Players in U.S. Need to Talk the Talk
Oh, for a decent squabble.
What soccer fans in this country wouldn’t give for just a few angry words, a few blunt comments, a few honest appraisals, a few remarks that have the ring of truth and passion about them.
At the All-Star break of Major League Soccer’s seventh season, the majority of the league’s players, coaches and officials still have a difficult time being outspoken. Political correctness and fear of reprisal rules the day and ruins the league.
It’s the same with the U.S. national teams. No one ever has anything critical to say. It’s all puff and no pastry.
It isn’t that way in the rest of the world. There, the pot is constantly kept boiling by the opinions of those unafraid to voice them, media included. Take last week, for example.
It began with Brazil Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari criticizing Ronaldo, of all people. A few days earlier, Scolari had ridiculed Pele, saying that he “knows nothing” about the sport. This time, he said that the player whose eight goals propelled Brazil to its fifth World Cup was “spoiled” and had to be taught to think in terms of team rather than self.
“Ronaldo is a player--how can I put it?--he’s a little spoiled,” Scolari told a Rio de Janeiro radio station. “We tried to show him the other side of things, the interest of the group.... He reconciled himself with that way of thinking to end up doing what we wanted of him.”
Ronaldo wasted little time responding via his Web site.
“I learned one thing in football,” the Inter Milan striker said in an oblique reference to Scolari. “Sometimes it is more difficult to react to victory than defeat.”
He also disputed Scolari’s assessment that he would never be 100% fit again after two knee surgeries, and that he has difficulty maintaining his ideal weight.
“It’s strange that in two months together at the World Cup he never told me this,” Ronaldo said. “At least I have always been sincere with him.”
That little give and go had no sooner been smoothed over than it was time for France forward Nicolas Anelka to lay into one of his former coaches, Luis Fernandez of Paris St Germain. “When he came in [as coach], we had a young team with great potential, but he dismantled it to bring in his own players,” Anelka, now with Manchester City, told the British magazine FourFourTwo. “It was impossible to talk to him. He gets angry whenever you try to have a discussion with him.
“He is not an intelligent man. As soon as you try to talk to him, he just loses it, simple as that.”
Anelka also lashed out at Liverpool’s French coach, Gerard Houllier, who decided not to sign Anelka after the forward had spent six months with the team on loan from Paris St Germain. Instead, Houllier acquired Senegal World Cup striker El-Hadji Diouf.
“It seems that Gerard Houllier did not appreciate my personality,” Anelka said. “It bothered him to have someone around who could stand up to him.”
Houllier ignored the jibe, but Fernandez reacted by poking fun at Anelka, who was not selected for France’s World Cup team.
Fernandez, a respected former midfielder for France, started his career with an amateur team in Lyon called Minguettes, a lowly beginning he remains proud of to this day.
“If [Anelka] is looking for another club after Manchester City, I just want him to know that AS Minguettes are interested in signing him,” Fernandez said in Paris. “After Arsenal, Real Madrid, Paris St Germain, Liverpool and Manchester City, Minguettes could be a good opportunity.
“He has everything to do well there. But he must be careful because it’s a good club and he will have to struggle to become a regular first choice.”
That should silence Anelka for while, but hopefully not.
Being a World Cup winner helps a player to speak out and ignore the consequences, which is why France’s captain, defender Marcel Desailly, last week was unafraid to criticize Claudio Ranieri, his coach at Chelsea.
Desailly told the English club’s television channel, Chelsea TV, that the team was better under former coach Gianluca Vialli.
“The team under Vialli were more ready to cope when they were in trouble, to analyze the game and come through it,” Desailly said.
“Now, although we have more quality, we are a bit crazy. We are not able to analyze the moment. We are not able to slow down and keep what we have in our pockets.... We are only sometimes like a good team, but we do not have enough [confidence] about ourselves--individually or collectively--to get out of trouble.”
Another World Cup winner, Brazil’s Rivaldo, also got into an interesting feud, lambasting Barcelona’s Dutch coach, Louis van Gaal, for questioning his lack of commitment and motivation and therefore allowing him to leave for AC Milan.
“He is envious because I won a tournament [the Korea/Japan World Cup] that he couldn’t even qualify for [as coach of the Netherlands],” Rivaldo said on his Web site.
“I feel sorry for Van Gaal and understand why he is so angry. With all the stars in the Dutch team, he wasn’t even capable of guiding them toward qualification for the World Cup.”
Soccer in the U.S. needs to develop a similar nasty edge.
When players and coaches are not good enough, they need to be told that fact. In public. Loudly.
As long as everything is sweetness and light, as long as anything that even resembles an unwelcome truth is swept under the rug, as long as it’s all rah-rah and public relations, the sport will go nowhere.
There are a few beacons of hope--honest and outspoken souls such as D.C. United Coach Ray Hudson and Galaxy defender Alexi Lalas, to name two--but many, many more are needed.
Otherwise, all MLS and the U.S. will continue to hear is the sound of silence.
