Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Message from Pardew
Posted by whubris at 11:39 am
said...
Why Wenger's way is an assault on English football's integrity
Richard Williams
Tuesday March 14, 2006
Guardian
According to Arsène Wenger, England should be coached by an Englishman. So when the sage of Highbury responded at the weekend to Alan Pardew's criticism of Arsenal's recruitment policy by saying that if we want to build a successful Europe without frontiers then we must accept a club manager's freedom to assemble the best personnel, regardless of origins, he appeared to be contradicting himself.
If Wenger's firmly expressed belief that Sven-Goran Eriksson should be succeeded by an Allardyce or a Curbishley - or even a Pardew - is rooted in a feeling that national teams ought to be an expression of the identity of the nation in question, then should the same principle not apply to a club? His answer would clearly be no.
"Racism starts there," he said of the West Ham manager's view that Arsenal's approach constitutes a threat to the "soul" of English football. In choosing a pretty strong way of expressing his disapproval of a man who plies his trade in Alf Garnett country, Wenger was trying to make a point that goes far beyond football. He was launching an attack on the sort of creeping fears that express themselves in cultural and economic protectionism.
"We can't say we want to make a [united] Europe but when we work abroad we should only live with English people," Wenger continued. "They are like that in France. They vote against the constitution but they want Europe. They want to buy the big companies abroad, but when a big company comes into France to buy they don't like it. But it doesn't work like that."
Football clubs, he believes, derive their identity from their players and their supporters, but not from a sense of loyalty based on origins. "The club is built on values, not passports," he said. So he is free to pick a starting line-up containing not a single Briton, knowing that only bad results will lead the club's fans to question his operating method.
In the modern world, there is some merit in his view. Notoriously, Manchester United have long drawn their huge following from around the country and, today, from around the world. No doubt Chelsea, under Roman Abramovich and Jose Mourinho, will have attracted new followers lacking ties to west London but tending to form allegiances with success.
The case against Wenger's opinion is hard to make, since it depends not on the evidence of verifiable results but on a feeling for the shifts and rumblings in football's tectonic plates. Far below the surface of the game , these movements are the distant pre-echoes of future dissatisfaction.
Making the argument even more awkward to sustain, the suggestion that English football clubs need English players also flies in the face of a change in the nature of a country which appears likely to enjoy a peaceful future only if it embraces demographic change. I hope that my children, for instance, are growing up to accept without question a nation in which contrasts of colour and language are integral to a collective identity no longer dependent on a single set of assumed cultural characteristics. I envy them the possibility.
But life is not football, and vice versa. Like all sports, football is governed by rules that seem arbitrary but are there for good reasons: not just to govern the competition itself but to maintain the overall health of the enterprise. Gérard Houllier, nowadays a generally derided figure in England, may only have had one club's interests in mind, but he was right when he tried to rebuild his side around "a good Liverpool heart".
If the present imbalance worsens, as it shows every sign of doing, eventually there will be even fewer Jimmy Bullards or Dean Ashtons in the Premiership. A place will always be found for prodigies of genuine world class (and perhaps Arsenal's own Theo Walcott will turn out to be the next Wayne Rooney), but the talented journeyman will become extinct at the highest level. In this way, Wenger's approach is indeed an attack on the integrity of the English game - and perhaps even on its soul.
Open in his dislike of Uefa's proposed quota system, Wenger would never agree that the problems faced during his transitional year might have been eased by more carefully maintaining a continuous strand of locally produced players in his first-team squad. Quite right about an Englishman managing England, he is wrong to believe that clubs are not to some degree affected by the same imperatives. But then, as he says, "what makes the national teams, I don't care about".
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said...Why Wenger's way is an assault on English football's integrity
Richard Williams
Tuesday March 14, 2006
Guardian
According to Arsène Wenger, England should be coached by an Englishman. So when the sage of Highbury responded at the weekend to Alan Pardew's criticism of Arsenal's recruitment policy by saying that if we want to build a successful Europe without frontiers then we must accept a club manager's freedom to assemble the best personnel, regardless of origins, he appeared to be contradicting himself.
If Wenger's firmly expressed belief that Sven-Goran Eriksson should be succeeded by an Allardyce or a Curbishley - or even a Pardew - is rooted in a feeling that national teams ought to be an expression of the identity of the nation in question, then should the same principle not apply to a club? His answer would clearly be no.
"Racism starts there," he said of the West Ham manager's view that Arsenal's approach constitutes a threat to the "soul" of English football. In choosing a pretty strong way of expressing his disapproval of a man who plies his trade in Alf Garnett country, Wenger was trying to make a point that goes far beyond football. He was launching an attack on the sort of creeping fears that express themselves in cultural and economic protectionism.
"We can't say we want to make a [united] Europe but when we work abroad we should only live with English people," Wenger continued. "They are like that in France. They vote against the constitution but they want Europe. They want to buy the big companies abroad, but when a big company comes into France to buy they don't like it. But it doesn't work like that."
Football clubs, he believes, derive their identity from their players and their supporters, but not from a sense of loyalty based on origins. "The club is built on values, not passports," he said. So he is free to pick a starting line-up containing not a single Briton, knowing that only bad results will lead the club's fans to question his operating method.
In the modern world, there is some merit in his view. Notoriously, Manchester United have long drawn their huge following from around the country and, today, from around the world. No doubt Chelsea, under Roman Abramovich and Jose Mourinho, will have attracted new followers lacking ties to west London but tending to form allegiances with success.
The case against Wenger's opinion is hard to make, since it depends not on the evidence of verifiable results but on a feeling for the shifts and rumblings in football's tectonic plates. Far below the surface of the game , these movements are the distant pre-echoes of future dissatisfaction.
Making the argument even more awkward to sustain, the suggestion that English football clubs need English players also flies in the face of a change in the nature of a country which appears likely to enjoy a peaceful future only if it embraces demographic change. I hope that my children, for instance, are growing up to accept without question a nation in which contrasts of colour and language are integral to a collective identity no longer dependent on a single set of assumed cultural characteristics. I envy them the possibility.
But life is not football, and vice versa. Like all sports, football is governed by rules that seem arbitrary but are there for good reasons: not just to govern the competition itself but to maintain the overall health of the enterprise. Gérard Houllier, nowadays a generally derided figure in England, may only have had one club's interests in mind, but he was right when he tried to rebuild his side around "a good Liverpool heart".
If the present imbalance worsens, as it shows every sign of doing, eventually there will be even fewer Jimmy Bullards or Dean Ashtons in the Premiership. A place will always be found for prodigies of genuine world class (and perhaps Arsenal's own Theo Walcott will turn out to be the next Wayne Rooney), but the talented journeyman will become extinct at the highest level. In this way, Wenger's approach is indeed an attack on the integrity of the English game - and perhaps even on its soul.
Open in his dislike of Uefa's proposed quota system, Wenger would never agree that the problems faced during his transitional year might have been eased by more carefully maintaining a continuous strand of locally produced players in his first-team squad. Quite right about an Englishman managing England, he is wrong to believe that clubs are not to some degree affected by the same imperatives. But then, as he says, "what makes the national teams, I don't care about".
