Waiting for Manzano?

When Sevilla manager Antonio Alvarez was sacked earlier this week following a 2-0 away defeat to Hércules at the weekend, surely few supporters’ eyebrows were raised. Although he steered the Rojiblancos to a Copa del Rey victory and Champions League berth last season after taking over with just ten games remaining, the disappointments were starting to accumulate well above the brim for the recently deposed Alvarez.

The first omen came back in August in the playoff round of the Champions League, when Sevilla failed to return to the group stages following a 5-3 aggregate loss to Portuguese debutants Braga, which included an embarrassing 4-3 defeat at home.

The second portent must have been their sheer inability to bedazzle the home crowd this season, as the club is still winless (0-2-2) in four games in all competitions at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, which includes a controversial 1-0 defeat against visiting Paris Saint-Germain two weeks ago.

And the third and final straw surely was Sunday’s loss in Alicante, courtesy of two David Trezeguet goals, that saw Sevilla go winless for the sixth time in eight games in all competitions this season.

Having been in Sevilla last week, I decided to pay a visit to the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán on a Thursday night to see if I couldn’t gauge the vibe surrounding Andalusia’s second-oldest club as they prepared for battle against visiting Racing Santander.

A few blocks from the stadium I caught up with an enthusiastic Sevillista named Viktor who helped set the record straight.

“Sevilla is one of the greatest teams in Spain,” he began in Spanish, bee-lining it across the crosswalk, “But right now, things are not good.”

He took a moment to sigh, then continued on.

“We have the players (Luis Fabiano, Freddie Kanouté, Jesús Navas, etc.) to take us far each and every year, it’s just a matter of whether or not they have the heart to finish.”

I then asked him to opine about Sevilla’s untimely exit from the Champions League at the hands of lowly Braga.

“I have nothing to say,” he told me solemnly as the two of us advanced toward the gates of the stadium.

Viktor still shook hands with me and gave me a friendly grin as we parted ways, but I realized that I had struck a concealed chord of chagrin within his Sevilla-loving heart, and my mere mentioning of the Braga debacle had visibly agitated him. It was similar to an episode I had shared with my cab driver—another rabid Sevilla fan—en route from the airport to my hotel.

When I had asked him to comment on the Braga collapse, he looked at me resentfully in the reflection of his rearview mirror and told me sternly, “We don’t talk about that here.”

As the match finally went underway, I could see why.

Sevilla looked lackluster at best against an inferior Racing Santander side, whose greatest claim to fame—19-year-old hotshot Sergio Canales—wasn’t even playing for them anymore, having been purchased last year by Real Madrid. Admittedly, the home side was without their usual big three of Fabiano, Kanouté, and Navas, all of whom were out with injuries. But besides one spot kick that was duly converted by Álvaro Negredo, there wasn’t even a hint of another goal from the outfit donned in all-white for the duration of the evening, and Racing equalized just after halftime with an impressive strike from a former bricklayer, defender Pablo Pinillos, to secure a point for Los Racinguistas in a 1-1 draw.

Just before the game’s conclusion, I ventured to the upper confines of the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán and struck up a conversation with two other Sevillistas named Antonio and José. I asked them their thoughts so far on the night’s fixture against Racing, and they expectedly shook their heads.

“They are not playing well right now,” started Antonio alluding to Sevilla, “and that is not surprising given their recent run of form.”

Daring not to bring up Braga one more time during my brief stay in the city, I wondered aloud if Sevilla might ever be able to compete with habitual Liga giants Barcelona and Real Madrid.

They both laughed.

“No. There’s just no way,” José conceded ultimately. “Barcelona and Real Madrid are here,” he told me moving both his hands well above his head, “And [Sevilla] is here,” he said, dropping them back to eyelevel.

When the match finally ended, Antonio tapped my arm to get my attention.

“Watch this,” he informed me in Spanish.

The two of them, and almost everyone else in the stadium, reached into their respective pockets and removed a white plastic bag, which they then began to brandish in the general direction of Alvarez while a cacophony of boos rained down upon the under-fire boss. It was to be his last home match as manager.

Sevilla have since replaced Alvarez with Gregorio Manzano, who guided Mallorca to a fifth-place finish in La Liga last year and near Champions League qualification tantalizingly out of reach, in the hopes that the incumbent manager can turn things around in southern Spain’s largest metropolis. But with no Champions League fixtures in the near future, one dismal home performance after another, and the brightest event on the horizon being that of the less glamorous Europa League, Manzano will have to do it in front of an ardent soccer city that nowadays feels more like a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

As Sevilla’s players departed the pitch after the monotonous draw versus Racing, José continued to wave his white bag emphatically.

“This is a disappointing result,” he told me, “but this is what you sign up for when you root for Sevilla.”

Only time will tell as to whether Manzano has what it takes to revive Sevilla and its contingent of disillusioned followers, and after a Europe League clash away to in-form Borussia Dortmund tomorrow, it will all start this weekend at home to high-flying Atlético Madrid. Though it’s obvious that it will take much more than just victories to change the mentality of this club and its supporters seemingly stuck in purgatory.

The Northern Sights

If you happened to be watching ESPN, any soccer highlight shows, or browsing random clips on YouTube at any point during the past two weeks, chances are you’ve seen one of the strangest, most creative, and dare I say, more impressive goal celebrations in recent memory.

After finding the back of the net in a recent match, Stjarnan FC striker Thorvaldur Árnason ran towards his jubilant teammates who celebrated with him in typical soccer fashion, wrapping their arms around their colleague and embracing the euphoric goal-scorer. It was natural, basic, and expected. But Árnason and his crew were far from finished.

As the crowd applauded their side’s strike, Árnason raised an index figure to the supporters, signaling for them to wait. Seconds later, three other members of Stjarnan assembled behind Árnason forming what has quickly come to be known as the Human Toilet. The 30-year-old forward then took a seat, skimmed over his imaginary newspaper, and took care of business—at least in simulation—much to the raucous incredulity of those in attendance. Oh, and not only did Árnason have the courtesy to flush, but he remembered to put the seat down, too.

Stjarnan (pronounced SHTAIRT-nahn), who play in Iceland’s top-flight division, Pepsi-deildin, have become major celebrities in the soccer world almost overnight for their unique choreographed goal-scoring celebrations like the aforementioned Árnason’s, whose shenanigans made number one on SportsCenter’s Not Top Ten just two Fridays ago.

The lavish celebrations, which, in addition to the Human Toilet include a Rambo shooting spree, a human bicycle, and an exceptionally realistic depiction of reeling in a fish, have become a hit on the Internet and soccer television shows around world in recent months. And while each possesses its own peculiar blend of novelty, cleverness, and imagination, an onlooker witnessing these extravagant celebrations for the first time might think them all to be just a tad out of the ordinary. But they would be right, for in a land where puffin and fermented shark meat are considered delicacies, where all children are named after their fathers, and where everyone—even the Prime Minister—is listed in the country’s solitary telephone book, it’s best to expect the unexpected.

Having traveled to Iceland this past weekend, I sought out after the natives of Reykjavik to see if they might be able to explain to me this bizarre on-going phenomenon from the club that makes its home just down the road from the capital in the municipality of Garðabær. And I didn’t have to stray far, as two managers—Ingi and Svavar—working the front desk at my hostel proved not only to be rabid soccer enthusiasts, but de facto authorities on all-things Stjarnan.

“There was a tradition of strange celebrations in Pepsi-deildin (then known as Úrvalsdeild) that began in 1999 when club ÍBV performed a version of human bowling after scoring a goal, “ started Svavar. “Ten players lined up as pins, while the goal-scorer ran into them as the ball, knocking them down in a perfect strike. It is this mantle of odd celebrating that Stjarnan have now taken up, and theirs are pretty ingenious,” he admitted.

Entertaining they may be, however, the celebrations can only carry the intrigue of an entire league so far.

“I cannot stand watching Icelandic soccer,” conceded an honest Ingi, “it just doesn’t have anything exciting to offer.”

“So how does a team like Stjarnan and the rest of the teams in Pepsi-deildin compare to those big clubs on the continent like Real Madrid,” I inquired.

Ingi just stared at me blankly.

Okay, so it was a silly question, and of course I had known the answer well before asking it (surely anyone who follows soccer even a little bit would): the gap between the two in terms of talent was wide. Very wide. Just to give you a reference point, of the 53 top-flight divisions in all of Europe, Spain is currently 2nd in the UEFA coefficient rankings, while Iceland, clocking in just above Kazakhstan’s Premier League and just below Macedonia’s Prva Liga, is a measly 40th.

“The Icelandic people have never regarded Pepsi-deildin as being a professional soccer league, but instead as a step between amateur and professional, and it starts and ends with the Icelandic National team“ said Ingi.

To be sure, Iceland has produced a handful of notable soccer players, perhaps most famously that of current Stoke City striker Eiður Guðjohnsen, whose illustrious career has included successful spells at Chelsea and Barcelona, among others. However, at least for these Iceland fans, the amount of stars that have emanated from this tiny island in the north Atlantic seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

“Our country’s National team has never qualified for a major tournament (such as the World Cup or European Championship), they have never gotten anything done as a team, and they constantly give up,” continued Ingi, “which is why I have a difficult time supporting them and our country’s club teams. Liverpool is my true club.”

One need only take a stroll down Reykjavik’s main drag Laugavegur to confirm his latter statement. With several sports bars advertising match times for English Premier League fixtures featuring Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool, it’s obvious that Icelandic soccer, like a little brother, will always succumb to the big boys and take the back seat.

Curious as to how Pepsi-deildin compared in play to England’s Premiership, a friend of mine and I journeyed southward on foot to Vodafonevöllurinn, the home stadium of the Reykjavik-based club Valur, who were fortuitously playing, yup, you guessed it: Stjarnan. Maybe I would get a chance to witness one of these ridiculous celebrations after all, and in the process, dispel Ingi’s accusations of Iceland’s top-flight division being unwatchable.

I was wrong.

Even for its wealth of collective goals scored (6), Valur’s 5-1 drubbing of the web’s most athletic goof troop was a paltry, shambolic affair to feast one’s eyes on. Throughout the entire match both teams were devoid of organization, creativity, and rhythm: three ingredients whose lack thereof inevitably lead to appallingly ugly performances. And the one glimmer of hope for seeing a new outrageous celebration vanished as quickly as it had arrived when a Stjarnan penalty (duly converted by Halldór Björnsson) came late after halftime when they were trailing 3-0; certainly not an appropriate time for such aforementioned antics.

But the fans were there—the visiting Stjarnan contingent in blue, the home supporters of Valur in red—cheering back in forth, singing their club’s songs in vociferous, yet indecipherable Icelandic expression. The fervor for clubs in Pepsi-deildin, which I had been told was nonexistent, was instead abundantly palpable. Even when a young fan ran past me in the stands wearing a Manchester United cap and a Stjarnan sweatshirt, it was evident which team had taken priority for this youth at this particular moment. And the soccer wasn’t that bad either. In fact, the sheer strength and physicality being displayed on the pitch might have rivaled some of the top leagues in Europe.

We returned to the hostel to be informed by one of the managers that a player from UMF Selfoss, another club from Pepsi-deildin, was staying in our room that night. The player, Martin Dohlsten, is the lone Swede on a team predominated by Icelandics, and when asked what he thought of Stjarnan’s unique style of celebrating goals, the 24-year-old defender just laughed.

“They are really funny,” he says with a grin, “I think our league needs something like that; they’re brilliant.”

As evidenced from Sunday’s match, Stjarnan don’t unleash their trademark histrionics after every goal they score, and playing in a country whose volcanoes are unpredictably active, that seems rather appropriate. We soccer fans have no way of knowing when the next epochal Stjarnan celebration will surface, but I have no doubt that it will catch us all by surprise and entertain as much as, if not more than the club’s previous on-field theatrics.

When asked what he thought the celebrations and their global publicity meant for Icelandic soccer and its country in general, Ingi was unexpectedly earnest:

“I honestly can see nothing bad coming from it. I’ve seen all the celebrations and they’re really cool. If [Stjarnan] continue to do them, and people see them on the Internet and identify the club as being from Iceland, that can only be seen as a positive thing for our league and for our country.”

Iceland’s national team and top-flight soccer league may be far from the best, but as long as the country and its most popular sport are getting worldwide attention from this tiny club made up of all but one home-grown player, it would appear that these unique celebrations have no end in sight. We just can’t wait to see what Stjarnan is cooking up next.

UCL Preview to come...

What's in a Name? Italy's Rescue Plan Maybe

In the wake of Sampdoria’s untimely crashing out of the UEFA Champions League to Werder Bremen last week, there must have been few supporters of the Italian game who were left scratching their heads, flabbergasted as to exactly what had gone wrong for the Genoa outfit.

Up 3-0 and 4-3 on aggregate over the German outfit, the Blucerchiati looked to be headed for the group stage as Serie A’s fourth and final representative in 2010, when a last gasp Markus Rosenberg strike in the 93rd minute changed everything. Level on aggregate, the match headed into extra time where Claudio Pizarro found the score-sheet and silenced the home crowd, effectively sealing Werder Bremen’s progress to the group stage, and giving the German Bundesliga the upper hand over Italy’s top flight in the two leagues’ on-going UEFA coefficient battle.

No, for Serie A fans—and neutrals, for that matter—Sampdoria’s disheartening collapse could not have evoked sentiments of much shock or surprise. In fact, it is specifically these kinds of disappointing performances and uninspiring runs of play that supporters of the Italian game have come to expect over the past few years, as the erstwhile verve and charm of Serie A seemingly continues to wane.

It is true that Inter completed an historic treble-winning season last year, which culminated in May with the hoisting of their third European crown. But one club’s unprecedented capturing of a triad of trophies isn’t enough to conceal or make up for the innumerable defects of an entire league.

Gone is the exciting, zesty style of play of yesteryear, the previously evident level of unwavering competitiveness, and perhaps most crucially, the highly coveted third UEFA coefficient spot currently and tantalizingly out of reach. Though the real crux of these issues plaguing Italy’s top flight division can be traced back to what its league and every other league like it on this planet is most fundamentally based on: its players. Simply put, Serie A’s fall from grace can best be attributed to its lack of marquee talent.

But that was last Tuesday. My how things can change in just a week.

While pundits in the UK have lamented a rather uneventful transfer window for their top division, what with Tottenham’s coup in swooping up Dutch midfielder Rafael van der Vaart from Real Madrid for a cool £8m being deemed the most high-profiled move of any English club, it has been quite the antithesis in Italy, whose clubs have been involved in a flurry of deals. There were last season’s runners-up Roma who secured the services of the reportedly rejuvenated Brazilian Adriano, as well as Marco Borriello in a loan deal from Milan. There were Juventus who, following an abysmal campaign last term, have added a trio of loanees to their ranks in Alberto Aquilani (Liverpool), Armand Traoré (Arsenal), and Fabio Quagliarella (Napoli), not to mention the plucking of enigmatic Serbian midfielder Miloš Krasić from CSKA Moscow. Even Genoa managed to make a splash in the transfer market agreeing to terms with Portuguese starting goalkeeper Eduardo from Braga, Brazilian right back Rafinha from Schalke, and mercurial front man Luca Toni from Bayern Munich.

So…where are the big names again? Oh, that’s right. Excuse me—for those we need not travel far from the home ground of the reigning champions. Actually, they can be found playing for an opposing club that shares the same building.

AC Milan. The most successful club in Europe this side of Real Madrid having won seven European Cups, no outfit represents Serie A quite like the Rossoneri. Milan begin each and every season with the onerous task of upholding the club’s legacy in continuing to reassert their dominance over the rest of Europe as one of the world’s most prosperous outfits. But times of late have been tough on owner Silvio Berlusconi’s side, their last major trophy coming in the 2007 Champions League Final victory over Liverpool, and before that, a solitary Scudetto for the decade back in 2004. The club’s struggles have become even more apparent these past few years, with a fifth place league finish in 2008 and a 7-2 aggregate mauling courtesy of Manchester United in the round of sixteen of last year’s Champions League being its too most glaringly egregious shortcomings (I need not even mention that the club hasn’t finished higher than third in the Italian table since 2005, but I did it anyway).

However, nowadays there is a new scent emanating from the Rossoneri side of the San Siro, and, like their Milanese rivals, it is one that reeks of both freshness and promise (one need only examine Milan’s new kits to see that). Newly appointed manager Massimiliano Allegri has brought in versatile Greek defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Ghanian marksman Kevin-Prince Boateng, and perhaps the signing of the summer in Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimović, who arrives at the Giuseppe Meazza on loan from Barcelona. But the former Cagliari boss wasn’t finished.

Allegri finally put an end to Robinho’s tumultuous relationship with Manchester City when the manager roped in the glittering Brazilian forward, who was desperately seeking a change of scenery from Eastlands, for a bargain price of just over £18m. The move now gives Allegri the option of deploying a potentially menacing lozenge of attackers in Alexandre Pato, Ibrahimović, Ronaldinho, and now Robinho. And amazingly, none of the newcomers—with the exception of Boateng, who made a late cameo as a substitute—even featured in the 4-0 thrashing of newly-promoted Lecce at the weekend that saw goals from Thiago Silva, Fiippo Inzaghi, and a brace Pato. Though it is unlikely that he will employ the attacking diamond up front, the newly-acquired weapons and reinforcements at Allegri’s disposal are significant to say the least, and in due time, the rest of the league will be forced to take note (if nothing else, it makes an already mouthwatering handful of fixtures in Group G of the Champions League featuring Milan, Real Madrid, Ajax, and Auxerre look even tastier).

Not since Kaká departed the Rossoneri for Real Madrid in June of 2009 have Serie A fans had an elite superstar to call their own. Just over a year later, and the monikers of several world-class performers have flocked to, and now make their new homes in, the unpredictable world of Italian football. At Inter, there are the ever-bourgeoning cognomens of Milito, Eto’o, Sneijder, and Maicon, and on the other side of the San Siro, the new front four of Pato, Ibrahimović, Ronaldinho, and Robinho, not to mention the aforementioned newcomers at Roma, Juve, and Genoa among others. They may not have a Ronaldo, a Rooney, or a Messi patrolling their pitches on a weekly basis, but Serie A fans can have both confidence and pride in their new imports, who could not have arrived at a better time. After all, each of them now belongs to Italian football, and in their hands—at their feet, really—they hold the ability to rescue, restore and revitalize a decaying league. As always though, it is the results, and not the names themselves, that will do the talking, and we can’t wait to watch all of it unfold.