André Onana chose to come home from a World Cup rather than hoof his kicks down the field. So it must have come as something of a surprise to be told he now plays for a long-ball team at Manchester United.
The same with Bruno Fernandes and Raphaël Varane, even Harry Maguire. The whole United squad play international football and not one of them is required to go long as a first resort. Not with France, not with Portugal, not with Spain nor Brazil; not with England, Morocco, Scotland or Sweden. Yet Erik ten Hag’s description of his players this week made them out to be lead-footed and lumpen, certainly in comparison to his old Ajax side.
He said he had to go direct against Manchester City because they couldn’t play the Ajax way. Yet we remember his Ajax from their Champions League semi-final with Tottenham Hotspur in 2019. “We certainly can’t stroke it about like we did in the days when we had Daley Blind,” said no United fan, ever — but Blind was a mainstay for Ten Hag at Ajax. So was Hakim Ziyech, last seen being deeply ineffectual with Chelsea.
Ten Hag has former Ajax charges at Brighton & Hove Albion, Las Palmas, Nijmegen, Galatasaray and UNAM of Mexico. Indeed, of the 15 players that represented Ajax against Tottenham that year, only six are still active in the Champions League, including Onana. It would be seven but Ten Hag has not even listed Donny van de Beek in his Champions League squad at United, nor started him in a single game this season.
Yet Van de Beek was a key member of the Ajax XI who were apparently much more comfortable on the ball than his present team-mates. It is almost as if Ten Hag is making this up as he goes along — which is pretty much how United looked on Sunday.
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Until now, United’s manager has been largely indulged. It’s the fault of the owners, or the recruiters, or the players. How can anyone restore the club in such circumstances? And there are elements of truth in that, plainly.
Yet to gather United’s squad of players and announce that he has no option other than to play long is specious. These are not long-ball footballers with their countries and his group at Ajax were not so exquisitely gifted that they fell naturally into that style, either. It would have to be coached, developed in a way United are not.
It was Ten Hag’s decision not to start Varane against City; Ten Hag’s decision not to play Sergio Reguilón at full back. And then he bemoans limitations? How must that make Maguire feel, having fought so hard to get back into the first team? It is easy to forget that when Maguire first came into the England set-up, he was considered a hybrid talent — an old-fashioned centre half, strong in the tackle, commanding in the air, who would also try to bring the ball out like a continental libero. It wasn’t always perfect, but the will, and often the talent, was there. Now he has to be bypassed? Along with Scott McTominay, Sofyan Amrabat and — for heaven’s sake — Christian Eriksen?
United are not a good team, but they’re not as bad as this. They are not so bad that they cannot be challenged to build the play as their rivals do. And it’s not about injuries, either. Ten Hag is missing Lisandro Martínez and Luke Shaw, but does that really mean he has no alternative but route one? Liverpool lost the best part of an entire defence in the 2020-21 season, but Jürgen Klopp did not abandon his belief system; City play Pep Guardiola’s way, no matter who is available.
What is the point in Ten Hag investing in Onana and then scrapping his strongest suit at the first hurdle? That is the difference in the Manchester clubs. Guardiola wanted a ball-playing goalkeeper and set his team up for Ederson’s arrival. Onana’s interaction with his team-mates has been compromised almost from the start.
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Cameroon’s 2022 World Cup campaign was a single game old when Onana fell out with his coach, Rigobert Song, over his persistence in playing out from the back. Song demanded that Onana launch it downfield, the goalkeeper resisted, then left the camp before the second group game. Yet fast-forward a year and that is what Onana is being asked to do for his club.
The Uefa technical report around his Champions League campaign with Inter Milan last season described him as playing not so much as a sweeper-keeper but as a No 6 — a member of the defensive midfield. Now he is being asked to bombard the opposing half in the hope that United can live off the scraps.
It is an incredibly unsophisticated strategy, given the players at Ten Hag’s disposal. There were 628 caps in United’s starting line-up at the weekend and nobody who hadn’t reached double figures for their country. Ten Hag must have been unfortunate indeed to have gathered a group with an average of 57 caps each and none of them can pass.
Yet he continues with the love of, if not exactly the common people, then certainly the ones in suits. United’s chief executive, Richard Arnold, is said to be firmly behind the manager, as is Sir Jim Ratcliffe — although why a man who barely owns a season ticket let alone a share gets a say remains a mystery. Yet there it is.
“Until you actually get in there it’s difficult to make those big decisions,” an Ineos source told The i newspaper this week. And he’s right about that. Once inside, however, it may be equally problematic, given that Ratcliffe, the owner of Ineos, will only control a quarter of the company.
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Even if the Glazers do cede transfer business to their new partners, how much influence will then be yielded to Ten Hag, considering this is largely his team that is misfiring? On Sunday he was responsible for bringing in five of the starting line-up and four of the bench, with two other players injured. Yet, somehow, despite those numbers, this is a team who cannot play the way he asks. If true, that isn’t on anyone but him.
Moaning Lionesses miss the point
Football, as its protagonists never stop reminding us, is a team sport. No goalscorer ever takes pride in his or her achievements because it’s about the team. No player-of-the-match plaudit means anything if the team hasn’t won. A goalkeeper would rather three points and a quiet life than make a string of heroic saves.
And we get that. So it’s a little jarring to hear England’s nominees for the women’s Ballon d’Or moaning that they couldn’t attend the ceremony because a Nations League qualifier with Belgium got in the way. England’s performance in the Nations League will decide whether Great Britain qualifies for the Olympics in Paris next year. So Georgia Stanway’s complaints about the Ballon d’Or scheduling seem rather misplaced, if it is about the team and not the individual.
In 2018, Liverpool laid on a plane to take Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané to and from the Confederation of African Football Awards, even though that meant arriving back on the same day as an FA Cup tie with Everton. It’s tough. There is barely a week when a group of footballers hasn’t got a commitment somewhere. Awards ceremonies have no fixed position in the calendar, but there is a reason for that — in the overall scheme, they are not what the game is about. And if they become so, it’s slightly worrying.
England exceeded not so great expectations
Now the Rugby World Cup is complete, perhaps England’s showing can be reviewed after being stripped of emotion. Steve Borthwick’s team reached the semi-finals, which is a decent showing, but the results balance that out. They beat every nation that England would be expected to beat at a tournament — Argentina, Japan, Chile, Samoa, Fiji and Argentina again — and lost to the one opponent they wouldn’t be fancied against, South Africa.
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The only reason this seems like success is because their form going into the competition was so poor, it was genuinely feared that they might not finish in the top two pool places — so behind Argentina and one of Japan or Samoa. There is no reason, then, for apologies or the eating of words. England played well against South Africa — although maybe not as well as France or 14-man New Zealand — but still lost. We can’t keep turning defeat into some moral triumph. That is what the cricketers did in the summer against Australia, since when it hasn’t gone so well.
European giants cut down to size
In 2019, at a meeting of the European Club Association, the former chief executive of Ajax, Edwin van der Sar, made a case for his club to receive a golden ticket to Champions League qualification. He explained that Ajax developed a lot of young players but one year were in the Champions League, the next the Europa League and for two years did not manage to qualify at all. He wanted a guaranteed place, to afford stability.
This is genuinely how the big clubs think. More recently, Marc Skinner, the coach of Manchester United Women, was moaning about the Champions League format, having been knocked out during qualifying by Paris Saint-Germain. “We want the best teams in the Champions League,” he said, despite losing 4-2 on aggregate. “We deserve to be at this level.”
This often happens, the conflating of best and biggest, entitlement and merit. Van der Sar left in May, but where are Ajax now? Bottom of the Eredivisie table and bottom of Europa League group B. Their most recent results brought defeat by Brighton & Hove Albion and PSV Eindhoven. So remind me again why Ajax deserve a free pass?
Logic of the cup
From next season, the League Cup will have single-leg semi-finals. Good, now it makes sense. It is ridiculous that in every round the tie is decided on one night, then in the semi-finals it becomes two matches, then back to one for the final at Wembley. Setting aside the space such change affords the calendar, competitions should follow a logical path, even those organised by the EFL.
