Manchester United, Liverpool, and The Long Ball PR Job
Eliot Rothwell |
January 17, 2017 |
1 Comment
Football News 24/7
After the match between Manchester United and Liverpool, the managers of the two clubs used the post-match tunnel interview to aim a little jab at the other. Jose Mourinho, often shade-thrower in-chief, suggested that it was nice to see that Liverpool can also play “defensively”. Jurgen Klopp, speaking after Mourinho, twice mentioned United’s use of “long balls” in his interview with Sky Sports.
The point, for both managers, was to try and frame the way the game was perceived afterwards. Both attempted to take something away from the other team’s performance by utilising two concepts that English football is hung up on: defensive football and long balls. Gaining points through the use of defensive football or long balls is often externally portrayed as inferior, befitting of a “smaller” club. To win a match is one thing, but there is also a morally correct way to go about doing so. It’s the sort of lesson that Brian Clough sketched out long ago, in conversation with Don Revie. You can win, or you can win “better”.
For Mourinho and Klopp, the comments also served another purpose. It allowed both managers to edge away from questions about dropping points and failing to win. Each of the pair could point to the other’s spoiling tactics as a reason for the draw. If only they hadn’t shied away from a real contest with their “defensive” football. If only they had tried to fashion openings rather than resort to “long balls”. If only the other hadn’t had broken the moral code.
In framing the result this way, each of the two managers revealed something about themselves and their self-perceptions. For years, Mourinho has sought to edge away from the categorisation as a defensive coach. The Catenaccio of Inter’s second-leg performance against Barcelona is, in Mourinho’s mind, outweighed by the dominant performance in the third. The defensive jibes, so often used, for some reason, to try and belittle achievements, bother Mourinho. That they should, or that playing defensively should even be considered in some way as less legitimate than playing offensively, is another matter. Mourinho has accepted that “defensive” is a tag that carries negative weight in England. His comments about Liverpool, then, seek to remove some legitimacy from their point and reposition himself as the attacking coach held to a draw by a defensive spoiler.
Klopp, meanwhile, knows he has a problem with long balls but also knows that resorting to them is regarded as inferior, as the coverage around Louis van Gaal demonstrated. So, when Klopp suggests that the last portion of the game was just “25 minutes in the air”, he knows there will be a receptive audience. But it also masks the problem that pressing, or gegenpressing, has with lofted balls. At Borussia Dortmund, Klopp’s side suffered when Pep Guardiola took the unconventional step of pushing Javi Martinez into a sort of attacking midfield target man role. The plan, which worked, was to circumvent Klopp’s initial press, launching balls over it and leaving the Dortmund forwards stranded at the top of the pitch. After realising that Liverpool were leaving Michael Carrick with little room to manoeuvre, Mourinho eventually used a similar tactic with Fellaini. Adam Lallana, Roberto Firminho and Divock Origi are excellent pressers, but if the opposition defence refuses to take possession, they are left with little to press.
What we’re left with is two managers, two comments, two deflections and two shared points. Neither was completely happy with the game and neither was able to accept that the other team deserved a point. Instead, both tried to diminish the other as defensive and long ball, confident that we will continue to get hung up on whether either side was, in fact, defensive or used long balls. They know us too well.
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Or in other words Jose had a plan B when plan A is not working….is that not what he is paid to do