Manchester United have become a little like a Stewart Lee routine. Every time you think you have heard the payoff, along comes another line to add a new layer to the layers.
The punchline wasn’t the defeat to Watford. It wasn’t the miserable performance after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had spoken of needing a resilient response. It wasn’t Solskjaer’s sacking. It wasn’t even Solskjaer’s farewell interview.
Because on Monday morning, reports suggested that Ed Woodward has magnanimously offered to stay on to steer Manchester United through these choppy waters. And as punchlines go, it’s a doozy. You have to admire the chutzpah, if nothing else. “A crisis, you say – well I’m your man for that. After all, I’ve spent the last two years managing through a crisis, haven’t I? I will be taking no more questions at this time.”
In Woodward’s offer, the truth of Solskjaer’s lot emerges. He was wholly unfit for the task of long-term elite coach – that was clear to many painfully early on – but he was a useful human shield for the mess that sits above him. It’s like when a small child promises to tidy their room and then places a large soft toy in front of the cupboard to stop the detritus spilling out onto the floor. Solskjaer smiled a lot, talked about positive vibes on demand and was friendly on a Zoom call. To Manchester United’s hierarchy, that was uniquely helpful.
That game is now up for Manchester United. On the pitch, they have quickly learned that shiny new toys do good numbers for the brand but do not a cohesive system make. Their finances remain healthy, buoyed by historic strength and a global fanbase, but cannot persevere forever if the team isn’t winning. It is, to be blunt, time to get someone in who really knows what they are doing (sorry Ole) but won’t fall out with everyone in the process (sorry Jose). Step forward Mauricio Pochettino.
Pochettino has been here before. He was Manchester United’s initial first choice to replace Mourinho, before they became bewitched by the notion that an effective interim manager could become a Fergie-lite sovereign. Pochettino made no secret of his desire to manage United then and he is apparently making little secret of that desire now.
For Manchester United, this would represent a move back in the right direction. They would be owning their previous mistake, finally prioritising logic over romantic nostalgia and accepting that the last 18 months, the period after which Solskjaer repaired the post-Mourinho damage, have been squandered. Solskjaer taking Manchester United to second last season can be presented as a success story, but that is merely a mirage. They were closer to Tottenham in seventh than Manchester City, one place above them. For a club that determines its health on the seriousness of its title challenges, United haven’t managed one since Ferguson’s departure.
But what of Pochettino’s current employers, the ones that currently top their domestic league by 11 points and are in a stronger position than Manchester United to qualify from their Champions League group? What does it say that their manager is so keen to be linked to United?
There is a delicious irony to PSG regularly changing managers in pursuit of the Champions League trophy that eludes them and then seeing those discarded managers winning European trophies. Carlo Ancelotti left and won the European Cup with Real Madrid. Unai Emery left and won the Europa League with Villarreal. Thomas Tuchel left and won the European Cup with Chelsea. It’s quite the job advert: “Come to Paris – you’ll realise your dreams (just not here)”.
It sells the PSG job as nothing more than a placeholder, a destination where managers go to understand what made life so enjoyable at other clubs free from messy politics and deafening mania. They have become a modern morality tale: you can have all the money in the world, easy league titles, an outrageous squad, the best player in the game’s history and live in one of the most wonderful cities on earth – but can you ever be happy?
PSG are the superclub where no manager can really fail, or at least not to the extent that their reputation is damaged enough to make them toxic to other elite clubs, but they can never truly succeed either because only one trophy will do and the mass of superegos and prioritisation of attacking talent only takes them so far in it every year.
That puts Pochettino in a bizarre position, at the mercy of two clubs with grand ambitions but political strife that threatens to suffocate them. At best he is jumping from fire to frying pan, swapping one club with myriad individual talents that struggle to squeeze them all into one system for another. He has watched on from afar as Old Trafford became engulfed in farce. But if Manchester United have become a circus, it doesn’t say much for life at Paris Saint-Germain that Pochettino is so desperate to run away and join it.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/30LVmPL
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