25-26 Feb was a large weekend in football. I was in Shepherd's Bush for the big London derby between local rivals QPR and Fulham. The following day up North there was another derby featuring Arsenal and Spurs while later the same afternoon the Carling Cup final took place at Wembley where Liverpool took on Championship side Cardiff City. Whilst travelling to the match I continued to read War and Peace. The final 25% or so of the novel contains a great deal of philosophical musings on a number of subjects, amongst them the writing of History and the leadership of great men.
Tolstoy asserts that the so called great men who populate history books are nothing of the kind. Rather than being in possession of some kind of genius that enables them to predict the future course of events so that they can plan accordingly he suggests they are, if anything, even more at the mercy of events than the rest of us. My theory is that the same goes for football managers. The games this weekend were full of managerial malarky.
Martin Jol's Fulham side rocked up to the Bush seeking to prove how wrong Mark Hughes was to cite "lack of ambition" as a reason for leaving the sweet Thames-side turf of Craven Cottage for the ruff n tuff grime of a roundabout in West London. It didn't really matter how much QPR trained or what the tactical plan was as they had a man sent off in the first half for the second time in as many home games. You can't really plan for that. After the match Hughes tried to blame himself suggesting that Samba Diakite was new to the Premier league and shouldn't have been introduced to the blood and thunder quite so soon. But you just knew that if he hadn't played Samba Diakite and QPR had lost he would have been questioned for leaving a new signing on the bench when he appeared to be just what was needed on the pitch.
The North London derby featured two managers with wildly contrasting recent fortunes. Arsene Wenger's side had just been thrashed 4 - 0 in the Champions League by Inter Milan, pretty much ensuring their exit from the lucrative competition. The radio waves had been jammed for a week with irate fans demanding the head of perhaps their most successful manager ever on a plate. Wenger's Arsenal faced Harry Redknapp's Spurs who are flying in the league and look set to finish higher than their rivals for the first time in years. Open any paper and Redknapp was being spoken of as the finest English manager for a generation, a sure thing to be next England manager where his undoubted tactical genius/motivational skills were sure to result in a bulging trophy cabinet at Wembley after many years of national pain. After half an hour or so Spurs were 2 - 0 up and the hacks were salivating about the demise of Wenger. By full time Arsenal had spanked Spurs 5-2 and Wenger was a genius again. Redknapp meanwhile was already said to be suffering from the curse of the England manager. To cap it all Theo Walcott, a player many Arsenal fans had been desperate to see dropped and humiliated, scored twice!
Finally we come to the Carling Cup final where Liverpool took on Cardiff City. Received wisdom said that the Premier League side were sure to win so there were a few surprised faces when Cardiff took the lead. Similarly the extra time goal from Dirk Kuyt should have been game over for Cardiff but whaddayouknow? The plucky underdogs equalised to take the game to penalties. Throughout all of this the managers yelled and gesticulated to minimal effect.
So where does Tolstoy fit in? I have substituted commander in chief for football manager in the following passage from War and Peace.
"The football manager is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted shaping of events the football manager is in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continuously obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict with one another."
In the next passage I have used the word match instead of battle.
"A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during a match, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force."
A manager can prepare his team as much as he likes, can drill them for hours and watch videos until his eyes are popping but he will never never never be able to control what happens once the game begins. To be frank, it's chaos out there. The variables are limitless and impossible to factor into any game plan.
To my mind it is Roy Hodgson, that most literary of managers, who seems most in synch with Tolstoy on this issue. When he was Fulham manager his style took a little getting used to. He seemed to quickly decide on his best team and then stuck them out there game after game, only making changes as men dropped out injured. During matches he seemed reluctant to make changes hardly ever making any substitutions unless players appeared to be tired in the last fifteen minutes or so. Why make changes? His best team were out there. They were prepared, drilled and knew their jobs. There was nothing more he could do. He represents general Kutuzov from War and Peace in my mind. As Napoleon retreats from Russia the Emperor and many of the other generals are keen to wipe out the French in a devastating attack. Kutuzov resists with all his power since he appreciates the French are already beaten. Their army is disintegrating as it retreats with men dropping by the road, frozen and starved. Why waste Russian lives in an attack when victory is certain and the aim of driving the French from Russian soil is being achieved? The way Kutuzov perceives things battle plans and strategy are not what wins you wars. What wins wars (and football matches, which are, let's face it, small "civilised" wars) is the spirit of the troops on the ground. You can have the best plan in the world but if the men trusted to carry it out are not motivated to win then there is nothing you can do.
The moment the French lose their war against Russia comes during the battle of Borodino. Though the French destroy 50% of the Russian army who retreat from the field leaving Moscow at the mercy of the French they still lose. Why? Tolstoy again:
"...he(Kutuzov) knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power."
Such patient wisdom in a leader is often misunderstood. Look at poor old Roy's time at Liverpool. The team that that represent perhaps the most emotional city in Europe were never going to be led by a quiet, unassuming personality such as Roy's. No, they need Messiahs and "big men" such as Kenny Dalgleish - the least valuable personalities for leadership according to Tolstoy. Personally I think this aspect of Roy Hodgson was summed up by our final 11th May match against Portsmouth in the 2008 season. Danny Murphy had just scored the goal that would keep us in the Premier League. Roy strolled across the pitch towards the delirious away support. He raised a hand in salute and mouthed "Have a good holiday!" as if our summer break away was on any of our alcohol and endorphine affected minds.
The mysterious chemistry of winning in any group situation be it a sports team or a military force is impossible to pin down. We might look to our leaders, military or managerial, for guidance but the fact of the matter is that what counts is spirit and the will to win. As supporters of any relatively small club know, just as those among a population who support guerilla fighters in their struggle know, if you have the spirit you can never be beaten. A defeat becomes nothing more than a lost battle in a war that can be sustained for as long as the desire to fight it is there.
So next time you sit down with a pint or two in the pub and start slagging off your team's manager think of Tolstoy, general Kutuzov and this blog post and have a nice game of darts instead...