The first plane David Moyes ever boarded as Real Sociedad manager could not land and the last could not take off. Ultimately, nor could he. Late on Sunday night, he was still in charge at Anoeta, still a guest in the suite at the elegant Maria Cristina hotel alongside the Urumea river and by the most beautiful of bays, but only because flight U21877 from Manchester had been cancelled, rescheduled for 6.30am on Monday. And so it was that his time as coach of la Real, his Spanish adventure, was extended by a day – from 362 to 363.
In San Sebastián the club president, Jokin Aperribay, was waiting for him. He has waited for Moyes rather a lot. He waited to sign him, persisting when everyone else had given up and the Scot had said no repeatedly; he waited to allow him and his players to get it right, resisting when others demanded a change, still hoping that together they could find a solution; and now he waited to sack him, determined to do this the right way: face to face. David, it’s over. Back at Manchester airport, Moyes suspected as much; the meeting had been called and the media had too. he heard first hand what he already knew.
Real Sociedad’s trip to Las Palmas on Friday night might have been a turning point; instead it was the end. A 2-0 defeat against the team who started the weekend second-bottom left la Real level on points with the relegation zone, having won just two in 10, and none at home, despite not facing the toughest fixture list. The two wins were against the bottom two and if tranquillity came with a 4-0 victory over Levante, and with performances that have been better than results, unfortunate not to get anything from Celta Vigo and Atlético, they still have to play Sevilla, Barcelona, Villarreal and Madrid before 2016. A team some think should compete for Europe – although Moyes is not one of them – feared a relegation fight instead.
Points were needed, a protective cushion before that run, although there was more to this trip than that. Potential replacements had been discreetly sounded out a fortnight ago, but sacking him was not the plan and nor was this an ultimatum, even if it turned out that way; the intention instead was to use the international break to address the flaws, open dialogue and make changes with Moyes. Presidential preference was for him to continue. He had been Aperribay’s personal signing, after all. A defeat would not necessarily change that, only the conviction that the players had given up would. And at the final whistle that conclusion had been reached.
One Las Palmas player privately admitted that they had never won so easily. El Diario Vasco described la Real’s performances a “total disaster”, writing: “This Real is dead and needs an immediate change before they are irreversibly sunk. [Moyes] has used up all his credit. The sooner they realise that his continuity is condemned to failure, the closer they will be to the patient recovering.”
When players, staff and directors boarded the plane back to the Basque country after the game, Moyes was not on board. Instead he flew directly to England, where he spent the weekend.
Hold that image; others have. Moyes had been in England celebrating his daughter’s birthday and on Sunday night he was due back in San Sebastián only for the flight to be cancelled, meaning that the sacking had to wait and so too did Eusebio Sacristán, the coach who is set to take over from him.
Moyes has been at Real Sociedad almost exactly a year and in league terms exactly a season: from week 11 in 2014-15 to week 10 in 2015-16. It would not be fair to say that nothing has changed, even if looking at results, the temptation would be to say exactly that.
Moyes was charged with bringing some intensity to la Real, to make them a competitive side and to build for the future, and that was quickly apparent. Having taken over with the team in trouble, he took them to comfortable safety, 12th place and 11 points clear of the relegation zone despite effectively letting go once safety was reached and winning just two of the last 11. Some better luck and things might look rather different this season, too; there have been signs of something, albeit fleeting ones. And yet Moyes took over at Anoeta with the team having won just twice in 11 games last season and he departs with the team in the same league position this season, having won just twice in 10.
So maybe not much has changed, or perhaps just not much has happened. His first game was a 0-0 draw at Deportivo, the night when the team’s plane was forced to land at Santiago De Compostela, 70km away; his last was a 2-0 defeat in Las Palmas. In between those there has been a 1-0 win over Barcelona, secured by a Jordi Alba own goal, and an amazing 4-3 win over Sevilla, but not a huge amount else. Highlights include the time he ate crisps, and that lovely touch in the derby, but it is not supposed to be the manager who provides the derby’s best moment. Between those flights there have been 38 league games, a full season: 11 wins, 13 draws and 13 defeats. Never especially bad, until last weekend, but rarely especially good; a bit underwhelming, a bit normal.
That may well be their real level, rather than the European football they believe they should be chasing. This squad is not as good as they think and has been weakened every season for three years. There has been a certain consistency but none of the consistency held up as a virtue, little real sense of momentum: they have never managed two consecutive wins and last season only once suffered two consecutive defeats.
Thirty-seven points last season could have been the basis of something, a starting point that most were so sufficiently satisfied with that they became worried by rumours of Moyes returning to England. This was going to be the season, but things have gone wrong. And that’s despite signings – albeit most of them not Moyes’s; indeed he was denied the opportunity to do what he is best at and identify and buy players, building a team – and despite getting the pre-season he didn’t have last year, when he was handed a poorly prepared, unfit squad.
If la Real think they will resolve all their problems with a sacking, they are wrong; failures have not been his alone, and might yet have been turned round, Carlos Vela is their best player and has virtually given up on a system he has never been a fan of; the signings Moyes requested were not delivered; injuries have come at bad times; and individual mistakes have done them dreadful damage. How different it might look if they had killed off Celta, not thrown it away in Málaga, or got the draw against Atlético.
But they did expect more. Moyes was, after all, The Former Manchester United manager. It is tempting to see that as part of the problem; tempting too to see la Real’s determination to get him as part of the problem. Pepe Mel had been offered the job when Moyes finally said “yes”; they had given up on him but they went back to him immediately. “The president’s message was: ‘we badly want you, the players want you, it’s big for us’,” Moyes said at his presentation. Right from the start, did that shift the balance of power, the nature of the relationship?
Some in San Sebastián believe so. Moyes sought to change things – too many things, some said, and things that did not truly matter. His reference point was United and la Real are not United. Others thought Moyes aloof, arrogant, tough, befitting the former Manchester United manager. Quite apart from the fact that they had explicitly brought him in to be tough with players accused of cruising, beyond the fact that Moyes spoke with enthusiasm about his footballers and plans for the future, they were wrong: a better word would be isolated. Far from arrogance, it could in fact be described as timidity.
Moyes arrived alone and although Billy McKinlay later joined him as his assistant, he remained largely alone. The rest of his staff were there before him and will be there after him. “An island,” one local radio station called him this morning. Distance was not always deliberate, but a consequence of difficulties communicating. Messages were harder to get across, relationships more difficult to build, nuance lost entirely.
“The players have been great and a lot of them are actually taking English lessons, so have the staff, so there is something a wee bit weird about that ... it should almost be the other way round,” Moyes said after the first game. He was right, it should be, but it didn’t happen. He did not speak Spanish and did not learn, although he tried – at least to begin with. Failed attempts could undermine his authority and by extension his desire to try. And so the distance grew.
Those players and managers who go abroad and succeed are usually those who most embrace their new environment, who fully understand where they are, who know exactly what is going on around them; with Moyes that never quite happened. “He doesn’t get it” was a phrase too often repeated. His team never really took off; he never really landed. The fact that he still lived in the hotel almost a year later was held against him; it did not really matter where he lived, of course, and every evening he did stroll out and through the old town, but that became symbolic of his isolation, of a sense that he might not be stopping.
Moyes talked about the little differences and often people agreed with him – the Cup format is ridiculous, the kick-off times worse – but it ended up seeming like another barrier when it did not really need to. A criticism, even. Like he was always moaning, when in fact he was largely enthusiastic. “Look,” Moyes had said, “I’m not the guru coming here telling people what to do, absolutely not. It’s just an opinion. I know I have to adapt.” The accusation was that he did not, even though he had talked about doing so, even though he came because he saw Spain as a learning process, insisting that he had long “beaten the drum” for more British managers going abroad.
La Real don’t have a player called Stefano. An easy mistake to mistake – Esteban + Granero + a foreign language + the tension of the game = Stefano – and forgiven then, but less so later. Some thought he was not sufficiently prepared to try; they could see little progress, on or off the pitch. It was odd that they should think he was not trying, when he travelled endlessly, from game to game, scouting constantly, watching teams.
Key figures in football in San Sebastián could not understand why, despite saying he had come to learn, he did not seek out information and understanding; why he did not build relationships, beyond the one he had with the president; why he was not more open; why, in fact, he was not more cynical, more political, why he did not forge alliances or build protection. On one level it was laudable; he is a football man, not a manipulator. Yet it may not have helped.
Others considered him unwilling to leave Britain behind, without considering how difficult it is to do so, all the more so for someone who is 52 and has spent his entire life in the British football. When Ernesto Valverde joined him for a drink after the Basque derby, in a small, grey room under the stand with a coffee machine on one table, a handful of sandwiches on another, a little fridge filled with beers in the corner and pictures of San Sebastián on the walls, he was delighted. That was a British tradition rarely followed in Spain, something he missed; it was also virtually a one-off.
La Real wanted Moyes to bring something British with him. “Can we play a ‘British’ style? I hope so. I want to play fast, the ball moving, energy. But if you can’t, you change. I may think differently in six months,” he said. It is not clear that he does think any differently. A year later he is set to leave; how much of Spain has he taken with him? How much of the British style has he left behind? How much did they let him leave? Could his time in Spain be summed up right there: the right manager in the wrong place?
The players embraced those ideas to begin with but, naturally, they had doubts too. Spanish coaches are more tactically minded than British ones, Spanish players too. Moyes was always very positive about his squad, praising their professionalism, and some of the work they did was good, but at the start of this season the midfielder David Zurutuza claimed “there are lots of things missing, not just the final pass … we’re having doubts, we’re lacking an idea”. It was not a throwaway line, rather it was an unexpectedly public glimpse of an opinion others shared: the players did not so much think that Moyes’s tactical work was wrong as that there was not enough of it. This was a different way of working, at a different club in a different country and with different players.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Moyes did not quite grasp some of those differences, nor embrace them. “I have to change,” he had said but while there was an apparent willingness to do so, he did not really change and no one really told him he had to. On Friday night he flew to England and his team flew to San Sebastián. Three days later, they were his team no longer.
Talking points
Sevilla in crisis, hammered by Juventus … four days later they beat Barcelona. Sevilla in crisis, hammered by Manchester City … four days later they beat Real Madrid. For about half an hour it looked impossible too. Madrid were 1-0 up and comfortable, following Sergio Ramos’s overhead kick, while Sevilla were startlingly passive, as if just awaiting their fate. Only it seemed Madrid were not that keen on imposing their fate upon them. And then it happened. Ciro Immobile got the equaliser, whipping off his shirt to celebrate and getting a booking for it, and Ramos went off. He had landed on his bad shoulder when he scored. Suddenly, Sevilla were not just in the game, they were on top. As Michael Robinson put it on Canal Plus, Immobile escaped a sending off when he missed two clear chances. This was a different game now. Madrid crumbled and Sevilla grew. By the end, Madrid were pathetic, in the literal sense of the word. Sevilla went 2-1 up, then 3-1, rolling over Madrid, tearing them to pieces, and although James got one back in the last minute, Madrid had long since given up. The olés were ringing round the Pizjuán and Yevhen Konoplyanka was running rings round everyone, turning in the kind of display that was so good it was funny, turning people inside out and back to front. As for Madrid, all those doubts came racing to the surface. Maybe it was Keylor Navas holding them together after all.
Oh. My. Goodness. Neymar. Suddenly, Barcelona are playing very, very well. Not just Luis Suárez and Neymar, who have pretty much been the second and third best players in the world in 2015 and who were leading their team lately when the performances were not good, but all of them. And especially Sergio Busquets again. They beat Villarreal 3-0, keeping a clean sheet for the fourth consecutive game. No Messi, no problem? Not exactly, but far from slipping behind Madrid in his absence, they now go into the clásico three points ahead. “The clásico really turns me on,” Piqué said. “I’ve never had an orgasm on a football pitch,” Sergio Ramos replied.
Which was your favourite, then? Iñaki Williams or Neymar? Bloody brilliant both of them.
Rarely has a player felt so ‘right’ and played so well so quickly in a team as Raúl García at Athletic.
Diego Simeone went wild, racing along the touchline, and no wonder. Atlético were flat again, lacking in creativity, and heading for a 0-0 draw with Sporting Gijón when Antoine Griezmann scored the winner in the 93rd minute. Atlético are just one point behind Madrid but things still aren’t quite right. And this week Simeone turned his back on the tactical evolution he had been trying to bring about. Atlético’s history has always been about counter-attacking, he insisted, and anyone who breaks from that gets it wrong.
Valencia had five shots on target against Celta … and beat them 5-1. How? Still not sure. Paco Alcácer and Dai Parejo got two each.
Javi Guerra again. Lucas Pérez again. Guerra has now scored six or Rayo’s last eight league goals, eight of 13 in total. Only Suárez and Neymar have more than him. Pérez only has one less than him.
Is that Eibar in a European place? Bloody hell, it is you know.
Are Messi and Ronaldo still having that weekly phone call? Kind of looks like it, doesn’t it?
Results: Las Palmas 2-0 Real Sociedad, Celta 1-5 Valencia, Levante 1-1 Deportivo, Eibar 3-1 Getafe, Rayo 2-1 Granada, Málaga 0-1 Betis, Athletic 2-1 Espanyol, Barcelona 3-0 Villarreal, Atlético 1-0 Sporting, Sevilla 3-2 Real Madrid
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion