Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, recently gave an interview in which
he set out what he believes to be the case against him. He said that the
English media did not like it that a coach from a small country such as
Israel had come to their league and was showing them how to win matches in a
different way. He is right about that last part.
Until Grant's arrival, matches had not been won in such a different way since
Sunndal, a Norwegian fourth division club, defeated Surnadal, their local
rivals, in a cup-tie in April 2000 by scoring directly from the kick-off as
the second half of extra time began while Olav Kare Fiske, the Surnadal
goalkeeper, was enthusiastically urinating against his goalpost. If Grant
could just persuade José Manuel Reina, the Liverpool goalkeeper, to
overindulge in the Powerade before kick-off this evening, he may crack that
method, too, and the way fortune had been favouring him these past few
weeks, do not bet against it.
The other ways of getting a result patented by Grant since his arrival in
England have also caught the attention. There is the one in which his team
are comprehensively outplayed for long periods before an opponent is
persuaded to head the ball into his own net in the fifth minute of injury
time. Another is to convince Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United
manager, to rest several of his most important players in an away match
against his biggest rivals, while fielding a striker who is plainly unfit.
Whatever alternative methods Grant is working on at Chelsea's training ground,
some form of mind control, as practised by Uri Geller, a compatriot, cannot
be ruled out. If Rafael Benítez names an unchanged team from the one that
represented Liverpool against Birmingham City last weekend, we will have the
proof.
Dumb luck and a deeply talented squad aside, what Grant believes these
different techniques to be is a mystery anyway. To most eyes Chelsea look
very much same old, same old; slightly more open to risk-taking than they
were under José Mourinho, but nowhere near as cavalier as Arsenal or United.
Grant has played Joe Cole more regularly, but so did Mourinho last season
and he may have restored him in this campaign had he been in the job beyond
September 19.
Michael Ballack was named as one of Mourinho's “untouchables” too. His
performances have improved under Grant, but that could equally be part of
the second-season syndrome that affects foreign players. Didier Drogba and
Michael Essien were also different animals second time around, having grown
used to the English game. That is the conundrum with Grant. It is possible
to see both sides of the argument on just about every topic that surrounds
him, which is why he polarises opinion like no other manager in the Barclays
Premier League.
If his team beat Liverpool to reach the Champions League final, he will go one
better than Mourinho at Chelsea and should be drowning in garlands and
plaudits. Yet there remains the nagging suspicion that he is a bluffer,
handed an amazing bounty of talent by an employer who is also a close
friend, and that Chelsea's revival has occurred despite him, not because of
him.
His detractors paint a picture of a Chelsea team who would run smoothly for at
least a season with the kitman in charge and say that the time to judge
Grant is 12 months on, when he has put his stamp on the place; but that is
impossible if he succeeds. No one can ignore the influence of a manager in
reaching a Champions League final and Grant would be no different. If
Chelsea win, he wins, simple as that.
Benítez knows this. The Liverpool manager is still given credit for a
Champions League final victory in 2005 that brought new meaning to the
notion of organised chaos. He has proven an outstanding tactician in Europe
on many occasions since, but on that night he got his game plan wrong in the
first half, went three goals down to AC Milan and then sought to change at
half-time.
This 15 minutes is regarded as his greatest triumph, but anecdotal
dressing-room evidence reveals that amid the confusion the first team set
out on the tactics board had ten players and the second had 12. Benítez
later admitted that he did not have sufficient command of the English
language to explain his thoughts to key members of the team.
Somehow, though, from disorder, Liverpool fought back to 3-3, took the match
to penalties and won. The football world remains nonplussed by the sequence
of events and even Benítez has said that when he reminisces about the squad
of players from that season, he finds its level of achievement hard to
conceive.
No matter. Overnight Benítez was recast as a genius because on lifting the
European Cup, the title is bestowed automatically. Sir Alex Ferguson, like
Benítez, was a brilliant manager long before his Champions League win, but
victory in that final in 1999, in which Bayern Munich were the better team,
earned him a knighthood. If Grant is victorious this evening and in Moscow,
the critics will cease to matter. Even if the goalkeeper is Olav Kare Fiske,
it will go down as the night on which Grant was elevated to football
nobility.
Considering the interpretation that board members and owners could put on
Grant's achievements, the League Managers Association must fear Chelsea's
short-term success more than most. What will it prove if a man with such
limited experience of big competitions and football beyond his own country -
and whose CV was, at face value, inadequate for the task expected of him -
wins the domestic title or the Champions League? Clearly, one reading of the
situation could be that if an owner assembles a squad of outstanding
players, he truly can put a chum in charge and it will still work out for
the best.
Now, of course, Chelsea's squad cost Roman Abramovich roughly £300 million and
few owners have that financial clout, but even so, if Grant thrives after
less than a season in the job, with a group of players (Nicolas Anelka
aside) that are not his own, is it any surprise that Sven-Göran Eriksson,
who is just about to lose his job as manager of Manchester City, was told by
Thaksin Shinawatra that transfer policy was no longer his to decide?
Some have argued that Grant's gloomy façade, with a look that suggests he is a
martyr to piles, is to be blamed for his failure to engage. His predecessor
was part of an American Express advertising campaign in which his pose drew
comparisons to the effortlessly cool detachment of James Bond. Mourinho was
always going to be a tough act to follow photographically, unless Abramovich
appointed Brad Pitt, but English football is littered with legendary
managers who were hardly darlings of the camera, not least Bob Paisley, one
of the greatest of all.
Society may have grown shallower, but it is not Grant's failure to challenge
Daniel Craig for the lead in Quantum of Solace (and what sort of damn fool
title for a Bond film is that, by the way) that is his problem. It is
something deeper. Football is respected as a bastion of meritocracy. We
believe that players are picked according to talent and regardless of race,
social status or connections. The complaints made by Sir Ian Botham that his
comprehensive school background and boisterous manner upset the authorities
in the world of cricket would never be heard in football.
The resentment of Grant, therefore, can be explained by the fact that his
elevation to a top job appears to have been achieved by nepotistic means. We
do not like it, in the same way that managers' sons are always given the
hardest time by supporters: think of Frank Lampard at West Ham United when
his father, Frank Sr, was assistant to Harry Redknapp, or Niko Kranjcar's
long battle for acceptance in the Croatia team during his father Zlatko's
time as manager.
We expect businesses to be inherited and we are all aware of the adage that it
isn't what you know but who you know that gets you on in life, but we wish
sport to be different. When Peter Kenyon, the Chelsea chief executive, first
went in search of a manager in 2004 the instruction was to get the best; by
2007 this message had been abandoned in favour of phoning a friend.
There was no quest for excellence. Mourinho left on Wednesday and by Friday
there was a man in his seat who had qualified on the back of two good
seasons at Maccabi Haifa, one at Maccabi Tel-Aviv and his rapport with the
guy who pays the bills. It did not seem right. Despite Grant's progress, it
still doesn't.
The other break that Grant has caught is his depiction as the underdog. A
genuine man in a vindictive world, blamed for his failings but rarely
credited for his achievements. Even with a team worth £300 million, people
feel a little sorry for him and it is true that he seems a decent sort. When
John Arne Riise put through his own net last week Grant did not attempt to
shake his hand, as he did Riise's team-mates as they left the field. He did
not wish to appear to be mocking the player by thanking him. It was a
thoughtful gesture, largely unnoticed.
Yet ultimately, unable to call his talents for certain, Grant will end up
being judged on results alone and the next four matches (or three if it goes
wrong this evening) will decide it. Right now he could be anything. He could
be an impostor or a pretender; he could be the champion of England or
Europe. Indeed, the way his luck has held this season, he could quite
probably still be Nancy.
