Benitez and the Americans
By jebI was posting this because it’s pretty ridiculous. (Link) Mr. Donegan’s point that Hicks and Gillett should show more respect to Benitez because of the Champions League victory might be a fair one. However, his claim that this is happening because they are American is preposterous. I see no difference in the Liverpool situation than what happened at Tottenham, Newcastle, and Chelsea. And unless I’m mistaken none of those clubs are owned by Americans.
Great Britain and the United States; two nations divided by an ocean and a wildly differing view of the manager’s place in the hierarchy of a sports team or, if you prefer, sports franchise.
Over here, team managers enjoy great power and influence for as long as they occupy the office. The great ones become legends. They have stands named after them and gates erected in their honour; Shankley, Paisley, Busby, Stein and, when he retires no doubt, Ferguson.
It’s different in the world of North American baseball, where the team manager is the guy who picks the team, executes the match-day tactics and, if he has a strong personality or a death wish, isn’t scared to challenge the club’s general manager or owners - aka. the real bosses - about the club’s signing policies. Nothing more. In baseball, the great managers are no longer exalted, they are treated like day workers, to be summarily dismissed at the owner’s whim, as Joe Torre, who brought great success to the New York Yankees, discovered to his cost at the end of the 2007 Major League Baseball season.
Once upon a time British football fans could afford to ignore this particular quirk of the American sports world. No longer. The recent influx of American money in British football has meant an influx of American attitudes, most notably at Liverpool, which has now been owned by the American pair of Tom Hicks and George Gillett for nine months.