Post by QPR Report on Oct 30, 2009 6:26:44 GMT
The Guardian/Harry Pearson
Football's project managers aiming for a lasting legacyMiddlesbrough's appointment of Gordon Strachan could see the club become a Project – or worse still, an emotional rollercoaster
A decade or so ago I met a lady from Pickering who'd been judging baking competitions across the North Riding of Yorkshire for four decades. I'd heard that the competitions were taken very seriously and asked if she'd ever received hate mail from disgruntled losers in the coconut haystack or teacakes (baked on the shelf) section.
"No," she said after a moment's thought, "but I have been tutted at on a couple of occasions."
I think this illustrates that people from the North Riding are a phlegmatic breed not given to hysterical displays of emotion. Because if the battle of the meringues won't get you hot under the collar, then frankly nothing will.
I was therefore surprised on Tuesday morning when an old acquaintance from the North York Moors phoned in a state of the sort of mild exuberance that passes for foaming frenzy down in the Bilberry Belt. It was the appointment of Gordon Strachan as the new Middlesbrough manager that had brought it on. Not so much the Scot himself, you understand, as to what his arrival might represent.
As far as the caller was concerned, the former Celtic boss was a clear sign that Middlesbrough were about to transform themselves from an ordinary football club into that most shimmering of modern football entities, a Project.
In the last year or so Projects have been springing up in the smouldering financial ashes of the English game like those Ray Harryhausen skeleton warriors in Jason and the Argonauts. Manchester City are a Project, Notts County are a Project, Birmingham City are on the cusp of becoming a Project, Portsmouth stand on the threshold of Projecthood and QPR have Project potential written across them as plainly as the word "nob" on the forehead of some bloke who fell asleep during a stag weekend in Tallinn.
Ideally, of course, you don't want your club to be just a Project, which, to be honest, smacks of something you might do at primary school. It sounds infantile, really. In fact, every time Sven-Goran Eriksson talks about the Project I imagine him locked in his office at Meadow Lane applying papier-mache to the outside of a balloon while phoning down to the changing rooms to see if any more cardboard toilet roll cylinders have become available yet.
The Magpies' new manager, Hans Backe, is apparently already familiar with the Project, which is one of the reasons County preferred him to Roberto Mancini. The Italian brings many talents to the table, but so far there's no evidence that washing-up liquid bottles and sticky-back plastic are among them.
No, a Project pure and simple is not enough. What football demands is a Project that is going on a journey. Ideally a journey inspired by a vision or dream, and leading towards a goal. Because only when a Project reaches a goal can it be transformed into a legacy. And that is the ultimate challenge.
Although naturally it won't be the end of the Project. Because those who start on a Project are not interested in building an ordinary legacy. Not for them the sort of legacy you might get when a kindly old aunt shuffles through the exit door and fritter away one afternoon buying up Pinky and Perky EPs on eBay.
Football is not interested in the transient, here-today-gone-tomorrow type of legacy, you see. No, it wants, nay demands, a lasting legacy. The sort of enduring legacy that speaks so strongly to the human heart it is reinvented, burnished anew, through the ages, by generation upon generation, until in some distant future when the natural resources of the world have all but run dry and the sky is cloaked in impenetrable blackness, the few survivors of our species will gather around the dying embers of the last fire on Earth and tell tales that begin: "And then came the man called Garry of Eastlands and he was excited, looked to the future and carried things forward and a mighty storm of bullshit rained down upon the land …" That is the sort of legacy football is aiming to build.
The caller from North Yorkshire believed this was the direction Boro were heading. "Chief executive Keith Lamb said it is going to be 'an interesting ride'," he said, in response to my scepticism, "surely that's the first step on the road to a journey?"
"Sadly not," I told him. "A journey has a destination. A ride simply goes round and round. And, of course, there's a danger that any ride – interesting or otherwise – may turn out to be an emotional rollercoaster. And nobody wants that."
"You're not wrong," the caller said. There was a hint of unease in his voice. And well there might be, for during the Bryan Robson era he had been driven quite crazy by the melodrama of it all. Twice I distinctly heard him make tsk-ing noises and once I'd swear I saw him slap his thigh ... Though when I asked him about it afterwards he said he was just checking to see he had his car keys on him.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/oct/30/middlesbrough-project-gordon-strachan
Football's project managers aiming for a lasting legacyMiddlesbrough's appointment of Gordon Strachan could see the club become a Project – or worse still, an emotional rollercoaster
A decade or so ago I met a lady from Pickering who'd been judging baking competitions across the North Riding of Yorkshire for four decades. I'd heard that the competitions were taken very seriously and asked if she'd ever received hate mail from disgruntled losers in the coconut haystack or teacakes (baked on the shelf) section.
"No," she said after a moment's thought, "but I have been tutted at on a couple of occasions."
I think this illustrates that people from the North Riding are a phlegmatic breed not given to hysterical displays of emotion. Because if the battle of the meringues won't get you hot under the collar, then frankly nothing will.
I was therefore surprised on Tuesday morning when an old acquaintance from the North York Moors phoned in a state of the sort of mild exuberance that passes for foaming frenzy down in the Bilberry Belt. It was the appointment of Gordon Strachan as the new Middlesbrough manager that had brought it on. Not so much the Scot himself, you understand, as to what his arrival might represent.
As far as the caller was concerned, the former Celtic boss was a clear sign that Middlesbrough were about to transform themselves from an ordinary football club into that most shimmering of modern football entities, a Project.
In the last year or so Projects have been springing up in the smouldering financial ashes of the English game like those Ray Harryhausen skeleton warriors in Jason and the Argonauts. Manchester City are a Project, Notts County are a Project, Birmingham City are on the cusp of becoming a Project, Portsmouth stand on the threshold of Projecthood and QPR have Project potential written across them as plainly as the word "nob" on the forehead of some bloke who fell asleep during a stag weekend in Tallinn.
Ideally, of course, you don't want your club to be just a Project, which, to be honest, smacks of something you might do at primary school. It sounds infantile, really. In fact, every time Sven-Goran Eriksson talks about the Project I imagine him locked in his office at Meadow Lane applying papier-mache to the outside of a balloon while phoning down to the changing rooms to see if any more cardboard toilet roll cylinders have become available yet.
The Magpies' new manager, Hans Backe, is apparently already familiar with the Project, which is one of the reasons County preferred him to Roberto Mancini. The Italian brings many talents to the table, but so far there's no evidence that washing-up liquid bottles and sticky-back plastic are among them.
No, a Project pure and simple is not enough. What football demands is a Project that is going on a journey. Ideally a journey inspired by a vision or dream, and leading towards a goal. Because only when a Project reaches a goal can it be transformed into a legacy. And that is the ultimate challenge.
Although naturally it won't be the end of the Project. Because those who start on a Project are not interested in building an ordinary legacy. Not for them the sort of legacy you might get when a kindly old aunt shuffles through the exit door and fritter away one afternoon buying up Pinky and Perky EPs on eBay.
Football is not interested in the transient, here-today-gone-tomorrow type of legacy, you see. No, it wants, nay demands, a lasting legacy. The sort of enduring legacy that speaks so strongly to the human heart it is reinvented, burnished anew, through the ages, by generation upon generation, until in some distant future when the natural resources of the world have all but run dry and the sky is cloaked in impenetrable blackness, the few survivors of our species will gather around the dying embers of the last fire on Earth and tell tales that begin: "And then came the man called Garry of Eastlands and he was excited, looked to the future and carried things forward and a mighty storm of bullshit rained down upon the land …" That is the sort of legacy football is aiming to build.
The caller from North Yorkshire believed this was the direction Boro were heading. "Chief executive Keith Lamb said it is going to be 'an interesting ride'," he said, in response to my scepticism, "surely that's the first step on the road to a journey?"
"Sadly not," I told him. "A journey has a destination. A ride simply goes round and round. And, of course, there's a danger that any ride – interesting or otherwise – may turn out to be an emotional rollercoaster. And nobody wants that."
"You're not wrong," the caller said. There was a hint of unease in his voice. And well there might be, for during the Bryan Robson era he had been driven quite crazy by the melodrama of it all. Twice I distinctly heard him make tsk-ing noises and once I'd swear I saw him slap his thigh ... Though when I asked him about it afterwards he said he was just checking to see he had his car keys on him.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/oct/30/middlesbrough-project-gordon-strachan