Ancelotti, 64 years old; Gasperini, 66 years old; Mendilibar, 63 years old. These are the technicians who have won the European competitions of the year for their teams, Champions, Europa League and Conference League, with Real Madrid, Atalanta and Olympiacos, respectively. They have different approaches, but they are related in age, they are neighbors on the sixth floor of their lives. That is why I associate them under the heading of Gray Panthers, evoking that political party that raised the flag of the age in Germany between 1989 and 2008, and that had a fleeting emulator among us.
The three of them were formed in the time before Big-Data, when instinct and psychology counted more than Excel sheets and the glut of data offered to footballers, and I like that they have done well. It’s not that they despise the possibilities of this time, nor do I. They rely on them, but they do not put them at the center of their work. The big surprise, of course, has been Mendilibiar, the most down-to-earth of the three. (“Greeks, long live the mother who gave birth to you!” was his triumphant speech from the balcony of the town hall).
We had his figure very related to Eibar, a club in which he was twice and which he trained the most. It seemed that this was his natural biotope and from there we received his opinions and phrases of old wisdom that made him close. He came to Sevilla as a firefighter and won the Europa League; The club, which had other plans, began to reluctance with him the next year and kicked him out as soon as it could. That was in October of last year; In February of this year he arrived at Olympiacos, also as a firefighter, and has led them to win their first continental title. Simplicity, closeness to the player, success in making the mix, frontal rejection of nonsense. A message sunk in the roots of football.
Gasperini is the most methodical and energetic of the three. An apostle of the five-man defense with speed to get out on the wings, which cost him criticism for being ultra-defensive, he has stuck to his idea until he took it forward, precisely with a purely offensive game. Theirs has been, like so many, a selling club, one of those that lives off the coach’s good hand making players shine who are then transferred in order to maintain a competitive squad with progressively higher salaries. A bit like Monchi’s Sevilla or Borussia Dortmund. His good eye for finding spare parts (the latest case is Lookman, signed for 15 million after a lackluster career in half of England and part of Germany) has allowed him to continually go further. In the final he destroyed Bayer Leverkusen before the astonished eyes of all the fans on the continent.
The third, or first in fame and category, or the middle in age, is our Ancelotti, also a man without nonsense. Of course he has a great team of analysts on whose data he relies, but he usefully mixes it with all the wealth of prior knowledge acquired since the good old days of Sacchi’s Milan (“the greater the chaos, the closer the solution is”, he told me one day, and well that he saw himself in the Wembley final) to everything that has been soaking him in his already very long career in football. A look, a raised eyebrow, a reasoning. That’s how he treats the players. “I like Nacho that he is a pessimistic defender”; “I have a dream, to dance with Camavinga.” You can’t imagine him scorching his players with data.
Let’s not deny the possibilities that technology offers to football, but it is not advisable to make a golden calf of it either. It was recently reported that by computing Expected goals (abbreviated in xGA), Barça, Arsenal and Bayern would have been champions of their Leagues. But they weren’t. And Almería would not have been relegated. But it went down. Football is not there, but in the solidarity and state of mind of a group of young people gathered in the same squad under the orders of a boss who knows how to treat them. And it seems that the old language is still useful for this, or so the happy coincidence of this shortlist of gray panthers crowned in continental football version 2024 leads us to think.
The three of them are, paradoxically, the latest fashion.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
_
