Initial B
03-14-2014, 12:22 PM
I'm realizing perhaps I've been too negative about this year. Lieweke does ask a valid question in "Why can we be great?"
It got me rereading pages 306-307 in "Inverting the Pyramid" where they talk about this. Here's a couple of quotes:
"...if you want to go down in history you don't just need to win, you have to entertain."
That became an abiding principle, and Sacchi seems very early to have had an eye on posterity, or at least to have a notion of greatness measured by something more than medals or trophies. "Great clubs have had one thing in common throughout history, regardless of era and tactics," he said, "they owned the pitch and they owned the ball. That means when you have the ball, you dictate play and when you are defending, you control the space.
Marco van Basten used to ask me why we had to win and also be convincing. A few years ago, [I]France Football made their list of the ten greatest teams in history. My Milan was right up there. World Soccer did the same: my Milan was fourth, but the first three were national teams - Hungary '54, Brazil '70 and Holland '74. And then us. So took those magazines and told Marco, 'This is why you need to win and you need to be convincing.' I didn't do it because I wanted to write history. I did it because I wanted to give 90 minutes of joy to people. And I wanted that joy to come not from winning, but from being entertained, from witnessing something special. I did this out of passion, not because I wanted to manage Milan or win the European Cup. I was just a guy with ideas and I loved to teach. A good manager is both screenwriter and director. The team has to reflect him."
Lieweke definitely has the entertainment factor and special vision, but does Nelsen? Can Nelsen be a good coach that can bring out greatness in this team? Or could he be one of coaches Jorge Valdano talks about. Again from "Inverting the Pyramid":
"Coaches", he said, "have come to view games as a succession of threats and thus fear has contaminated their ideas. every imaginary threat they try to nullify leads them to a repressive decision which corrodes aspects of football such as happiness, freedom and creativity. At the heart of football's great power of seduction is that there are certain sensations that are eternal . What a fan feels today thinking about the game is at the heart of what fans felt fifty or eighty years ago... People often say results are paramount, that, ten years down the line, the only thing which will be remembered is the score, but that's not true...What remains in peoples memories is the search for greatness and the feeling it engenders. We remember Arrigo Sacchi's AC Milan side more than we remember Fabio Capello's AC Milan side, even though Capello's Milan was more successful and more recent. Equally the Dutch Total Football teams of the 1970s are legendary, far more than West Germany, who beat them in the World Cup final in 1974, or Argentina, who defeated them in the 1978 final. It's about the search for perfection. We know it doesn't exist, but it's our obligation towards football and, maybe, towards humanity to strive towards it. That's what we remember. That's what's special."
I look back at the signings from this year and just about all of them said they "wanted to be a part of something special." I guess the last 7 years of following the train wreck that has been TFC had beaten the possibility that the team could be special out of me. I've been afraid to dream that things could be great because the past has been so bitterly disappointing after the great vibe this franchise gave off in the beginning. Has anybody else had that experience?
I'll stop rambling now, but I just have two more questions: What pieces, if any, do you think are missing that prevent this version of TFC from being one of the greats in MLS history? And what does it take to be considered great? Is it winning, or style, or a bit of both, or something else entirely?
It got me rereading pages 306-307 in "Inverting the Pyramid" where they talk about this. Here's a couple of quotes:
"...if you want to go down in history you don't just need to win, you have to entertain."
That became an abiding principle, and Sacchi seems very early to have had an eye on posterity, or at least to have a notion of greatness measured by something more than medals or trophies. "Great clubs have had one thing in common throughout history, regardless of era and tactics," he said, "they owned the pitch and they owned the ball. That means when you have the ball, you dictate play and when you are defending, you control the space.
Marco van Basten used to ask me why we had to win and also be convincing. A few years ago, [I]France Football made their list of the ten greatest teams in history. My Milan was right up there. World Soccer did the same: my Milan was fourth, but the first three were national teams - Hungary '54, Brazil '70 and Holland '74. And then us. So took those magazines and told Marco, 'This is why you need to win and you need to be convincing.' I didn't do it because I wanted to write history. I did it because I wanted to give 90 minutes of joy to people. And I wanted that joy to come not from winning, but from being entertained, from witnessing something special. I did this out of passion, not because I wanted to manage Milan or win the European Cup. I was just a guy with ideas and I loved to teach. A good manager is both screenwriter and director. The team has to reflect him."
Lieweke definitely has the entertainment factor and special vision, but does Nelsen? Can Nelsen be a good coach that can bring out greatness in this team? Or could he be one of coaches Jorge Valdano talks about. Again from "Inverting the Pyramid":
"Coaches", he said, "have come to view games as a succession of threats and thus fear has contaminated their ideas. every imaginary threat they try to nullify leads them to a repressive decision which corrodes aspects of football such as happiness, freedom and creativity. At the heart of football's great power of seduction is that there are certain sensations that are eternal . What a fan feels today thinking about the game is at the heart of what fans felt fifty or eighty years ago... People often say results are paramount, that, ten years down the line, the only thing which will be remembered is the score, but that's not true...What remains in peoples memories is the search for greatness and the feeling it engenders. We remember Arrigo Sacchi's AC Milan side more than we remember Fabio Capello's AC Milan side, even though Capello's Milan was more successful and more recent. Equally the Dutch Total Football teams of the 1970s are legendary, far more than West Germany, who beat them in the World Cup final in 1974, or Argentina, who defeated them in the 1978 final. It's about the search for perfection. We know it doesn't exist, but it's our obligation towards football and, maybe, towards humanity to strive towards it. That's what we remember. That's what's special."
I look back at the signings from this year and just about all of them said they "wanted to be a part of something special." I guess the last 7 years of following the train wreck that has been TFC had beaten the possibility that the team could be special out of me. I've been afraid to dream that things could be great because the past has been so bitterly disappointing after the great vibe this franchise gave off in the beginning. Has anybody else had that experience?
I'll stop rambling now, but I just have two more questions: What pieces, if any, do you think are missing that prevent this version of TFC from being one of the greats in MLS history? And what does it take to be considered great? Is it winning, or style, or a bit of both, or something else entirely?