In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why he got it wrong about the FA Cup Final, why Enzo Maresca isn’t the right man for Chelsea, why Jadon Sancho should steer clear of Man United and much more.
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Man United players did the club proud… and I got it completely wrong
I genuinly couldn’t see how Man United could win that FA Cup final. It was fertile ground for Man City. Premier League Champions, no Champions League final to worry about, nice and relaxed and ready to go out and play a team that was fractured and not playing well.
I should’ve known better really.
Whatever vintage it is, Man United (or Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona for that matter) manage to compete.
I was genuinely shocked because I thought that they would play within within themselves. I didn’t expect them to come out and be like ‘okay, we’ll have a really good go at this’ because I haven’t seen enough big characters or enough personalities in the dressing room throughout the season to suggest that this would be the case. Secondly, obviously with it being a derby game, they showed up to that as well.
I’m more than happy to hold my hand up and say that I got it completely wrong and I thought that they did the club proud.
The performance was a massive positive for Erik ten Hag too so what does that mean for him? He was obviously very bullish and said ‘if United don’t want me then I’ll go and win trophies elsewhere,’ but that’s a bit rich really because he’s only been in Holland before United so he’s not exactly won the Champions League.
I think that if you asked me who would do a better job with the youngsters and the seniors at Manchester United, Mauricio Pochettino or Erik ten Hag, I’d go for Pochettino every day of the week and twice on a Sunday.
It’s great that ten Hag managed to get the players to go out and play for the shirts because that’s always important for Manchester United fans, but I think that there will be an element of dropping the ball if Sir Jim Ratcliffe, INEOS and Sir Dave Brailsford all of a sudden now thought that one performance meant ten Hag was the right man to lead the charge towards a title tilt.
There was nothing in Manchester United’s league season to suggest that Erik ten Hag had control of the dressing room in the way that he did for 90 minutes in a one-off final.
Real Madrid’s final to lose and Sancho must steer clear of Man United
The Champions League is Real Madrid’s competition and it’s theirs to lose. That’s nothing against Borussia Dortmund, it’s just that Madrid have got more match winners; Bellingham, Vini Jr… the list goes on, and I think Real will win it comfortably 2-0.
In terms of Jadon Sancho, even if he has a brilliant final, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Man United – even if Sir Alex Ferguson had come back. I think that if you go to a club, and you have a bad experience at that football club, then if you go back, it’s still a bad experience.
He’s been playing great at Dortmund, it’s clear that he feels good and looks at home, so if his agent isn’t trying to put to deal together right now with Dortmund then he’s crazy. If Sancho honestly thinks that he’s got the chutzpah to be able to go back into Manchester United with a new manager, good luck to him.
The expectation is much greater there, with the greatest respect to Dortmund who are club where you bring your waifs and strays, young and promising players, and they’ll turn them into a team that play in this amazing 80,000 capacity arena. Whereas at Manchester United, you have to be the finished product. You’ve got to produce immediately.
Sancho’s dug himself out of a hole and is enjoying his football again, and England have got big Nations League games coming up. There’s nothing to say that he couldn’t get back into an England squad but I’d say to him ‘don’t walk back into that familiar dressing room at Old Trafford and put that shirt on that drags you down. Move on even if that’s to somewhere else.’
Even if United say that they’re not going to allow him to be loaned out again and he can only be sold, that’s fine. If Dortmund can’t afford him, he should go somewhere else in Germany or to Italy – but under no circumstances should he be going back to Manchester United.
Enzo Maresca to Chelsea is a very underwhelming appointment
Enzo Maresca worked with the Man City development squad before going to Parma and then onto Leicester, and with the greatest respect to Parma and Leicester, it’s a very, very, very different beast to Chelsea.
He knows England – let’s not forget as a player he actually started his professional career at West Bromwich Albion – and he’s played at Sevilla, Fiorentina, Bologna, Juventus, Malaga, Sampdoria and Olympiacos so he’s got a really good CV, but Chelsea is a beast that will eat great managers up.
It ate Mourinho up twice, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Frank Lampard…
Although there are some seasoned winners in that Chelsea dressing room, it’s very much a young squad, and that’s what Todd Boehly will be hoping to tap into. That there isn’t a John Terry or a Didier Drogba to question things, but a group of young players that will marvel at Maresca’s work on the training pitch with all his Pep-type driills.
Unfortunately for him, Chelsea had a poor season in the Premier League and it’s a results-based business. He’ll need to get wins on the board without, perhaps, some of his senior players because they’ll be sold as the club are close to falling foul of FFP despite selling hotels in London and doing all sorts of creative accounting.
The Blues need to get lots of very good results very early if they want to get into Europe, and by that I mean the Europa League.
I would be absolutely astounded if, when we get to Christmas, there aren’t rumblings about Maresca’s position already being under threat because it’s a young, fickle, rookie group.
For me, it’s an underwhelming appointment, the club should have stuck with Poch, and I get the feeling that come November/December time, we’ll be having another conversation about Chelsea changing their manager again.
Lopetegui will play exciting football at West Ham… but for how long?
Julen Lopetegui is a confident man, he’s had some of the biggest jobs that it’s possible to get, and I think that West Ham are obviously looking for somebody that can take them consistently into Europe over the next three or four years.
If you’re David Sullivan, you’re probably looking at clubs like Aston Villa and Newcastle and saying that’s where we should be. That’s where we want to be. We want to be in the Champions League. So we need a manager that can pretty much get us there.
So Lopetegui’s experience at Real Madrid, at Sevilla, with the Spanish National team, at Porto and with Spanish under age groups… he ticks all the boxes. I’m just not convinced about him as a person.
If you look at Wolves he was there for a year, if you look at Seville – three years, Real Madrid – he barely walked into the club before he was out again, Spain – a couple of years, Porto – a couple of years… if West Ham are looking to get into the Champions League, it’s a three, four or five year project, and he hasn’t stayed at a club for anywhere near that.
So the question is, what’s in it for him? A massive payday.
Is he particularly loyal? Wolves fans will say no. If he has a good season and let’s say do what Villa did last season, does anybody honestly think that if Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich came in for him that he’d still be at West Ham?
Saudi Pro League is nothing but a gimmick
I’m 53 and I can’t ever see in my lifetime that the Saudi Pro League will be thought of as a top five global league and the reasons are really quite simple. England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany… 100 plus year-old leagues, legacy leagues that really mean something.
Secondly, all those leagues are very rich in their own right. Companies aren’t bailing on the Premier League or La Liga to go and sponsor the Saudi League, which will be propped up by Saudi money from Saudi companies.
And thirdly, dare I say the culture that you’ve seen. Muslim players go out there because obviously it’s something they know, but you’ve also seen players that go out there, dip their toe in and are back in no time at all. Likewise, managers. Nuno Espirito Santo, Jordan Henderson…. So for me, I just think it’s going to continue being a gimmick.
Boxing will be there for the next 20 years, but people aren’t going to go there and watch boxing in the same way that they would if they were at Madison Square Garden or some of the great venues.
The Saudi’s will continue to build it up, but I just think it’s all about location and the cultural aspect. They will always get tournaments – like Qatar had the World Cup and Dubai gets the tennis – but people still want to go to Wimbledon, people still want to go to an Olympics in Paris, people still want to go to Wembley Stadium for that footballl experience or to watch Madrid in the Bernabeu.
It’s like the MLS was and like the A League in Australia was for two or three years, and it’s a bit of a top up for the pension.
No disrespect to Cristiano Ronaldo, whose 35 goals is a remarkable achievement even if he was doing that at his age in Sunday league football, but I can’t cannot see a time where European footballers head to Saudi Arabia to give the best years of their life.
Kylian Mbappe was effectively offered billions to go and he didn’t choose it because he knew that he could get paid very handsomely in Europe and be relevant. When you go to Saudi you’re seen as two things; a mercenary and irrelevant.