“Freedom is being free to say that two and two make four.”
George Orwell
After the first and – as far as I know – battle that was fought completely in the air, that of Great Britain in 1940, Churchill unleashed another of his lapidary phrases: “Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so many. few”.
We are going to adapt it to Rodri, current Ballon d’Or winner, Madrid midfielder for Manchester City: “Never on a football field have so many owed so much to one player.”
It is tremendous what is happening to what, until recently, had been the best football team in England and, in the opinion of many (perhaps not that of Florentino Pérez), the best in the world, under the command of Pep Guardiola , the most influential and most successful coach of the century.
City have lost their last five games, a record for Guardiola. The most recent defeat was on Saturday 0-4, at home, against Tottenham, sixth in the table.
Rodri kisses the Ballon d’Or in the run-up to City-Tottenham, this Sunday, in Manchester
City is in free fall, without a parachute. Because? We can complicate it, if we want – the advanced age of the players, the fact that Guardiola’s tactical dogmatism exhausts them, etc. – but basically it is because Rodri is their parachute and he was injured two months ago and will not play again for the rest of the season.
The data is devastating. Before Rodri’s injury against Arsenal on September 22, City, English champions for the last four seasons, were going for fifth, first place in the Premier League. Now, they are eight points behind Liverpool, their rival next weekend, may God save them.
And look at this: in the 50 Premier League games since the start of last season, City did not lose a game when Rodri played and lost 43 percent when he was absent.
City is in free fall and without a parachute, basically because Rodri has been injured for two months
There was another theory a couple of weeks ago to explain City’s debacle. That it was due to the general perception that Guardiola was leaving the club at the end of the season. That was why the players had lost competitive tension, went the argument, summarized thus by the Times from London: “If Guardiola commits to staying one more year, that news would be better than any strategy or scheme he is contemplating.”
Well, last week, Guardiola announced that he would stay for two more years and, two days later, the catastrophe against Tottenham occurred. Maybe not, it seems.
It has been shown, irrefutably, that Rodri is the key that closes the team’s defense and the key that opens the opponent’s goal. Without the protective wall he provides in midfield, highly regarded defenders like Rúben Dias and Manuel Akanji become comically vulnerable.
As for the attack, look what has happened to Erlig Håland. Without Rodri’s order and vision, the world’s most prolific scoring machine of the last three years has been blocked. In the five league games prior to Rodri’s injury, the Norwegian giant had scored ten goals. In the seven games since then, he has scored two.
What Rodri offers City is, first, that he is the father of the group. A familiar Spanish-style guy, as God intended, has a university degree and does not have tattoos, an infallible sign in those who do have them of a point of personal insecurity. He conveys maturity and good sense, in an environment in which too many are children with nouveau riche complexes.
Second, in the decisions and positions he takes, in the passes he makes, the Spaniard does not fail. Well, very occasionally yes, an opportunity for television commentators to point it out as an event.
In football, Florentino has less base than the voter of Namibia, Uganda, Albania and Finland
Speaking of kids, the president of Real Madrid tried to explain in a speech last week the embarrassment of why his club had not sent anyone to the Ballon d’Or ceremony that Rodri won. Insinuating that everything was a UEFA scheme, that, if not, his striker, Vinícius, would have won, he said: “This year, surprising things have happened in the vote. Without the votes of Namibia, Uganda, Albania and Finland, Vinícius would have won.”
The whiff of racism aside, it turns out that Florentino Pérez has less football criteria than the voters of those four countries. It helps, of course, to see things as they are, to know how to interpret the data, to understand the colossal Rodridependence of what was a great team. It also helps not to live blinded by fanaticism.
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#Rodri #Florentino #John #Carlin
