FOOTBALL IS NO place for nuance or context.
So it’s a surprise that somebody like Andre Villas-Boas, an eternal outlier, still finds himself immersed in the upper echelons of the game.
When he arrived in English football, aged just 33, to take over at Chelsea in 2011, the suspicions didn’t take long in forming. While Jose Mourinho was loud, brash and arrogant, Villas-Boas – who had been part of his coaching staff and subsequently plotted a similar managerial course – was an introvert. Quiet and reserved, he lacked the mischievous Mourinho excelled at and seemed better suited to the insurance industry than football. So how, many pondered, would he motivate an experienced Chelsea dressing room?
When he failed to do so and was sacked in early March 2012, the reaction was inevitable. Stories – like the one about him sleeping at Chelsea’s training ground and waking early to study analytical data – painted him as some sort of unhealthy manic obsessive. The fact he was a young man with a young family, under intense stress and media scrutiny and struggling to keep his job was probably lost on the majority of reporters.
But just over a year later, he was guiding Tottenham to a record points total and a pair of Manager of the Month accolades. By December, he was gone. The sale of Gareth Bale, of course, had a serious impact and even though Spurs were seventh in the table and managed six wins from six Europa League group games, a pair of heavy Premier League defeats to Manchester City and Liverpool sounded the death knell.
And then he disappeared. In Premier League terms.
Of course, he was just in a different country and doing very well. But, stepping outside the cocoon is the equivalent of dropping off a football cliff.
In Russia, he won the league (only the fifth championship in the club’s history) and cup (only the fourth in the club’s history) with Zenit St Petersburg. When he headed to China to take up a role with Shanghai SIPG, the consensus was that his elite coaching career was certainly over. When he left in November 2017 to prepare for the Dakar Rally, some thought he was having a mid life crisis.
But, he’s back in football and performing miracles at Marseille.
The side – who have bounced from one setback to another in recent years – are nestled in second place in Ligue 1, five points behind leaders Paris Saint-Germain. Right now, they’re the most in-form team in the league and have won their last six games. Stretching that out to the last eight fixtures, they’ve taken an average of 2.63 points per game – on par with PSG.
There’s no over-reliance on star players and the team’s strength is the collective. Veteran Steve Mandanda is showing some excellent form and along with Dimitri Payet, there’s the exciting Valentin Rongier, Darío Benedetto and Álvaro González while another consistent performer has been Japanese full-back Hiroki Sakai.
As French football writer and commentator Matt Spiro put it recently, what if Andre Villas-Boas is actually really good? What if he wasn’t quite ready to manage Chelsea (at 33) or Spurs (at 34) but has learned from the experiences – and the stints in Russia and China – and now, at 42, is ‘the real deal’?
Then again, that seems like rational thinking.
And that doesn’t really work in football either.
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