kkdowning - 1/19/2011 10:04:00 AM
阿森纳的巴西中场德尼尔森语出惊人，他称枪手队长法布雷加斯不是一个好的领袖，现在的阿森纳更多是各自为战22岁的德尼尔森正随阿森纳备战和利兹的足总杯重赛，他谈到了枪手队长的情况。“法布雷加斯是队长，但他不是一个领袖。”“这是有关性格的事情，一个领袖可以很年轻，但气质必须是与生俱来的。”“我们队里现在缺少这种领袖气质，我们需要领袖来带领大家继续前进，但队里现在没有一个领袖人物，我看不到任何一个人可以成为领袖。”“阿森纳现在更像是一个拼凑起的队伍，每个人都在发表意见，但对于一支球队来说，找到一个领袖总是很重要的。”
在阿森纳，队长的位置并不稳定，而且过去出现过争议，加拉斯曾出任队长，但后来被温格免职，法布雷加斯是现任队长，但在性格上，西班牙人确实不具备像亚当斯、维埃拉那样的大佬气质。
德尼尔森还批评了阿森纳在守门员位置上的选择，如今西班牙人阿穆尼亚打不上比赛，而且有可能在冬季离队，法比安斯基和斯泽兹尼竞争主力，但在巴西人看来，这两个年轻人都不够强。德尼尔森说：“在阿森纳，最好的守门员是阿穆尼亚。”
22岁的德尼尔森曾是温格青睐的中场主力，但这一两个赛季沦为替补，有传闻称他可能会转会离队，目的地是德甲。以往巴西人相对沉默，这次突然爆发指出阿森纳的队长问题，多少有些令人意外。
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针对德尼尔森的言论，小法在Twitter上做出回应：“关于德尼尔森的那些话，我之前也遇到过类似的情况，那就是他的话被误解了。让我们在今晚赢球吧！” 
Looking for a Leader?
I’ve been saying that Denilson hasn’t done anything of note all season. Well, he has now.
Denilson gave a recent interview to Arsenal Brasil. I’m not sure exactly how recently the interview was given, but it has to have been pretty recent because they specifically talk about the Wigan match, which was only a couple of weeks ago.
It’s a pretty rare interview in that it’s so long, and unedited — unlike the 90-second, heavily-edited interview excerpts we get from Arsenal TV Online, this is just a guy sitting down and talking about anything and everything for almost 25 minutes. In what looks to be someone’s bedroom with a sheet nailed to the wall. But I digress. And before I forget it, kudos to the interviewer, who really asked some good, tough, insightful questions.
Anyway, let’s get right down to it. You can watch the entire interview in its entirety over at Arseblog, and it’s pretty good. But here’s the money quote, the one that’s going to make all the papers tomorrow. The following exchange happened:
Now. Your immediate reaction to this may have been one of the following things:
1. Why the frak is he saying this publicly?
2. It’s classless and disloyal to throw your captain and everyone else in the squad under the bus like this.
3. Who is he, the guy who can’t even be bothered to run back on a counterattack, to criticize anyone else?
4. If he thinks leadership is so important, who doesn’t HE try to step up and provide some of that?
5. Even if he’s right, how is this helpful?
And I wouldn’t disagree with any of these. And I suspect this will be the reaction of most Gooners today. However, after the dust settles and anger fades, we may have to face the disturbing possibility that he may be absolutely, positively, 100% correct. Because the thing is, this isn’t Balotelli, who says something seemingly calculated to offend in every single interview. And watch it for yourself, that isn’t taken out of context — the interviewer certainly cannot be accused of trying to trick him into saying something he didn’t mean — he asked him a simple question, and Denilson took it in that direction.
In a way, the biggest sign that there’s probably something to this is the rest of the interview. It was 23 minutes long. He was asked about Wenger, the medical staff, the goalkeepers, the defenders — pretty much every topic that Arsenal fans love to bitch about, and had ample opportunity to criticize anyone else. But he didn’t. He gave answers as measured and scripted as if Wenger himself had written them out for him on cards beforehand (although he did say that he thought Almunia was our best keeper, which is a pretty compelling argument for mandatory drug testing). And he generally came across as a nice, calm, relatively intelligent (if not particularly insightful) player. And that’s worrying. If something like this had come from some idiot like Adebayor, we could write it off a bit and ignore it. But watching this interview, you just get the sense that Denilson is saying this because it’s true. And that’s a problem for Arsenal.
Leadership is, of course, impossible to quantify. It doesn’t show up in statistics. But I don’t know a single football fan who doesn’t think it matters. And I do know that when Tony Adams was captain, we won things. When Patrick Vieira was captain, we won things. With either of those guys, you just got the sense that this was their team, they were in charge, and if someone didn’t do their jobs, they were going to hear about it, and possibly feel it, in the locker room after the game. So most of the time, players did their jobs.
We haven’t won anything since those guys left. Players like . . . well, Denilson, for one, seemingly feel free to amble around the pitch, conceding stupid penalties, giving the ball away, and generally not doing the things they need to do to help us win. And you just don’t get the sense that there’s that urgency — anyone who has played sports of any kind knows how powerful fear can be. It’s not the only motivating factor, or even necessarily the best one . . . but it’s a pretty damn good one. If you know you’re going to get dressed down by your coach or your teammate in front of everyone if you don’t do your job, it really does make you work harder to do your job. Most militaries are based on this simple but effective motivational principle.
But with Arsenal, you just don’t get the sense that there is that fear there. And that is a problem, because it hurts our performances, and hurts our chances to win. Let me put it this way — if Adams or Vieira was our captain, don’t you think they would deal with some of the problems we have in the squad right now? Not necessarily the old “bar of soap in a tube sock” prison-style “deal with it,” but they’d find a way, don’t you think? I just don’t think Arshavin would be half-assing it around, standing around when we don’t have the ball, Charlie Brown walking when the slightest thing goes wrong, etc. I think he’d get an earful and he’d learn some new English words, and he’d have to think twice before he did it again. But that’s just not there right now.
Maybe this is an overreaction. I do think Cesc seems to be growing into the leadership role a lot more. Guys like van Persie and Nasri are passionate and talk to their teammates a lot on the pitch. Vermaelen seems absolutely like leadership/captain material to me. Maybe Denilson is just misguided, and doesn’t view those players as “leaders” in the same way that he viewed Gilberto and Slo as leaders b/c the current squad is his own age range and he doesn’t put them up on a pedastal the way he does older players. I’m not sure.
But I do know that watching that interview gave me the impression that he absolutely understood what he was saying, and meant every word. He thinks this is a team with a good coach, and skilled players, and good teammates, but he obviously thinks we could use a guy to take charge and be the leader. And it’s not like what we have seen with our own eyes doesn’t support what he says. It was disturbing in a way to see Slo be by far the best player in an awful match against Spurs that killed off our title hopes last season — he was a guy who was only here for 5 months, why did he care so much more than anyone else on the team?
I’m not sure what the answer is. Cesc is still very young, so I don’t know that it’s fair to criticize him too much for leadership failures. He’s still young. Yes, I know, Tony Adams became captain when he was 21, but you know what, we’ll never have another captain like Tony Adams, so that’s not really a fair comparison. I think Cesc takes his role seriously, and wants to be a good captain. He talks to his teammates on the pitch, he intervenes on their behalf with the referee, he carries himself as a good representative and ambassador of the club. But the bottom line is that if his teammates don’t view him as a leader, and at least one of them is willing to publicly state that he does not, Cesc may not be the right man for the job. If that’s the case, do we let him grow into it, or give it to someone else?
As I’ve said several times already, I don’t have any answers. And I’m not sure anyone does. That’s the problem. Denilson has said something which may have confirmed many of our worst fears about the club as currently constituted, and it’s a problem which is: (a) potentially serious enough to keep us from winning trophies; and (b) not easily fixable.
Big thanks to Arsenal Brasil and Arseblog for conducting the interview and bringing it to the masses, respectively.