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“Let’s not forget that the guy who goes to the World Cup final plays seven games,” Wenger said. “They need a breather.”
Up
in northern England, Louis van Gaal wasted no time getting involved in
the Premier League managers’ showcase. Van Gaal, who left his job as
manager of the Netherlands’ national team to take over at Manchester United,
seems well aware that Alex Ferguson left a strong history of colorful
leadership — one that the dullish David Moyes could not fill — and van
Gaal has not hesitated to embrace it.
This
was to be expected. Van Gaal has never been shy (or particularly
modest), and it has been said that he once dropped his pants in front of
his players while coaching at Bayern Munich, as a way to demonstrate
that he had the guts to bench any player on the team. Since arriving at
Old Trafford, van Gaal has not resorted to such measures, though he did
immediately make clear his intent to be a micromanager, dictating that
his players speak only English while on the field and making no secret
of his intention to monitor what the players did even when they were not
taking part in team activities.
“There are many rules the players have to fulfill outside the pitch,” van Gaal said.
Ostensibly,
van Gaal’s methods will lead to better results for Manchester United,
though not, apparently, immediately. Swansea spoiled van Gaal’s opener
on Saturday, beating the Red Devils, 2-1. Van Gaal — of course — spoke
after the loss, and he was duly morose in his comments, saying that the
team’s confidence was “smashed” and that “it cannot be worse.”
For
all his woe, however, van Gaal’s difficult debut was not the most
notable managerial story line of the weekend. That belonged to Tony
Pulis, who was named manager of the year last season after leading
Crystal Palace out of what looked to be near-certain relegation but did
not even get to defend that honor for a single match. Pulis parted ways
with Crystal Palace on Thursday — two days before the season began —
after getting into a dispute with the club’s owner over team finances.
That made Pulis the first manager to be unseated this season after 13 managers were let go last season. Remember, there are only 20 teams.
One
of Pulis’s assistants is filling in until a permanent replacement is
named, and despite the upheaval, Crystal Palace played well enough to
take an early lead against Arsenal.
The
Gunners would go on to overturn that deficit later in the game, but for
a little while at least, the Crystal Palace fans took the opportunity
to unveil a chant that, especially in the Premier League, seemed
particularly strange.
“Who needs a manager?” they sang over and over. “Who needs a manager?”
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