Bill
Moderator
Graffin said:Manchester City’s Coach: Honest, Charming and Winning With Style
By ROB HUGHESMAY 11, 2014
A gentleman coach arrived in England last year, and it is fair to say that the English media still do not quite know what to make of him. That in part is because the Chilean Manuel Pellegrini does not play the modern media game.
He has no time for spats with other coaches on the sidelines. He is what used to be called a player’s manager.
But as rain fell heavily upon Manchester last week, a banner in the crowd paid tribute to City’s quiet coach. “This Charming Man” it read, a reference to a 30-year-old song by the rock band The Smiths, who hailed from Manchester.
This man Pellegrini is an educated outsider, having studied civil engineering while he was still playing in Chile. However, the charm now is in his math: City has scored 102 goals in the league season, and its overall total of 154 goals in 56 games in all competitions under Pellegrini surpasses the 143 total of Manchester United’s famous Busby Babes in 1957-58.
“There are different ways to win titles,” the coach said at his news conference before City clinched the title by outclassing West Ham United, 2-0, on Sunday. “I choose this one, with attractive football. We have a style of play. We are always thinking to score goals. That, to me, has the same importance as winning the title.”
Photo
A banner paid tribute to City’s Manuel Pellegrini last Wednesday. It read “This Charming Man”, a reference to a song by the rock band The Smiths. Credit Jon Super/Associated Press
It is not simply scoring. Something has happened this season to transform the top of England’s Premier League from a place of caution and fear of defeat. Five of the top six teams — City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton, Tottenham — have attacked, and the only exception has been Chelsea.
The Chelsea coach, José Mourinho, has turned from his own description, “The Special One,” into The Sour One. He will on Monday present his employer, Roman Abramovich, with a detailed dossier on where things went wrong, and what it might cost to join the in-crowd of clubs now seemingly embarked upon winning, with style.
Pellegrini, though, will talk only about his players.
He inherited the bulk of the City squad from Roberto Mancini, the Italian who was fired last May. Mancini had won the English title the season before, but his moody personality had wrought division within the camp.
Pellegrini soothed the factions. David Silva, the Spanish creator whom the City fans call “El Mago,” the Magician, spoke on the club website this weekend of Pellegrini’s bringing “joy” and “freedom to express” talents within the team.
“If you are edgy out on the field,” Silva said, “that’s when things don’t work so well.”
Yaya Touré, the team’s midfield colossus, did not have to speak. His goal a week ago, when he sprinted 60 yards with the ball and outran player after Aston Villa player, was the embodiment of a freedom that most of us last saw on the playground.
Yet there were adjustments, sacrifices to be made. Vincent Kompany, the team’s Belgian captain, has spoken of the risks taken when six or seven of the players are encouraged by the coach to go forward seeking goals. The keeper, Joe Hart, had remained largely silent when Pellegrini took him out of the lineup for more than a month, shielding the England goalie from a worrisome period of lost confidence, while giving his understudy the chance that every No. 2 works for.
The key, say the players, is that the coach is honest at all times in his explanations of his decisions. Honest, calm, and not distracted by anything from the outside.
Pellegrini has been taunted by other managers. He made one uncharacteristic public slip when he blamed a Swedish referee for his team’s failure in the Champions League. And being an honest man, Pellegrini publicly made an apology about an hour later.
If we look back, we see the strength of character that this Chilean coach showed even before he was handed the richest collection of players in an English team. Players, incidentally, who are predominantly not English at all, outside of Hart and the industrious substitute James Milner.
Pellegrini’s credo, though, was there to see a decade ago when he coached, and coaxed, a little-known Villarreal side to third place in Spain. His always pleasing Villarreal team was affectionately known as “the yellow submarine.” It was easy on the eye, and it reached the semifinals of the Champions League.
During that time, the charming man that was Pellegrini mused that he had been “a dog” as a player, but he had changed.
It is a curious trait of the managers. Quite often those who were negative as players turn out to be coaches who seek to liberate the attacking qualities in players they manage. A dull, defensive player turns into a bright, creative coach.
“It was a pleasure to work with him,” Samir Nasri said Sunday. “Everybody put his ego to one side.”
As it happens, West Ham United, City’s final opponent of the season, once had such a manager. Ron Greenwood was a quite limited central defender as a player, but he built an ethos of open, stylish performances that ran through the teams he coached for West Ham.
Indeed, to this day, the Hammers fans will not accept anything as pragmatic as that of the current squad. Its coach, Sam Allardyce, is therefore under pressure to keep his job even though the first task of a manager at West Ham’s level is to keep the team in the Premier league.
Allardyce did that. The players at his disposal were nothing like the caliber of those brought to City’s Etihad Stadium — Kompany, Touré, Silva, Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko — and they cost nothing like them, either.
From here, City’s path is open to question. The Abu Dhabi rulers who have spent lavishly to raise the club now crave Champions League success. But UEFA, the governing body of Europe, is expected to impose a fine of 50 million pounds, or about $84 million, along with other penalties on City for spending beyond its soccer-related income.
Pellegrini may have to manage on less next season but is unlikely to change his style. This Charming Man, indeed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/s...est-charming-and-winning-with-style.html?_r=0
A cracking piece.