Sevilla all at sea as Montella sees the door

Club struggling to adjust to life in the post-Monchi era

Joseph Sexton @josephsbcn

If Barcelona securing a 25th La Liga title in A Coruña ranked as the weekend’s least surprising news, then events a day before and 1,000 kilometres to the south must have run it a close second. Following Friday’s limp 2-1 defeat at 17th-placed Levante, Sevilla parted company with Vincenzo Montella.

The former Milan and Fiorentina boss had been in the job for less than four months. Yet despite taking them to a first Champions League quarter-final in 60 years — at the expense of Manchester United, no less — the question remains as to why he was ever appointed in the first place.

To say this season has been a rollercoaster ride for the club would be an understatement, but with no wins in their last nine matches, the simple fact is that Montella took a side who were in fifth position — two points behind Real Madrid in fourth — on his arrival to eighth, and outside the European places.

Remarkably, they have shipped five goals on six occasions already this season — most recently in last week’s Copa del Rey final against Barcelona — with their goals against column in La Liga a whopping 54; three more than bottom-placed Málaga.

Vincenzo Montella struggled and was shown the door by Sevilla at the weekend

“If Sevilla outran Barça like Montella said,” local daily Estadio Deportivo's editor Joaquin Adorna wrote witheringly last week, “Then it must have been some pretty brainless and pointless running.”

All of this off the back of their highest-ever single season playing budget, their record transfer total outlay, and their most expensive individual signing.

To analyse how we got here, one needs to look back to a couple of key departures last summer.

First of all, rockstar sporting director Monchi — the man who unearthed the likes Dani Alves, Júlio Baptista, Seydou Keita, and José Antonio Reyes, as well as bringing in the likes of Ivan Rakitic for peanuts — left the club after 17 stellar years in his post.

The current Roma recruiter set up a network of over 700 scouts worldwide, and netted the club an incredible €200 million net transfer profit during his tenure. It also represented the most successful period in the club’s history, with nine trophies; including five Europa Leagues.

Secondly, manager Jorge Sampaoli left to take charge of the Argentina national team. That left the club scrambling to find a like-for-like replacement for the Marcelo Bielsa disciple, and the obvious choice was Bielsa’s former assistant Eduardo Berizzo following his excellent three year run as head honcho at Celta Vigo.

The performances didn’t always convince under Berizzo, but the results were for the most part sound. However, having fallen out with the midfield lynchpin Steven N’Zonzi and been left fuming at the recruitment work of Monchi’s successor Óscar Arias, there was palpable tension in the air.

Arias in turn paid with his job last Thursday. In another piece entitled ‘Arias’s mortal deadly sins’, Estadio Deportivo laid a litany of failures firmly on his doorstep. 

With their record defensive signing Simon Kjaer enduring an injury-wracked campaign, they had only two fit centre backs for most of the season, and he was castigated for failing to secure the likes of Michy Batshuayi or Daniel Sturridge on loan in the winter, opting instead for Everton flop Sandro Ramírez.

Above all, the piece concluded, “he failed to recognise or learn from his mistakes.”

Into the breach steps their former manager Joaquín Caparrós, thirteen years down the road. Having spoken — but given little away — on the radio over the weekend, he was a little more generous at his official presentation on Monday.

“I’ve looked at the players,” he began. “And they’re in good physical shape, not as tired as they look from the outside.

“Now we need to work on the mental side, and break this cycle of poor results. I know the talent and quality of these players, now let’s see if we can achieve what we need to.”

What they need do is to overhaul seventh-placed Getafe to make it back into Europe. What will hurt more than anything is to see crosstown rivals Real Betis staring down at them from the lofty heights of fifth.

When Berizzo was sacked, somewhat heartlessly, a week after a successful operation on a cancerous tumour on December 22nd, Betis were languishing in 14th. 

The time between then and now has seen a stunning 16 point swing in favour of the side who won for the first time in over a decade by 5-3 at Sevilla in Montella’s first league game in charge.

They will contest the return fixture on Saturday 12 May in Caparrós’s second game in charge, the penultimate round of the season. But he refused to be drawn on the derby on Monday.

“We’re not going to think too far ahead. A few fine details will change, but nothing more. We need to take it step by step and not think beyond next Friday’s game [against Real Sociedad]. We have to be ready.”

Chat with Radio Cadena SER ahead of Ireland v Spain

Ahead of Ireland's game against Spain in group C, I spoke to Jesus Gallego on the Spanish national radio station Cadena SER about our chances of getting something against the World and European Champions.

The audio can be found below.

Joseph Sexton - Cadena SER Irlanda x España

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As the Los Che World Turns aka the Unai Emery story

 This article originally appeared on the excellent Forza Futbol website. Be sure and check out their regular podcast features on iTunes. Link to the original article here.
 

Special Guest writer and friend of Forza Futbol, Joseph Sexton joins us to pay tribute to the underappreciated Unai Emery. You can find more of his fabulous work at STV, the Irish Examiner, among others as well as talking on various shows and podcasts including WPFI and Forza Futbol! 

When the news broke last week that Valencia would be parting company with Unai Emery, it came as no great shock. The intolerance of los che supporters may be legendary by now. But the writing had been on the wall for some time.

On Monday, president Manuel Llorente paid tribute to the Basque trainer while confirming what we already knew- that former defensive stalwart Mauricio Pellegrino would be taking his post. Llorente’s words were kind, and they were also the truth. “We wish to thank Unai for four year’s great service at the club. His success in leading us into third spot again this season is something we are all grateful for”.

And is well worth reflecting upon that success. His predecessors- and Llorente’s- had led the club the brink of financial meltdown. Two league titles had been secured by Rafael Benítez, following on closely from two Champions League final appearances under Hector Cúper. It represented the most successful period in the club’s history.

But with wage costs already reaching unsustainable levels, Benítez departed under something of a cloud in 2004. Prior to that second title success, he had clashed repeatedly with the board over the provision and control of transfer funds in a manner rather reminiscent of his later travails atLiverpool. But rather than improve, the club’s fiscal position grew steadily worse.

There were the dud signings, a raft of whom followed in Claudio Ranieri’s second spell at the club. Not only were they duds on the pitch. What now appear to be ludicrously generous contractual terms were sanctioned, making it difficult to move them on elsewhere.

Managers were hired, fired, and compensated. Stability remained elusive. But what on the face of it looked to be a smart investment in the club’s future proved to be albatross around its neck.

A new stadium development was sanctioned, but before it was completed the bottom fell out of the Spanish property market. SuddenlyValencia were landed with two stadiums; one they couldn’t sell, and another they couldn’t afford to finish.

They were also stuck with €500m of debt.

To put that debt into perspective in relation to the club’s finances, they earned as much from domestic television rights last season as West Ham United did in England.

In England, West Ham had finished bottom of the pile.

It was into this environment that Unai Emery arrived four summers ago. What he has managed to achieve in that time represents something of a minor miracle. Year upon year, he’s been forced into selling off his best players. Yet every season, he’s kept them competitive on the pitch.

The club took a calculated gamble in 2009 in holding on to David Villa and David Silva in the hope of securing Champions League qualification and the financial fillip that would come with it.

That gamble was to pay off. Emery’s reward was to have both sold off to Barcelona and Manchester City. But he never complained.

Instead, he set about rebuilding the squad. As older players retired- or left- younger ones were brought in for lower fees, and more manageable contracts. On the park, they barely skipped a beat. Unable to match the behemoths of Real Madrid and Barça, they at least managed to plant themselves firmly ahead of the rest of the pack.

The fans never really took to Emery, however. A pragmatic, intelligent, and tactically flexible coach, he was accused of being too negative; too defensive. These criticisms seemed harsh. But then these are the same fans who booed both Benítez and Cúper before him.

Valencia could get down and dirty, as they did earlier this season in dumping Stoke City out of the Europa League. But they also remained capable of playing dazzling technical football. The curious aspect of Emery’s downfall is that his perceived negative streak never really sufficed to help them see out big games, while the more proactive aspects of his approach went unheralded.

They never managed to defeat Barcelona, despite coming agonisingly close on occasion. They never could live with Madrid. They never could get close to them in the league rankings either. Despite their final rankings under Emery, they never finished within 20 points of the pair.

At times, Emery was arguably guilty of over-thinking things. Rarely selecting the same personal or system in consecutive games, he preferred to cut his cloth to measure on a match by match basis. A man supremely confident in his own tactical nous, his chopping and changing became legendary. Sadly for him, so too did his side’s propensity for tossing away leads. In his four year tenure,Valencia have managed to surrender winning positions on more than 45 occasions.

That statistic at least allows us to see the fans’ ire in a more generous light. They were consistent, but at times also infuriating. That will go down as the greatest paradox of his reign. Good enough to set about what they were expected of, but not in a manner satisfactory to the Mestalla crowd.

They secured third spot again last weekend, but came worryingly close to throwing away what had been a commanding position there. They went out of the Europa League semi-final against Atlético Madrid with a whimper, losing 1-0 in their home leg have scraped a scarcely merited 4-2 defeat at the Vicente Calderon. And that is what ultimately sealed his fate. He departs having failed to secure any silverware.

At least he will be among old friends. Valery Karpin and Dmitry Popov- both former team-mates- are on the administrative staff at Spartak Moscow. Karpin indeed, is stepping aside from the manager’s seat following a turbulent period in the club’s history.

The east represents something of a never-never land for Western European coaches. Juande Ramos’ already dipping stock remains irreparably damaged following his disastrous tenure across town at CSKA though somehow he managed to rebound at Dnipro in the Ukraine. Luciano Spalletti has overseen a decisive shift in power to former capital at Zenit of Saint Petersburg. It is the Italian’s example Emery will seek to emulate. But to do so, he’ll have to unseat the former AS Roma boss as Russia’s top dog.

Meanwhile, what will happen next at Valencia is anyone’s guess. We have no way of judging how Mauricio Pellegrino will fare as boss. His experience to date has come solely in a supporting role, as first team coach and later assistant to Rafa Benítez at Liverpool & Inter. Top scorer, Roberto Soldado, spoke to French television on Monday about the possibility of joining Paris Saint-Germain. His international colleague Jordi Alba is poised to move the Camp Nou as Eric Abidal’s successor. Once again, the club will have to rebuild, and so with cut-price replacements.

Having got what they so evidently wanted, one now wonders if the supporters will be left learning that sometimes it is prudent to be careful what you wish for.

La Liga: Five reasons why Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid won the title

Joseph Sexton

for 

 

José Mourinho was tasked by Florentino Pérez in May 2010 to knock Barcelona off their perch. Last Wednesday, as the players held the Portuguese aloft at San Mamés, he had achieved that target. Real Madrid have now won 32 league titles in their glittering history. But few, if any, have come at the expense of a rival of such potency.  

That’s because few sides in the history of the game match up to the Catalans. To hoover up trophies as Barcelona have done under Pep Guardiola is something remarkable, and while many will focus on the style with which they achieved their success, less have looked at the hunger, the drive, that underpinned that. This year, Madrid’s hunger was insatiable, and this is why they are champions of Spain.

It’s been a bumpy ride for Mourinho. Discord within and without the camp have threatened to undermine the meringue challenge at key moments. Sometimes, internal grievances have received the most public of airings. At others, the vitriol of the press- many of the same Madrid-based ones who painted Mourinho as a saint before the bruising four game clásico series in April 2011- have latterly been queuing up to throw rocks.

At times, it seemed certain he would be departing at the end of this season. Few now doubt that he will stay. And if Madrid have bagged this title with considerable style, it is worth looking at some of the key factors behind their success

1. Benzema’s renaissance

José Mourinho had spent most of his first summer at Real moaning about the lack of strikers. When injury on the eve in that infamous 5-0 defeat at Camp Nou ruled Gonzalo Higuaín out for some 5 months, the cupboard was bare. Karim Benzema was a flagship Florentino Pérez signing, but the manager didn’t like the look of the young Frenchman. Nor was he impressed by his attitude. “When you don’t have a dog, sometimes you have to hunt with a cat”, he lamented. Rather than hunt with this cat, he signed Emanuel Adebayor on loan.

This season, Benzema has been a man reborn. Right from those two ferociously intense Supercopa clashes that opened the season, it was clear that he’d come back determined, and a few kilos lighter. Given his rival for the centre forward position’s numbers, supplanting Higuaín in the role is some achievement. His blend of finesse and physique has given defenders nightmares.

2. Sidelining Ricardo Carvalho

It might sound counterintuitive at first. For almost a decade now, Mourinho’s former Chelsea and Porto lieutenant had been one of the world’s top defenders- and one of the smartest. In his first season in Madrid, he had clearly been the top dog. But maybe time was catching up with.

Although initially an enforced move, moving Sergio Ramos to centre has made Real Madrid a better team. The Spain international may be guilty of positional lapses, but his athleticism allows Real to pressure much higher up the park than they could with Carvalho. Alongside Pepe, his aerial dominance has been a massive asset.

3. Attitude

Last year’s title was not lost in the clásicos- it was lost in defeats to lowly sides like Sporting and Osasuna, games where Real Madrid failed to score. Last September, the loss at Levante followed by a draw against Sporting suggested it might be more of the same again. Instead, they went on a run of wins extending all the way to the visit of Barcelona in December.

That clásico blew the title race wide open once more. Madrid’s capacity to respond would be everything.

They won their next ten games, as Barça shed further points.

Their ability to come back has also been a standout factor. Victories from losing positions against Rayo, Atlético, Mallorca, Athletic, Zaragoza, Levante, Sporting and Sevilla spoke of a side for whom that defeat was not an acceptable outcome. Real have beaten teams in a variety of ways this season, but it is this attitude that has helped them over the line.

4. Firepower

We’ve mentioned Benzema already. He now has 20 league goals. Despite his limited minutes, Higuaín has chipped in with 22. José Callejón has sprung 5 goals from the bench, many of them crucial in changing games. No full back has scored more than Marcelo. And only Lionel Messi has scored more than Cristiano Ronaldo’s 44. With David Villa injured, Barcelona have been overly dependent on Lionel Messi. Ronaldo may be equally totemic to his side, but it’s clear that his colleagues also know the way to goal. In all competitions, the trident of Ronaldo-Benzema-Higuaín have contributed a staggering total of 117 goals.

5 Put up- and... shut up

Just as in Italy, the press in Spain have been Mourinho’s bête noire. So charming and adept was he at pulling strings and setting the news agenda at Chelsea, it may be hard to fathom the antipathy that now exists between him and the media. But Milan, as Mourinho swiftly found out, is not England. And Real Madrid is a club like no other.

In his recent book, Graham Hunter illustrates just how badly Mourinho had misjudged matters a year ago. Puffed up by his side’s Copa del Rey final victory at the Mestalla the previous week, he went on the warpath against Barcelona’s coach ahead of the Champions League semi-final. Guardiola, a man so eloquent and dignified in his public persona that it almost seems painful for him at times, decided he’d had enough. The gloves were off. In a masterpiece of rhetoric, he responded to his rival’s jibes in the most forthright of manners.

More importantly, his team did the business on the pitch. For what good are words when you can’t back them up?

Ever since that moment sections of the Madrid-based press were out for Mourinho, and well he knew it. After all, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not all out to get you. Last weekend at the Santiago Bernabéu, Sid Lowe explained just how poisonous the relationship had become.

“It seems clear now that the initial agenda- at least from Marca- driven as ever some sections within the club, was to build José up as being the saviour. AS [the other principal Madrid sports daily], on the other hand, whose editor Alfredo Relaño has great admiration for this current Barça, always had a slightly different take. In the end, attending the post match briefings was joyless. At times, the prospect of dealing with Mourinho had become tense, to say the least. Sometimes, even the most innocuous of questions would draw a caustic and utterly dismissive response”. In the end, Mourinho chose to see agendas at play everywhere.

This is why the aftermath of their 1-1 draw at Villarreal marked a key turning point. For the second game in a row, Madrid had surrendered a lead to a late free kick. And not for the first time in recent weeks, they’d played well below par. Moreover- and at this point is worth noting Jorge Valdano’s words on Cadena SER that, if anyone had any right to be aggrieved, it was Villarreal- the officiating had infuriated Real. 

Fitness trainer, Rui Faría, had been sent to the stands in the first half. In the immediate aftermath of Villarreal’s equaliser, he was followed swiftly by Sergio Ramos, Mourinho himself, and Mesut Ozil of all people. Madrid had lost their heads; lost their papers, as the Spanish phrase goes. Their lead had been trimmed from 10 to 6 points. And their season was in danger of falling apart

Then, something unexpected happened. We waited for the denunciations of Mourinho. And waited.

In vain. For in his place came the number two, Aitor Karanka. The following weekend, the Basque former defender did the same. And every other week. In fact, outside of Champions League briefings, we’ve not heard from Mourinho since. Until, of course, last Wednesday. Mourinho had let himself down and been badly burned in his dealings with the press at the climax of last season. This year, he’d learned his lesson.

Sometimes it’s best to shut up. But you also have to front up.

Mourinho has done both.

You can follow Joseph @josephsbcn

This article originally appeared on STV Sport