Gasperini and Bielsa

I can go two ways here; actually compare them and their squads/performances, or go into the broader issue at hand. Let's go with the macro first.

In football, especially in England, things have changed in terms of what people want out of the sport. It used to be a way for you to hang out with your mates, or take you son to get him indoctrinated to supporting the local team. Now, however, and this has been a long process spanning 30+ years, it's foreign players playing for foreign coaches who are paid by foreign owners. The Newcastle takeover is the most recent example of the Premier League being more about billionaires trying to acquire power internationally than what the sport was initially about. I don't want to get too deep into that because it's not the point here, but it's worth saying because attention spans are short and people want to watch entertaining football. There's the saying the winning football is good football, or something like that. Let's then say that there are four categories, using PL teams as examples. There's entertaining winning football (Liverpool and Man City), boring winning football (Chelsea), entertaining losing football (Leeds) and boring losing football (current Burnley, Newcastle, Norwich, Watford). Thus, when discussing Atalanta and Gasperini, the obvious PL comparison is Leeds.

I just want to say right off the bat that the situations are clearly different. taking last season as an example, Leeds (newly promoted) finished 9th with 59 points and a goal tally of 62 for and 54 against. Atalanta, in contrast, finished 3rd on 78 points with 90 goals scored and 47 against. Whatever you want to say about the quality of each league, that's two different tiers. One is established in its league and nobody would even fathom a relegation battle, much less actually going down, while the other is still in survival mode in its second season back up (and it's not going well). To compare the leagues real quick, it's actually more "competitive" in Serie A, in all honesty. There are three or four teams (the ones in the CL) that are simply deeper and better in England, while in Italy there are 7 that could make the CL this season and it wouldn't be a shock. Now, in contrast, Inter have been terrible in the CL since the treble 11 years ago, Milan are just now back in the competition, and Juve haven't won it this century. To be fair though, United haven't won it in 13 years now and City have still never won it, while Chelsea just got their second playing Juve inspired football.

The main point of this piece, which I'll get to now, is that I want to give my thoughts on the enigma that is playing "good football" with "inferior players". My footballing philosophy is that it's about entertainment but not at the sake of winning. Thus, on the one hand I despise coaches like Allegri and Tuchel (and most of Spain right now) playing conservative, slow football when the talent is there to actually entertain. At the same time, it also grinds my gears watching Atalanta consistently compete against superior teams and lose because the games are too open. Sure, in today's game against Man Utd you can argue that it was controlled to an extent prior to Demiral exiting due to injury, and that Toloi, Gosens, Hateboer and Pessina are all out. This is true. However, if you're 2-0 up at HT, having conceded some decent chances due to dodgy defending, you make slight tweaks and protect the lead, not play right into their hands. Same thing with Bielsa at Leeds. Yes, they've had players out, including Bamford, Phillips, and the CB's, but at the same time, they aren't even scoring goals anymore (7 in 8 games) and still can't defend. The current bottom 6 to me are all at risk, and I don't see anyone else going down barring something crazy. Leeds shouldn't be there, in my opinion. You look at Southampton and they literally have zero proven goalscorer at this level, plus a stubborn coach. Burnley are perennially down there and thanks to defensive solidity they find a way to stay up. Norwich and Watford are newly promoted and frankly quite poor. That leaves Newcastle who today finally got rid of Steve Bruce, though they'll be down there until they a) get a decent coach and b) field competent defenders. Speaking of defenders, I want to highlight Koch and Llorente. More specifically, the amount of time they've been out due to injury. It's one thing to say a team can't defend (much like Atalanta now that Romero is gone and Demiral is injury prone), but when they have actual defenders that can't stay healthy, that's not quite the same thing. My point here is yes, Bielsa decides to have a small squad, and that's on him, but you can't assume players are going to be constantly injured (outside of Forshaw).

To make my final point, there's this odd discussion in the football community regarding managers like this. You take Zidane for instance and the only club he's ever coached is the biggest in European history. How do you even judge how good a manager is in that case? It works both ways. You have these former players turned coaches who end up at a certain level, but how do you actually judge them? I could name like 8 who I don't rate, but how much is that down to them being given jobs well beyond their ability? Those would be Arteta, Lampard, Ole, Pirlo, van Bommel, de Boer, Bruce, even Gattuso to an extent, etc., and I know I've included various generations there. Point is, you see a guy like Iraola at Rayo doing bits, and you wonder if he'll get a proper chance at a big club. Likewise, Xabi Alonso is at La Real coaching their B team. When will he get a chance? Same with Gerrard at Rangers. Former players, especially top ones, get chances and it's often unfair. Has Bielsa ever really stayed long enough at a "big club" to do anything? don't think so. Same with Gasperini. You can speculate all you want but it's not clear whether "man manager" types are better than "tacticians". They're just different really. I do wonder though if a club like Arsenal or Spurs could benefit from a proper coach, kinda like Liverpool did when they got Klopp.

The takeaway from this is that there's a limit to what coaching can do. Pep would never win the league with average players, nor would Klopp. At the same time, having lesser players is also not an excuse to ignore clear faults in coaches. Let's go back to Newcastle for a second. You always see this in England now; fans of the "non-rich" clubs can't complain about how shit the football is, and they should be honored that "their" club is in the same league as these super clubs. The way I look at it is this. Ticket prices are expensive, the owners couldn't give a shit about the fans, the players are completely detached outside of the rare local lad who makes it to the first team. Why SHOULD people tolerate horrible football that they're paying to watch at exorbitant rate either in the ground or on TV? It's about the spectacle, is it not? It's one of the reason I don't watch La Liga anymore; most of the teams can't be bothered to play football. Eventually, the money involved is a curse, as you're paying over the odds for average players and boards care more about staying in the league than winning trophies.

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Lastly, having let this sit for a few days, another set of fixtures have gone by. Atalanta and Leeds both drew 1-1 against Udinese and Wolves, respectively. It's just more of the same. Both are without key players because of injury, neither looks particularly solid defensively or cohesive in attack, and neither can really feel hard done by in not winning. I'm actually more disappointed with Bruno Lage because I was told he "played good football", yet they parked the bus after 10 minutes when they were 1-0 up. Same with Udinese. I've written of this before, but they're in that malaise of literally being too good to go down despite playing embarrassing football every year with Serie B quality coaches (see Genoa and Sampdoria, Torino until Juric came in). Even if we discount the Rome clubs, Atalanta have overstayed their welcome in the Champions League spots. Last season Napoli bottled it with Gattuso, Milan collapsed due to a small squad, and Juve had an amateur as coach. Now, you still have Inter, who are worse but still better than Atalanta, the three I just mentioned, and Lazio/Roma to deal with, not to mention Fiorentina as they build with Italiano. On the other hand, Leeds's focus will be staying up, which is fine in reality, given the circumstances and how taxing that style is.

To reiterate, I do wonder what would happen if these two coached "big clubs". Would either of their styles work at say Barcelona or Man Utd? I think they would, but it's about the buy in from the players. Would diva mercenaries run like "hungry" players with less talent? Bielsa was relatively successful with Athletic, but even that's not a normal club and certain not one that's fallen into the ills of modern football. Most of the players there are from the same area and look similar, speak the same language, etc. and that's pretty much the opposite of English football. People talk about "the United way" and a "Spurs identity", but what does that mean? United really aren't run differently than when they were successful, it's just that other clubs spend money and have world class coaches now. Spurs literally won nothing when Pochettino was there, but apparently it was attacking football and fun times, so I guess that's it? Let's put it this way; Nuno most definitely does not have what Poch supposedly had and was a poor signing from the get to, and Ole has no tactical identity.