On the Path to Ruin

I wasn’t going to write this piece right now, but what do you know? I just did. Actually I should be attending a Real Analysis class at the moment, but at times human interactions (I mean twitter) can alter much around and about you. So this morning I’ve been online on the TL very early (it helps when your crush wakes you up) and we’ve been dissecting age discrepancies among African players, but that’s talk for another day. The other subject, as usual, was Arsenal and that’s going to dominate, once again, here. I may have missed the class, but what better way to atone for that than to do a real analysis of my own here? Right? (just don’t tell my dad).

On Wednesday, as if the Carrow Road capitulation wasn’t enough, Arsenal once again served us with an insipid and agonizing display in the Champions League at home to Schalke 04. And this time I was pretty much a part of this. That might have just been my worst decision of the month. Picture this; I had a CAT to read for that night which I duly opted to ignore, then there was also a better match on the screen, Dortmund v Real Madrid at the Westfallenstadion. The Madridista in me very much wanted to watch it, but I didn’t. Reason?Arsenal. I wanted to see my side set the record straight from the weekend. And well, they did it…in all the negative ways possible.

These days just by looking at the team line-up, I can tell whether we’ll win or not and almost get it spot on. What am I driving at? If I can do that, then how many more times can Arsene Wenger, the manager for 16 years manage that? Granted, we don’t share the same set of eyes, but surely some things are just plain obvious! I glanced at the line up and team formation just before kick-off and the only thing that stopped me from switching to the Madrid game was the fact that we were home at the Emirates. And of course, in some 42 games prior, we hadn’t lost to a foreign club in the Champions League. Gervinho leading the line, Cazorla just behind him, Podolski on the left and Ramsey on the right of midfield.My verdict (at the time…and still now)? Recipe for disaster! Why? I will explain, don’t worry.

It is every manger’s or coach’s prerogative to prepare and assemble his team adequately enough to get the required result for a match. This result almost always (about 98% of the time) usually is a win. Hence the saying in football, ‘you are as good as your last game’. So back to the game at the Emirates. I think is fairly obvious that Gervinho is not a striker, but rather what they call a wide man. Should he be leading the line? I don’t think so. Wenger thought and has been thinking so. And on the night he was as woeful as you’ll ever see a player at a corporate get-together match. Cazorla playing in the ‘hole’ is fine, but I’ll elucidate why it was the wrong decision. Lukas Podolski? I need a new paragraph for him. So, here goes.

I’ve followed Podolski closely since he made his name for Cologne as a teenager 7 or 8 years ago. And I may be wrong, but I think his designation at the time was a striker and still should be now. In the 2006 World Cup on home soil, Poldi announced his arrival on the big stage by staring for Germany partnering the evergreen Miroslav Klose in attack. I think he scored three goals and was the Young Player of the Tournament. He then went to Bayern Munich, flattered to deceive and was back at Cologne in no time. Anyway, I digress a lot. Accept my a thousand apologies. My point? Wide left is not for Podolski, not in a long shot. This is a player with one of the sweetest left foot in the game and has scored over 40 goals for Germany. If you play a left-footed striker on the left, he’s never going to score (a lot). And aren’t strikers born to score goals? Fine, maybe the gaffer wanted him to create chance for Gervinho. Wait, Gervinho??? And you wonder why the German fizzled very early in game? And if he isn’t to lead the attack, don’t you think a Robben-style wide right for him is a more productive option?

What about Ramsey? I won’t pretend that I’m his greatest fan, so probably this is a bit biased. In that game he sucked (for lack of a better word). Why? He was badly out of position. He was tasked with giving our attack pace and width on the right. We all know he’s not the quickest, so it was always going to be hell for him. Which brings me to Santi. At the moment, he’s the most gifted player we have and watching him pull the strings is, as they say, orgasmic. Even on the night it was evident that in the sea of mediocrity, he was the island of brilliance. But, Cazorla was ineffective, most thanks to the Ivorian’s profligacy. Unlike the others I’ve mentioned, he wasn’t exactly playing out of position, but given how the team was set-up, he would be best utilized on the flanks. I expected Podolski to be the central striker, Cazorla on the left Gervinho on the right and Ramsey linking the midfield to attack. I’m convinced we wouldn’t have lost given how Schalke was set up.

People have been talking about how greedy and out of touch the Arsenal board is, and that may be true. I find myself subscribing to that sentiment a lot too, but the fact is, we are a football club, emphasis on the football. When we lose a game that we shouldn’t be losing, it is not the board that the buck stops with. It is the players and the manager. As a fan I’m more interested in the result on the pitch than the books of accounts and boardroom politics. And on the pitch we’ve hardly been good enough…for years. When we have a manger that is supposedly among the best in the world, you can’t help but wonder. I mean, the best produce the best results, right?

In the first half of his reign at Arsenal, Arsene Wenger couldn’t put a foot wrong. He was just the best. Is he still? In 8 years, what has he to show for it, apart from the club’s overflowing coffers? Yesterday at the AGM he said that playing in the Champions League is just the same as winning a trophy. Well, not in so many words, but to that effect. You could tell a six year old all day that participating is same as winning and he would still think you’re an idiot. Hasn’t the great Arsene consigned himself to the fact that the players at his disposal (whom he brought to the club) are too poor to win anything? Well, if he has, it is true anyway.

Football has changed radically over the years. You need the best players to win things. These best players come at huge sums of money, if your academy is not Barcelona’s La Masia. When you settle for less, you have to work almost seven times as hard to harness their technique and make them as competitive as the others. Gooners, football is about two things: winning and not winning. It’s a choice. Arsene Wenger hasn’t chosen winning. If he is still is what Arsenal as a club needs, maybe I should just limit my life to the insurance math that is boring the hell out of me day in, day out.

Totally unrelated, I thought it wise to cap this up with this verse from Rudyard Kipling’s most famous poem:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

Same Old, Same Old

It’s been quite long since I penned down something about my beloved Arsenal Football Club and this has duly raised eyebrows on twitter and other forums, both online and offline. Admittedly, this sabbatical of sorts has been deliberate. Why? Well, let’s just say interest is often fleeting, and we fanatics can be quite a fickle lot. Anyway, I’m back…or rather, circumstances have necessitated this.

Well, it’s that time again, when I write off, albeit heavy-heartedly, Arsenal’s title credentials. In fact, this has come even sooner than usual. Normally, I’m driven to do this sometime from November to around the festive season. Yes, you can call me the proverbial prophet of doom and I won’t mind because in real sense my other sober self has often called me this every season. And it hurts. So much. Even as I’m typing this away on my computer I’ve had to play blaring music if just to drown my soft cries. Anyone would find it hard to do a title eulogy of sorts this early in the season about their team.

Last Saturday we went to Carrow Road for what would seem to be a routine collection of three points without much fuss. I mean, prior to that Norwich City hadn’t won any league game and Arsenal didn’t look that bad either. On top of that, our number 10 and the jewel on the club’s crown, Jack Wilshere would be part of the matchday squad for the first time in a million years! Ok, not exactly a million years, but you get the drift, aye? Why wouldn’t any Gooner be (overly) optimistic? Due to unforeseen circumstances (some of which I engineered myself) I was unable to watch the match. I wasn’t overly bothered anyway because I knew we would win. Instead I followed it on the ever so reliable twitter or as I like to say, TLTV (Timeline Television). Of course Norwich won the game 1-0.

Even without watching the match, from the tweets that flooded my timeline courtesy of the vibrant Gooner Twittersphere, it was obvious that it had been an abysmal Arsenal performance. Granted, stand in keeper Vito Mannone was hugely at fault for Norwich’s winner, but really no one really put up a fight worth their weekly wages. They went, swam over like the slippery characters we’ve always known them to be and got beat. At the end of it, I knew damn well that I had missed nothing from absconding. In fact, I was convinced that I could direct a simulation of that display (without having seen it) and come up almost 95% accurate. It was that typically disgusting and over time I’ve sat through many similar agonizing 90 minutes that I thank the gods I skipped this one.

Some may say that I’m just being a sensationalist brat by declaring Arsenal out of the title race and probably they are right. Though I may ask, were they ever in it in the first place? Of course, the 3 months period between the end of last season and start of this one when Arsenal topped the log (alphabetically) doesn’t count. After 8 games, we are 9^th, 10 points behind table-toppers Chelsea. Of course there are still 30 games to go and as the cliché goes, anything can happen within that time. And I agree completely. Then again, it’s not only Chelsea that is contending for that title as there are two other heavyweights. Yes, they are Manchester United and the holders, Manchester City who are currently 2^nd and 3^rd on the table. What is the likelihood that Arsenal will pip all these three to the title? I’m a pretend actuary, but even I won’t dignify that question with a calculated probability figure.

Ladies and gentlemen, in as much as the English Premier League is unpredictable, the winners are just as predictable. From my EPL experience, most if not all of the time, the eventual league winners at this point of the season are usually in the top 4. You can quash this all you want but can you look me in the eye and tell me I’m lying? Oh wait, you can’t see me. The truth is, from now till the end of the season, the occupant at the apex of the log is going to be interchanging among Chelsea and the Manchesters. Don’t worry, I’ve not come back from the future, I’m just saying.

At the start of the season when the club sold Robin Van Persie to (of all teams) Man United, I instinctively concluded that we had eroded almost all the gains we had made last season. I mean, we finally had a goal-machine of title-winning caliber that with the addition of the silky Santi Cazorla we could mount a serious assault at the title. Then for 24 million pounds we gave him away to the Devil who had only missed the title by whiskers last season. Honestly I’ve spent days and nights trying to dissect this deal and make sense out of it but I’ve failed miserably. If I had the time and means, I would persuade the International Criminal Court at the Hague to classify this sale as a crime against humanity and open proceedings. It doesn’t shock me that at times I’d still prefer to watch Robin set up and bang in the goals for United rather than watch his ‘replacement’ Olivier Giroud stutter and flounder painfully. I’m sorry; evidently I’m not yet over the Persiecutor.

On our day, we can beat anybody. That’s a fact. Also true is that on a not-our-day, we can be bullied, stifled, be beaten and left for dead by anybody. Is that title-winning material? I don’t think so. United are weak at the back, but they have the deadliest offensive quartet in the land in Rooney, Welbeck, Chicharito and Van Persie. They may leak the goals in, but they can also score literally at will. Yes, their midfield is probably their weakest link, but they are battle-hardened and so it doesn’t really matter. Chelsea have probably the most settled defense (so far) and possess the most potent midfield trio of Hazard-Oscar-Mata who are never far from an assist or goal. They are so good that they are turning a woeful Torres into something decent. God knows what would happen if El Nino raised his game just a little. The champions City for me are still the team to beat. So far, they’ve been far from their best yet they are unbeaten, just 4 points adrift of the top. In due course they will shift gears and the others had better beware. Plus, with the Sheikh’s deep pockets, Mancini can always add what is needed in January to tie up the job.

But of course we can always pretend that we have a world class ‘keeper, a flying English winger who shouldn’t step up to center forward, an Brazilian-named Ivorian who is smashing as the focal point of our attack and an elegant French super striker who is still buying time before he won’t stop scoring. We can pretend that we have a Plan B to beat a United and a Stoke in consecutive weeks. We can pretend that we will win the Premier League. ‘Yes, we can’ is not Obama’s only, right?

I love Arsenal so damn much, but I’ve seen it all, I’m not even sure I want to witness another crash and burn rendition again. And it has a thick aura of inevitability firmly around it. Anyway, we will still make more money than all the other teams. That’s a good thing, yes? If Arsenal wins the league title I’ll be the happiest man in the world. True story. However, if they don’t, at least I’ll have seen it coming and prepared for it. Have an amazing remaining 30 league games, won’t you?

Tribute to Michael Ballack

Michael Ballack. Does it ring a bell? Well, if you are a football fan (of course, you are. That’s why you’re reading this) the name rings more than a thousand bells. He has quit the game of football this week. Actually I prefer to say that he’s retired from playing. Who knows, maybe sooner rather or later he might be back as a coach, manager or as a football administrator in a certain capacity. This is a tribute to this guy, and in essence, a longer than usual thank you note to this true great of football.

I’ve always loved all things German, well, apart from Hitler, of course. Where do I start? There’s their brands of cars, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen. Then their female Chancellor, Angela Merkel, their language, their well-known efficiency, and of course, their football. Brazil and Italy aside, Germany remains the most successful team in World Cup history as evidenced by the three stars on their shirt’s football association’s crest. The German Bundesliga is currently the best managed league in Europe (and by extension, the world) and leads in match day attendance. Hence, Germany’s status as one of the game’s powerhouses isn’t in question. And that’s why so many big-named players exit the game but Michael Ballack is the one I’ve written about first.

From the year 2001, I developed quite a strong interest in the Bundesliga albeit partly attributed to Bayern Munich’s Champions League triumph the same year. At the time I was already an Arsenal fan, but English football was a luxury since satellite tv was damn expensive. The national broadcaster at the time incorporated a good number of German programmes to their line up and they in turn gave a wide a berth to German football, so, there. It’s always a detailed story – my love affair with German football – so I’ll skip other nitty-gritties…grudgingly (with a wry smile to boot).

Enter season 2001-2002. Enter Michael Ballack. And boy, did he take world football by storm! My first sight of Ballack was of this lanky number 13 midfielder with dark hair and boyish looks donning the famous black and white of Die NationalElf (German national team) in their 2002 World Cup qualifier play-off match away in Ukraine. The match ended 1-1, and yes, Michael saved Germany’s blushes with that decisive (well, it wouldn’t turn out that decisive anyway) goal. Ballack and co would go on to seal their World Cup spot with a comprehensive 4-1 win in the reverse fixture where he once again excelled. The girls had found themselves a new pin-up boy, the boys their new role model, the ladies their new crush, and the men their new bar-talk conversation starter. Deutschland had unearthed a new star. I had found a new hero, Michael Ballack. The only strange thing then for a ten year-old boy like me was why the commentators pronounced his name ‘Michael’ different (Mikael) to what I was used to (Maikol). Later though, after a few German classes, I would come to appreciate that variance in intonation.

That particular season, for me, remains the most exciting Bundesliga season that I’ve witnessed. The title race went all the way down to the final day of the season. And on top of that, it was contested by an impressive triumvirate of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Ballack’s Bayer Leverkusen. With him scoring handsomely from midfield and Oliver Neuville doing the poaching for Leverkusen, expectations were high that finally the dug-out-smoking Klaus Toppmoller’s side would be the toast of the rest, but it wasn’t to be. They were outlasted by a Rosicky-Everton-Koller-inspired ruthlessly efficient Dortmund, by only a point. They may not have won the title, but they had won wide acclaim and adoration. And of course, Ballack was arguably the league’s best player. Talk of a more than burgeoning reputation.

The amazing Bundesliga run wasn’t the whole story, but just a slice of it. As lovers of the game we dream of and live for fairytale league and especially cup runs by teams that would best be defined as underdogs or whipping boys or also runs. In that season Ballack inspired Leverkusen to embark on and come to within a Zidane moment of genius of doing the improbable – becoming the kings of Europe. I watched them every step of the way and it was just thrilling. The 4-2 hammering of Liverpool in the quarters, the dramatic shock 2-2 draw against Manchester United at Old Trafford that Ballack starred in and sealed Leverkusen’s passage to the Hampden Park final were memories I’ll have to be killed to forget. Although Michael couldn’t inspire the Germans against a Zizou masterclass that night, they had outdone themselves.

During that summer’s World Cup in Korea/Japan, Germany would be represented by probably her least talented team ever to such a tournament. What they lacked in quality though, they more than atoned for in terms of dogged efficiency and high work ethic. And they had the best keeper in the world, Oliver Kahn…and Michael Ballack. With both minimal fuss and almost non-existent flamboyance, they marched on to the final against Brazil. Ballack would prove to be the difference with vital goals against the USA in the quarters and co-host Korea in the semis, but as fate would have it, he would sit out the final through suspension. How cruel the rules can be! The German’s without their inspirational figurehead would be no match for a Ronaldo-led Brazil and succumbed to a 2-0 loss.

Ballack would go on to move to my beloved Bayern Munich and in truth at the time we desperately needed him so as to reclaim our status as the top club in Germany. And that he did, driving FC Hollywood to two League and Cup Doubles before he bid the Allianz Arena farewell. As much as it hurt us that he was leaving, everyone connected to the club was just happy that such a fine midfielder of the highest quality had graced the club.

In the run up to the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Jurgen Klinsmann, then coach of the national team decided to take away the captaincy from Oliver Kahn and hand it to Michael Ballack. The move was rather unpopular (even with me) but if there was an individual best suited for the job aside from Kahn, Ballack was him. Klinsi explained that he wanted his captain to be more involved in the play hence his option of an outfield player, Ballack. I adored Kahn, but then again I felt it wasn’t that bad a change. Ballack’s World Cup campaign would be blighted by injury, but nonetheless, spurred Germany to a credible third place finish marred only by that extra time heartbreak at the hands of the Italians.

Michael Ballack would then move to Chelsea on a free, a move that I loathed. You never like it when your idol moves to a rival, but I guess he needed a new challenge abroad. His career at the Bridge started slow off the blocks, but for a big player like him it was only going to be a matter of time before he asserted his presence in the first team. His finest hour there, I think, has to be his header and coolly slotted penalty under pressure against rivals United as the 2006-2007 title race intensified. He almost single-handedly won Chelsea that match, but eventually they’d come short in the title stakes. Ballack would go on to win one more league title and some FA Cups, and then return to Bayer Leverkusen where he’s just hung his boots.

Every perfection is flawed, and Ballack, though not perfect, was more than flawed. His temperament wasn’t always the best. He wasn’t always far from a booking. Then there’s his affinity to the number 13, a number widely regarded as unlucky. If there was a Ballon d’Or for ill-luck, nobody would rival Michael. He played in both the Champions League and Euros final and never won any. Add the World Cup final he missed and it’s just sad. You wonder whether he looks back at those times and ponders what he might have done differently. Also, his international career ended on a low as he got ruled out of the 2010 World Cup and the captaincy went to Phillip Lahm. Thanks to huge turnover of talent in the squad, he would never feature again for Die Mannschaft. What a shame!

Five years ago, I wrote an article about Ballack for my school magazine and it catapulted me to prominence in the writing circles. This one is not for prominence, acclaim or fame. This was just about a young man paying homage to his boyhood hero. I’ve seen a lot of excellent midfielders all these years. I don’t mean to say Ballack was the best of them all, but for me, he’ll always be up there. Wish him the best in his retirement. Vielen dank, Michael Ballack. Thanks for the memories.