KEN EARLY: No Pep in their step but Chelsea can prove ‘real club’
Bayern never knowingly turn down an opportunity to boast about the superiority of their methods and club president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told journalists that Guardiola had been particularly impressed by Bayern’s self-sustaining business model. Had Guardiola been motivated by money, Rummenigge explained, he never would have joined Bayern: it was the Bayern model that had seduced the world’s hottest coach.
The apparently-widespread notion of Bayern as some kind of organic, fair-trade exemplar of what real football is all about is a tribute to the marketing chutzpah of the club’s current administration. This is a club that until a few years ago was known as FC Hollywood, a club where Giovanni Trapattoni had to fight for the privilege of holding at least one training session a week behind closed doors.
They are now praised for developing young players, although the credit for that should be shared with the German FA, who 10 years ago overhauled the system of youth development in German football. Traditionally, Bayern occupy a position of such wealth and dominance that they have not needed to develop players. Instead they just buy the best players from smaller German clubs, which, if you are Bayern, means every other German club.
Their current side supplements home-grown talent like Philipp Lahm and Thomas Müller with the likes of Mario Gomez, a €30 million signing from Stuttgart, and Manuel Neuer, prised for €22m from the grasp of Schalke, Bayern’s bitter rivals and Germany’s second-richest club.
Pep is renowned as a coach who takes his football philosophy seriously, and many people pointed out last week that Bayern, too, have a set way of playing. Anyone would think this way of playing was handed down from the generation of Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller. In fact it is no more than a few years since Bayern abandoned their decades-old three-at-the-back system in favour of something Jurgen Klinsmann and then Louis van Gaal considered more modern.
Finally Bayern have been lauded as a model of stability and patience compared to the trigger-happy regime of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea. After all, Abramovich has changed manager eight times since taking over in 2003.
Guardiola’s choice of Bayern over Chelsea has given elements of the media a stick with which to beat Roman Abramovich. The narrative is that the oligarch is finally getting his comeuppance after sacking too many coaches. When a coach comes along with real class and his pick of Europe’s top clubs, he turns down Abramovich’s money because he doesn’t want to work with an owner he can’t trust.
The more you think about it, the more unfair it seems to consider Bayern the aristocrats, Chelsea the arrivistes. At the Champions League final, you could not help but be struck by the awfulness of Bayern’s anthem, a power-pop dirge so hideous it might have been written by Uli Hoeness himself. Chelsea’s pub-rock anthem, “Blue Is The Colour”, sounded genuinely soulful by comparison. Someone judging purely on the pre-match build-up would have no doubt which club had history and tradition, and which was a recent confection of marketing committees. That was before Bayern unfurled their terrible hubristic banner, “Our City, Our Stadium, Our Trophy,” at the same end where Didier Drogba would, a few hours later, stroke the winning penalty.
Chelsea should not feel too bad about being rejected by Guardiola. Abramovich’s money has been good enough to attract coaches of the calibre of Mourinho, Hiddink, Ancelotti and Villas-Boas. Chelsea will get another top-class manager. In fact, they have one already, if they could only come to appreciate him.
It might prove a blessing in disguise. Instead of nervously welcoming Guardiola, weighed down by unrealistic expectations, Chelsea fans have found themselves lumped with Rafael Benitez, who bores and depresses them but whom they might eventually grow to love, as is said to happen in a thoughtfully arranged marriage.
If that proves impossible, the consolation for Abramovich is within a few short years Chelsea’s reputation might morph into something much more respectable. Look at the image transformation at Bayern. If they can go from FC Hollywood to Pep Guardiola in club form, anything is possible.
