Football, being as it is a concentrated microcosm of life, lends itself only too easily to armchair punditry; maybes, what-ifs and if-only-we-hads bubble from television studios and bar counters alike, whenever consequences come to pass. What if Pelé had gone to Europe? What if Cruyff had played in '78? What if the Hand had been spotted? What if Baggio had kept his shot down? What if Ronaldo (the fat one) had been fit?
About these, we will never know; they are mystery.
And then, there are the events that strike one as predestined, almost as they unfold before one's eyes - Materazzi being headbutted. Gyan's penalty miss. England getting knocked out. They merely fit, as coherent fragments of a greater, overarching epic, into patterns of lore so ancient as to be archaic. United have weathered its fair share of these moments - the Busby Babes rising from the ashes; Denis Law's backheel; Solskjær in the 93rd; Wayne Rooney trying to chip the goalkeeper, despite him staying on his line.
To these, we bear witness; they are destiny.
Finally, more and more, we are reminded that modern football is a field of shifting allegiances. Few are those that play for the honour of club and country alone, and the heroes of today are too often the villains of tomorrow. Figo, Campbell, Adebayor, Tevez, Torres... the list goes on. Worshipped one day, cursed the next, there are few better expressions of the callousness of ephemeral phenomena, that nothing lasts forever.
When they all come together, we have The Special One.
Mourinho was, of course, one of the first names to arise, once Ferguson stated his intention to retire. The Knight Castellan of Old Trafford, however, sniffed. Not of the blood, the peerless Sir Bobby Charlton said. And that was it. The ill-mannered Portuguese was shut out, as United went through the rolls. They settled on the dour, sensible Moyes - perhaps a tad plodding, but respectful and traditional. In retrospect, they probably should have known how it would end.
With bitter reality staring them in the face, United would look beyond the Home Nations for the first time in their long history, and picked Louis van Gaal. The Dutchman possessed a resume few could match - Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern, the Netherlands. And unlike Moyes, van Gaal had, well, won stuff. It seemed a match made in heaven, and the club chequebook opened for the new gaffer - Di Maria, Schweinsteiger, Falcao, Herrera, Memphis Depay, Luke Shaw, Anthony Martial... it was as if the transfer muppets of RedCafe had been unleashed in unison.
He got a second season, because United support their managers (Moyes doesn't count), but it soon became painfully apparent that it wouldn't get any better. True, van Gaal fixed the defence, but at the cost of scuttling United's once-feared attack wholesale. Forty-nine league goals could only be described as a disaster for a side of their stature, all the more given the talent available on paper. This was only rubbed in by Leicester's fairytale, as the Foxes galloped to the title with a squad that cost less than Juan Mata (but it's not his fault)
As far as failures went, this was not quite critical as yet - Moyes had, if nothing else, set the bar tremendously low with his seventh-place finish in 2014, and van Gaal didcapture the FA Cup (with Pardew tempting fate with one of those moments). It wouldn't save his job as it supposedly did Ferguson's, though - United were too far along for that.
And thus, days after lifting the hallowed trophy, van Gaal wasgone. And, sweeping in in his stead, the Prince of Pragmatism, José Mourinho. The Manager is fired. Long live the Manager.
But what then happened to the moral and philosophical objections? Mourinho surely hadn't rehabilitated his image to such an extent, during his second stint at Chelsea? One imagines the venerable knights of the realm Charlton and Ferguson grimacing at the rot on the pitch, and accepting at last that there was no glory in pointless defeat. Romantic doomed charges and last stands in the vein of Crockett, Cardigan and Custer were one thing, but surely they saw, in their infinite wisdom, the malaise consuming United.
They were turning into Liverpool. Where running others close was brave, where almost was good enough, where fans sung of legendary deeds from before they were born, where the sum of ambition was just wait for next season.
And that, that would never do.
The Mourinho Era
"He's a wanker, but he's *our* wanker now."
- Paraphrased
For better or worse, it is done, and Mourinho has obtained the post he really should have gotten three years ago. Further, it isn't hard to guess his assignment - win. Just win.
Opinions have been divided on which squad he would have been better suited to rebuild from, but it should be clear that, coming in after three years of finishing seventh, fourth and fifth - and crappy football to boot - Mourinho has a certain leverage on this one. Anyway, the wags have it:
Rooney - Over a million pounds a month, through 2019. Oh, Moyes. If ever one needs an example of an instance of poor judgment that hangs like a millstone around a club's neck for years afterwards, this is it.
It's one thing paying that for a Ronaldo or a Xavi - or, dare I say it, a Suárez - but this is as good as committing to build a team around, well, a declining self-described Scholes knockoff, but without the requisite technique or ludicrous passing range.
Moyes and Van Gaal took the easy way out in acquiescing to the captain, who almost definitely had much greater pull in the dressing room than them - which can't have escaped Mourinho, despite his previous kind words.
How Mourinho approaches The Rooney Conundrum, then, will offer the defining insight on how he will approach his tenure. Rooney is the last of the true Old Guard, from the time United were undisputed kings of the roost (Carrick is his only contemporary, but four years older, and never approached him in influence); will Rooney becoddled, or will he be placed on the first plane out to China? Let's just say that there's no question in my mind what a younger Ferguson would have done, and it involves a shanghaiing...
Giggs - Under-21 coach, or greener pastures? Both are arguably acceptable for United's most decorated Welshman, given that Mourinho is likely to bring Rui Faria along as his assistant.
But honestly, did anyone seriously expect Giggs to be handed the biggest job in British football, just like that? It's one thing waltzing down the wing, another cajoling prima donnas, and both of Giggs' obvious options provide him the same opportunity - to prove himself in a managerial role, as his own man. Either will do.
Ibrahimović - Why worry, when you can have Zlatan? Similar to Mourinho, in that victory has followed him wherever he has gone (he has a quite astounding record of winning twelve top European league titles in the last thirteen seasons), he'd make for an interesting splash for The Special United. They've yearned for a dab of Cantona-esque magic tinged with arrogance for far too long, which the Swede has never been short of.
De Gea - Went as far as to state that he would consider his future, had Van Gaal stayed. Then again, he had every right to do so - widelyacclaimed as amongst the top few goalkeepers of his generation, one can't really expect him to spend his best years wondering whether there will be Champions League football, a sentiment that Mourinho will no doubt appreciate.
Youth - One of the biggest objections to Mourinho has been his supposed aversion to developing youth - which does make sense for him, not having spent more than a few seasons at each of his previous clubs. However, the Fledglings were an aberration of the highest order, and the days of leaning on youth and winning are probably over. Heck, Ferguson told Pogba to wait, despite the United midfield being at its weakest for years, and he's now quoted at £60 million to return!
Personally, I don't see Mourinho as being against youth for its own sake - he played Hazard and Oscar as regulars, for example, despite both being young. In corollary to Busby's famous saying of "if they're good enough, they're old enough", I'd explain Mourinho's attitude throughout his managerial career as: "if they're not good enough, they're not old enough". On that bit, Martial and Rashford can relax on current evidence.
Tactics - And finally, the other complaint: Mourinho plays anti-football. It has been popularly argued that, almost alone amongst renowned modern coaches, Mourinho doesn't mind his teams not having the ball - "whoever has the ball has fear, whoever does not have it is thereby stronger". He destroys the other team's creations, and slugs classlessly to the win.
But is this a fair characterization? His Chelsea teams have not exactly been free-scoring, but they have turned in a consistent 70-odd goals, about par for league champions. Same for Inter. This went up with Real, but having Cristiano and being Madrid will do that.
Above all, Mourinho's style can be summarized as pragmatic, and diagrammatically opposed to pure theorists like Wenger and Guardiola (to a lesser extent); if he has the personnel to crush the opposition, he will (see Madrid). If he has to fight dirty as the underdog, so be it (see Porto). Between boring and losing, he chooses boring, which is how it should be.
After all this, a final comment: ten to one, when Mourinho reveals his season targets, he won't emulate Moyes and Van Gaal in setting his sights on a top-four finish. And that, more than anything else, is the difference between them - and why United should have gone with him, three years back.
Nine Points For Nine
Caught (The Brothers) Grimsby, Sacha Baron Cohen's latest film vehicle, recently, and thought that it was better than what reviews suggested. It's Mr. Borat, come on, you don't watch it if you don't enjoy completely tasteless and off-colour gags. What's more, the action sequences were polished and wouldn't look out of place in a bona-fide thriller (holy first person views!), if you can suspend disbelief at England winning the World Cup. The pandemic plot device also cuts close to the bone. Ah, and TRUMP is in it!
It certainly looked better, in a technical sense, than London Has Fallen. Arab terrorists blow up London (well, it's in the title) with various world leaders in attendance, and capture the American President for a humiliating public execution à la Saddam, Gaddafi etc, in revenge for a drone strike that killed innocent civilians. Obviously, the Big Damn American Hero saves the day (while broadcasting his - and the President's - location just because he feels like it), and when the dust settles, the US of A retaliates with... another drone strike in a very public, civilian-filled area.
If this wasn't snide commentary, it's some of the most jingoistic propaganda I've seen for a time.
Automation roundup: Adidas returns production back to the US and Germany from Asia... but to 100% robotic factories. McDonald's looking at US$35k robots, rather than US$15/hour minimum wage workers (anyone remember what happened to their old burger ramps?) Chinaculls 60000 jobs from just one factory because, robots. Truckand cardrivers! Lawyers! Horse punters! Is there anything left for humans to do?
Japan pivots towards mandatory programming in elementary schools, getting the leap on Singapore. Commentators largelyskeptical on the likely top-down rote learning approach to fulfilling "innovation quotas".
Anyway, the predicted "mindset change" attitude towards education has filtered up to the highest levels here, in latest "you die not our business" disclaimer. Own humble proposed suggestions reserved for now.
Meanwhile, the local bricks-and-mortar retail scene is crashinghard. As visited here many times before, it was inevitable - cramming cut-price labour to prop the economy only goes so far, and it's probably getting to the stage where "the immigrant cohort is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding immigrant cohort".
More from The State's Times, under the questionable title "Reviewing the elected presidency: Your* say": in summary, the presiding Chief Justice kept asking - is it all right for there not to be a minority president for a very long time? - which is clearly, in legal parlance, leading the hapless witnesses.
[*"Your" here referring to 19 invited participants]
As explained, we have had an ethnic minority as President for some 60-plus percent of the time since the inception of the position, and are just five years from a twelve-year minority President term. And, ominously, the third page of the feature was headlined "Some would scrap system altogether".
I mean, if this is just a sibei kiasu reaction to Dr. Tan Cheng Bock's likely activist campaign, they should take a chill pill, as their incumbent probably has a roughly 54-46 advantage as of now. Please don't do this, man. It's really bad to resort to this shit, in the longer run...
