Search: 'Paul Ince'

Paul Knott pays tribute to the pioneering life and times of Valery Lobanovsky

The image conjured up by Valery Lobanovsky, who died in May aged 63, was of a Slavic cousin of the Lanarkshire coalfields school of man­agers, glowering from the dugout. An astute and inspirational disciplinarian with a fear­some temper, he had plenty in common with Stein and Shankly. But there was also a great intellect behind the harsh exterior. Loban­ov­sky pio­neered the use of scientific methods in coaching. Unlike many of his cerebral peers, the out­come was neither mechanical nor neg­ative. The aim was al­ways to complement the artistry of his play­ers. His teams’ alliance of power with flair prod­uced a style that significantly raised the game’s technical standards.

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As the world looks east towards the World Cup, England could be on course to righting the wrongs of 1998

You never really know until it starts, of course, but it feels as though this World Cup is going to be very different from the last one. Some of the differences are obvious, notably the fact that it is be­ing held much further away from Eng­land. While you would not want to rule it out, it seems implausible that hooliganism will be as big a theme as it was in France. Perhaps more interestingly from England’s point of view is the way the culture of the team itself has changed, lar­gely, though not entirely, due to the in­fluence of Sven-Goran Eriksson.

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Huw Richards gives us an update on  life as a Swans fan

Are Swansea fans in favour of a move to a new stadium or would some prefer to stay put?
The Vetch is a dump, but it is a much loved, highly at­­mospheric dump in which a 4,000 crowd can sound like a packed Colosseum on a bad day for Christians. We all recognise the possible econ­omic benefits of a move to the Morfa Stadium, but can’t help worrying about the possibility of rattling ar­ound in an atmosphere-less 20,000-seater tin­ can.

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Letters, WSC 184

Dear WSC
While Ian Kelp (Letters, WSC 183) makes some valid points about the bizarre soft spot banks have for football clubs in allowing them to trade on nought but pro­mises year after year, I fear that he is too pur­it­an­ical in his approach to business planning. Page one of the Company Treasurer’s Handbook tells us about cashflow planning and a seemingly valid contract pro­m­­ising revenue at fixed future times is a reasonable thing to make plans on, or, if necessary, borrow against. No business waits until the money is in the bank account before planning how to spend it, or indeed actually spending it. Would Marks and Spencer wait until it had a queue of unsatisfied customers waving bunches of tenners in the branch until it ordered a batch of knickers from its sup­pliers? Where the clubs have probably been naive is in what appears to be a less than watertight contract. If it is true that Carlton and Granada can walk away without liability for their little joint venture, the clubs should be looking at the quality of their legal advice. The fact that the share prices of both Carlton and Granada rose once the situation became public is a pret­ty depressing sign of what the City thinks of that contract.
Jonathan Gibbs, via email

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There's a World Cup coming up, apparently, so we invited three well-travelled journalists to make some rash predictions about what will happen. As a Swede based in London Marcus Christenson has ties to two of the countries in Group F. Gabriele Marcotti has lived in Japan and how tries to explain English football to Italians and vice-versa. Alan Duncan reports regularly on Nigeria and Cameroon, who face England and Ireland respectively, as well as the three other African qualifiers

Are playing styles and tactics are becoming more homogeneous throughout the world, because most of the top players are playing in the same leagues? If so, does that make the World Cup less interesting?
Gabriele Marcotti There’s a greater uniformity. Not just in the way teams play, but also in how they train. If you look at the size of the Italian or Spanish players, they are now as big as the northern Europeans are expected to be. Everybody’s an athlete. Some of the English play­ers still get drunk and irresponsible but the impression I get with players like Beckham and Owen is that they train seriously and take care of their diet. In some ways it has become more uniform, but in a positive way – the level of fitness has definitely increased everywhere.

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