The world's first £20m manager?
Having myself recently whinged about today’s money-driven game in a recent post about Samir Nasri, it may come as a surprise to both my readers to learn that I welcome Chelsea’s rumoured £20m bid for Porto’s manager Andres Villas-Boas. Don’t read anything into that subject (not that you would); we are less in-the-know than a deaf and blind cuckold, but this blog will be written on the assumption that the Villas-Boas rumour is true.
My gut feeling is that the introduction of big fees being paid out for managers is a positive thing and will benefit football. I think it will help clubs develop more distinctive identities, a notion fast being lost in the age of £25m squad players, and I think smaller clubs will benefit from the precedence of high fees for coaching staff for more than financial reasons.
It has always struck me as somewhat illogical that compensation to clubs who lose their manager is usually so low. Porto, Villas-Boas’ current club, lost another manager in 2004 for £1.7m compensation. The manager was José Mourinho, who had just won them the Champions League, and he went on to win two league titles and two domestic cup competitions with Chelsea. A bargain for just £1.7m. Now, while only a madman (or possibly José himself) would claim he could have done it without his players, it’s fair to say he probably could have done it without Shaun Wright-Phillips and Asier Del Horno, who cost Chelsea approximately £30m. The example is not an extreme one.
In film adaptation of The Damned United, Jim Broadbent, as Derby County’s cantankerous former chairman Sam Longson, tells Michael Sheen’s Brian Clough that a club’s manager is narrowly less valuable than the cleaning staff. That’s overdoing it a bit, but there’s no doubt that managers are currently the most disproportionately undervalued member of staff. At most clubs, the manager is one of the most powerful and influential members on the payroll. The Premier League’s two longest-serving bosses are Sir Alex Ferguson and Arséne Wenger. Their influence on their respective clubs is all-encompassing, from the footballing development of ten-year-olds to, in Wenger’s case, being the driving force behind rehousing the club into a brand new stadium. And how much money would either club have been entitled to if their manager had been poached at the first knockings of success? Compared to their value to their clubs, almost nothing.
The impact of this hypothetical appointment will be quite enormous. The precedent set, clubs with coveted managers will finally have a sizeable chip to bargain with. I saw a Tweet from a respected journalist earlier lamenting the fact that teams like Porto and Dortmund will not have a chance to have a proper go at the Champions League if teams of their size get dismantled as soon as they start to look handy. Well, I would argue that the £20m Porto receive for Villas-Boas can’t hurt if they appoint and spend shrewdly. While I agree it is a shame that teams will be robbed of the stability perhaps needed to keep clubs in possession of winning teams, this happens anyway with players and the situation is such that teams must make the best of their lot. The option of forcing teams like Chelsea to pay through the teeth for managers – as they do players – must surely be a welcome introduction to the game.
Further to that, I don’t think the current ludicrous situation with players, leaving for more money as soon as they have a good six-month spell of form, will ever be replicated by managers. In fact, if these mega-fees become commonplace, it would become even more of a rarity. When Carlo Ancelotti was judged – rightly or wrongly – to have been underperforming for Chelsea, they sacked him. When Shaun Wright-Phillips was underperforming for Chelsea, why didn’t they do likewise? Because they paid £21m for him, and wanted some of their money back. If Chelsea do shell out £20m for Villas-Boas, you can be absolutely sure that he will get longer than Ancelotti (who incidentally joined as a free agent after leaving Milan) to turn it round if things start going pear-shaped. Meanwhile, Porto could have another promising manager who, because of other teams having to be patient for a change, gets through the summer without being offered a bigger job. Perhaps the next summer too. It may not play out exactly like this next summer, but within a few years of mega-fees, it will happen.
This almost alien concept is called stability. I am particularly excited about this because stability will also bring with it the return of club identity. Years with the same man at the helm results in far more entertaining rivalries, even ideological ones. The blandness of teams apparently in permanent transition is like watching 22 unblinking £25m players, with no faces and grey kits, playing 4-5-1 against each other for eternity.
In addition to all that, with the continual and depressing sagas of players manipulating clubs for higher contracts, doesn’t the redistribution of power (however slight) into anyone elses’ hands have to be a good thing? If a manager can consider himself on more of an even keel with his players – as Villas-Boas will be able to if he costs Chelsea £20m – the closing of that gap will claim back some ground from the ever more belligerent archetypal footballer. Who knows, we might even see humility rear its modest head in football again.
Much of this may be hopelessly optimistic, but I really do see more good than bad in this development. I want football to change, and even if that change comes about in as vulgar and unwitting a manner as by Chelsea spending £20m on a head coach, I think it should be welcomed.
