金融时报:殊途同归的“足球天才”

殊途同归的“足球天才”

为何曾经所向披靡的教练会一败涂地？为何曾经睿智果敢的战术创新家会失去神奇的魔法？在足坛，我们见证了太多曾经改变足球潮流的天才教练最终归于平庸。足球教练的成功真的如此难以持续？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

mediocre [ˌmiːdi'oʊkər] adj. 平庸的，平凡的

marvel['mɑːvl] v. 惊异于，惊异

scrap [skræp] vt. 扔弃

ritual ['rɪtʃuəl] adj. 老规矩的，惯常的

afield[ə'fiːld] adj. 远离的，偏离的

hindsight ['haɪndsaɪt] n. 后见之明

regress[rɪ'ɡres] v. 倒退，退化

penultimate[pen'ʌltɪmət] adj. 倒数第二的

demeanour[dɪ'miːnə] n. 行为

endgame['endɡeɪm] n. 残局，最后阶段

Football managers: a career of two halves(760 words)

By Simon Kuper

Louis van Gaal and Arsène Wenger were once great innovative football managers. Now in their sixties, both remain as keen as ever. Yet both van Gaal at Manchester United and Wenger at Arsenal are stuck in long ruts of mediocre performance. Both, in fact, are suffering the curse of the innovator as an old man — a curse that applies far beyond football.

Innovative football managers tend to follow a predictable career path. Before becoming a manager, they spend years studying their trade, and stealing ideas from the best innovators of the previous generation. Van Gaal as a teenager in the 1960s used to hang around the Ajax stadium in his native Amsterdam-East, watching the great Rinus Michels lead training sessions. In the same way 30 years later, when Van Gaal coached Barcelona, his young translator José Mourinho and club captain Josep Guardiola watched him.

The young innovator starts his managerial career having already decided on his methods. When Van Gaal became coach of Ajax aged 40 in 1991, he had worked more than 20 years in football. He recalls, “The first-team players had to deal with a coach who knew exactly how they had to play.”

The young innovator then immediately makes big changes. When Guardiola began coaching Barcelona aged 37, he introduced a radical new “pressing” game to win the ball, and converted Lionel Messi from winger into withdrawn centre-forward. In Guardiola’s first three seasons, Barça won two Champions Leagues. That was only slightly better than Van Gaal and Mourinho, who each needed four seasons as head coach to win both the Uefa Cup and Champions League.

The world — having missed the young innovator’s years of planning — marvels at his sudden ascent. As Mourinho quipped after making Porto European champions, “After 15 years, I’m an overnight success.”

Wenger got to a big club relatively late: he arrived at Arsenal aged 46. But he too then emerged as a pioneer. He scrapped the ritual prematch meal of baked beans and Coca-Cola, introduced his players to vegetables, studied stats, and stunned English rivals by scouting stars as far afield as France.

Often the young innovator — bursting with energy and self-confidence — gets up people’s noses. Mourinho aged 41 dubbed himself “The Special One”, much as the young Van Gaal famously asked a journalist, “Am I so clever or are you so stupid?” But the early success is indisputable.

With hindsight, the innovator often hits his career peak at about age 40. This pattern seems to apply beyond football. When Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University led a study of 549 successful entrepreneurs in 12 high-growth industries, he found that the average and median age at which they started their company was 40.

After the innovator’s early triumphs, he is typically snapped up by a giant club — often just at the moment when he is becoming less innovative. It’s hard to be a pioneer twice, especially when you have to win a match every three days. Life at the top is busy. Your own loyal staff grows stale with you. Your early luck regresses to the mean. Meanwhile other managers steal your ideas, and younger innovators improve on them.

The innovator quickly uses up the ideas that he began with. Guardiola confesses in Martí Perarnau’s Pep Confidential that when he quit Barcelona in 2012, “I was on my knees and had no new tactical ideas left. That was why I left.”

The penultimate stage is where Van Gaal is now: the bewildered old former innovator. The patient passing game he installed at Ajax 25 years ago can no longer pull apart modern defences. Meanwhile his lasting innovations — for instance, making his forwards ceaselessly press opponents to win the ball — have been copied by everyone else. He keeps chopping and changing unproductively at Manchester United, because he no longer knows what to do. Likewise, all Wenger’s past innovations have long since become best practice across football.

As the innovator ages and loses confidence, he tones down his irritating demeanour, reducing his run-ins with players, club presidents and journalists. But after those first magical six or seven years, he ceases to be special. He becomes just another manager, who wins when his players are good and loses when they aren’t.

Now Van Gaal and Wenger have entered the endgame: trying to time their own career exits before they are pushed out. The next crop of young innovators is poised to replace them. People in football are talking about Borussia Dortmund’s 42-year-old coach Thomas Tuchel. But by the time a giant club hires him, it will probably already be too late.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.Before becoming a manager, Mourinho spend years studying from ____.

A. Rinus Michels.

B. Louis van Gaal.

C. Josep Guardiola.

D. Arsène Wenger.

答案(1)

2.What did Guardiola do after he became the coach of Barcelona aged 37 ?

A. He led Barcelona to win the Champions League and became the most successful coach in history.

B. He led his team to win both the Uefa Cup and Champions League in his first three seasons.

C. He applied statistical analysis and healthy eating habits to his team and stunned his rivals.

D. He introduced a radical new playing style which was proved to be wonderfully successful.

答案(2)

3.Which of the following is not a reason why talented coaches tend to become less innovative after hired by a giant club ?

A. Big clubs have few tolerance for mistakes.

B. Their old tactical ideas become outdated.

C. The next crop of innovators is ready to replace them.

D. The coach and his staff lose the ability to innovate.

答案(3)

4.Which of the following statements is true according to the article ?

A. In football world, an old coach is doomed to be defeated by younger innovators.

B. The key to becoming a successful coach is stealing ideas from previous innovators.

C. A young innovator usually forms his playing philosophy when coaching lower league teams.

D. A innovator's career often peaks at about age 40, which is a curse that applies beyond football.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：B.Louis van Gaal.

解释：当范加尔在巴塞罗那执教时，他年轻的翻译穆里尼奥和球队队长瓜迪奥拉都向他学习。

(2) 答案：D.He introduced a radical new playing style which was proved to be wonderfully successful.

解释：当37岁的瓜迪奥拉成为巴塞罗那主教练时，他发明了一种全新的“压迫式”踢法。在他最初的三个赛季里，他赢下了2个欧冠。

(3) 答案：C.The next crop of innovators is ready to replace them.

解释：一个教练很难引领两次潮流，尤其是当你每三天就必须赢下一场比赛的时候。顶级俱乐部的工作非常繁忙，你的员工也和你一样渐渐变得陈腐。

(4) 答案：D.A innovator's career often peaks at about age 40, which is a curse that applies beyond football.

解释：足球的革新者往往在40岁左右达到职业生涯的巅峰，而成功的企业家开始创业的平均年龄也在40岁。