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    Everton’s Identity Crisis

    Europe is filled with big clubs that lost their way. But soccer’s fallen giants will never rise again until they face what they’ve become.Frank Lampard can, at least, be sure that there will be no lasting damage. The disappointment of his firing as Everton manager will sting for a while, of course, but there is little reason to believe it will be held against him. A failure to meet expectations at Everton has long since become the sort of thing that might happen to anyone.It did not, after all, stop Carlo Ancelotti — who steered Everton to the dizzying heights of 10th in the Premier League in his sole full season at Goodison Park — from getting the Real Madrid job. Less than a year after leaving Merseyside, Ancelotti picked up his fourth Champions League trophy (a record), and became the first manager in history to win domestic titles in all of Europe’s five most illustrious leagues.Ancelotti’s predecessor at Goodison, Marco Silva, has not done quite so well, but his Fulham team currently sits seventh in the Premier League. Ronald Koeman left England with his reputation shredded, but he has since managed the Dutch national team, Barcelona, and the Dutch national team again. Roberto Martínez spent eight years in charge of Belgium; his next task is to take Portugal to the European Championship next summer.Indeed, of the six most recent (permanent) managers to have clasped English soccer’s great poisoned chalice before Lampard, so far only one — Sam Allardyce — failed to recover, and that might be attributed at least in part to his pre-existing, not especially flattering and largely self-inflicted caricature. (Rafa Benítez, whom Lampard replaced a year ago, has yet to return to work.)That is instructive. Only one of those managers, Ancelotti, left the club on his terms and with the broad beneficence of the fans. The rest left Goodison Park bilious, rancorous and, more than once, on the verge of outright mutiny.Frank Lampard in better days. (Spoiler: There weren’t a lot of those.)Geoff Caddick/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat so few of those managers have been sullied by the manner of their departures indicates that soccer, as a whole, does not feel Everton, these days, is the sort of place where a manager’s talent can be accurately gauged. Lampard — now four years into his managerial career and with little proof, either way, of whether he is particularly cut out for the job or not — will benefit from that just as Koeman, Silva and all of the others did.Why that should be, of course, has been outlined frequently in the days since Lampard was fired.As noted by this newsletter last week, Everton’s majority owner, Farhad Moshiri, lacks a clear vision for what he wants the club to be, other than — as a statement put it — not in the Premier League’s relegation zone. He has, in the six years since he bought Everton, spent something north of $500 million on players, but the recruitment has been so scattershot that it has incontrovertibly made the team worse.He appointed a director of football and then, by most accounts, did not empower him to sign anyone. He has hired and fired managers with such speed that Lampard’s team for his final game, a defeat at West Ham, contained players brought in by four of his predecessors. Everton is a patchwork of different influences and ideas and policies, a consequence of years of failure.Both among the club’s fan base and soccer’s professional commentariat, conventional wisdom has it that it is from there that the tendrils of Everton’s chronic disappointment, its permanent crisis, climb: not with the manager but with the system in which they are expected, forlornly, to work. It is, of course, correct. It may not, though, quite get to the root of the issue.For the youngest Everton fans, glory is just a story passed down the generations.Molly Darlington/ReutersIt is impossible to escape Everton’s history. It is there, emblazoned on the stadium, in a series of snapshots commemorating the club’s finest teams, its greatest achievements. It is there, in the words to “Grand Old Team,” the song that long served as one of the club’s prematch standards. It even warranted a mention in the statement Lampard released after his departure, in which he paid homage to the club’s “incredible” history.That is understandable: Everton’s history is unusually illustrious. It is, depending on your preferred metric, either the fourth most successful team in English history — in terms of league titles won, ahead of Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham — or the eighth, if total trophy haul is deemed a better measure. That history is, as it should be, a source of immense pride.It is also, though, a prison. The metastasis of soccer over the last two decades has, effectively, rendered history largely irrelevant as a marker of power. Everton’s nine league titles do not mean it earns more from the Premier League’s television deals than Brentford, just as A.C. Milan’s seven European Cups do not give it more financial firepower than Bournemouth (Champions League titles: zero).The past that brings charm can also hold a club back.Phil Noble/ReutersThe old hierarchies no longer hold, as the rise of Manchester City and Paris St.-Germain make clear, toppled and leveled by the flood of money rushing into the game from broadcasters and sponsors, from oligarchs and hedge funds. History is no longer a draw. Or, rather, it is not nearly so significant a draw as wealth, or prospects, or status, or facilities, or plans.That adjusted reality has affected the game’s self-appointed superpowers, of course, just as surely as it has affected the vast majority of clubs, the minnows and the traditionally mediocre, all of whom have been forced to adapt to narrowed horizons and limited ambitions.The impact has been most profound, though, on the class of club to which Everton belongs, those on the second rung of the game’s long established and now defunct power structure, those who are best regarded as soccer’s cruiserweights.Those teams can be placed, broadly, into two categories. There are those who have accommodated themselves to the way things are now, who have managed to carve out a new definition of success that enables them to find some contentment in a hostile environment.For Benfica and Ajax, say, that has taken the form of trading continental prominence for domestic supremacy, secured thanks to a steady stream of young talent. For Borussia Dortmund, it has involved accepting a place as the game’s most reliable springboard, a role as a midwife to greatness.Unlike some other faded powers, Benfica has found its place in the modern soccer economy, and in this season’s Champions League.Pedro Nunes/ReutersAnd then there are those who seem to be weighed down by the burden of their history: Valencia, Inter Milan, Marseille, Schalke, Hamburg, West Ham, Aston Villa and, of course, Everton, all unable or unwilling to adopt the methods of their former peers to stake out a new place for themselves.It is no surprise that these teams have become, for the most part, the most unstable, the least contented clubs in Europe. Happiness is a fleeting thing in soccer; elite sport does not lend itself to lasting satisfaction. But these clubs often seem the most unhappy, caught in a grinding, unending identity crisis, trapped between what they were and what they are.That is what lies at the heart of the modern Everton. Like Lampard, even Moshiri, to some extent, can be viewed as a consequence as much as a cause of the problem. The club was so desperate to be restored to what it once was that it sold itself to someone who — on the balance of the last six years — has very little clue what he is doing, beyond hiring famous managers and signing expensive players and hoping for the best.And it is what will continue to undermine Everton until it is resolved, as the teams above them streak away and the teams traditionally beneath them — the smart, progressive ones, at least — roar past. Everton has never been willing to surrender the idea that it is more than a way-station, that it is a destination sort of a club, even if doing so is the first step to returning itself to relevance. To do so would be to think small, and thinking small is unimaginable when you believe, when history dictates, that you are big.CorrespondenceThanks, first of all, to the half-dozen eagle-eyed readers who got in touch to inform me that I had my magical kingdoms mixed up: Disney World is in Florida, by all accounts, whereas Disneyland is in California. I have, alas, been to neither, owing to a lifelong — and to be honest perfectly logical — fear of giant anthropomorphized mice.The issue of celebrations, meanwhile, seems to animate even more of you than the misattribution of theme parks. “I wonder if goal celebrations can (or used to) be culture-specific,” wrote Thomas Bodenberg. “In 1994, Brazil played Sweden at the late, unlamented Pontiac Silverdome. When Kennet Andersson scored for Sweden, putting them 1-0 up, he just jogged stoically back to his end, awaiting kickoff. I wonder if that was more a product of Swedish culture than the individual.”Quick: Which player scored the goal here?Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat irks Allan Culham, on the other hand, is how often goal-scorers “do not recognize whoever set them up to get it. Often the assist is the most impressive part, but players celebrate as if it was a result of their effort alone.”It feels to me as if many players do, these days, opt for the “emphatic pointing” method of celebration, singling out the teammate who made the chance, but this hits upon an issue close to my heart, and one I have discussed with a host of current and former players: the cliché runs that scoring a goal is the hardest job in soccer, but I would contend that making one is infinitely more difficult. (They largely disagree with me.)Dan Lachman is not short on ambition. It is time, he wrote, to “retire” the tradition/habit/pretension of referring to players by the role seemingly predicated by their numbers. “Does the casual fan have any clue what a ‘No. 6’ is? How about calling it a holding, or defensive, midfielder? It’s time for this to go.”Oddly, this is a relatively new phenomenon: At a rough guess, the phrase “No. 6” would never have appeared in English commentary of a game even 10 years ago. It is a recent (and entirely harmless) import, and I would agree that it does not actually offer the clarity people assume. What a No. 6 does in Spain, say, is different from what one does in Germany, which is different again from how the Dutch perceive the position.Forward Lynn Williams wore the No. 6 in two recent victories for the U.S. women’s team. Lynn Williams is not a No. 6.Andrew Cornaga/PHOTOSPORT, via Associated PressAnd a forlorn request from Tony De Palma. “I long to know what is being sung by fans at Premier League stadia,” he wrote. “I love the feel of the spectacle, the ambient sound, but I am unable to make out all but the most well-known chants. How can I, an American onlooker, figure out what these English fans are singing?”Alas, Tony, the first assumption should always be that whatever it is, the lyrics would almost certainly make the Grey Lady blush. I remember going to a baseball game in San Francisco a few years ago with my wife, who is no fan of either sport. So powerful is social conditioning, though, that after a few minutes even she turned to me, with the air of a disappointed line manager conducting a performance review, and asked why it was that the fans were not swearing at the opposition team. More

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    Rangers, Celtic and the Perils of a Zero-Sum Game

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerOld Rivals, New Ideas and Why Some Clubs Are Reluctant to TryRangers and Celtic are so focused on beating one another that they may have lost sight of the future. In Brazil, two rivals enter the Copa Libertadores final toying with a new concept: coaching stability.Is it possible Rangers and Celtic are too tangled up in their rivalry for their own good?Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersJan. 29, 2021Updated 12:04 p.m. ETNobody wants to say it is over. Steven Gerrard, the Rangers manager, will not tempt fate. He will only believe the title is won, he has said, when the math says so. Neil Lennon, his counterpart at Celtic, similarly cannot concede defeat. His team, he has said, will keep going, keep fighting, while there is still some small glimmer of hope.But both must surely know that it is over, and has been for some time. It was over long before this last, toxic month, when Celtic staged a winter training break in Dubai in the middle of a pandemic and flew back into a coronavirus-infected storm.It was over before two Celtic players duly tested positive, before pretty much the whole first-team squad had to go into isolation, before criticism rained down on the club from the Scottish government and even its own fans. It was over before Lennon gave a startlingly bellicose news conference defending the trip only a few days after Celtic’s hierarchy had admitted it had been a mistake.All of that has served to foster a sense of crisis around Celtic, created an impression that the club was falling into disarray as its dream of a 10th straight league title disappeared, but the narrative does not quite match up to reality.Rangers has been clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership for some time, stretching further and further ahead of its great rival, the gap spooling and yawning until it became a chasm. Its lead currently stands at 23 points. Rangers needs to win only eight more games to be crowned Scottish champion again. Or, to put it another way: Rangers needs to win eight more games so that Celtic cannot be crowned Scottish champion again.It is hard to pinpoint, precisely, when the idea of Celtic’s winning 10 titles in a row was first touted as an ambition, or floated as a possibility. A mixture of instinct and memory suggests it was after the club had won three or four straight, in the early years of the last decade.It is easy, though, to see why it appealed. The power tussle between Rangers and Celtic — the twin, repelling poles of Scottish soccer — has long provided the driving animus in that country’s sporting conversation. With only occasional exceptions — particularly in the 1980s, when Hearts, Dundee United and Aberdeen all had their moment in the sun — the story of the former has felt like the story of the latter. Seasons turned on their head-to-head meetings. Trophies were a zero-sum game: the more won by one, the fewer by the other.Celtic has led Scotland in trophies, and confetti, for a decade.Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersIn 2012, though, the rivalry disappeared — if not as a sentiment, then certainly as an event. Rangers, after years of mismanagement, went into liquidation and was forced to start life again in Scotland’s semiprofessional fourth tier. Unmoored from its counterweight, Celtic effectively found itself in a league of its own, its financial firepower vastly superior to any of its putative rivals’, any challenge to its hegemony entirely theoretical.In lieu of an opponent, it set out to play against history. Celtic’s great team of the 1960s and 1970s had won nine league titles in a row. So, too, had the Rangers teams of the late 1980s and the 1990s. But nobody had ever made it to double figures. Celtic was in need of a target, and Scottish soccer in need of a plotline.And so, for the better part of the last decade, the quest for 10 in a row has consumed both sides of the Old Firm: for Celtic, the chance to outstrip its rival once and for all; for Rangers, an almost existential urgency to prevent it from happening.For several years, though, the achievement seemed inevitable. Even after it was restored to the top flight in 2015, Rangers was operating at such a vast financial disadvantage that the prospect of overhauling Celtic seemed fanciful. Under Brendan Rodgers and his successor, Lennon, Celtic completed the quadruple treble: winning all three of Scotland’s senior domestic competitions, four years in a row.And then, this season, it happened. Under Gerrard, now in his third season in his first managing job, Rangers has an air of invincibility. It has only conceded seven goals. At the same time, Celtic has all but collapsed. Though Lennon has pointed to the fact that his team has only lost twice in the league, he also has confessed that he does not know where his all-conquering players of the last few years “have gone.”Celtic has dreamed of 10 titles in a row for almost nine years. All of that work, all of that hope, has evaporated over the course of a few months. The race is over. The story is, too. And while one side of Glasgow will greet that with delight and the other with despair — happiness in soccer is a zero-sum game, too — that may be a good thing, for both teams.Steven Gerrard and Rangers can clinch the league as early as April.Credit…Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesScotland occupies a strange, outsize place in soccer’s landscape. By most measures, it is a small country: five and a half million people or so, roughly the same size as Slovakia, a little smaller than Bulgaria, half the size of Portugal.But partly because of its historical significance to the sport — it is the place that invented passing, inspired professionalism, produced some of the game’s most celebrated players, and for a considerable period of time quite likely possessed the best or second-best national team in the world — it does not judge itself like a small country.The fact, for example, that until it qualified for this summer’s postponed European Championship, Scotland had not been to a major tournament since 1998 was a source of the sort of embarrassment and disquiet that, in all likelihood, would not really happen in Slovakia (though, in fairness, Slovakia has been to major tournaments much more recently).The nature of the Old Firm, too — both the size and scope of its clubs, with their vast stadiums, global fan bases, rich histories and unyielding enmity — distorts the reality of Scottish soccer.What matters to Celtic and Rangers, at all times, is winning — to garland their own reputation and to dent that of their rival. It leads to a form of thinking in which tomorrow must necessarily be sacrificed for today, because losing today is unfathomable.That logic has been on full display as the thought of 10 in a row consumed both clubs. Celtic has failed to refresh its squad, fearful of the consequences of getting it wrong. Rangers has had to invest heavily, often in players in their peak years, in order to catch up as quickly as possible.But that approach is out of step with the most forward-thinking clubs in leagues of comparative size: places like Belgium, Denmark, Austria and, to an extent, even Portugal.There, even the most dominant clubs have accepted that they are no longer a destination, but a way-point on a journey. Teams like Club Bruges, Genk and Red Bull Salzburg may not have the history of the Glasgow clubs, but they are not without pride. Still, though, they have embraced the idea of being steppingstones and have made it work for them.They have worked to scour specific markets for players, offering them the chance to hone their craft in a Western European league before making the jump to one of the big five. They have focused almost exclusively on either recruiting or developing young players. In doing so, they have found not only domestic success but often European relevance, too.For fairness, this is a picture of Rangers celebrating.Credit…Mark Runnacles/Getty ImagesAnd this is a picture of Celtic celebrating.Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersThanks to the geographical and stylistic proximity of the Premier League — as well as their almost guaranteed places in European competition — Celtic and Rangers should be well-placed to do the same. Celtic, indeed, was the first point of arrival in Britain for the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Victor Wanyama.But the obsession with today, with outdoing each other, mitigates against it. Celtic has lost two of the stars of its academy to Bayern Munich in recent years; both should have been able to see a more viable pathway to first-team soccer in their homeland than at one of Europe’s superclubs.Though Celtic sold defender Jeremie Frimpong to Bayer Leverkusen this week, only three more of Lennon’s regulars are 23 or under. Only one, the French striker Odsonne Edouard, is likely to catch the eye of the Premier League. The Rangers squad is older still: Gerrard has fielded only one under-23 player, Ianis Hagi, regularly. His most salable asset is the controversial Colombian forward Alfredo Morelos.Rangers, of course, needs only to point at the league table to justify its approach, just as Celtic has done for the last nine years. But now it is over. There will be no 10 in a row. And as both teams ask themselves what comes next, they must determine whether it is enough to have eyes only for each other, or whether, perhaps, it is time to shift their horizons.Read This Before You Send That Angry NoteCan’t we all get along, at least in this newsletter?Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersTwo more Rangers-Celtic points before we move on:A NOTE ON NAMES Some Celtic fans, perhaps even a majority, reject the use of the term Old Firm. That was a rivalry, they say, between Celtic and Rangers, and it ended in 2012. The team that replaced Rangers, in their mind, is not that Rangers. It is just another team that plays in blue, in Glasgow, at Ibrox, called Rangers.ON THAT OTHER WORD From experience, the exact meaning and nature of the term liquidation, at least as it applies to the demise and revival of Rangers, is contested by Rangers fans. It is effectively impossible to write about this subject without transgressing some minor, semantic point of difference. When you don’t have a horse in the race, it is almost too much trouble to bother with.Now, onward.Long-Term Thinking and Short-Term RewardsFans turned out to see off Palmeiras as it departed for Saturday’s Copa Libertadores final.Credit…Amanda Perobelli/ReutersEven by the standards of Brazilian soccer managers, Cuca’s résumé is pretty remarkable. Not just for the successes it contains — half a dozen regional trophies, a national title, a Copa Libertadores — but for the sheer length of it. Cuca is 57. He has been coaching for 23 years. He is currently on his 27th job.All but one of those roles have been in his native Brazil. He has taken charge of Flamengo, Fluminense and Botafogo twice each. He coached Cruzeiro and Atlético Mineiro — fierce crosstown rivals in Belo Horizonte — back to back. Grêmio and São Paulo are on the list, too. In August, he was appointed coach of Santos for the third time.Five months later, he has steered the club to its first Copa Libertadores final since 2011. Whether or not Santos beats its local rival, Palmeiras — quick check; yep, Cuca has coached there too, twice — at the Maracanã on Saturday is unlikely to make much of a difference to Cuca’s long-term prospects. He led Atlético Mineiro to the biggest trophy in South American club soccer in July 2013. It was the first Copa Libertadores title in the club’s history. He was fired that December.Name a Brazilian club, and chances are good that Cuca has coached it.Credit…Pool photo by Alexandre SchneiderBrazilian soccer has been this way for some time, and its managers are accustomed to its volatility. Indeed, in some ways, both Cuca and his counterpart on Saturday — Abel Ferreira — are advertisements for its benefits. Ferreira has only been in his post since October. Cuca, by contrast, has almost had time to get comfortable: He rejoined Santos last August.And yet there are signs that this cycle may be changing. Palmeiras’s rationale for appointing Ferreira, a 42-year-old Portuguese, rather than plucking a name off Brazilian soccer’s endless carousel was that it wanted to build for the long term, rather than seek yet another short-term fix.In the context of Brazilian soccer, that makes sense. Each of Saturday’s finalists boasts a cadre of bright young things: Gabriel Menino, Gabriel Veron, Danilo and Patrick de Paula at Palmeiras; Kaio Jorge and the Venezuelan Yeferson Soteldo at Santos. What players at that stage of their development need is stability, a clear pathway, a long-term vision.Changing coaches is not in their interests, or those of their clubs, which rely on the transfer fees they can generate to compete. A second continental crown would be ample reward for Cuca’s long, circuitous journey. But so too would be the thought that it might buy him time to settle into a job for once.The Danger of Too Much, Too YoungAt Chelsea, all eyes have turned to Thomas Tuchel, who coached his first game Wednesday.Credit…Pool photo by Neil HallManagerial instability is, of course, not unique to Brazil. A few months after leading a young Chelsea team to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, and on the back of a career in which he became one of the greatest players in the club’s history, Frank Lampard was fired on Monday morning. His replacement, Thomas Tuchel, was in position by Tuesday afternoon.There has been an abundance of wailing and gnashing of teeth in England in the days since about what that might mean for the young players — Mason Mount, Reece James, Tammy Abraham and the rest — who flourished under Lampard’s aegis, but in truth those worries are misplaced.Tuchel, after all, has a background in youth coaching, and he made his name at Borussia Dortmund, a club that draws its very identity from the dynamism of youth. More tellingly, Tuchel took that approach with him to Paris St.-Germain, where he blooded a host of academy products in the superstar-infested first team.More interesting is what it means for Lampard. A few months ago, the Manchester City player Raheem Sterling questioned whether high-profile white players were more readily given opportunities in management than high-profile Black players.Lampard did not disagree with the general assertion, but resented the suggestion that he might be a living example of the phenomenon. “I certainly worked from the start of my career to try to get this opportunity,” he said. “And there’s a million things along the way that knock you, set you back, that you fight against.”At the time, it felt a little like Lampard had misunderstood the point — the difficulties he has faced are not equivalent to structural discrimination — and had also misinterpreted his own journey. His first managerial job was at Derby County, in the Championship. His second, a year later, was at Chelsea, in the Champions League. He had not, as a coach, experienced any setbacks at all.Now he has, and how he responds will be telling. It is fair to assume that he would have regarded Chelsea as the pinnacle of his managerial ambitions, the club he wanted to coach above all others. Will he now be prepared to work his way back up? How low will he be ready to drop to do so? And most of all: Will he be willing to undertake the journey without a clear destination in mind?CorrespondenceMesut Ozil’s move to Fenerbahce is a fresh start, not a swan song.Credit…Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA valid concern from Steve Marron over last week’s column on Mesut Ozil: “You make it sound like he’s retired,” he wrote. “Just because he’s not playing in the Premier League any more doesn’t mean he’s suddenly irrelevant.” No, of course not — and he may have a wonderful grandmother’s summer in Turkey — but it is legitimate, I think, to look back on his Arsenal career at this point, and ask whether he is remembered there as he should be.The issue of Inter Milan’s forthcoming rebranding, though, seemed to exercise more of you than expected — enough, in fact, that it is probably worth a more thorough investigation. The current crest “was designed by Giorgio Muggiani,” Gavin MacPhee, a man of exceptional musical taste, wrote. “It’s a testament to his craft that the crest, 113 years later, remains classic and modern at the same time. One wonders if Juventus’s ‘J’ will stand the test of time.”I think I know the answer to that. It is: “No.”Some looks never age: Ronaldo in 1998.Credit…Luca Bruno/Associated PressRomelu Lukaku on Tuesday.Credit…Matteo Bazzi/EPA, via ShutterstockCallum Tyler, meanwhile, wonders if the crest is not the most iconic component of Inter’s jersey. “To a certain generation, the Pirelli logo is arguably far more synonymous with Inter, its history, and personality. It’s been on the shirt since 1995. It has outlived four versions of the crest itself.”Pirelli, Inter’s sponsor for a generation, is likely to go in the rebranding, too — the Chinese company Evergrande is the favorite to replace it — and, weirdly, it will feel strange to see those blue-and-black stripes promoting something other than tires.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Chelsea Fires Frank Lampard as Manager

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHoping to Salvage a Troubled Season, Chelsea Fires Frank LampardLampard, a title-winning player, failed to draw out the same type of success from his team as a manager. The German Thomas Tuchel is expected to replace him.Frank Lampard’s job security vanished as Chelsea slipped down the Premier League standings.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainRory Smith and Jan. 25, 2021Updated 8:50 a.m. ETLONDON — Lying ninth in a congested Premier League table and with only two wins in its last eight league games, Chelsea confirmed on Monday morning that it had fired Frank Lampard, one of the club’s greatest players, from his post as head coach after 18 months in the role.Chelsea’s recent slide, despite a handful of expensive summer signings, had not only dashed any remaining hopes of contenting for the Premier League title but also imperiled the club’s chances of qualifying for next season’s Champions League, Europe’s richest club competition. Chelsea’s board said in a statement that an immediate change was the only option “to give the club time to improve performances and results this season.”Such is Lampard’s standing at Stamford Bridge — where he spent 13 years as a player, winning three Premier League titles, four F.A. Cups and the Champions League and establishing himself as Chelsea’s career goals leader — that Roman Abramovich, the club’s reclusive Russian owner, took the rare step of explaining his departure to the team’s fans.“This was a very difficult decision for the club, not least because I have an excellent personal relationship with Frank,” Abramovich, a largely silent presence in his 17 years at the club, said in a statement on Chelsea’s website. “I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man of great integrity and has the highest of work ethics. However, under current circumstances we believe it is best to change managers.”Lampard took the job in the summer of 2019, on the back of a single season’s experience as a manager at the Championship team Derby County. In his first year at Chelsea, he guided the club to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, despite the club’s losing his star, Eden Hazard, to Real Madrid and working under the restrictions of a FIFA-imposed transfer ban.The stakes this season were always likely to be higher: Chelsea spent $300 million on new players last summer, despite the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with a view to challenging Liverpool and Manchester City for the Premier League title.Under those increased demands, Lampard has struggled. Two of the most expensive summer signings, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, have made little impression, and the club has dropped out of the title race at the season’s halfway point.Fearful that qualification for next season’s Champions League was at risk, the club felt it had no choice but to act. Chelsea is expected to appoint Thomas Tuchel, the former Paris St.-Germain and Borussia Dortmund coach, as Lampard’s replacement.“We are grateful to Frank for what he has achieved in his time as head coach of the club,” the club said in a statement confirming his firing. “However, recent results and performances have not met the club’s expectations, leaving the club mid-table without any clear path to sustained improvement.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Petr Cech Is Still Saving Chelsea, This Time in New Role

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerPetr Cech Is in His Comfort Zone: In the Middle of EverythingFor the recently retired goalkeeper, a role as Chelsea’s technical director is appealing because of how different it is from playing.Petr Cech’s role as technical director at Chelsea calls on every bit of what he learned in the game.Credit…John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersDec. 24, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ETLONDON — Petr Cech does not watch a lot of television. Switching his brain off, by his own admission, does not come easily to him. He has always preferred, he said, to fill every minute of his day, not just with work and family but with a moderately intimidating litany of pastimes and projects. Settling down on the sofa counts, to his mind, as time wasted.This year, though, Cech and his wife, Martina, have started getting into “The Crown.” Even then, though, he is not the sort to allow himself to be washed away by the lavish Netflix melodrama. Each episode — he is somewhere in the middle of the second season — prompts him to go away and fill in the gaps in both his knowledge and the series’ contested historical authenticity.“Obviously it’s not completely accurate,” he said. “But there are lots of interesting things. You start Googling those parts of British history, and you realize there are lots of things you didn’t know.” That, just about, encapsulates Cech: He is inclined to see an hour or two of fairly mindless television in his rare downtime not as a chance to relax, but as a learning opportunity.That Cech has time to disappear down a rabbit hole about the Suez crisis — or anything else — is faintly remarkable. Spooling through all of the things he does, it is hard not to assume he is handcuffed by having a mere 24 hours in his day. He is studying for an M.B.A. He plays the drums well enough that last year he released a charity single with Roger Taylor of Queen.He is fluent in five languages — his native Czech, English, German, Spanish and French — but speaks seven. He admits, as if confessing to some great flaw, that he cannot write quite as well as he might like in Italian and Portuguese. He has started running, too; every so often he will knock out a quick 10K on a weekend morning.All of this, he said, means that his “time management has to be right.” These are extracurricular activities, after all. He also has a job to think about. Strictly speaking, in fact, he has two.Cech spent the bulk of his career at Chelsea, but finished it at its London rival Arsenal.Credit…Kerim Okten/European Pressphoto AgencyCech retired as a player in 2019 — after a decorated career spent at Rennes, Chelsea and, in his twilight, Arsenal. He made the decision before it was made for him; within a few months, he found that his “mind started to clear, that I had a new motivation, a new happiness.”He went back to the gym, reveling in the fact that his body — without “a big ball being fired at me at 60 miles an hour” hundreds of times every day — was recovering from the wear and tear it had endured. As far as he was concerned, his life as a player was over. He had plenty of job offers. The one that appealed the most was a post as technical director at Chelsea.He had been doing that for almost a year when the pandemic struck. Suddenly, he found himself dragged back to a life he thought he had left behind. “We were lucky to be able to finish the season,” he said. “But nobody knew how many players would get the virus, and we had really strict numbers and restrictions. Normally, if a player gets injured, you would take someone from the academy, but because we had to be in bubbles, that was not possible.“At one point, we were short a goalkeeper, so the solution was either I stepped in, or a goalkeeping coach did. I was fit, so I said OK.” It was intended as a precaution, a form of emergency cover, but Cech was still more than good enough to be a viable option. He was briefly registered on Chelsea’s squad list for the Champions League this season.His primary focus, though, what all of his other interests must swirl around, is his new role. Cech is — by English soccer’s standards — something of a rarity. In certain parts of continental Europe, and especially Germany, it is not unusual for high-profile players to eschew coaching and move into front-office roles immediately after retirement: Marc Overmars and Edwin van der Sar at Ajax; Leonardo at Paris St.-Germain; almost the entire off-field hierarchy at Bayern Munich.England is only now catching up. For the most part, where Premier League clubs employ a technical director, it is seen as a position for a recruitment specialist, someone who can navigate the choppy, unpredictable waters of soccer’s transfer market. Edu Gaspar, at Arsenal, and Cech, at Chelsea — both appointed last year, both with vast experience as top players — are exceptions.For Cech, the appeal of the job lies in how different it is from playing. He had thought in great depth about what he would do after he retired. He had, he said, realized after fracturing his skull in 2006 that “it took only a split second for everything to be finished.” He knew he had to be prepared.He studied for his coaching licenses while still playing — on international duty with the Czech Republic, he said, “there was always time” — but it occurred to him that coaches, essentially, live the same life as a player: “You spend time training, traveling, at games, in hotels. The routine is the same.”A front office role, by contrast, “allows me to be close to the game, but to organize things in a different way.” The challenge was that soccer the game and soccer the industry are distinct entities; a life in one does not wholly prepare you for a life in the other. Cech was, effectively, “starting from zero.”To some extent, what he has seen since has been eye-opening. Cech chose his agents at the age of 17; they still represent him now. He always made a point of knowing not only exactly what they were doing, but how they were doing it. He can see now, of course, that not every player is quite so thorough, and not every agent quite so transparent. “Lots of players leave things with the agent and carry on,” he said. “There are parts of football on this side that are very surprising, in a negative way.”For all that surprise, the early results suggest Cech is well suited to his new role. His playing career, as it turned out, was not entirely irrelevant. As a player, he was always involved with the various liaison committees that express the squad’s feelings to the club’s representatives. He feels, still, that he knows instinctively how players would react to certain suggestions.The luster his playing career carries can be an advantage, too. At one point this summer, he flew to Germany to meet with Kai Havertz, the playmaker Chelsea would eventually sign for $81 million.Cech’s contributions helped deliver the German forwards Timo Werner and Kai Havertz to the team coached by Frank Lampard, Cech’s former Chelsea teammate.Credit…Donall Farmer/Press Association, via Associated PressCech impressed Havertz’s family not only with the depth of his analysis but his human touch: He spent as much time discussing raising children in London and his own memories of moving to England as a young player as he did the 21-year-old Havertz’s role on the team. His mere presence, though, helped persuade Havertz: He was impressed that the player he had seen winning the Champions League in 2012 would come to see him in person.His other skills have proved useful, too. Earlier this year, Chelsea was trying to figure out how to make headway with the signing of the German forward Timo Werner. Liverpool was circling, and Frank Lampard, the Chelsea manager, and the club’s recruitment department, led by Scott McLachlan, were eager to find an edge in the chase.Over lunch at the club’s training facility one day, Cech pointed out that he spoke German. What if he called Werner directly? Those involved with the deal point to it as the decisive moment.But there is something broader, too, that has smoothed Cech’s transition. The position of technical director varies from club to club and country to country. In Chelsea’s case, Cech is there to tie together the various strands of the club’s sporting vision, the linchpin between the first team, the academy and the recruitment department. The business side is handled by Marina Granovskaia, Chelsea’s director and its de facto chief executive.It is, in other words, the sort of job that requires someone used to balancing a whole host of different demands and needs and priorities. Someone given to thinking in four dimensions to make sure their many and varied commitments can all be met. Someone, like Cech, who does not, as he put it, “like to waste time.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More