Will The Kids Be Alright?

Van Gaal's winning record with youth might be the real reason for his appointment by the Glazers

Assessing the lay of the land at Old Trafford on Friday, Paul Scholes became the latest inviolable name associated with the club to miss the giant white elephant skulking in the car park.

 

It's everywhere, in fact. It was in United's team sheet yesterday at the Stadium of Light. It lumbered on next to Michael Keane when Chris Smalling hobbled off, again. It was sat next to Louis Van Gaal - no stooge? - when he talked about United's lack of creative passing.

 

Avi Glazer and co should give serious thought to taking over a small country and setting up a totalitarian state. Do United have a small Stasi located in the bowels of that massive stadium, working day and night to 'discourage' negative pronouncements on the parasitic effect they have on the club?

 

Scholes, Neville et al were brought up in the standard United manner. The club is bigger than all those who walk down Sir Alex Ferguson Way. They recognise their forbearance and act accordingly when passing comment. That's not the same as keeping your head below the parapet. But the Glazers, cowards that they are, feed off the parsimony. They don't badmouth anybody - because it's bad for business.

 

The reason Van Gaal excited fans - and gets City fans switching the match on at 4pm, no less - is because he's cut from the same cloth as them. He refers to the board as 'my directors'. He gets in fights with people like Uli Hoeness. His principles are all-encompassing.

 

And he believes in youth. His pride at Xavi and Iniesta's achievements was evident in his interview with Gary Neville last week. He likes to remind people of what he did with Thomas Mueller, Holger Badstuber, David Alaba and Toni Kroos at Bayern. He nearly won a second Champions League with Ajax - with the same squad that he led to victory over Milan the year prior.

 

Everyone sees the connection, but stories of Angel di Maria cloud what could be the Glazers' real motivation for hiring Van Gaal. Sure, he's demanded better players. But he's also played Tyler Blackett and Michael Keane. He'll probably give Tom Lawrence and definitely James Wilson a chance, both being included in the season's first team squad. Jesse Lingard will probably also make an appearance.



Do players like James Wilson represent the future for United under the Glazers?

 

In the case of Keane and Blackett, his hand's rather been forced by a shocking lack of depth. But beneath United's floundering first team, their under 21 side remains strong. They were only beaten to the league title by Chelsea last season and have started this season well in second position. Further down the age bracket, six of the eleven current under-18 players have been capped by England.

 

The rumours of Welbeck's wishes to depart are offset a little by the superb form of Wilson, who netted five in six in last season's UEFA Youth League and seven in nine in the U21 Premier League. His two goals versus Hull City last season prompted an uncharacteristically sentimental outburst from Giggs, interim coach at the time. 

 

United were handed a relatively easy fixture list to open their season with - the first ten sides they play finished, on average, in 16th place last season. So this is undoubtedly the time to get youngsters like Blackett, Lingard and Keane involved.

 

Van Gaal will effusively reject any suggestion of manipulation. He will do the job his way, as noted during the club's marathon timetable around America midsummer. And it's true there was no one as good as Van Gaal immediately available when the club decided there was no substitute for regular, sustained success.

 

But instead of dreaming of the Bayern squad full of internationals playing breakneck football, or the Dutch-Brazilian fusion going on at Barcelona under his guidance, perhaps United fans should cast their eyes towards this year's Netherlands side.

A mix of youth and technical proficiency, sprinkled with stardust, that Van Gaal found a way of exploiting for delivering results. Sound familiar?

Picture thanks to the Telegraph

The Premier League: A Trans Europa Success

English football does not simply need less foreign footballers - it needs more, and it needs the best, to improve at international level

One hundred and ten! proudly tooted the Premier League at the start of the World Cup. Can you guess what the number relates to? No, not the average percentage of debt to profit ratio for each Premier League club, although good call. It's actually the number of Premier League players involved in Brazil.

 

One hundred and ten. Like a lot of numbers, it feels significant. Assuming each Premier league squad boasts an average 23 players, as per this World Cup, that infers that nearly a quarter of all the players we watch week in, week out on Match of the Day et al are international players capable of playing in the world's biggest and best football tournament.

 

Rubbish, grouches the football traditionalist who's no doubt sick of seeing England getting knocked out early again, and perhaps mutters to himself that the English would do a lot better without these foreign international players clogging up their youth teams.



None of the 2014 Ballon D'or winners play in England

Would they? Nationalism is a funny thing and it has not infected sport in the same way as it has politics and culture in Britain. In England, we love watching Silva, Hazard, Oscar, Aguero, Kompany, Van Persie and Ozil. Football fans in this country are not overtly racist and it would be an interesting exercise to see who the average terrace fan voted for at the last European elections.

It's certainly true to say England has a problem with foreign footballers, but what it really has a problem with, as usual, is ownership and strategy. Of the last eight nations left in the World Cup, 37 players play in the Premier League. That's around 20% of the eight squads - and that figure's significantly heightened by ten French players and 11 Belgians. If you strip those two away, the figure becomes less than 10%. Compare that to the Bundesliga, on 38%, and La Liga, on 33%. Still the best league in the world?

 

Of course, you think, it's natural that if you speak Spanish or Portuguese - as Argentina, Brazil and Colombia do - you'll want to be around people like you. Spaniards, for example. Except that's also not true. Nine leagues are represented in the Brazil and Colombia squads, and seven in the Argentina squad. In England, Spain and Italy, the squads are represented by two, four and two respectively.

 

Travel really does seem to broaden the mind and it appears, superficially at least, there's little doubt that the English are simply too insular when it comes to their football. But the economics, unlike South American leagues, make it hard to resist playing in one league when it could set the player up financially for life.

 

The exception of course is Germany, who have 20 of their players based in the Bundesliga. But there is room to develop youth there, without risk of clubs going through the blender should relegation occur. The '50+1' shareholder model is characteristic of a philosophy which ensures financial fair play is pretty much already in place. In both Italy and Spain there are serious long term debt issues for various clubs - much like the Premier League. This year's Spanish champions, Atletico, are over £100 million in debt over unpaid taxes.

English football is simply a smudge on a broader canvas that reflects the way Britain has relied upon skilled immigration to add value to its most lucrative industries - for example, financial services. For the Premier League, see any building housed in Canary Wharf after close of business, when British citizens can be seen scrubbing at the City's skyscraping artifices.

The difference in football, unfortunately, is that the hired help is often better than the in-house. That has nothing to do with money - that, as can be seen in Colombia's squad make-up, is much more about determination and a strong sense of self-worth. The things an Englishman cannot buy.

Britain needs top foreign talent to improve still further, and a greater focus on buying top-bracket foreign players at cheaper players' expense would still mean great entertainment. But would the inevitable culture change mean a move back to traditional, outmoded English tactics? Moreover, would a change in the number of nationalities reduce the likelihood of Brazilians playing in England? There are many more, but questions like this are important.

 

No one can doubt that the English has improved immeasurably in the wake of David Luiz, Sergio Aguero, Fernando Torres, Nemanja Vidic et al arriving. All have given huge amounts. But if we've learned nothing and simply watched the circus as it passed through town, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Picture thanks to World Soccer

A Load Of Hot Air?

The key to South American success is down to tactics, not the weather - and France and the Netherlands are proof

During the 1994 World Cup, before their first group match versus Morocco, the Belgian national team decided to try something to counteract the stifling Floridian heat. The plan was admittedly unorthodox; hair gel. Temperatures in Orlando were forecast to reach ninety degrees that day anyway, and so the Belgians slathered their hair in the desperate hope it would help keep them cool.

 

Belgium won 1-0, one Moroccan collapsed from dehydration, and sixty fans were hospitalised. But in the end, the better team won.

 

At this World Cup, the picture's much the same. Most pundits have put their money on a South American side flourishing, and the results, so far, bear them out. Spain, Italy and England are already out, whilst Belgium and Portugal have struggled to break teams down. Six out of the first eight group qualifiers - Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia and hosts Brazil - are from Latin America.  

 

But it would be lazy to suggest it's all about the weather. It's a contributory factor for sure, but the main reason this tournament's seen one hundred goals already concerns the stuff football is all about - space, tactics and formations, particularly the return of wing backs and five man midfields.

 

Take Chile. Their exploitation of the wider spaces through their overlapping wing backs has seen some breathtaking moves, and their interlocking front players  - Eduardo Vargas (right), Alexis Sanchez and Jorge Valdivia, has been one of the best things about the tournament so far. Sanchez is particularly strong at running from out to in, as per his role with Barcelona, and that has made the three very difficult to track by opposing centre halves. Their performance versus Spain, coupled with their usual pressing excellence, made for exhilarating, high-risk football, and the holders simply could not hold the middle whilst being asked to track the marauding Isla and Mena.

 

But exactly the same argument could be made of the Netherlands, who utilised a defensive 5-3-2 and offensive 3-4-1-2 versus Spain and reaped rewards. Robben and Van Persie grabbed all the headlines but it was Ajax defender Daley Blind, son of legend Danny, who made the key difference, with his runs down the Spanish right tilting the play over to that side and also providing some very useful long balls to the forwards. Van Gaal correctly calculated that Spain didn't possess the men to make runs in behind his three man defence, and was able to utilise his players further up the field as a result.

 

The other major surprise has undoubtedly been Costa Rica who will play Greece in a second round match no one anticipated. Qualifying top, their secret - again - has been utilising a strong press with a wing-back formation that allowed them to break at speed against opponents who played with four defensive players, handing the Costa Ricans a man advantage in midfield that they utilised throughout.

 

The downside to all these full-backs pressing up the pitch? France 5 Switzerland 2. France destroyed Switzerland down the flanks through very quick counterattacks, with Valbuena and Benzema (left) both enjoying acres of space in the final third. Coupled with a very efficient goals-to-chances ratio, they are undoubtedly one of the teams to beat.

 

Whilst it's definitely true that the heat has made possession even more important to teams, quick transfers from defence to attacking formations have been integral to fast, clinical play that saves energy for the team in possession. To reap the benefits, you don't need to be born in a hot country - you need to be able to play whatever the situation demands.

 

Pictures courtesy of Eurosport Asia and IBNLive.com