Blame Game Always Popular
Excuses, excuses.
Explaining away a difficult or unanticipated loss is an art form, one that some coaches clearly have mastered and others just as clearly have not.
Over the weekend, for instance, three teams that are expected to contend for the championships of their leagues -- Arsenal in England, Inter Milan in Italy and Real Madrid in Spain -- all were beaten by unheralded opponents.
The reactions of the three losing coaches were enlightening.
Arsenal’s French coach, Arsene Wenger, blamed his players. Inter Milan’s Italian coach, Roberto Mancini, blamed himself. Real Madrid’s Brazilian coach, Vanderlei Luxemburgo, blamed the referee.
“I feel that we cannot afford any defeats at all,” Wenger said after a 2-1 setback at Middlesbrough -- the Gunners’ second loss of the young season -- left them struggling to keep pace with defending champion Chelsea, which is unbeaten after five games and has not given up a goal. Arsenal also learned Monday that striker Thierry Henry could be lost for as many as six weeks because of a groin injury.
“Our worry is not Chelsea, our worry is our results,” Wenger said. “We have the potential to be up there, but we have to have a much stronger killing instinct than we had today.”
Inter Milan also was on the road, at Palermo on the island of Sicily, where it was beaten, 3-2, after trailing by three goals with five minutes left.
“You can have an evening like that when you are not particularly sparkling,” Mancini acknowledged. “They did very well. They got an early goal with a free kick and then we had to go at them, and they are very good on the break [counter-attack].
“Maybe we need to have a bit more concentration, but in defeats you look for blame and the blame is, in the end, mine, for a few things that I did.”
In Madrid, meanwhile, Luxemburgo was not about to shoulder any responsibility for Real’s 3-2 home loss to Celta Vigo.
“I don’t like making comments about referees,” he told the Spanish news agency Efe, “although it seems as if Celta’s third goal did not go in.
“The defeat hurts, but it will be good for the future.”
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Referees all too often are blamed when things go wrong, and that was certainly the case last week when Bulgaria was thumped, 3-0, by Sweden in a World Cup qualifying game played near Stockholm.
Bulgaria’s coach, Hristo Stoitchkov, who had more than a few run-ins with game officials during his years in Major League Soccer and elsewhere, lambasted Belgian referee Frank De Bleeckere, who had ejected Stoitchkov late in the match.
“The result was predetermined,” Stoitchkov told the Swedish newspaper Expressen. “When the man in black [the referee] wants to be the center of attention, it’s difficult to play.”
Stoitchkov also suggested that Lennart Johansson, the Swedish president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, had a hand in the result.
“It’s an insult to soccer, Stoitchkov said. “We have to stop the corruption.”
Johansson left the game early, which, Stoitchkov claimed, “showed the whole world once again that he does not love soccer. He is only interested in how to make more money.”
Bulgaria’s soccer federation immediately apologized for Stoitchkov’s “scandalous behavior,” but it was left to Johansson to express the comments that put Stoitchkov in his place.
Johansson said he had left the game before the end to avoid the crowd because his wife walks with the aid of crutches.
“I get pretty angry that a man in his position can make statements like this,” Johansson said. “It’s sad. We’re dealing with a good soccer player, but a very unskilled leader and careless man.”
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Look for the Galaxy to add a player before the international transfer window closes at midnight Wednesday.
Word around the Home Depot Center was that defensive midfielder Marcelo Saragosa might return to join fellow Brazilian Paulo Nagamura, but Doug Hamilton, the Galaxy’s president and general manager said the team was seeking help at two positions.
“We’ve been in discussions on a couple of things and I think there’s a chance that we’ll fill that last roster spot that we have open,” Hamilton said.
The spot became available when the Galaxy traded defender Paul Broome to Real Salt Lake in late June.
“If there is a way to get help out wide, I think we’d have to take it,” Hamilton said. “Other than that, if there is just a quality [player] out there that makes us a better team, we’d have to take” that player.
Even if he is signed, Saragosa, a starter for the Galaxy last season when he was on loan from Sao Paulo, is unlikely to be available for Wednesday night’s U.S. Open Cup semifinal against the Minnesota Thunder in Carson.
