Vital cog: Wright-Phillips says it is difficult to win if a team doesn’t have good management or technical staff.
| Photo Credit: special arrangement
While lack of resources is often cited as a primary reason for India continuing to be a laggard in world football, Shaun Wright-Phillips believes simply splashing money is of no use without a process in place.
He should know, having been a mainstay at Manchester City before and after the immense financial backing of Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi Group in 2008.
“People always talk about Manchester City splashing money but if you go into the last 10-15 years and you weigh up the top-five clubs who spend the most money, Man City never broke the bank every single time.
Its most expensive player is Jack Grealish (signed for a reported £100m in 2021, the most expensive transfer fee for an English player at the time) and everyone else, apart from Josko Gvardiol (Croatian defender, signed for a reported £77m in 2023), is 60 or under,” he said.
“The key thing is they very rarely miss now. With Pep’s (Guardiola) team and the recruitment around him, the players they get seem to gel and fit, not just in the way he wants them to play but also as a person outside the game. There’s a lot more at play than just splashing money. One thing I have learnt is that you cannot buy the EPL. If you don’t have the manager and coaches and staff, you are tactically not going to be there.
“If you look at some of the players Pep’s brought in, most hadn’t even heard of them – he brought them in and made them elite players or at least fulfil their potential,” Wright-Phillips said in an interaction here on Friday.
Wright-Phillips pointed out that some of the most successful teams are not necessarily the richest.
“I hate looking at my own club and mentioning it but Chelsea (2005-08) is a prime example that you cannot simply buy your way to the top. For the owners, there are lots of floor plans out there that prove money doesn’t win.
“You have Brentford, you have Liverpool who won the Champions League (CL) and, in many ways, you can turn around and say that team wasn’t as good as now but they won the CL… Look at Girona FC, they didn’t splash money in the Spanish League and they are in the CL for the first time in history,” he listed.
One of the club’s most famous products, Wright-Phillips has now turned to being its ambassador and is on his third visit to India, accompanying the club’s Champions four-in-a-row Trophy Tour after winning a historic fourth consecutive Premier League title last year.
As part of the Tour, City will also be providing a free coaching course to upskill grassroots coaches. While he swore by the structure, he admitted that there needs to be a balance between system and raw talent.
“Grassroots is different to when I was playing, I would be lucky to have goalposts and a net. Now it is very structured and professional. I think the one thing that is missing is that very rarely now you see people play football with friends on the street. Because that’s one thing you cannot teach in football, raw talent.
“Messi is God’s gift to football, you cannot teach that whereas Ronaldo put the hard work in to get where he is. Even on his off days he will go in, do gym and practice his skills. That’s why he is the man he is today. If you don’t have what Messi has, Ronaldo is someone kids can see and if you can do even half or a quarter of that, you can with dedication reach a certain level,” he explained.
Asked about the constant comparison between ‘good-looking football’ in South America and ‘structured play’ in England and whether it was real or fiction, he was non-committal.
“See, I don’t necessarily agree with that distinction but understand what you are saying. If you see the last 2-3 years, those players are now re-emerging, the ones where when you give them the ball, you always feel something’s going to happen.
“You see Phil Foden and what he does in those pockets, that’s not something you teach, that’s just something he knows and probably has since he was 7-8. There will always be players like that around the world — Kevin de Bruyne, Foden, Savinho. But people also have to understand that, in EPL, if you take the risk in a bad area, you can lose the title. Do you want to win or just be exciting?”
Published – September 20, 2024 11:46 pm IST
