If you're not a lawyer, you should become one! 😆
jones wrote:
All the great coaches/managers mentioned in this thread became known initially not because of their building great squads by buying players but their ability to extract more out of the players at their disposal. Guardiola you could claim as the one outlier as having started at a huge club but even he took a team that finished 3rd and ten points behind Villarreal and lead it to the greatest side ever in football. He did get Dani Alves that season to be fair but ditching Ronaldinho and Deco then rearranging that midfield had nothing to do spending big.
Klopp was the same, very successful with no cash whatsoever at Mainz, back to back league titles and a double with Dortmund with little investment, even at Liverpool the base for his work was visible before they spent big in 2017.
Tuchel has largely the same CV and story behind him. That Mainz team of his was ridiculous, complete nonsense players and they still broke several league records back then. Even Jose Mourinho had his first success at Porto without significant investment, not to be too polemic but if you can win the CL with Benni McCarthy as your star striker it should be possible to do something with the squad we've had and have
Only here it's somehow considered impossible to do better than 8th two seasons in a row, only here the manager's task is to sell everything and everyone and build it new before his coaching comes into play. I think you're normally reasonable enough Ricky, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one
Thanks for acknowledging my usual reason, how wonderfully benevolent of you. 😆
I couldn't care less what Klopp did at Mainz or Tuchel for that matter (who tore up no trees at Dortmund and I would argue at PSG). What the rest of the teams you listed have in common, other than actually winning something (because, strangely, even the chosen one, Herr Klopp couldn't win shit at Mainz. Obviously), is that every single one of them had quality footballers.
Porto - Vitor Baia, Paolo Ferreira, Ricardo Carvalho, Costinha, Maniche, Sergio Conceicao, Deco.
Dortmund - Weidenfeller, Piszcek, Hummels, Gundogan, Kagawa, Götze, Perisic, Lewandowski
It's not even worth listing Barcelona's truly phenomenal squad.
These guys didn't take nobodies and miraculously coach them to great things - and you're confused if you think spending big is the important part. These were very good teams, put together by very good coaches and sporting directors (certainly at Dortmund and Barca, but I don't know for sure at Porto). Many of the players have gone on to win League titles at other clubs, Champions Leagues, World Cups, Ballon d'Ors.
It's not a case of one or the other either - the coaches have gone on to other clubs and proven they are greats. I'm not saying they weren't hugely important factors, but to disregsrd or de-emphasise the importance of the quality of the players they had at their disposal is ludicrous. Genuinely. In any great team, one that actually wins something of substance, there has to be a marrying of the two. One without the other does not work.
