30/05/2008 00:09
Chelsea & Inter: How Do You Define Success?
Following the dismissals of Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant and Roberto Mancini
this season, Graham Lister considers the imperatives and tensions at Stamford
Bridge and the San Siro, and wonders what defines success for a big club
these days…

A Tale Of Three Managers

The experiences of Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant and Roberto Mancini during the
last eight months - and in particular the last eight days - provide an
illuminating if somewhat chilling commentary on what constitutes success in
modern top-level football.

All three men were sacked despite delivering results that most other managers
would die for - or at least be delighted to have achieved. Yet they were
deemed to be not good enough by their respective employers, Chelsea and
Internazionale.

In the surreal world of football club management, one of the men Chelsea
discarded - Mourinho - is set to be installed as the new messiah at San Siro,
while Inter's sacked coach Mancini is being linked with the Chelsea job,
though it remains far from certain that it will be offered to him. As for
Grant, he has headed off on holiday to the United States to reflect on the
nature of loyalty and integrity in the beautiful game.

What has been highlighted in West London and Milan, yet again, is how thin
the dividing line is between success and failure. Discounting national FA and
League Cup competitions (as the biggest clubs increasingly do), there are
only two genuinely 'major' prizes that any club can win each season: their
national domestic league championship; and the Champions League. Manchester
United won both those jewels this season; Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Bayern
Munich won their respective domestic titles. Does that mean that every other
club in England, Italy, Spain and Germany endured a campaign of failure?
Certainly by the criteria that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich applies, they
did. Daft and unrealistic though it is, that is how rarefied the atmosphere
is becoming.

It's Roman's Empire

Mourinho was fired after bringing Chelsea their first domestic title in 50
years, then repeating the feat, adding domestic cups along the way and
reaching two Champions League semi-finals. But by not conquering Europe as he
had done with Porto, by giving priority to winning rather than winning
prettily, and by resisting interference from above in matters of team
selection, he fell foul of the Russian billionaire who regards Chelsea as his
personal plaything.

So in this particular Toy Story, Mourinho's Woody was displaced by Avram
Grant's Buzz Lightyear. He guided the Blues from sixth to second in the
Premier League with a 22-8-2  W-D-L record and nearly overtook Manchester
United in the final furlong. He also led Chelsea to two cup finals -
including, for the first time in their history, the Champions League final
which they lost by the width of a post in a dramatic shoot-out. But Grant was
still told to buzz off.

Peter Kenyon, the Machiavellian chief executive at Stamford Bridge, explained
that Grant's record - bettered only by Manchester United - was "not
acceptable" for "a club like Chelsea."

But then what exactly is a club like Chelsea? Their recent trophy haul is
impressive; but the emphasis here is on recent. They do not have a heritage
of  harvesting silverware on an annual basis; their traditions are more
modest. Vaulting ambition can be commendable, but it needs to be tempered by
perspective or it tips over into arrogant pretension. Isn't football less
about instant fixes than solid development that bears fruit over time?
Chelsea have the big-club swagger; but by the words and actions of the
Stamford Bridge hierarchy they sometimes betray a small-club mentality.
Kenyon implies that Chelsea now see themselves in a unique category where
anything less than the Premier League title and/or European Cup on the
sideboard in any one season constitutes failure - requiring the removal and
replacement of the manager.

Good Enough For Most?

Chelsea's record over the last five seasons has been phenomenal by most
measures, but especially by their own standards during the preceding 97
years. In 2003-04, Claudio Ranieri took them to their highest league finish
for 49 years and might well have won the title but for Arsenal's remarkable
unbeaten campaign. He also took them further in the Champions League than
they'd ever been before. Mourinho bettered that with a bang, winning
back-to-back titles, two League Cups, the FA Cup and also making it to the
Champions League semi-finals twice. And while Grant was in charge, his record
in Premier League matches was actually better than that of Sir Alex Ferguson,
Arsene Wenger and Rafael Benitez. The Blues also lined up in their first ever
Champions League final.

Yet few were surprised that Grant was sacked. Like Ranieri and Mourinho
before him, he was unable to spare Abramovich the "embarrassment" of not
winning the Champions League, so he had to go.

However, it is likely that even if John Terry's spot-kick had hit the net
rather than the post and United had been the heartbroken ones in Moscow,
Grant would still have been fired.

In the terms of that awful modern-day cliché, he just didn't tick all the
boxes. He was persistently sniped at for his tactics and substitutions, and
accused of lacking the big-match temperament. Notwithstanding Terry's slip on
the Luzhniki turf, he surely nailed those criticisms during the last few
weeks of the campaign.  

A Need To Be Loved

Yet it seems that the internal politics at Stamford Bridge were always
undermining him. He had an 'image problem' from the start, which shouldn't be
an issue but is. In that respect he was the complete antithesis of the
dashing, media-savvy and manipulative Mourinho, so adored by the Chelsea fans
who have grown accustomed to charismatic managers over the last decade (Ruud
Gullit, Gianluca Vialli, Ranieri and Mourinho). But what Grant shared with
the Special One was an inability to make Chelsea liked if not loved beyond
Stamford Bridge.

And it seems that Abramovich craves this, as well as the glittering prizes,
for his King's Road project. It has been revealed this week that Chelsea's
next manager will be expected to change the public perception of the club and
make them more popular among the public at large.

To change the club's image, Chelsea must first understand why current
perceptions of the club are as they are. For any club, the normal state of
affairs is that they are worshipped (though not uncritically) by their own
loyal fan-base, hated by their traditional rivals and mostly tolerated by
everyone else as an object of curiosity, amusement or indifference. In
Chelsea's case, the tolerance is lower and the hatred, or at least
negativity, higher than the vanity of the club's hierarchy can stand. Unlike
Millwall, whose fans famously and defiantly made a virtue of their
unpopularity by singing, "No-one likes us, we don't care," Chelsea clearly DO
care. So why the negativity towards them?

Reasons To Be Unpopular

Firstly, they are the epitome of the nouveau-riche. And it is a fact of life
that while lottery winners and others who come into big money without a
history of handling wealth have no problem attracting hangers-on, the typical
reaction towards them is envy, turning quickly to jealousy and resentment -
especially if they indulge in conspicuous consumption. And Chelsea's spending
has certainly been conspicuous. They are perceived by many to have bought
their trophies in recent years. It is a trite criticism, because it takes a
lot more than a collection of galacticos to make a successful team. But
perception can be a powerful thing.

Secondly, some of the Chelsea players are perceived to be too big for their
handsomely endorsed boots. Player-power, whether real or imagined, is rarely
seen as attractive these days. The tendency of Terry and Frank Lampard to
question every decision against their team, or indeed to want to referee the
match as well as play in it, irks many people. Haranguing officials like
indignant shop-stewards, encouraging others like Ashley Cole and Didier
Drogba to follow suit, is not endearing. As for Drogba, leaving aside the
notorious theatricals, he undermined team unity all season with indiscreet
utterances to the media about leaving, then staying, then leaving again. He
certainly did nothing to bolster Grant's position.

Thirdly, Chelsea's style of play is criticised by many (fuelled by the media)
for being dull and boring. They are certainly a more pragmatic proposition
than say Arsenal; but the card that they are not entertaining has been
heavily over-played. Chelsea are capable of excellent football; and they are
very hard to beat. But again, the perception is that they lack the 'wow'
factor. Tellingly, that seems to be what Abramovich thinks, too.

Fourthly, the Russian oligarch’s club and its main mouthpiece, Kenyon, are
accused of acting disrespectfully and lacking 'class'. There is an element of
snobbery in the accusation but their treatment of their own managers (and of
assistant first-team coach Henk ten Cate, sacked on Thursday after being told
on Saturday his position was safe) hardly strengthens the case for the
defence.  

Under Mourinho, the goading of rival managers, the histrionic railing against
Anders Fisk and Frank Rijkaard, and the tapping-up of Ashley Cole, earned him
kudos among his own fans, but elsewhere? Not really.  
  
So the task of polishing Chelsea's image will not be an easy one. It will be
an additional challenge for whoever becomes the new manager. It is being said
that those on the short-list will be sceptical about accepting the job in
view of what has happened to the last three incumbents. But this is the real
world and the managers in the frame are in a win-win situation. If they
deliver trophies to Abramovich they will enhance both their bank balances and
reputations. If they fail, they will be compensated with a lavish pay-off,
and find their job prospects in no way diminished, because football manager
is one profession where getting sacked is not so much a career set-back as an
invitation to another club to take you on.  That's why Inter are lining up
Mourinho; and why Mancini and Rijkaard and Deschamps are thought to be
possibilities for Chelsea.

Inter Active

The case of Mancini, of course, underlines the earlier point about the narrow
margins between success and failure. A hat-trick of Scudettos should be
enough to keep anyone in a job, but not Mancio at Inter. Why?

Firstly, he has been denied much of the credit for the first two of those
titles by calciopoli and its subsequent fall-out. The 2005-06 championship
was stripped from Juventus and given to runners-up Inter. The 2006-07 title
was won with Juve in Serie B and AC Milan hobbled by a points deduction, so
although Inter's results were outstanding, the team were given a clear run,
said the critics. Mancini's latest title was certainly achieved in a fully
competitive Serie A, although since March the Nerazzurri were decidedly less
convincing.

That March turning point was precipitated by the second black mark against
Mancini: another failure in the Champions League, where his overly defensive
tactics against Liverpool were perceived as handing the initiative to the
Reds.

Thirdly, Mancini's emotional response to elimination by Liverpool - to
resign, then reverse his decision 24 hours later - raised question-marks
about his temperament and also fatally damaged his standing with club owner
Massimo Moratti.  

But fourthly and most damningly, Mancini's management style seems to have
alienated too many key players in the Inter squad. It appears their
opposition to the boss sounded the fatal death-knell to his reign.
Player-power again, albeit in a rather more blatant and brutal fashion than
Grant experienced.

The issue of compensation is delaying the announcement of Mourinho as
Mancini's successor, while Mancini's agent is making a point of stressing his
client's availability to Chelsea.

Whatever Next?

Whoever is managing at Stamford Bridge and San Siro next season, they will
know what to expect. The bar has been set high and if they fall short they
will be out with little ceremony.  Is that the best way to guarantee success?
And how exactly is 'success' to be defined these days?

Interestingly, Mourinho used to taunt Arsene Wenger that the Arsenal boss
didn't need to win trophies to keep his job. The Gunners have just completed
a third successive season without silverware, but there was never a hint from
the hierarchy at the Emirates that Wenger would be sacked. Has that made the
man who has won seven trophies for Arsenal complacent, or is it the sort of
support that helps build sustained long-term success? 60,000-plus sell-out
crowds for every Arsenal home game suggest that the fans enjoy what they're
seeing, though of course they'd prefer that elusive silver lining. Alex
Ferguson famously needed nearly four fraught years to bring the first of his
22 trophies to Old Trafford. And in 1994-95, 1997-98, 2001-02 and 2004-05,
Manchester United won nothing, but never threatened to pull the plug on
Fergie. Chelsea and Inter have a less patient approach to management.

But which model is the best?

Graham Lister
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