Oh, for Some Balance and Leadership

What Football Can Teach Us About Politics - Part 1

When I was in the shower yesterday, I naturally began mulling over Trump’s incoming government and contrasting it with the shower occupying Whitehall. Obviously, all of this made me think about football. And then I thought I could squeeze some vaguely satirical content from these brain waves. So here goes.

Putting together a winning team is a bit like alchemy. The best teams are frequently greater than the sum of their parts. Leadership is crucial. The ability to spot something in a player that others don’t. Think Brian Clough’s Derby County or Nottingham Forest. Two unfancied teams. But winners both.

Much was expected of England’s so-called ‘golden generation’ of the 2000s. But winners they certainly were not. Much less than the sum of their parts. A team of individuals. Too lopsided – no left wingers. Paul Scholes, one of England’s finest ever midfielders, shunted out to the left wing, ineffectual, unhappy. Lampard and Gerrard, two more of England’s finest ever midfielders, getting in each other’s way. Result: disappointment and soul-searching, tournament after tournament.

Now look at Team Labour. I know it’s a bit of a leap, an analogy stretched. But I liked the parallels as I turned up the heat before the gas reserves ran out. The Reds are in a similar predicament to the golden lot, you see. Not nearly as talented of course. But even more lopsided. A team packed with left wingers. No balance. Nothing up front and leaking goals for fun. Dreadful leadership. No wonder they keep losing in the polls. They’re all over the place.

Young Streeting occasionally shows some promise. He’ll sometimes find a pocket of space in the centre and try to exploit it, only to be let down by his teammates. He could be quite effective with the right team around him. But alas, chance after chance is squandered. Still, one for the future perhaps, and tipped for management one day.

It only gets worse, though.

There’s the curious case of Reeves. For a player with such an illustrious CV, you’re left wondering where all that supposed talent is. She claims to have played for various top clubs in her younger days, but when asked, none of her coaches or managers from the time seem to remember her. Former teammates who vaguely recall her tend to say she was “fucking useless.”

On her last major outing she had a shocker, scoring several own goals. Jeers rained down from the stands. Chants of “you don’t what you’re doing,” rang around the ground. Many have cancelled their season tickets. The club is bleeding money. And now the Premier League is concerned about financial viability. It's almost as if she hasn’t played the game at all. Quite reminiscent of Alli Dia at Southampton. But at least Graeme Souness had the good sense to hook him early, whereas head coach Starmer mystifyingly sticks by Reeves through thick and thin. She’s become a real liability.

Then we’ve got the big blundering mess that is Lammy. For some reason, he’s occupying that midfield role that requires a bit of finesse. A bit of fleet of foot allied with intelligence. The one who glides around the field like a Rolls Royce, quietly manipulating play, especially against tricky foreign opponents. This position is synonymous with class on the field and charm off of it. By contrast, Lammy is the proverbial square peg in a round hole. He doesn’t seem to know the role at all. He has no sense of positioning, loses the ball at vital moments, and commits blunder after blunder. His disciplinary record is shocking and his mouth gets him into trouble time and again. For sure, someone needs to take control of his Twitter account. He’d be better off in defence, although even there he’d make Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock look like Pele.

Cooper is another strange one. By no means a flamboyant player, she was nevertheless seen as a safe pair of hands in the middle of the park. Dependable, trustworthy, clean in possession, chipping in with the odd goal. Since the team won the trophy however, the occasion seems to have gone to her head. Now she flails around, lashing out at opponents, inflicting unnecessary fouls and overacting to innocuous challenges. With her fierce lunging tackles, she’s put numerous opponents out of action for months. And the season has barely begun. Luckily for Cooper, referees rarely give any decisions against the Reds, especially at home. The team may flounder around her, but at least opposition players are now reluctant to go in too hard against her.

Further up the pitch, Starmer has placed a great deal of faith in Miliband to deliver the goods up front. But like much of the rest of the team, he’s been a huge disappointment. Many foresaw this. He emerged from the shadow of his more talented brother in the 2010s, achieving his dream to lead the Reds as captain, but failed to perform in the following campaign against a very average Blues side who had signed too many Liberals. It was the Reds’ game to lose, and they duly followed through, edged out in 2015 in a tight contest. Now he’s back.

An ostensibly talented player, Miliband came through Oxford’s academy. While he’s single minded – a good quality for a striker – this is so often his downfall. Just one of his many flaws, in fact. He’ll shine in a meaningless summer exhibition game when nothing’s on the line, but will go missing in a crucial but frosty mid-winter clash when conditions are against him and everything’s at stake. He preens around the pitch thinking he’s a million dollars while his team mates frantically scramble around trying to summon some energy. He’s been accused of having an attitude problem, and slammed for costing the club huge amounts of money for essentially doing nothing. Although an experienced player, his decision-making is questionable to say the least, not helped by the dubious cabal of advisers he has surrounded himself with. Fancies himself as a rock star. Stubbornness is a major weakness; he seems to have a problem receiving constructive criticism. Some warn Starmer he’ll take the team down if not dropped.

The Reds would do well to utilise the bench. Veteran winger Stringer, for instance, could do a job down the right, providing much needed breadth. But he continues to languish in the reserves. Similarly, the team is crying out for a player like Duffield, who could be a good link player between left and right. However, she broke ranks and gave some unauthorised interviews, and Starmer never forgave her. She ended up being frozen out. Not on the bench, not even in the squad. She wound down her contract and is now a free agent.

Talking of Starmer, fans have been left to wonder what he's thinking. He’s had top jobs in the past. He seemed perfect for the role, impeccably dressed as he is on the touchline – Southgate-esque in demeanour – posh specs a-glinting. Surely he should be better than this? But he’s been a total disaster, like Rafa Benitez at Everton. What he has in sartorial elegance, he seriously lacks in nouse. His selections are highly questionable, his tactics, such as they are, are shambolic, and his team talks uninspiring. He refuses to make substitutions when the game is clearly slipping away from him – another trait he shares with Southgate. That he gets irritated at almost every press conference is perhaps a sign that he is not cut out for this level. Oh isn’t he precious! Think Ange Postecoglou, or Graham Taylor (RIP).

One wonders how they won the trophy in the first place. And with a record points total to boot (not since Tony Blair’s “wingless wonders” of ‘97 has a team accumulated more points). But the truth is, their points haul did not reflect performances. In fact, attendances declined amid a string of insipid displays. It’s not uncharitable to say that they won the title by default, largely because the Blues, their closest rivals, squandered a healthy lead last term and fell away catastrophically, having lost confidence and all sense of identity. Several changes in manager only seemed to accelerate The Blues’ decline.

Now the fans are flooding the radio phone-ins to call for Starmer to be sacked before it’s too late. But who to replace him? Young Streeting? Surely far too inexperienced. Lammy? They’d quickly become a laughing stock – they might as well go for Ralph Rangnick. Cooper? Hardly inspiring. But while a new manager bounce may help in the short-term, they look like certain relegation candidates.

It’s a cautionary tale. And such a contrast to the excitement on the other side of the Pond, which is covered in part two of this post.