The Dutch artist Maurice Escher has a wonderful cycle of paintings with a broken logic of space - the famous "impossible figures". They gracefully use the ability of the human brain to perceive two-dimensional drawings as three-dimensional. Thanks to this feature, you can create a completely unthinkable triangle or, for example, an “eternal” closed waterfall. The eye does not notice discrepancies between the individual elements of the image, which form a completely impossible, unreal whole. The solution is simple, but you cannot see it.
Steve McLaren’s activities as England coach are very reminiscent of “impossible figures”. The individual parts - Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney - are almost perfect, they are docked all the time in different ways, but outwardly logical. But the overall picture is increasingly puzzling. The manager’s creativity evokes strong feelings in impressionable viewers, but, unlike Escher’s drawings, they are stably negative. In the football field, as in the canvas, you can peer forever. The answer lies beyond visual sensations - McLaren’s coaching talent simply lacks one dimension.
Steve McLaren started out great. His appointment took place on a patriotic wave of discontent of the English football community by Sven-Goran Ericsson. Maclaren, even though he had worked for a long time as an assistant to the Swede, seemed almost his antipode. The team defeated the Greeks in a friendly match of European champions in an impressive emotional recovery, and then confidently started in the qualifying tournament. Fans of immature conclusions even considered that skepticism regarding the former Middlesbrough coach was completely in vain.
The main tactical idea of McLaren was the transfer of Stephen Gerrard to the right flank of midfield. This maneuver, apparently, had long settled in the coaching head and was called upon to solve several urgent issues at once - speeding up the rhythm of the game, increasing the mobility of the midline, diluting Lampard and Gerrard in different parts of the field, under Ericsson, it seemed to interfere with each other in the center. At the same time, McLaren easily excommunicated David Beckham from the national team - he did not fit into the coaching plans.
At first, everything really worked - the efficiency of Lampard and especially Gerrard increased. However, it soon became clear that the first victories of England with a new coach were not caused by tactical delights, but by psychology.
Four days in October inverted the vector of public sentiment - the team did not win at home in Macedonia and lost in Croatia. The match in Zagreb has so far become the main "masterpiece" in the work of McLaren. The coach portrayed a real “impossible figure”, playing according to the 3-5-2 scheme, inconceivable for England. Paul Robinson was then so impressed by the picture before his eyes that he couldn’t get on the ball that rolled quietly into his goal. What McLaren wanted to say remained a mystery - England had an absolutely empty match. The same games were played with Spain and Israel in the new year. As a result, the match with Andorra Maclaren turned into a national laughing stock. The obstruction arranged by English fans during the break went even out of British brutal traditions.
The press, as usual, played a special role. After the match in Israel, journalists no longer felt shy to call their national team's coach borrowed from the fan forums by the nickname McClone - and they began selling t-shirts on the Internet.
A full-flowing stream of printed, obscene fan thoughts fell upon McLaren. Steve was denied not only football skills, but also universal. Each word of the trainer has become the object of ridicule - because in his speeches it is really hard to detect the depth of thought. After defeating Andorra, Maclaren tore off the post-match press conference. It was a hysteria that did not touch anyone, unlike, for example, Ferguson or Mourinho, for example, from occasionally angry rebuffs to journalists.
So who is McLaren and what happened to him? Sometime in the early 2000s, in the midst of controversy over applicants for the England team coach, the same British press wrote that appointing John Gregory (at that time the manager of Aston Villa) to this post would be like sitting down a Birmingham bus driver in the Formula 1 car. The phrase, of course, is simple, but very accurate. Change the Birmingham driver to a cabman from Middlesbrough - and it will become even more relevant.
A man was in such a high post simply by chance. McLaren’s objective coaching merit will not be enough to guide the 17-year-old team. It so happened that, being Ericsson’s assistant, he was well acquainted with the current state of affairs, and his nationality fell at the pace of public sentiment. The venerable foreign coaches are not eager to take one of the hottest football jobs, and the English specialists now simply have a poor harvest. So McLaren got an unbearable burden.
England, meanwhile, needs a strong coach. The best qualities of the same Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney can only properly manifest themselves in the set, rehearsed and thought out team game. None of them are able, like Cristiano Ronaldo, to grab the ball in their half of the field and skip it to someone else's penalty, sowing panic in the opponent's defenses. Trumps and functions of Lampard with Gerrard - regulation of the game, its pace, direction. They are designed to help partners make the best use of their strengths and only on occasion can decide episodes on their own. This only works when the actions of all players are synchronized and worked out. This is the case with Mourinho at Chelsea, Benitez at Liverpool, Ferguson at Manchester United. Maclaren, however, does not seem to be able to combine parts into a complete system, but only throws them into a heap, believing that they themselves somehow fit together. More precisely, he is trying to somehow connect them, but he does it primitively. It’s completely two-dimensional.
To build a team game, it is not enough just to part Lampard and Gerrard at different angles of the field, and to increase the pace, just release Aaron Lennon. If everything was so easy, Ericsson would have succeeded a long time ago. He, unlike McLaren, coaching thinking is not even three-dimensional, but four-dimensional.
The foregoing does not mean that Steve McLaren has no merits at all. He, as far as can be judged from the outside, is an excellent second coach. Able to get along with football players and not think too much. But building a viable system on your own, making tough decisions and answering for them is no longer for him. Not that scale of personality, not that coaching talent. Having gotten under the press and getting nervous, Maclaren lost his few advantages as well. He had a fight with Rooney, freaked out at a press conference. If he still loses contact with the team, it will be completely gloomy.
Almost certainly the next misfire would be his last. There are hardly many deaf and dumb people in the English Federation - they see and understand everything. Sending McLaren to resign is not a problem - now it’s even more difficult not to do it. However, the same problem of coaching choice will remain - a heterogeneous system of equations with too many unknowns. Which, perhaps, does not have rational solutions.
And you can only sympathize with Mclaren - it is unbearably difficult to withstand British pressure, and the breakdowns are understandable. Steve is required to do what lies beyond his capabilities. Only the miraculous combination of circumstances can help the England team coach to maintain his post at least until the final of Euro 2008. But even it will never make McLaren's “impossible figures” brilliant.