April 14, 2012
For Liverpool and Red Sox, the Same Owner and Parallel Debacles
By JERÉ LONGMAN
LONDON — John Henry is the principal owner of two of the sporting world’s most visible, storied and valuable franchises — the Red Sox of Boston and the Reds of Liverpool. Yet at the moment, his baseball and soccer teams are united not in towering success but in stunning collapse.
The Red Sox finished 7-20 last September and missed the playoffs. The new season has brought a nervous start. Meanwhile, Liverpool has won only 3 of its 14 Premier League matches in 2012 and has had its reputation sullied in the clumsy handling of a case of on-field racial taunting by Luis Suárez, its star Uruguayan forward.
On Thursday, Liverpool fired its director of soccer, Damien Comolli, a Frenchman. In effect, Comolli took the fall for the profligate spending of about $175 million over the past 17 months in player acquisitions that have produced mediocre results. The signings generally appeared to contradict the “Moneyball” approach, favored by Henry, to spend judiciously on capable, lesser-known players.
“We feel there is enough talent on the pitch to win,” Tom Werner, Liverpool’s (and the Red Sox’) American chairman, told reporters, “and we’ve been dissatisfied, as most supporters have been, with the results so far.”
On Saturday at Wembley Stadium, Liverpool found some consolation with the awakening of the somnolent forward Andy Carroll and a late 2-1 victory over its city rival Everton in a semifinal of the F.A. Cup, a tournament open to all divisions of English soccer. In February, Liverpool won the Carling Cup, a lesser domestic tournament that put hardware in the club’s trophy case for the first time in six years.
A second trophy, the F.A. Cup, would mitigate the disappointment but not redeem this season for many Liverpool fans. Manchester United appears headed toward a 20th league title, while Liverpool remains stuck for two decades on 18, last having won a league crown in 1990, its present struggles a dim comparison with a shimmering past.
Drifting in eighth place in the Premier League, Liverpool will miss out on next season’s European Champions League, considered the world’s best club competition, for the third consecutive season. The absence could lead to the loss of $45 million or more in revenue and to a decreased willingness of top players to join the club.
“It would be good to win two cups, but I guess the majority of fans would probably still be disappointed,” said Peter Harmsworth, 59, a family therapist from Liverpool. “Liverpool won’t have been seen as making any progress since last year, while Manchester United has continued to do well. That’s what really gets people, when your biggest rival wins again.”
The Red Sox and Liverpool have struggled recently from the extravagant acquisitions of players who have underperformed. Most noticeably this has been the case with Boston outfielder Carl Crawford and Liverpool’s Carroll, who was bought from Newcastle in January 2011 for $55.8 million, a club record, but who has since delivered only six goals in the Premier League and 10 over all.
“You think of the optimism both fan bases seemed to have 12 to 18 months ago, versus both fan bases being pretty dejected at the moment,” said Jonathan Meltzer, 26, a second-year Yale Law School student and a fan of the Red Sox and Liverpool.
In fairness, Henry, who made his fortune as a futures trader and who did not respond to a request for an interview, remains a respected owner in both cities. His Red Sox, after all, won the World Series in 2004 and 2007 after eight decades of futility.
Still, in Boston, where the Red Sox have started slowly for the second consecutive season, there is some itchy concern in the news media that Henry may be paying too much attention to soccer and not enough to baseball.
“He’s had the appearance of being distracted, absent, focused elsewhere,” said Dan Shaughnessy, a longtime columnist at The Boston Globe.
In England, the news-media portrayal of Henry is as an attentive, even ruthless, owner who has a clear strategy for success and is impatient with failure. “Americans show who is in control,” The Times of London said in a Friday headline after Comolli was fired.
Upon buying Liverpool in October 2010 for about $480 million, Henry and the Fenway Sports Group were seen as saviors, having rescued the club from the previous American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr., who had debts of about $375 million, did not get a new stadium deal and were widely disliked by fans. (The New York Times owns part of Fenway Sports Group.)
“When Henry arrived, anyone would have been perceived to be better than Hicks and Gillett,” said Tom Cannon, a professor of strategic development at the University of Liverpool. “He was seen as an astute businessman with a plan.”
Yet Henry and Werner received mixed reviews for Liverpool’s handling of an episode last October, when Suárez directed racial taunts at Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, who is black, during a match. Suárez was suspended for eight games and later refused to shake Evra’s hand in a pregame ritual.
Meanwhile, Liverpool’s manager, Kenny Dalglish, and players wore T-shirts in support of Suárez, a gesture that drew widespread criticism, given international soccer’s stated policy of zero tolerance for racism. Suárez apologized for the handshake snub in February, an act of contrition that Henry and Werner were credited with orchestrating. Still, they were criticized for not acting sooner and more forcefully.
“The general view is that the people from Boston said, ‘Stop arguing; let’s close this down,’ ” Cannon said. “Still, it hurt the club. Liverpool historically has been seen as a progressive club that did the right thing.”
There are considerable roadblocks to returning to something like the glory days of 1972 to 1990, when Liverpool won the English league 11 times and the European title 4 times. (A fifth Champions League title came in 2005.) Anfield, Liverpool’s revered stadium, is aging, holds only 45,000 fans and is fitted with fewer corporate amenities than newer Premier League stadiums. Liverpool is also the poorest among the major soccer cities in England, Cannon said.
The prestige and financial gain of the Champions League remain elusive. And Liverpool’s standing with Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal as the big four of the Premier League has been challenged by Manchester City and Tottenham.
“The Liverpool problems are probably more serious and fundamental than that of the Red Sox,” said Stefan Szymanski, a Briton who co-wrote the book “Soccernomics” and teaches sports management at the University of Michigan.
On Thursday, Liverpool gave a vote of confidence to Dalglish, 61, a Scotsman known as King Kenny, who has faced criticism for a perceived over-reliance on British-born players, questionable tactical decisions and remarks about a supposed referees conspiracy against his team.
Still, Dalglish is widely revered. He is considered Liverpool’s greatest player, and he led the club to three league titles in a previous stint as the manager. He also accumulated enormous good will for his compassionate, stabilizing behavior after 96 Liverpool fans died in a stadium crush known as the Hillsborough disaster.
A moment of silence before Saturday’s match commemorated the 23rd anniversary of the tragedy. Then Liverpool tried to atone somewhat for this troubled season. Carroll had scored a winner in added time Tuesday against Blackburn. Against Everton, though, he missed twice, pulling his jersey over his face after driving a header wide from close range in the 47th minute.
Then, with the score tied at 1-1 in the 87th minute, facing away from goal, Carroll angled a free kick into the net with the back of his head. All the complaints about fat contracts and thin goal production fell away for the moment. A team and its coach and its fans found something to celebrate in a dour season.
“We showed a little what Liverpool are,” defender Jamie Carragher said.
For Liverpool and Red Sox, the Same Owner and Parallel Debacles
By JERÉ LONGMAN
LONDON — John Henry is the principal owner of two of the sporting world’s most visible, storied and valuable franchises — the Red Sox of Boston and the Reds of Liverpool. Yet at the moment, his baseball and soccer teams are united not in towering success but in stunning collapse.
The Red Sox finished 7-20 last September and missed the playoffs. The new season has brought a nervous start. Meanwhile, Liverpool has won only 3 of its 14 Premier League matches in 2012 and has had its reputation sullied in the clumsy handling of a case of on-field racial taunting by Luis Suárez, its star Uruguayan forward.
On Thursday, Liverpool fired its director of soccer, Damien Comolli, a Frenchman. In effect, Comolli took the fall for the profligate spending of about $175 million over the past 17 months in player acquisitions that have produced mediocre results. The signings generally appeared to contradict the “Moneyball” approach, favored by Henry, to spend judiciously on capable, lesser-known players.
“We feel there is enough talent on the pitch to win,” Tom Werner, Liverpool’s (and the Red Sox’) American chairman, told reporters, “and we’ve been dissatisfied, as most supporters have been, with the results so far.”
On Saturday at Wembley Stadium, Liverpool found some consolation with the awakening of the somnolent forward Andy Carroll and a late 2-1 victory over its city rival Everton in a semifinal of the F.A. Cup, a tournament open to all divisions of English soccer. In February, Liverpool won the Carling Cup, a lesser domestic tournament that put hardware in the club’s trophy case for the first time in six years.
A second trophy, the F.A. Cup, would mitigate the disappointment but not redeem this season for many Liverpool fans. Manchester United appears headed toward a 20th league title, while Liverpool remains stuck for two decades on 18, last having won a league crown in 1990, its present struggles a dim comparison with a shimmering past.
Drifting in eighth place in the Premier League, Liverpool will miss out on next season’s European Champions League, considered the world’s best club competition, for the third consecutive season. The absence could lead to the loss of $45 million or more in revenue and to a decreased willingness of top players to join the club.
“It would be good to win two cups, but I guess the majority of fans would probably still be disappointed,” said Peter Harmsworth, 59, a family therapist from Liverpool. “Liverpool won’t have been seen as making any progress since last year, while Manchester United has continued to do well. That’s what really gets people, when your biggest rival wins again.”
The Red Sox and Liverpool have struggled recently from the extravagant acquisitions of players who have underperformed. Most noticeably this has been the case with Boston outfielder Carl Crawford and Liverpool’s Carroll, who was bought from Newcastle in January 2011 for $55.8 million, a club record, but who has since delivered only six goals in the Premier League and 10 over all.
“You think of the optimism both fan bases seemed to have 12 to 18 months ago, versus both fan bases being pretty dejected at the moment,” said Jonathan Meltzer, 26, a second-year Yale Law School student and a fan of the Red Sox and Liverpool.
In fairness, Henry, who made his fortune as a futures trader and who did not respond to a request for an interview, remains a respected owner in both cities. His Red Sox, after all, won the World Series in 2004 and 2007 after eight decades of futility.
Still, in Boston, where the Red Sox have started slowly for the second consecutive season, there is some itchy concern in the news media that Henry may be paying too much attention to soccer and not enough to baseball.
“He’s had the appearance of being distracted, absent, focused elsewhere,” said Dan Shaughnessy, a longtime columnist at The Boston Globe.
In England, the news-media portrayal of Henry is as an attentive, even ruthless, owner who has a clear strategy for success and is impatient with failure. “Americans show who is in control,” The Times of London said in a Friday headline after Comolli was fired.
Upon buying Liverpool in October 2010 for about $480 million, Henry and the Fenway Sports Group were seen as saviors, having rescued the club from the previous American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr., who had debts of about $375 million, did not get a new stadium deal and were widely disliked by fans. (The New York Times owns part of Fenway Sports Group.)
“When Henry arrived, anyone would have been perceived to be better than Hicks and Gillett,” said Tom Cannon, a professor of strategic development at the University of Liverpool. “He was seen as an astute businessman with a plan.”
Yet Henry and Werner received mixed reviews for Liverpool’s handling of an episode last October, when Suárez directed racial taunts at Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, who is black, during a match. Suárez was suspended for eight games and later refused to shake Evra’s hand in a pregame ritual.
Meanwhile, Liverpool’s manager, Kenny Dalglish, and players wore T-shirts in support of Suárez, a gesture that drew widespread criticism, given international soccer’s stated policy of zero tolerance for racism. Suárez apologized for the handshake snub in February, an act of contrition that Henry and Werner were credited with orchestrating. Still, they were criticized for not acting sooner and more forcefully.
“The general view is that the people from Boston said, ‘Stop arguing; let’s close this down,’ ” Cannon said. “Still, it hurt the club. Liverpool historically has been seen as a progressive club that did the right thing.”
There are considerable roadblocks to returning to something like the glory days of 1972 to 1990, when Liverpool won the English league 11 times and the European title 4 times. (A fifth Champions League title came in 2005.) Anfield, Liverpool’s revered stadium, is aging, holds only 45,000 fans and is fitted with fewer corporate amenities than newer Premier League stadiums. Liverpool is also the poorest among the major soccer cities in England, Cannon said.
The prestige and financial gain of the Champions League remain elusive. And Liverpool’s standing with Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal as the big four of the Premier League has been challenged by Manchester City and Tottenham.
“The Liverpool problems are probably more serious and fundamental than that of the Red Sox,” said Stefan Szymanski, a Briton who co-wrote the book “Soccernomics” and teaches sports management at the University of Michigan.
On Thursday, Liverpool gave a vote of confidence to Dalglish, 61, a Scotsman known as King Kenny, who has faced criticism for a perceived over-reliance on British-born players, questionable tactical decisions and remarks about a supposed referees conspiracy against his team.
Still, Dalglish is widely revered. He is considered Liverpool’s greatest player, and he led the club to three league titles in a previous stint as the manager. He also accumulated enormous good will for his compassionate, stabilizing behavior after 96 Liverpool fans died in a stadium crush known as the Hillsborough disaster.
A moment of silence before Saturday’s match commemorated the 23rd anniversary of the tragedy. Then Liverpool tried to atone somewhat for this troubled season. Carroll had scored a winner in added time Tuesday against Blackburn. Against Everton, though, he missed twice, pulling his jersey over his face after driving a header wide from close range in the 47th minute.
Then, with the score tied at 1-1 in the 87th minute, facing away from goal, Carroll angled a free kick into the net with the back of his head. All the complaints about fat contracts and thin goal production fell away for the moment. A team and its coach and its fans found something to celebrate in a dour season.
“We showed a little what Liverpool are,” defender Jamie Carragher said.
