在同博格巴不和之后,穆里尼奥从曼联黯然下课。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识:
humdrum[ˈhʌmdrʌm] adj.单调
concur[kənˈkɜ:(r)] vi.同意
taskmaster[ˈtɑ:skmɑ:stə(r)] n.工头
ruse[ru:z] n.谋略
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The face is rounder now and the hair, once salt and pepper, is just salt. The quotable zingers have dried up. The tailoring is still sharp but there are lapses into the logo-prominent comfort wear of the suburban dog walker.
Even José Mourinho’s exit from Manchester United, when it came on Tuesday, was humdrum: shrugs on all sides, media guesswork as to the severance terms and the spectacle (evoking Alan Partridge) of a man settling his bill in a hotel that was his home for 895 days.
You would not know that Mourinho once had so much subversive glamour as to appear, at times, younger than his players. The first great football coach of the 21st century bucked all management theory in his mate-iness with the staff. “I am not one of the bottle,” he said, in a metaphor for specialness, and players concurred.
Now at 55, you could park a team bus in the cultural gap between him and the modern footballer. He fell out with United’s Paul Pogba for much the same reason that he soured on Eden Hazard at Chelsea and the young blades of Real Madrid. The taskmaster resented their alleged softness (“spoiled kids”, he called them) and their social media fripperies. He came to resemble the kind of war-generation father who cannot understand the flower in his son’s hair or the Doors album doing bluesy laps on the family Dancette.
Yes, the tactics stagnated. The transfer dealings erred. But it was the human element — man-management — that Mourinho really mislaid. This is a story of mutual generational incomprehension before it is a story of overly defensive midfield picks.
It used to be said that Mourinho, upon arrival at a club, would choose one player to alienate pour encourager les autres. At United, he alienated most of the squad. This is not a ruse. This is an all-too-authentic rift in mores and temperament. In the end, he just ran out of millennials to scold.
Mourinho has half a point. A new kind of footballer has emerged, flattered by super-agents and reared almost from the embryo in cloistered academies. Former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, another coach who failed to make sense of this breed, theorises that fans increasingly support individual players rather than clubs. Real Madrid has 67m Instagram followers. Their former star forward Cristiano Ronaldo, now at Juventus, has 149m. Mourinho, whose doctrine of football abhors randomness, must hate this trend towards the maverick.
“Spoiled”, however, is an odd line of attack. Footballers still rise from working (or workless) communities. Many move abroad at a young age, and move again, and again, each time acquiring a language with their necessarily truncated formal education. Given the astronomical mass of the sport’s worldwide following, and the advent of social media, they live in a panopticon prison of scrutiny that even an National Basketball Association star or serial tennis champion cannot understand.
Doubting the fibre of these men should be left to popped-collar rugby bores. As for their arrogance, if, like Pogba, you had escaped the Paris high-rises through your own scandalous talent, you might walk with a strut, too.
“Docile” might be a fairer criticism. In the exhaustible trove of football analysis, a trend is being picked up. The modern player demands copious and precise instruction to perform. What used to be seen as over-coaching has become the way of the greats. Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola, the millennial-whisperer, is a classic over-coacher, drilling such specific passing patterns that his team score variations of the same goal again and again. Lucien Favre at Borussia Dortmund is said to correct players on the exact position of their hands when they run.
This need for direction has done for some coaches. Wenger always relied on players to solve on-field problems themselves. Carlo Ancelotti was drummed out of Bayern Munich because players wanted more, not less, training. Consider that request: it suggests a lack of independent initiative, perhaps, but not a spoiled, feckless generation.
Just as Londoners of a certain age put the definite article before “Arsenal”, people with a formal association with Manchester United can be particular about the name. They might rush its enunciation (Manchoos-nited) but Man United, United and, sin of sins, Man U, are barred.
Football’s oligopoly of super-clubs are grand, self-regarding institutions, where Mourinho always pictured himself. Even admirers now wonder if he will be allowed to steer one again. If his decline is down to tactics, he has the suppleness of mind to change. But if he is just stumped by the young, this is it for him. He must settle for a club that is of the bottle.
请根据你所读到的文章内容,完成以下自测题目:
A.He's not fit for football manager.
B.He's special.
C.He's the right one for Manchester United.
D.He's not going to stay too long.
答案 (1)
A.Mourinho and Pogba don't like each other.
B.Mourinho is better than Alex Ferguson.
C.Mourinho understands everything about Pogba.
D.Mourinho should not be a football manager any more.
答案 (2)
A.Tactics
B.Transfer
C.Man-management
D.Public relationship
答案 (3)
A.The modern player is spoiled.
B.The modern player needs total freedom to perform.
C.The modern player demands copious and precise instruction to perform.
D.The modern player wants to follow their own strategy to perform.
答案 (4)
(1) 答案:B解释:“I am not one of the bottle,” he said, in a metaphor for specialness, and players concurred.
(2) 答案:A解释:He fell out with United’s Paul Pogba for much the same reason that he s oured on Eden Hazard at Chelsea and the young blades of Real Madrid.
(3) 答案:C解释:Yes, the tactics stagnated. The transfer dealings erred. But it was the human element — man-management — that Mourinho really mislaid.
(4) 答案:C解释:In the exhaustible trove of football analysis, a trend is being picked up. The modern player demands copious and precise instruction to perform.