Have you ever had a situation where the unrelated events of a day or a week start building and interconnecting? Synchronicity. Like, there are no accidents? Well that's the kind of futbol week I've had.
Last Tuesday I was catching up on some Times Online podcasts. Co-host Guillem Balague's was talking about the Valencia situation. To paraphrase him, Koeman had made a drastic mistake in getting rid of Canizares, Angulo and Albelda and the situation was becoming untenable. He pretty much told us the same when he was on with us last month. On Wednesday I was trolling through the blogs I normally read and found an article written by Guillem here. Scroll down to the bottom and you'll find him answering one of the emailers. According to him, it was Soler himself who called for the purge and that may be, along with some dire financial instability, why Koeman hasn't been rewarded with a firing. The chants that had gone up, "Vete (Leave) Quique!" have now turned on the Dutchman. Another interesting sidenote is that Balague believes that Koeman's second mistake at Valencia was that he disrespected this opportunity, treating it as a stepping stone to a bigger and better position; most notably a return to Barcelona and succeed Frank Rijkaard in Catalunya. Alright, now you're really going to think I'm stalking Balague, but on Thursday I finally got my copy of Balague's, A Season on the Brink: a portrait of Rafael Benitez's Liverpool from amazon.co.uk. I flipped through and added it to my huge list of books to be read, but the subject was just too strong to put down. I started reading it and I was just sucked in. Little did I know what kind of shadow Valencia would have over the whole book.
The book is ostensibly about the Rafa-lution at Liverpool FC and his first year on Merseyside, that saw them win the European Cup after only 10 months in charge. You get a very real picture of the man, a brilliant tactician and quiet leader of men. A true Madrileño: stoic and introspective, often to a fault. He reminds me of my dad in fact who comes from the same stock.
What you also get is that his years up to Valencia, the failures at Valladolid and Osasuna, not to mention the struggles with Extramadura and Tenerife, made him as a manager but his 4 years at the Mestalla marked him forever and it's done a whole lot of damage to both himself and Los Che.
The popular opinion is that the Soler family is treating Valencia CF as a very expensive plaything, hiring the wrong people and managing it poorly, and that may be so, but as this book clearly shows the problems started even before the Soler's won the election in 2004. During the 2004 season Benitez had some very public run-ins with his Sporting Director: Jesus Garcia Pitarch. It's those heated exchanges that Rafa's famous quote "I asked for a sofa and they brought me a lampshade" comes from. Sure, many of the problems were, like the quote says, over player acquisition or ironically about rotation of players, but he never felt truly appreciated for the monumental task he and his group of coaches had accomplished at the Mestalla: winning the league in 2001-2002 a mere 31 years after their last one, winning it again 2 years later and becoming UEFA Cup champions in 2001.
The often public exchanges between club President Jaime Orti and his manager couldn't help but form divisions with the players. He left tearfully for Liverpool and the fractures between players (those that supported Rafa and those that supported the Orti and Pitarch were already there. Soler took over just as the train wreck of the previous administration was being whisked away. Soler did try to keep Benitez, offering to hike his pay, but he had already made up his mind.
Benitez's Liverpool would be built with his Valencia model in mind. He soon found out though, that each club has its own internal life and what worked at Valencia wouldn't necessarily work at Liverpool. Winning the Champions League was almost a distraction from succeeding in the league. What was also inescapable were the behind the scenes problems that harkened back to his time at the Mestalla: his relationships with star players, his prickly tendency to annoy his paymasters and the often public debate over his selection, tactics and transfer policy.
At Valencia in his absence, Claudio Ranieri took over, bringing a series of Italian signings like Marco DiVaio, Bernardo Corradi and Stefano Fiore. The fractures became huge chasms as the Italians were never really accepted by the club or supporters. The Ranieri era ended n a whimper, and ex-Getafe coach Quique Sanchez-Flores was hired with the intent to return the club to the structure under Benitez. Ironically, Quique and Soler's Sporting Director Amedeo Carboni's working relationship would also mirror his predecessor. Firing Sanchez-Flores at the beginning of this year and bringing in the much traveled Ronald Koeman has done nothing to stop the madness at Los Che leading them to consider the very real possibility of relegation. Players have been benched, new signings have been brought in, and the club has continued to lose.
We think that the problems at a club can be solved by removing a Coach, a Manager, a Sporting Director or a Club President, that the answers are short term, and the fortunes of a club can be turned by patching over the faults and turning over a new leaf. In Valencia's case, and to certain extent Liverpool's, much more needs to be done. I don't have the answers, Los Che may be relegated if their current form continues, Koeman has two more games to right the ship or he's gone as has been reported, and Liverpool owners have given Rafa the dreaded vote of confidence for his outbursts earlier in the year. We'll see what the future holds.
I recommend this book highly, it is of course a minute by minute detail of an improbable Champions League run by the Reds, but it's far more. Balague offers a portrait of a manager in crisis and a a Rosetta Stone to read the present situation at both clubs by.
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