John Nicholson
[size=12pt]Is It Because He Is French, Oui?[/size]
Posted 24/01/11 13:42EmailPrintSave
Was Gerard Houllier right to say his spat with Steve Bruce over the Darren Bent transfer was because he's 'foreign'? Is there an anti-foreign manager spirit in the Premier League?
Such accusations are always bound to lift people's hackles. I'm sure Bruce would argue his beef is with what Houllier as a man did or didn't do - however precious you might consider those noises - rather than as a Frenchman.
Like many forms of discrimination, such things are hard, if not impossible to prove because the actions of someone who is prejudiced often appear the same as someone who isn't. It's often impossible to tell what is in somebody's heart. Unless you've got an off-air recording of them airing their views, of course.
But I think we can say that there is a sensitivity in English football about the foreign interloper. We're forever hearing from English managers how 'good young English managers' don't get a chance because clubs would rather 'go foreign'.
However, only seven of 20 clubs are managed by non-Brits (depending on how you classify Mick McCarthy) and in Roberto Martinez and Robbie D iMatteo there are two who did apprenticeships in the lower leagues and worked their way up rather than being parachuted in to steal the position away from a noble, worthy Brit.
Fabio Capello has also been a lightening rod for much foreigner-bashing. As soon as we lose, it's because he can't speak English properly and doesn't care about England the way an Englishman would. Every expression he does or doesn't make becomes proof of this and the fact that he won lots of games with his limited English and emotions is forgotten because it does''t fit the stereotype of the uncaring foreigner who is killing the beating English heart of oak.
Certainly, the press and media's attitude to foreign managers is not the same as it is to English managers. Contrast the largely sympathetic press Roy Hodgson received ('he needed more time' was the line trotted out by rote), and the insulting, mocking press that Avram Grant gets which focuses mostly around his appearance and his (lack of) facial expressions.
The fact that West Ham were a poor side before Grant arrived seems often ignored in favour of painting him as useless and uninspiring, whereas there was an almost unanimous agreement that Liverpool were ruined by the Spaniard Benitez and English Roy was merely picking up the pieces. This despite the fact that Benitez had almost won the league a couple of years earlier. Similary, Grant's cup successes are dismissed as a freaky blip in a way that, say, Redknapp's cup success is not.
There is definitely a cabal of British managers who seem to operate an 'all for one one for all' policy. We saw this when Sam Allardyce was sacked from Blackburn. Within hours Pulis, Coyle, Moyes, Bruce, Holloway and Redknapp et. al. were all over the media talking about this crazy decision - a decision made by foreign owners...and worse still, a chairwoman! Foreign and female! Do us a favour, luv.
They all were keen to tell the world just how fantastic Sam is and how wronged the millionaire ex-manager has been. There was simply no dissent from this view given an airing.
No journalist or talking head pops up to say, "Sam? He's okay but his teams make your eyes melt with boredom." Unreasonable or not, that is how many feel about Allardyce's teams, so why didn't we hear that? If Allardyce was from anywhere else, we certainly would have. People are much more comfortable criticising a man whose first tongue isn't English.
There are few more nauseating sights in Premier League football than when the Brit pack starts howling as one about some perceived injustice. This sometimes happens when a 'not-that-sort-of-player' boots a nancy-boy foreigner into the middle of next week and snaps something off him in the process. The wagons circle around the beleagured British brute.
And if you still don't think there's an anti-foreign attitude, listen out for how many times both managers and some British players will, even now, refer to the 'foreign lads' negatively in the context of diving and play-acting, as though no honest son of Albion would ever do such a cheating thing. It still happens. We're even told it was invented by foreigners and 'brought over here'.
Clearly, with around 65% of the league's players being drawn from outside these islands, there is no resistance to importing players over and above utilising British players. Any discrimination may be better characterised as cultural, which only emerges when one of the British brethren feels slighted or put down somehow.
Sometimes it seems as if some high-profile British managers have a chip on their shoulder about not being foreign, claiming they are somehow seen as less worthy and thus discriminated against because they don't have a foreign name. However, such managers are remarkably un-keen to reciprocate by similarly getting a job at a European club.
Some have claimed that this British cabal essentially revolves around the most powerful of all managers, Sir Alex Ferguson, who sits at the top of the food managerial chain but again, this is hard to prove.
Over the issue of the Darren Bent transfer, Houllier may not have been right to say the Sunderland manager's response was because he's a Frenchman, but it's hard to imagine that Bruce would have said the same sort of thing about, say Mark Hughes. But then, I'm sure that would be because Hughes would call Bruce for a chat about a player and invite him down for a glass of red wine. Never white wine. That's for the ladies. No-one in the alpha-male world of British football managers would admit to drinking a nice chilled glass of white - for some reason, red is a real man's drink.
Discrimination is a nebulous thing, sometimes existing only in the mind, but the feeling that it's us verses them in the Premier League is sometimes too strong to resist. Britain can be an insular nation and there have been grumblings about foreigners 'coming over here' for as long as time, often from people who themselves, one or two generations earlier, also 'came over here'.
So it'd be amazing if football doesn't also hold the same attitude in some quarters and I'm sure Houllier, an intelligent chap, knows that only too well. It certainly exists in France. But of course, even if it does exist, sensitivity to it will be used as a stick to beat the bleating foreigner for being too paranoid. In that respect, he can't win and so, like many before him, the easier life is to say nothing and just swallow it down. Maybe talking about it will just make it worse.
Still, it could be worse Ged - at least you're not a woman in men's football, eh.
[size=12pt]Is It Because He Is French, Oui?[/size]
Posted 24/01/11 13:42EmailPrintSave
Was Gerard Houllier right to say his spat with Steve Bruce over the Darren Bent transfer was because he's 'foreign'? Is there an anti-foreign manager spirit in the Premier League?
Such accusations are always bound to lift people's hackles. I'm sure Bruce would argue his beef is with what Houllier as a man did or didn't do - however precious you might consider those noises - rather than as a Frenchman.
Like many forms of discrimination, such things are hard, if not impossible to prove because the actions of someone who is prejudiced often appear the same as someone who isn't. It's often impossible to tell what is in somebody's heart. Unless you've got an off-air recording of them airing their views, of course.
But I think we can say that there is a sensitivity in English football about the foreign interloper. We're forever hearing from English managers how 'good young English managers' don't get a chance because clubs would rather 'go foreign'.
However, only seven of 20 clubs are managed by non-Brits (depending on how you classify Mick McCarthy) and in Roberto Martinez and Robbie D iMatteo there are two who did apprenticeships in the lower leagues and worked their way up rather than being parachuted in to steal the position away from a noble, worthy Brit.
Fabio Capello has also been a lightening rod for much foreigner-bashing. As soon as we lose, it's because he can't speak English properly and doesn't care about England the way an Englishman would. Every expression he does or doesn't make becomes proof of this and the fact that he won lots of games with his limited English and emotions is forgotten because it does''t fit the stereotype of the uncaring foreigner who is killing the beating English heart of oak.
Certainly, the press and media's attitude to foreign managers is not the same as it is to English managers. Contrast the largely sympathetic press Roy Hodgson received ('he needed more time' was the line trotted out by rote), and the insulting, mocking press that Avram Grant gets which focuses mostly around his appearance and his (lack of) facial expressions.
The fact that West Ham were a poor side before Grant arrived seems often ignored in favour of painting him as useless and uninspiring, whereas there was an almost unanimous agreement that Liverpool were ruined by the Spaniard Benitez and English Roy was merely picking up the pieces. This despite the fact that Benitez had almost won the league a couple of years earlier. Similary, Grant's cup successes are dismissed as a freaky blip in a way that, say, Redknapp's cup success is not.
There is definitely a cabal of British managers who seem to operate an 'all for one one for all' policy. We saw this when Sam Allardyce was sacked from Blackburn. Within hours Pulis, Coyle, Moyes, Bruce, Holloway and Redknapp et. al. were all over the media talking about this crazy decision - a decision made by foreign owners...and worse still, a chairwoman! Foreign and female! Do us a favour, luv.
They all were keen to tell the world just how fantastic Sam is and how wronged the millionaire ex-manager has been. There was simply no dissent from this view given an airing.
No journalist or talking head pops up to say, "Sam? He's okay but his teams make your eyes melt with boredom." Unreasonable or not, that is how many feel about Allardyce's teams, so why didn't we hear that? If Allardyce was from anywhere else, we certainly would have. People are much more comfortable criticising a man whose first tongue isn't English.
There are few more nauseating sights in Premier League football than when the Brit pack starts howling as one about some perceived injustice. This sometimes happens when a 'not-that-sort-of-player' boots a nancy-boy foreigner into the middle of next week and snaps something off him in the process. The wagons circle around the beleagured British brute.
And if you still don't think there's an anti-foreign attitude, listen out for how many times both managers and some British players will, even now, refer to the 'foreign lads' negatively in the context of diving and play-acting, as though no honest son of Albion would ever do such a cheating thing. It still happens. We're even told it was invented by foreigners and 'brought over here'.
Clearly, with around 65% of the league's players being drawn from outside these islands, there is no resistance to importing players over and above utilising British players. Any discrimination may be better characterised as cultural, which only emerges when one of the British brethren feels slighted or put down somehow.
Sometimes it seems as if some high-profile British managers have a chip on their shoulder about not being foreign, claiming they are somehow seen as less worthy and thus discriminated against because they don't have a foreign name. However, such managers are remarkably un-keen to reciprocate by similarly getting a job at a European club.
Some have claimed that this British cabal essentially revolves around the most powerful of all managers, Sir Alex Ferguson, who sits at the top of the food managerial chain but again, this is hard to prove.
Over the issue of the Darren Bent transfer, Houllier may not have been right to say the Sunderland manager's response was because he's a Frenchman, but it's hard to imagine that Bruce would have said the same sort of thing about, say Mark Hughes. But then, I'm sure that would be because Hughes would call Bruce for a chat about a player and invite him down for a glass of red wine. Never white wine. That's for the ladies. No-one in the alpha-male world of British football managers would admit to drinking a nice chilled glass of white - for some reason, red is a real man's drink.
Discrimination is a nebulous thing, sometimes existing only in the mind, but the feeling that it's us verses them in the Premier League is sometimes too strong to resist. Britain can be an insular nation and there have been grumblings about foreigners 'coming over here' for as long as time, often from people who themselves, one or two generations earlier, also 'came over here'.
So it'd be amazing if football doesn't also hold the same attitude in some quarters and I'm sure Houllier, an intelligent chap, knows that only too well. It certainly exists in France. But of course, even if it does exist, sensitivity to it will be used as a stick to beat the bleating foreigner for being too paranoid. In that respect, he can't win and so, like many before him, the easier life is to say nothing and just swallow it down. Maybe talking about it will just make it worse.
Still, it could be worse Ged - at least you're not a woman in men's football, eh.
