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Subject: Re: Capello is an ahole
Date: 30 Apr 1997 14:25:19 GMT
From: stokkerm@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Karel Stokkermans)
Steve Jones writes:
> anonymous poster writes:
> > I'm not contesting what Bobby Robson did in the English soccer.
> > He may be "one of the best in English football". In Europe, however...
> He also did rather well at PSV, although did fail to win the Europot they
> wanted.
Losing against Montpellier in the first round of the CWC was a great
disappointment, and the success in the domestic league never really made
up for it. When Robson came to PSV, PSV had won the league 4 out of the
5 previous seasons. (And in the fifth season, PSV basically threw the
title to Ajax because of internal bickering - a quick look at the
respective goal differences (Ajax won the title with 1 point advantage)
says it all.) When Robson came, PSV had easily the best team in the
Netherlands, and the margins by which he managed to win the title were
actually disappointing (once on goal difference, once with 3 points);
moreover, the European success in the 3 years before Robson (one Champions
Cup win and two more quarterfinals; moreover, some of the best matches
ever seen in the Netherlands, a 5-0 destruction of Porto and a 5-1
demolition of Steaua) disappeared (and hasn't been regained since).
Robson may have been very happy about those two championships because he
never had won one before - PSV fans didn't really care about them at the
time: the title was taken for granted.
Robson was appointed because the PSV management thought he was authoritarian
enough to stop the internal problems, not because they thought him a great
trainer. They were right. PSV won the league with less than brilliant
football and with only two players playing up to potential: Stans Valckx
and Twan Schepers. Valckx is an uncompromising defender who enjoys his
beer and Schepers was an eager youngster without much talent.
Sure, things got even worse after Robson. The coach after Robson was Hans
Westerhof (and an absolute disaster he was - taken only because his club
Groningen had beaten PSV 4-1 during the run-in towards Robson's last title),
and after that, even more unbelievably, Aad de Mos, who was a failure
everywhere except in Mechelen (but is even more a media figure than Beenhakker,
another wildly overestimated coach). However, if you want to prove Robson's
greatness by comparing his record with Westerhof's, I'd suggest you're on
the wrong track.
As far as I'm concerned, Guus Hiddink has proved to be a better club trainer
than Robson, and he may yet equal his record for the country as well. (What
did Robson do for England in all those years before 1990? Beating Paraguay
in Mexico and qualifying for the European Championships in 1988 is about it,
right?)
> He took England to the World Cup semis loosing only on penalties.
> At the end of this season he will probably have won titles in 4 different
I suppose titles include cup wins? He'll have won championships in Portugal
and the Netherlands, on all occasions with squads far superior to their
competitors. At Barcelona he now has a squad only marginally superior to
Real's, but certainly superior to that of Betis and Depor, and what does he
do with it? Can you see Robson win the Spanish league four years in succession
like Cruijff did? Can you see him win the Spanish league at all, ever?
> countries. He took Ipswich Town for pities sake to European glory. Capello
> has taken two very big clubs to titles, Porto are the biggest in Portugal,
> but Ajax are bigger than PSV, and there are many clubs bigger than
> Ipswich in England.
But he never won the title with Ipswich, did he? And Ajax were in no way
bigger than PSV between 1985 and 1992. (Robson was there in 90/91 and 91/92
and basically has Hiddink and Romario to thank for his Dutch titles.)
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Subject: Re: Capello is an ahole
Date: 30 Apr 1997 17:07:35 +0200
From: Steve Jones - JON
Karel Stokkermans writes:
[snip]
> But he never won the title with Ipswich, did he? And Ajax were in no way
> bigger than PSV between 1985 and 1992. (Robson was there in 90/91 and 91/92
> and basically has Hiddink and Romario to thank for his Dutch titles.)
[snip]
Yes but he was competing with probably the best european side of the
last 30 years for the English league title, admittedly therefore it
was much easier to win a europot but that is still a reasonable achievement.
As for what he did for England, in Mexico we came up against Diego at his
brilliant best and nearly won, the European championships were a failure
but Italia 90 was once again close to being the complete article. He
hasn't as succesful since losing that job, but I think Barca will find it
hard to get a better replacement. For me Capello took the most succesful
club side of the time and turned it into.... the most succesful club side
of the time at Milan and at Real he has taken big buckets of cash and
managed it into a title. Both appear to have suffered at the hand of
egotistical players, chairmen and fans who all feel that they could do
the job better, will any other managers be able to cope with all the
tantrums and running to the press ?
Both are good managers, whether Cruyff would have won 4 titles if faced
with a decent manager at Real is also a great "what if". Personally
I wish that Robson was still England manager as I don't feel the three
that have followed are as good.
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Subject: Re: Capello is an ahole
Date: 30 Apr 1997
From: stokkerm@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Karel Stokkermans)
Steve Jones writes:
> Yes but he was competing with probably the best european side of the
> last 30 years for the English league title, admittedly therefore it
The best European side of the last 30 years? That would be Aston Villa
in 1981?? (I mean, 1980/81 was the only year Ipswich were really competing
for the title if I remember correctly.)
And the last 30 years still include such teams as Ajax in the early seventies,
Bayern in the mid-seventies, and Milan in the late eighties - certainly Ajax
and Milan have at least as valid claims to that title of best European side
of those thirty years as the one you seem to have in mind...
> was much easier to win a europot but that is still a reasonable achievement.
I don't think it's easy to win any European Cup, and Robson certainly did fine
to win it with a club like Ipswich Town, but let's not forget Ipswich had a
few uncommonly good players at the time (two of them Dutch I'm compelled to
add), and many other "small" clubs made European headlines in those days (the
CWC final that year had Dynamo Tbilisi facing Carl Zeiss Jena after all, and
Ipswich's final opponents weren't a traditional power either...).
> As for what he did for England, in Mexico we came up against Diego at his
> brilliant best and nearly won,
Nearly won? Nearly drew, you meant to say, surely, and I don't think the
English performance against Morocco that year was particularly impressive.
> the European championships were a failure
Of course you did play the two finalists - actually I don't think England
were all that bad during that championship, but one away win in Yugoslavia
had the press going wild for no good reason.
> but Italia 90 was once again close to being the complete article. He
Close? Of course, if your best matches are the ones in which you lose,
there is a temptation to think that you might have gone further, but none
of the group matches was particularly brilliant and though both penalty
decisions against Cameroon were correct, it's not like you outplayed them...
You might as well argue that Brazil came close that World Cup, or Yugoslavia.
> hasn't as succesful since losing that job, but I think Barca will find it
> hard to get a better replacement.
I'm sure Van Gaal will make more of it.
> [Capello]
I'm not acclaiming Capello as the greatest coach of the world either - I think
his teams play fairly dull and boring, though efficient football.
> [...] will any other managers be able to cope with all the
> tantrums and running to the press ?
It's interesting to see how two Dutch managers somehow managed to guide
those clubs to a load of successive titles - and let me hasten to add that
I'm not all that impressed by either Beenhakker (anyone could have won
Spanish league titles with Real at the time) or Cruijff (who never won
anything of significance as a coach in the Dutch league but must take
credit for the way he transformed Barcelona from the most spectacularly
unsuccessful European giant to one of the best clubs in the world).
The best manager in Spain over the past couple of years is probably Antic.
> Personally I wish that Robson was still England manager as I don't feel
> the three that have followed are as good.
I'd agree as far as Venables and Taylor are concerned; judging Hoddle is
perhaps a bit premature.
==============================
Subject: Re: The England squad
Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 17:40:01 GMT
From: Snaps@kavana.u-net.com (Snaps)
Steve Jones - JON wrote:
> did Robson ever even think that the best way to play Lineker was
> to get him to hold the ball up for Robson or Beardo to run on to ?
Let's not forget that Robson was so tactically naive that he thought
playing a sweeper was a negative back-step to defensive football. Bryan
Robson, Chris Waddle, John Barnes and Peter Beardsley had to beg the
reluctant Bobby "4-4-2" Robson to let England play with a sweeper during
Italia 90 following that horrible, horrible game against Ireland (a
match that is possibly the second most tedious World Cup game of all
time, after Norway-Ireland from 1994). By the end of the tournament
England looked a quality team and Mark Wright - believe it or not - was
voted the best sweeper in the World Cup by Corriere Dello Sport! All
thanks to player-power.
We also shouldn't forget (as if we ever will) the shambolic performance
of Robson's England in the 1988 European Championships. You rightly
criticise Hoddle for playing Sol Campbell, but that decision is the
merest managerial blip in comparison to Robson's brainwave of putting
21-year-old Tony Adams up as sacrificial lamb for Marco Van Bastard. (I
made that name up to please Benny).
You say Sol Campbell. I say Terry Fenwick. You say Ian Walker. I say
Neil Webb. You say Andy Cole. I say John Fashanu, Steve Bull and Tony
Cottee.