The theory behind Wenger’s strategy is a bit like Malcolm Gladwell’s tipping point.
He wants to grow a team and play the game his own way.
A group of young players trains together, bonds together, improves season by season, and after about four or five years it becomes experienced and confident enough to go on long unbeaten runs and win the league. The group will finally blossom into greatness, bond into something unbreakable and unbeatable.
Will that strategy ever work?
Not if key players leave. Arsenal were top of the table for six months, promised a lot, then Flamini and Hleb left. After that, a decline.
The strategy hasn’t worked for four years, so can it work this season? Can young players learn without communicative senior players to learn from? Is a training regime that concentrates on what the players are good at, and ignores what they’re not good at, ever going to allow Arsenal to compete with serious clubs like Barcelona, Chelsea, Man United, who can defend as well as attack? Is Wenger’s beloved and oft-repeated concept of ” shared leadership” a valid one?
After so much talk about the ghastly Adebarndoor, I felt the need to see a quality striker, so I watched Benzema last night.
Kaka’s still on holiday, Cristiano’s repertoire is familiar to all of us, so Karim Benzema, the £30 million centre forward from Lyon, was the player I wanted to see.
Shamrock Rovers v Real Madrid was 0-0 at half time, with the Irish boys working hard and an 11,000 crowd enjoying the occasion. Rovers are 20 games into their summer league and this was Madrid’s first pre-season friendly.
New coach Manuel Pellegrini made nine changes at half time, taking off Ronaldo, Raul and Higuain up front and bringing on Benzema, Negredo and Van der Vaart.
He didn’t play Ronaldo and Benzema together. A shame, as I wanted to see how those two would combine, see whether Benzema was willing to make Ronaldo look good.
After 87 minutes it was still 0-0 and then left back Gabriel Heinze hit a 60-yard diagonal ball to Benzema, who was loitering on the right flank. As the ball bounced, the big man jabbed the ball across the defender with the inside of his right foot, cruised into the box, placed his body just beyond the ball, sat the goalkeeper down, and stroked his shot sweetly across the keeper. Yes, it was a pre-season goal against tired part-timers, but it had an unmistakeable stamp of authority. That goal oozed intelligence and authority. It was magisterial. His first touch was ball control of the highest order, absolutely flawless, and, crucially, it was married to a sublime grasp of the geometry involved. Only a very special player could have made those angles and scored that goal in that way.
Benzema didn’t celebrate, just smiled a small private smile. His goal reminded me of seeing the young Eric Cantona at Highbury one night, playing against England Under-21s, who had Paul Davis at No.4 as an overage player. Davis hit a long, craftily lofted ball down the middle of the field and Gazza raced onto it to score at full-tilt, with a flourish. One pass beat the whole French defence and Gazza’s swaggering finish was very uninhibited, funny and memorable.
That night Eric Cantona was tall, erect, slim, blue-shirted and he skipped over the turf like a dancer. He wasn’t in the game much but he scored two tasty goals and I said, “He’s like Van Basten with muscles.” In the fullness of time, after Cantona joined Man United, I realised that my first impression was wide of the mark. Cantona was nothing like Marco van Basten.
For me, Karim Benzema is a mixture of Zidane, Cantona and Martin Chivers.
Someone, a French player or reporter, said that Zidane had the body of a bear and the mind of a fox. He was, in other words, very strong and very cunning. Martin Chivers was a tall, broad-shouldered centre forward who played for Southampton, Spurs and England. A two-footed technician, a big man with excellent close control, Chivers was fast without looking fast, a player who could dawdle and cruise and hit explosive shots and time near-post headers perfectly. I thought he was the best centre forward in Europe for a short time, for a year around 1972.
Watching Peter Osgood and Martin Chivers, I used to think : The most exciting thing in football is a big man with skill and pace.
Watching Benzema, I think : if he’s not a great player, my name is Sir Nigel Gunshot-Wound.
On Arsenal, I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for writing about players from the French league that Wenger might sign. Most of them are third-rate anyway, except for a couple who are second-rate.
I’m not convinced he’ll replace Adebayor.
When he does, if he does, I’ll write about the player. Until then, ciao.
