Category: Football/Soccer

Werner Herzog scouts Joe Cole

September 15th, 2024

“Number 26 is a very intelligent player,” says Werner. “Who is he?” This is not a question I am able to answer, so Werner turns to the portly, slightly inebriated gentleman and his mates standing next to us, and asks again. “That’s Joe Cole,” we are told. “One of the best there is. Only eighteen years old.” “Yes,” says Werner. “He really knows how to use the space around him, even when he doesn’t have the ball. He’ll be playing for England soon.”

Werner Herzog scouting a young Joe Cole. A West Ham Joe Cole.

Herzog’s prediction came true.

I’m afraid this site is becoming a Werner Herzog commonplace book.

Cronin, Paul. Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Faber & Faber, 2020. ppxiv
Edgar Davids and Carlo Ancelotti, eye to eye.

February 25th, 2024

Edgar Davids was one of the first players I talked to in my capacity as coach of Juventus. I liked him a lot, and I told him so immediately: “I like the way you play, your aggression, your determination, your decisiveness. It’s clear that you never yield the initiative, that you’re a fighter, a battler.” I went on to catalog his physical endowments, his skills, and his natural gifts. He just stared at me and never said a word. More than a stare, he glared at me, like I was a turd he’d accidentally stepped on. He listened, closemouthed. Finally, when I stopped talking, he enunciated a concept: “You know, I can play football too.” True, though technique was never his strong suit.
– Carlo Ancelotti

Surprising to read that Ancelotti felt technique wasn’t David’s strength. Ancelotti is correct, David’s tenacity and battling spirit stood out above all, but Davids also continued that Dutch tradition of exceptional technique.

Ancelotti, Carlo., Alciato, Aleesandro. Carlo Ancelotti: The Beautiful Game of an Ordinary Genius. United States: Random House Digital-Wholesale, 2010. pp145
An Edgar Davids Ajax documentary, because why not?

February 21st, 2024

‘You know, I can play football, too.‘
Edgar Davids
Werner Herzog’s admiration for Franco Baresi and Thomas Müller

November 12th, 2023

From then on, I always played center forward even though most of the Black-Yellow team was faster or technically more gifted. But I had a quicker apprehension of movements in space and always had an instinctive nose for goal. That often drew the opposing defenders to me, which created space for my teammates. I could read situations, and those were the kind of players who always impressed me most, someone like the 1980s Italian defender Franco Baresi, who could intuit the collective intentions of the opposing forward line; no one matched the depth of his understanding of the game. As a forward, the Bayern Munich player Thomas Müller is the same species; he seems able to ghost into the area unopposed; he identified space like no one else, and no one seemed able to track his movements.
– Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog seems a man who can offer an insight on any topic. From the joys of living in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, to Franco Baresi’s masterful reading of the game.

Herzog, Werner. Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir. United States: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.
Two Quotes. Zissou & Zizou.

June 28th, 2023

Zissou:

Zissou has an almost magical connection to the life of the sea. He speaks its language fluently. I’ve never met a boy like that in all my life.
– Lord Mandrake

Zizou:

Zidane is the soccer player who, in my life, produced the greatest array of chills, thrills, and sheer enjoyment—a living spectacle who put on an amazing show every single day. The best description of him that I ever heard came from Jose Altafini: “The way he used his foot, it was as if he were spreading butter on a slice of bread.”
– Carlo Ancelotti
Aurelio De Laurentiis on Spalletti’s departure

May 31st, 2023

He is a free man,” De Laurentiis said of Spalletti. “After 50 years in cinema [as producer], and so many exclusives with directors, actors, when someone comes to you and says: ‘After all, I’ve done my best, a cycle of my life has ended, I still have a contract with you, but I’d rather have a sabbatical year.’ What are you going to do, are you going to oppose it?

“You have to be generous in life, I never expect anything in return. He gave us, I thank him, now it’s right that he continues to do what he loves to do.”
Garcia, Adriana. “Napoli boss Luciano Spalletti to leave, take sabbatical after Serie A title win.” ESPN, 29, May 2023, https://global.espn.com/football/story/_/id/37751868/napoli-boss-spalletti-leave-serie-title-win

When Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis speaks we quote him. Might he be the most underrated owner in football? Maybe the most underrated character in football?
RIP: Gianluca Vialli

January 7th, 2023

A sad day for football. A sad day for the world.

By all measures, Gianluca was a gentleman. He lived out the lesson Don Angelo taught him at 10 years old. A lesson we could all embrace.

At the oratorio, Don Angelo, a football-loving priest, supervised our games. He wasn’t a coach, just a man who loved the game, with the special gift of knowing how to relate to kids and sort out the squabbles. Come to think of it, he was the only adult I worked with as a boy to whom teaching values was more important than teaching football.

I remember one day when he was refereeing a game and a player on the opposing team passed the ball back to the goalkeeper, who slipped and fell over. All he could do was lie on the ground and watch the ball roll past him into the back of the net. I was ten and I suppose I had an undeveloped sense of right and wrong, but it seemed unfair that the goal should stand. The next time the ball was in our area, I handled it blatantly, trying intentionally to give away a penalty. It was my way of leveling things.

Don Angelo saw it rather differently. He rushed over, picked up the ball and began to lecture me. ‘No! We don’t do things like that! he said. ‘I know why you did it. You didn’t think the previous goal should stand and you wanted to even things up. You think this is sportsmanship? This isn’t sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is accepting what happens on the pitch, whether it’s to your advantage or disadvantage…‘

To this day, it’s probably the only ‘life lesson’ I was explicitly taught on a football pitch (apart from the ones I picked up indirectly). Don Angelo illustrated how, in life, when things happen that are beyond your control, you have to accept them and move on. You can’t right a wrong by committing another wrong. It’s not the most profound message, but it stuck with me all these years because such moments were rare.
Vialli, Gianluca, Marcotti, Gabriele The Italian Job: A Journey to the Heart of Two Great Footballing Cultures. London: Bantam Press, 2007. (see page 70,71)
José Sanfilippo: unknown goal scorer supreme, football innovator

December 7th, 2022

He would argue that he simply demands high standards from everybody, from nobody more than himself, his commitment to self-improvement having made him the fifth-most prolific striker in Argentinian history, scoring 200 goals in 260 appearances for San Lorenzo and 21 in 29 for the national side. “I invented the Sanfigo,” he said, “a big cage with a wall the size of a goal that I’d use for practicing, divided into squares of eighty centimeters [30 inches] by eighty centimeters. The most important corners were the lower ones, la ratonera, the mouse’s nest. Practicing everyday was fundamental. Hitting the lower corners is safer than the upper corners, but you need to hone your precision because you’re giving twenty-one feet to the goalkeeper. So I’d need to know how to aim and hit those lower corners, from every position.”
Wilson, Jonathan. Angels With Dirty Faces: How Argentinian Football Defined a Nation and Changed the Game Forever. New York: Nation Books, 2016 (see page 108)

The World Cup ticks on.

José Sanfilippo is an Argentine striker you also probably never heard of. His training methods were ahead of their time. Long before Eddie Lewis‘s TOCA touch trainer, José Sanfilippo created the Sanfigo to hone his ball striking technique.

I wonder what Gonçalo Ramos’s training methods are?
Samuel Smiles, Seth Curry, and Aritz Aduriz, a brotherhood of opsimaths

March 6th, 2022

The most important thing to understand about Smiles is that he worked for his whole life. When he wasn’t in the office, he was pursuing his education or writing articles. This doesn’t mean he was succeeding. Often he was simply reading and learning for the sake of it. The successful books he published were the eventual result of decades of accreted labour. He studied because he wanted to. For a long time, the returns were zero.
Samuel Smiles: late bloomer with a side hustle. Part I, Henry Oliver. The Common Reader

That last sentence though, a pile driver – “For a long time, the returns were zero.” Writer Samuel Smiles was a model of persistence. He is what Henry Oliver calls an opsimath, or a late bloomer. (You know a word is good when the spellchecker redlines it). Smiles persisted with his dream project – a biography of the father of railroads George Stephenson. Smiles persevered with the book despite discouragement from Stephenson’s son, and day jobs sapping his writing time. The George Stephenson project began for Smiles in 1849. It was finally published in 1857.

Failure and rejection be damned. A side hustle is for life — and the sheer hell of it. He was a walking writer. And he began to benefit from his accumulated experiences. One trait of late bloomers is their ability to turn their experiences, however incoherent, however seemingly irrelevant, to their advantage as they persist in their interests.
Samuel Smiles: late bloomer with a side hustle. Part II, Henry Oliver. The Common Reader

Samuel Smiles’ determined path reminds me of Brooklyn Nets guard Seth Curry, who went undrafted and didn’t sign his first guaranteed contract until age twenty five. And the “exceptional case” Athletic Bilbao striker Aritz Aduriz. An athletic polymath who found success at the top level of Spanish football during the latter stages of his career. Scoring 66% percent of his career first division goals after age thirty and then retiring at thirty nine.

Read Henry Oliver’s full profiles on Samuel Smiles here: pt.1, pt.2.

And do subscribe to The Common Reader. It’s one of the brightest lights on the internet.
Euro 2020 Journal- Entry 6: Marco Verratti. Italy’s Best Player, Hidden in Plain Sight.

July 15th, 2021

Despite the chatter of a new, progressive Italy, the emphasis on certain positions remains. Italy’s last two major international triumphs possessed world-class goalkeeping. Buffon in 06′ and Donnarumma today. A center-back pairing peaking at the right moment. Cannavaro and Marco Materazzi in 06′, Bonucci and Chiellini today. And an underrated, world class, ball playing midfielder. Pirlo in 06′, and Verratti today. And while Donnarumma, Bonucci and Chiellini have captured hearts, and rightly so, Marco Verratti hummed along as Italy’s best player.

Maybe it’s because he missed two matches. Maybe it’s because he didn’t score any goals, or pick up any red cards, but Marco Verratti Euro 2020 performances hid out right in front of us.

Consider, despite his treadmill mouth and stick-in-the-spokes tackling, he picked up only one card (a yellow). He completed 401 out of 425 passes, good for 9th in the tournament. His pass completion finished at a 93% clip. He created three assists. Impressive for a midfielder who at times was playing so deep, he was initiating build ups next Bonucci. He recovered 30 balls. Led the tournament with 30 tackles. Finished second with 8 tackles won, and also first in tackles lost with 22 (haha). Talk about getting stuck in. He also covered 49.9 km.

But statistics are limited. How do you measure cool? How can you measure composure? How is courage to receive the ball in the tightest of spaces, under the harshest pressure tallied? It’s Verratti’s trait of calm that helped Italy whether Spain’s press and control possession in midfield in every other match.

Locatelli’s brace was an early tournament highlight. Jorginho is rightfully in the Ballon d’or conversation. Spinzzola (before injury), deserves his newfound admirers, and Donnarumma must be the best keeper on the planet. But don’t forget Marco Verratti. His midfield play throughout Euro 2020 was a performance for the ages.