André Villas-Boas: Style and Substance

Jul 26 • Sam Poplett • 517 Views • No Comments

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Calm, assured, confident and pristine, Andre Villas-Boas’ presentation at his first press conference as the newly appointed Chelsea manager has been flawlessly replicated in everything he has done in his first few weeks in the job. From a quietly dignified look at the squad he has inherited from Carlo Ancelotti, his predecessor, to a measured yet purposeful strategy in the transfer market, it is hard not to be impressed with the 33-year-old Portuguese already. However, while first impressions still tend to carry great importance with fans and the media in equal measure, it will be the presence (or lack thereof) of cold, hard silverware at Stamford Bridge in ten months’ time that Villas-Boas will live or die by.

For the moment, however, preparation and groundwork for the new campaign is all AVB and his players can work on. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, goes the old adage, a mantra Villas-Boas has woven into the very fabric of his young career right from the start. He was, famously, the man who would compile exhaustive, meticulous reports on future opponents while José Mourinho was in charge at Stamford Bridge, those heady days when the club won back-to-back league titles, two League Cups and an FA Cup in just three years from 2004-07. The Special One called him his ‘eyes and ears’ as their success at Chelsea followed unprecedented domestic and European glory with FC Porto. As head of the Opponent Observation Department, Villas-Boas’ importance to Mourinho, and thus the success of Porto, Chelsea and Inter (before he left for Academica), has never been devalued.

The eyes and ears of Mourinho he might have been, yet it is palpable that Villas-Boas does not share the same controversy-inducing mouth as the Special One. Whereas Mourinho sat behind the desk at his first press conference as Chelsea manager and pronounced himself ‘not one from the bottle’, Villas-Boas steered clear of such dramatised declarations, despite also arriving in SW6 as a European champion. While clearly intent on fostering an enviable sense of club unity at Stamford Bridge, between the players, staff and supporters, Villas-Boas will go about it rather differently to Mourinho’s us-against-the-world approach.

His command of the English language was impressive, although not entirely surprising considering he spent three years in London working under Mourinho and has been fluent in the lingo from a very young age. His demeanour suggested a comfortable, confident and assertive young man, keen to grab hold of this unique opportunity with both hands. His pragmatic, realistic grasp of the task at hand in West London and the expectations burdened on his shoulders from above were also commendable, again though not entirely surprising. Carlo Ancelotti spent much of his Chelsea reign telling the press how he was all too aware of the consequences of failing to deliver Premier League and Champions League glory and Villas-Boas, too, wasted no time in setting the benchmark:

‘Our compromise is to win straight away, to win on a weekly basis, and that’s the challenge that I face,’ he said. ‘I would be surprised to be kept on the job if I don’t win, it’s as straightforward as that.’

His plan to make sure he hurdles those challenges will involve sticking with the majority of the players he has inherited, yet seeking to unlock an additional 10% of ability through fostering and nurturing belief, motivation and ambition throughout the ranks. It is an approach AVB claims he has used to great effect at Academica and Porto, an approach he and his technical staff obviously feel is a crucial component to their previous, and future, success.

‘We are people that like to exploit talent a lot and hopefully, by freeing their (the player’s) decision making, we can be able to find things in their talent that they thought they didn’t have,’ he said. ‘Most of them are experienced enough for us to think that the talent they have is the talent they have and finish, but we don’t believe in that. We believe that there’s something extra for them to give and that’s why we focus a lot on motivations and ambitions. This is the philosophy of this technical staff.’

If they are successful in unearthing an extra 10% out of this current Chelsea squad, you sense that will place the side in a promising position ahead of the new season. And, while it might take slightly more than a 10% improvement for the critics to relinquish their fierce pursuit of Fernando Torres, you also sense that tending to the Spaniard’s confidence and psychology, rather than obsessing over where his technical abilities have gone, will reap greater rewards. ‘It is a question of fine-tuning the team, not fine-tuning the player’ said Villas-Boas, in response to an inevitable query about the No.9’s form. Clearly, he acknowledges that getting his players onto the same wavelength as the Spanish hitman will be crucial.

AVB is a firm believer in 4-3-3, with creativity and organisation performed in unison and with the tempo and pressing akin to Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. He likes his centre backs to take possession and carry the ball out of defence and into midfield, initiating attacks. He likes his widemen to provide the width that stretches defences and creates holes for roaming midfielders to exploit, before delivering the killer cross or cutting inside to test the goalkeeper themselves. He likes his players to be as fit and fine-tuned as they can possibly be, which is why he continues to put them through their paces twice a day in the baking Asian heat on their current pre-season excursion. ‘We are proud defenders of the beauty of the game’, he has remarked, another seemingly essential ingredient for success at Chelsea and an ideology, perhaps, that differentiates him somewhat from Mourinho. Villas-Boas will almost certainly start the campaign, away at Stoke City, with his preferred 4-3-3 in action (which raises its own questions about the presence of Torres and Didier Drogba in the same side) but, as mentioned elsewhere, it certainly won’t be 4-3-3 as we know it.

His humility and humour will also endear him. Uprooting from his hometown in Porto and leaving behind his boyhood club was clearly not a decision he made lightly, not least due to the resistance of his own family. He’s admitted that the anger in Portugal is ‘something I will have to face’, and seems certain that the paths of his current and former employers will cross in the Champions League this campaign. However, the popular claim that he has merely shafted his old club scarcely stands up; the enormous release clause of over £13M that he wilfully inserted into his contract there suggests that the interests of his hometown club have long remained in his mind.

Yet, at just 33 years of age, the sceptics will wonder whether he’s too vulnerable or naïve to take on such a massive job in the footballing landscape. Perhaps that naivety shone through when he insisted he saw no reason why he wouldn’t be in full control of transfer activity at the club, or perhaps he was merely being diplomatic. Despite the suggestion that he will be given more autonomy and hold more sway than any Blues boss in recent times, there remains no doubts as to who has the final say at Chelsea, regarding transfer signings arguably more than anything else; ‘the boss’, as AVB affectionately dubbed him. If Freud were watching, he’d no doubt say that was a well-intended, yet pretty revealing, remark.

Nonetheless, for every Modric (negotiations for whom were begun before AVB arrived) there is an Oriol Romeu, the 19-year-old Spanish midfielder all-but-signed from Barcelona, a young man said to have been tracked by Villas-Boas for quite a while. Perhaps he will have more autonomy; perhaps Abramovich has acknowledged the need to relinquish just a little control. The biggest hint over that concerns the imminent restructuring of the upper echelons of the club — AVB said in his debut press conference that he’d be happy working under a director of football or a technical director, and suggested that such an appointment was looming. One imagines there is a desire at the club to replace Frank Arnesen before the start of the new campaign, a road you sense the club were on before Guus Hiddink threw the proverbial spanner in the works this summer.

Villas-Boas, though while emanating a constant aura of composure and self-assurance during his opening few weeks in the job, is clearly not afraid to bite when he feels it is necessary. As the Torres fixation continues in the press (his only pre-season goal came in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Wycombe Wanderers at Cobham and, seeing as the press weren’t invited, that doesn’t seem to count) AVB has snapped back at the fascination in prickly fashion.

‘The most important thing for us is to score and win,’ he said. ‘Whoever scores doesn’t matter. The importance of these games is to get a feel for your team. Individual objectives don’t play a part. I do not want there to be an obsession with this. My obsession is to win trophies and take this team to success. Your focus is purely on the individual and not the performance of the team, which is more important. Things will happen naturally.’

He has also hit back at Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager and the wiliest aggravator of mind games in the business, who has recently repeated his same cries of the previous three summers that the Chelsea squad has become too old and too stale (he said the same before Ancelotti’s Blues won an unprecedented league and Cup double in 2009-10), and expressed his bewilderment that Villas-Boas hadn’t started throwing money around immediately upon arrival in the capital.

‘Chelsea are the third, fourth or second oldest team in the Premier League but look at the trophies these players have won, they have a lot to offer,’ he retorted.

Whilst the press will no doubt be rubbing their hands in anticipation of a running feud between the bosses of the two biggest clubs in the land, what AVB’s spiky retaliation does suggest is a man perfectly prepared to say it how it is. Ancelotti, for all his charm and nice-guy image, could often be accused of ignoring swipes at his players and not sticking up for the club enough. Villas-Boas, it seems, won’t take such verbal attacks from the media or fellow managers without a fight.

His previous spell in West London lasted just a touch over three years and there won’t be many observers of the game that think Villas-Boas can last a similar distance this time around. All the evidence from the Abramovich era at Chelsea suggests anything less than a league title come May will be unacceptable, for the Champions League he might just be lucky enough to get two years. The preachers of common sense and continuity will plead that he’s given time and that patience is shown, but that simply is not the Abramovich way. It’s win-or-bust, do-or-die, sink-or-swim.

This piece was contributed by Sam (who you may have seen credited elsewhere as daspecial1). You can follow him on twitter @daspecial_1.