The Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has left Anfield after talks with the club’s American owners.

Dalglish had traveled to the US to meet with the Liverpool owners, where he presented his end-of-season review, outlined his plans for next season and answered questions from John Henry and Tom Werner about the missed targets this season.

The owners were left deeply unsatisfied with Liverpool’s eighth-place finish in the Premier League despite the Carling Cup win and FA Cup final appearances. Liverpool’s shocking home form and the inability of new (and expensive) signings to fire under Dalglish also added to the pressure.

With Liverpool’s owners signing significant sponsorship deals on the back of their takeover and investment into the playing squad, the minimum expectation was for Liverpool to return to the Champions League (which, while only offering 10 to 20 percent increase in revenues, has great knock-on effects in terms of other sponsorships).

Liverpool have already dismissed part of the club hierarchy they felt was responsible for Liverpool’s on field and off field troubles. Damien Comolli (director of football and responsible for negotiating transfers and contracts), Liverpool’s head of sports science, Dr Peter Brukner, and head of communications, Ian Cotton, have all been dismissed in recent months.

Liverpool end the season without a manager and with no transfer strategy in place, which will surely hinder the club’s progress as rival teams have already begun the process to sign targeted players. In addition there has been no decision on whether to rebuild Anfield or proceed with a new stadium on Stanley Park since FSG replaced Tom Hicks and George Gillett as owners in October 2010 – although the move also hinged on on-field success that Dalglish and Liverpool have failed to deliver.

Who will manage Liverpool next? Will Rafael Benitez make a return? Will Liverpool move for one of Rodgers, Lambert or Martinez (or even Di Matteo)? Whatever FSG decide, they need to make a decision quickly – Liverpool may not finish behind Everton and Newcastle again next season but even catching up to the top five would have represented a significant challenge for a stable management team.

Now, it seems unlikely.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Manchester United’s best performance in the 2011/2012 season was on Sunday, 28th August 2011, when they walloped an injury-ridden and pre-panic-buy Arsenal 8-2.

This standout performance wasn’t a blip. In their first five competitive games of the season, United won all 5, including their best performance against Manchester City (although it was the Community Shield, people forget that United played City four times, not three times, and beat them twice) that was far more in United’s advantage than the 3-2 scoreline suggested. There was a 5-0 thumping of Bolton and 3-0 defeat of Tottenham as well.

In short, United kicked off the new season in fine form, showing a new verve and energy in the team that caught other teams off guard.

If you ever hear United players speak about Ferguson, one thing is immediately clear – everything thing is meticulously planned in advance, from squad rotation to training regimens to rest periods, and you don’t diverge from that planning unless a player is injured.

United’s burning start was no coincidence – as Ferguson himself said at the time, United had planned their pre-season to ensure that they would get a fast start in the league and then maintain that tempo throughout the season. This was in light of the increased challenge that Manchester City would pose and Ferguson knew, before most other people, that United would need to hit 90 points to beat City to the title.

The key to that tempo wasn’t just the pace at which United moved the ball from defence to attack (always a United trademark) or width and pace on the wings (again, a United hallmark under Ferguson), it was the energy in central forward quadrant, where the two central midfielders and the two strikers could pass, move and press quickly, alleviating United’s 1-man disadvantage in midfield against most teams through tempo and quality.

This was Ferguson’s tactical blueprint for 2011/12 – to build a title winning side that would learn to control the midfield with aggression, not with the sit-back-and-watch approach they had employed in previous seasons.

Injuries coupled with an stubborn over-reliance on the existing squad meant that United had no one to maintain that tempo after September. Ferguson had to rip up all the work done in pre-season and start from scratch to build a new tactical plan. Under pressure, he went for the short-term option of bringing Scholes back and reverting to a midfield duo of Carrick + Scholes, slow as they come and designed to pass the opposition to death but not to win the ball back.

With the season now over, and the title lost on the finest of margins, Ferguson will be busy preparing his plans for the next season. Will he bring his plans for last season back, albeit with a few tweaks? That will surely require United to sign another midfielder (or two) to provide cover and also counter the fact that Anderson and Fletcher are hardly reliable options. Pogba is not ready to play for United at this level, and with Cleverely’s lack of experience, United need what they’ve needed for 8 years – a stronger midfield.

Or will Ferguson draw up a new strategy, having watched how Madrid have torn up La Liga and beaten Barcelona, and build a squad that allows him to play with a front three, meaning that he needs reinforcement on the flanks / up front as well as in midfield?

How United’s midfield lines up also impacts their defence – in 11/12, the midfield sat deep and the central defenders (Rio hampered by a lack of pace and Vidic / Evans sitting back to cover) sat deep too, meaning that De Gea often had very little space when the defence made a mistake. In fact, if there was a mistake, it would happen in the penalty box, giving De Gea next to no chance to stop the goal.

This lack of pace was highlighted at the very start of the season in the Community Shield when Ferguson took off Vidic and Ferdinand at half time and put on Jones and Evans. In a setup where the midfield was pushing up, United needed defenders who can keep up the pace.

Evans / Smalling / Jones are the future, but all three of them need either surgery or rest this summer. Vidic is not back till August. Rio is the new ‘old’ Paul Scholes, and is probably better off playing as a defensive midfielder where he can influence the game more. If United’s midfield setup is again all about sitting deep, they will need Vidic fit for the whole season and a better ball-winner in midfield. If United are again trying to play fast, they’ll need their young center backs fighting fit for the whole season.

Surprisingly, the only position that leaves United fans happy with what they have is the man guarding the goal. David De Gea is a phenomenal goalkeeper who has had a very deep-sitting midfield and defence that can’t tackle to deal with at times. United are safe in goal. Elsewhere on the pitch, there is brilliance and potential sprinkled across, but there is no shining light pointing to the future.

Last August that shining light was supposed to be the new United style of playing. This summer, United’s transfer dealings will depend on how Ferguson wants his team to play next season, not on who fans think United should buy (if Kagawa is coming in, you can expect another fast start in August).

We all know United need to strengthen the squad. But more importantly, United need to build on last year’s planned system and evolve it to be more durable. As Barcelona, Man City, Madrid, Milan, Arsenal and Chelsea have shown in defeats, hitting any side with fast passing and concentrated pressing while stretching the play (vertically and horizontally) in attack will cause them significant problems.

If United can find the players to play that way, City’s billions won’t be enough.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The two most popular football simulation games – Football Manager and FIFA, offer very contrasting experiences to football fans. And yet you will find that there is plenty to learn from one game that can be applied to the other, and vice versa. Despite the current trend of simulating real life matches, you’re not going to get real-life football betting tips from simulating matches on either FIFA or Football Manager – what you WILL get though, is a greater tactical understanding of the game and how to apply that in your football game of choice.

Let’s look at what you can learn from Football Manager and FIFA and apply to the other game’s playing experience.

Tactical Development

After several years of playing FM and FIFA at the same time, I can see that my Football Manager teams tend to play the same way as I would actually be playing on FIFA. That is, during match simulation they would occupy similar positions on the pitch, make the same kind of passes and move the same way off the ball. It’s uncanny how similar the simulation would look on Football Manager when I’m sitting back (or making changes from the ‘sidelines’) and how it would look on FIFA (when I’m actually controlling the players).

I’ve realised now that it the in fine-tuning my football tactics / strategies in Football Manager that has had a knock-on effect on how I play FIFA – my understanding of football has evolved (along with the realistic simulation capabilities of both FIFA and FM) to the point where I play football the same way as I think about it.

My tactical setup – playing tempo, passing speed, pass length and direction, wing play, off the ball movement – has organically evolved into a simple underlying strategy that was perfected on Football Manager and is now used (with considerable success) on FIFA.

Squad Development

Given that FIFA is nowhere near as involved in player and squad development as Football Manager, there are lessons to be learnt in that area of the game in FM that can make the corresponding sections of FIFA a cakewalk to manage.

What you learn from youth development, recruitment and player training in FM prepares you very nicely to quickly master those aspects in FIFA and maximise squad development in a very short time (something that takes a lot longer on FM).

Adapting Strategies

On the flip side, there is one obvious thing that FIFA does better than Football Manager – simulation – and this has helped me develop my FM strategies in certain specific ways. For example, what you learn from FIFA in defensive positioning, pressing, movement with the ball, shooting and dead-ball situations is quite valuable (for me at least) in shaping my FM strategies, especially in how to adapt my team’s tactical approach based on the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses.

FIFA 12 v FM 12

Which is the better game? It’s a tough question to answer as both games offer different challenges and fulfill different requirements for football fans. And as we’ve seen above, there is a learning overlap between the two games that can improve your skills and playing experiences.

But if you want to know which game improves your actual football skills, the answer is simple – playing FIFA 12 may help you understand how to defend or time your pass better, and playing Football Manager 12 certainly give you more insights into how to manage a football team – but you’re kidding yourself if you think either will improve your actual playing or management skills.

Although with the number of clubs using Football Manager as a scouting tool, surely it’s just a matter of time before a Football Manager fan also becomes a real-life football manager. It’s certainly more likely than a FIFA player actually graduating to playing competitive football.

Till then, let’s just enjoy the games for what they – an ever-improving and extremely enjoyable simulation.

This is article was previously published on FMScout and a variation of it was also published on Totally Gyn. You can contact the author on Twitter.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The 2012 European Championships will kick off this summer in Poland and Ukraine. The Euro 2012 betting hugely favours Spain and Germany, but beyond the favourites and indeed beyond the 16 teams competing at Euro 2012, there are plenty of footballing lessons for Pakistan and Pakistani football to learn from, and hopefully apply to our own national team’s cause.

This is not to say that Pakistan can reach the level of European giants with a few simple fixes. Instead, what we’re looking at are long-term, gradual changes that help Pakistan be more competitive in Asian football and then, if not in a decade then in two, mount a serious challenge for World Cup qualification. For the 6th most populous country in the world, that’s not an unreasonable objective to aim for.

Investment in grassroots training and development infrastructure

European countries that succeed internationally more or less have the same pattern when it comes to youth development – find talent at an early age and groom them as much as possible. At this point a comparison between England and Netherlands is most apt – where English schoolchildren – quite like our own – are overburdened by school timings and homework, Dutch schoolchildren have a more balanced lifestyle, dedicating equal time to education and play. The end result is that when these same players grow up, the Dutch counterparts are technically much more proficient than their English counterparts.

And then there is considerable investment made in footballing academies and training for children in Netherlands – something that is glaringly lacking in England.

What can we learn from this in Pakistan? For starters, there needs to be a cultural change that promotes a positive, balanced lifestyle, increasing competitive play time and decreasing school load, and most importantly, getting kids out of the house, away from the TVs and gaming consoles and into parks and grounds and academies where they can hone their skills. There are unique security challenges in Pakistan that don’t apply anywhere else but even then, there is plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to parents and their priorities for their children.

Secondly, you can invest / incentivise football training academies by providing football training equipment (like the M Station) and qualified coaches that work with the national football association to develop and implement training programs for different age levels.

All of this costs money, which brings us to point number two:

Heavy financial investment in Pakistan’s sporting future

This applies to other sports as well, but for now we’re just looking at football. In terms of international perception, few things are as ‘game-changing’ as sporting success. Few things can galvanise a nation’s energies and improve the national mood as well as sporting success. Smart investment in Pakistan’s footballing future can take the country from where it is now (a laughing stock) to legitimate WC qualification contenders – and just that step up can help change the mood in Pakistan and about Pakistan at a local and international level.

The most successful footballing countries in Europe make football a national priority when it comes to spending, to national / political importance and to investing in the future. Add the social and health benefits to the cultural changes associated with a sport-loving population and there is considerable motivation to invest – smartly – in Pakistan’s footballing / sporting future.

How to do that? That takes us to our third point.

Leverage the strong football support in Pakistan

Football is easily the second most popular sport in Pakistan. It does not have as active a participation as cricket but it more than makes up for it by the sheer number of people who watch, follow and enjoy football. This support comes from all sections of society – from children who play in school and after school to parents who support a European club or team to university students and working professionals who find common ground with their colleagues in sport (a pleasant departure from our other national past-time, debating politics).

This widespread support needs to be tapped into and leveraged to create the levels of local and government-level investment required for long-term footballing success in Pakistan. You can’t simply rely on the government for all the support – although in most countries that is where the support originates – you also need to tap into the existing football fanbase and convert it from passive followers to active participants in the country’s footballing future.

In Europe – there are plenty of examples of countries who have prioritised football at a national and social level with long-term planning to achieve success 10, 20, 30 years down the line. It’s how Brazil re-invented themselves in the 90s, it’s how France become such a global force in the 80s and 90s, and it’s how Spain started their dominance – by investing in grassroots football 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Football is not cricket, where Pakistan has a 50 year head start on most countries only 7-8 countries are any good at the sport. It’s a truly global sport, and Pakistan as a footballing nation has languished far behind through neglect and a general lack of understanding of what’s needed to fix football.

But if you can tap into the local fanbase and galvanise them into action, if you can provide quality training from a young age and if you can finance the whole operation, Pakistan can realistically be a force to be reckoned with in Asia, if not the world over.

This article was originally published on Football Pakistan. The author, Ahmed Bilal, can be contacted via Twitter.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Regardless of whether Chelsea beat Napoli tonight, and regardless of whether Chelsea qualify for the Champions League or not this season, the signs are crystal clear. The next Chelsea manager must either be extremely special (even Mourinho would be hard-pressed to fix the current Chelsea state, and he’s not coming), or it needs to be someone who commands widespread respect and authority inside the club.

Since God himself isn’t coming to Stamford Bridge (and the dreams of Guus, Pep and Jose are just that, dreams), Roman Abramovich has just one option – appoint John Terry as player-manager.

The upshot of this will be that team morale will more or less take care of itself. Terry will have specialised coaches working with him and the squad to take care of training, tactics and occasionally, team-selection but by and large he will be in front of the cameras (which he likes), rousing the players (which he likes) and uniquely for a manager, leading them on the pitch (which he likes).

You can bring in a Damian Comolli or Frank Arnesen to look after transfers (Rafa Benitez might be worth a punt for that role) and the academy, and a competent assistant manager (get Clarke back? demote RDM?) to assist the manager, whose role is then limited to managing the team on and off the ground. For someone like Terry who has a massive influence in the Chelsea dressing room and on the pitch, it’s the ideal role. As he ages, it’s also great on-the-job training for him to move upstairs when he’s done playing.

John Terry – the next Chelsea manager?

The downside is that you’ll end up with an inexperienced manager, but unlike AVB, the inexperience here lies in tactics, not in commanding the players’ respect. If Terry has the necessary resources at his disposal he can get the team playing to the maximum potential according to the methods that suit them best, as opposed to instigating a massive change that the team has so far resisted for the last few years.

John Terry could be the manager Chelsea need to at least get them playing like title contenders. Or he could be exactly the type of manager the players deserve. Either way he’s the perfect fit for the job. If only Roman Abramovich would listen to his players…

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

“What other areas are there to improve on – apart from points?”

From any other manager, these would their famous last words. From Kenny Dalglish, however, it’s merely an affirmation that Liverpool as a club has improved from last season.

Before we’re accused of taking this out of context, here’s what King Kenny said in full:

“The club is now where it was before – each one for each one, everybody in it together. There are many ways you can judge a season and the best way is progress at the football club as a whole. I don’t think it necessarily relates to trophies or points.

You can measure it by how the club has progressed and where it is, from the first team to the kids. Off the pitch, especially, the club is a lot stronger than what it was. You go off the pitch and see how much money we are getting through sponsorship and kit deals [the club signed a deal with US-based Warrior Sports in January worth a potential £300m over six years].

You look at the academy and see how much better it is. You look around here [at Melwood] and most of the people have got a smile on their faces now. The squad is stronger than it was last year. What other areas are there to improve on – apart from points?”

Yes, Liverpool has improved in the last year. And yes, success does relate to trophies and points – especially for a club with the ambitions of Liverpool (unless we missed the memo on Liverpool accepting that they’re not a top four side any more?). With his ‘I don’t think it [progress] necessarily related to trophies or points’ line, Dalglish to venturing into the Arsene Wenger territory of ‘what is a win, really?’.

However, forget Liverpool’s lack of performance on the pitch (based on pre-season expectations, if nothing else).Let’s answer Dalglish’s question: What other areas are there to improve on – apart from points?

Here are the five key areas that Liverpool still need to improve on:

1. Transfers

Last summer Manchester United and Liverpool both spent heavily on new recruitments. But where De Gea is coming good after obscene amounts of initial criticism, where Ashley Young is helping Manchester United win matches and where Phil Jones is inviting comparisons with Duncan Edwards and has become a fan favourite, where do Henderson, Downing and Adams stand?

Of those three, Henderson is young enough to still come good, but where the three United signings have a strong case to be part of the starting XI and in the case of Jones and De Gea, earmarked as future greats, the three Liverpool players would be lucky if they became as good as Lucas Leiva, let alone be compared to Anfield legends.

Liverpool have strengthened the squad, but it’s one thing to buy mid-table quality and quite another to buy top-level potential. Liverpool simply need to do better in the transfer market.

2. Stadium

Where are Liverpool with the move to Stanley Park / the redevelopment of Anfield? The need for increased capacity was highlighted over a decade ago. That 55m spent on Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing (cheap shot, I know) would have come handy in getting the stadium project off the ground.

3. Club Image

This isn’t about whether Evra was right or Suarez was right. It’s something much more basic – the image of the club. Compare the official responses from Chelsea and Liverpool to the respective racist charges against their players – where Chelsea defused the situation, Liverpool inflamed it by creating a false conspiracy against their players. Where Ferguson refused to answer questions on the matter, Dalglish kept talking to the press. Where United players kept quiet after the incident, Glen Johnson found it appropriate to blame Evra for creating a scene.

Blame aside, Liverpool’s reactions do not show them in a good light. If it takes an order from the bosses in the US to get you to defuse the situation, you know you’re doing it wrong.

And which club let’s their sponsors talk about their internal matters, on or off the field? Standard Chartered speaking about the racism controversy was another example of Liverpool not being able to handle their public image.

4. Mentality

Are Liverpool really happy at their current 7th place? Does this mean that they’re now firmly established outside the big four and will be the Tottenham of yesterday (who, it has to be said, weren’t happy if they were finishing 7th)? Or are they playing to at least qualify for the Champions League and hopefully push for the title? Liverpool’s goals have been become muddled, and it seems that the malaise that drove Torres away from Anfield hasn’t really disappeared – you just have less ambitious players on the pitch.

5. Fan Opinion

Maybe King Kenny should read this: Dalglish to blame for Liverpool collapse.

There’s no doubt that Dalglish has done a good job in some areas – but the facts are that the results aren’t good enough for what Liverpool have spent or aimed for this season.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Roman Abramovich has sacked André Villas-Boas after a string of poor results that has left Chelsea fifth in the league table. Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at West Bromwich Albion left Chelsea three points behind Arsenal with 11 games to go.

Villas-Boas’s assistant, Roberto Di Matteo, has been appointed the new first team coach until the end of the season. Villas-Boas was Chelsea’s least successful manager since Abramovich bought the club, with Chelsea having won less than 50 percent of the games played under him. It’s a dreadful record and while it doesn’t explain everything that has gone on beyond the scenes, it does show that regardless of player power issues, Villas-Boas simply needed to do better with the resources he had at his disposal.

While the move had been coming (in part because of a players’ mutiny and partially because of a clear media agenda against Villas-Boas), the cost of this change will be heavier than usual for Chelsea FC. Just eight months ago Chelsea, having terminated (i.e. paid off) Carlo Ancelotti’s contract, had paid Porto £13.3m to bring Andre Villas-Boas to Stamford Bridge. Some sources suggest that the total cost of changing managers in the summer was around £28m – and it will rise after Chelsea pay off AVB’s bumper contract.

All of this makes you wonder – why not ship out the players that are clearly not cutting it at Chelsea – instead of chopping and changing managers? There has been nothing to suggest that Chelsea have learned something new about AVB since hiring him, it’s more of an experiment that they’ve deemed unsuccessful and now want to discard, regardless of the costs involved.

When the club say that “….the results and performances of the team have not been good enough and were showing no signs of improving at a key time in the season”, who do they hold accountable? The players who have collectively failed to reach expectations for the last few years despite being given sufficient chances, or the managers who have had very little time to shape the team according to their tactics and have been punished for not performing miracles with failing players at the drop of a hat?

I’m happy to accept that the Chelsea top brass know more about what’s going on in the team than anyone on the outside, but surely changing managers is not the answer when it’s the players who are the problem? Chelsea have been let down by their players, although it’s the fans who will suffer. I doubt AVB will be bothered by his payout, and he will surely find a nice job somewhere on the continent where the owner(s) are more patient. £10m+ for eight months worth of work is not a bad deal at all.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The ‘vanishing spray’ is used by the referee to mark 10 yards between the ball and the wall at free-kicks. This line is a clear indicator of where the opposition teams should be standing before the free-kick is taken and was introduced in an effort to stop the attacking team gaining advantage by moving closer to the goal and the defensive side from encroaching towards the ball.

Once used, the spray disappears within 45 seconds without affecting the pitch and is seen as a way of tackling long, time-consuming breaks in play in which officials have to monitor encroachment.

The spray was introduced in South America and then trialed at last summer’s Copa America.

The IFAB – International Football Association Board made up of FIFA and the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish federations – is set to meet next month and introduction of the spray (or trials in Europe / other international events) is expected to be on the agenda.

Other key discussion points include allowing a fourth substitution when games run into extra time, additional assistant referees and goal-line technology, although in classic FIFA fashion you shouldn’t expect any technology to be part of football’s decision making in the near future (unless they use Sky’s cameras, that is).

Would you like to see the vanishing spray used in more football matches to prevent unnecessary delays in setting up free kicks? Or do you think that there are other ways that the ‘Authorities’ can penalise time wasting in the game and – given that they argue for the flow of the game when opposing technology – penalise actions by players that deliberately interrupt the flow of the game?

Personally I think that the vanishing spray is a great little idea, but there are much bigger issues that need to be fixed in football, top of the list being video replays.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The extraordinary delays in a resolution to the Terry-Ferdinand affair have already resulted in the wholly unnecessary cop-out by the FA and the Premier League in asking Chelsea and QPR to forego handshakes in their recent league clash. The pointlessness of team handshakes apart, the worst that could have happened would have been the whole of the QPR contingent refusing to shake John Terry’s hand.

Now you might refuse to shake Terry’s hand on principle in any case, but the more likely explanation was that the football authorities wanted to avoid the sort of press fiasco that followed Wayne Bridge’s refusal to shake John Terry’s hand and therefore deny tabloids extra ammunition to throw at Terry / the FA / English football in general.

Fair enough – but surely this could have been resolved a lot quicker through an expedited judicial process where the relevant witnesses and parties involved would have been due in court regardless of their ‘footballing’ commitments? Unless the reasons for the delay have nothing to do with time and everything to do with Chelsea and the English FA.

John Terry’s history with racism

A lot of people forget that John Terry has priors when it comes to racist comments – a few years ago he was thought to have racially abused Ledley King during a Chelsea-Tottenham game. Terry was already getting sent off for an incident that happened in actual play, but the reaction of players on both sides was damning. King, Zokora and Chimbonda all squared up to Terry, with Essien and Makelele from Chelsea’s side running up to Terry and asking him to repeat what he’d said.

That incident is long gone from the memories of the tabloid press but it’s just one of many indiscretions by Terry (and his family) – and there’s sufficient evidence (even if the press isn’t using all of it) to suggest that if there are any moral standards to being a captain of Chelsea and England, John Terry shouldn’t be it.

The best of John Terry

There’s sufficient evidence to suggest that Terry plays at his best when he’s dogged by controversies (on or off the field). His performance against QPR is just one of many telling contributions he’s made in a Chelsea shirt, and after every controversy there seems to follow a hallmark John Terry performance on the pitch as if to underscore the point that regardless of what you may think of him as a person, as a footballer he must be respected.

Despite the negative headlines, Chelsea are likely to benefit from an under-siege John Terry, and England will also benefit from a charged up captain determined to prove that he’s still the best. So regardless of the questions made over his footballing ability, the fact is that if Terry is picked for the Euros, the press uproar will be good enough for him to raise his game to a sufficiently high level.

So now it comes to what impact his presence would have on the rest of the England squad. Before I answer that, consider the key influences in the England squad – Terry, Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Gareth Barry, and recently Joe Hart (you can include Lampard and Gerrard in that list too). Rio’s injuries mean that he’s no longer first-choice for England, and all of the other players in the above list are generally close pals of John Terry.

You only have to look at Capello’s reinstatement of John Terry as captain to understand the support he has inside the team – with Rio’s injuries making him unavailable (ditto with Gerrard), the first choice for captain was Terry. With Rooney biding his time until the seniors retire, there are hardly any players in the England squad who would be both central to England’s chances in the Euros and would be opposed to John Terry being in the England squad.

So at the end of the day, Capello and the FA have a simple choice – they can take the moral ground, or they can put the squad first and value performances over everything else. We keep lambasting the FA for bowing down to the press and not making the right choice. This is the rare moment when (so far) they’ve stood firm against public outcry. It might not be the right thing to do, but it may actually help England’s performances at the Euros.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

We may be going into 2012 but with PR agencies it still feels like 2006 at times.

I started Soccerlens.com way back in April 2006 – and one of the lasting memories of the last five and a half years has been the treatment of football bloggers by PR agencies promoting their clients. I say ‘treatment’ because there has been a very distinct pattern to the blogosphere-PR world relationship – we’ve gone from being completely ignored to being completely inundated and taken advantage of.

Look, I like free stuff as much as the next guy but being asked to give brands exposure – however limited – for free seemed like a stupid idea at the start and still seems stupid. As I wrote a last year ago in Football PR 101, marketing is simple – get to know your contact, treat them as real people and give them value first before you ask them to do something for you. Not everyone wants money, but if they do, you should either be willing to pay, or find another solution.

And this bring us to this week, when I got an email from a PR agency representing adidas (yes, the new guys). Now I’ve been working with adidas for a while – through their UK and global agencies, and the guys at Hill & Knowlton and WeAreSocial are some the best in the business (hat tip to Seb, Glen and Chris). these are long standing personal relationships – emphasis on personal – and they work even if we don’t always promote what thy send us.

The email I got – and I’m sure everyone else got as well – was poorly phrased. It wasn’t a big deal – I made a couple of tweets criticisng it (1, 2, 3 and 4) and left it at that. Since I knew the other PR guys personally and after all, I run a digital media agency myself, I know that this doesn’t mean that adidas don’t get blogging – their Own the Game event was spectacular – its just that some young kid was trying to impress and got it horribly wrong.

That wasn’t important though – what’s really important is how adidas reacted. They could have easily ignored it and swept it under the carpet, but here’s the classic example of how proactive engagement of your community can help turn a negative feedback into an overwhelmingly positive recommendation.

Immediately after my tweets, I had a Skype conversation with one of my adidas PR guys. The next day, I had a call with adidas UK‘s senior PR manager, and a follow up email from him and my second PR contact. The same day, my miCoach boots arrived – a complete coincidence, I’m sure, but for the purposes of this story I’d like to think that adidas rushed them through to me as a result of those conversations.

The key theme during all three conversations – how much they value us as a blogging partner and an apology for that out of context contact.

I’m not telling you this to score points or show how important we are – we’re not – and I know that they’d say the same to any other blog, but GODDAMMIT, adidas GET PR. They are, like the ad, all in when it comes to client relationships, and the same goes for their PR agencies. I came away impressed by their dedication to positively resolving what was, to be honest, a non issue and mostly a critique of the new PR agency itself.

We don’t care about free stuff most of the time – and given that the PR business is mostly about earned media, the need for personal relationships is greater than ever.

And that’s where adidas is miles ahead of the competition. I could talk to you about Nike and Umbro and Puma and their respective PR agencies, but why care about them when they don’t care about us?

adidas cares. And because they care, we care.

adidas is all in. If only other brands and PR agencies did the same, they would get so much better coverage from bloggers. Something to think about.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News