Jonathan Wilson
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As Arsenal travel to Shakhtar Donetsk this evening, it's easy to draw parallels between the opposing managers
He has worked in numerous countries and has an air of obvious cosmopolitanism. He is intelligent and good-humoured, even outside his first language. He believes football is about passing and movement. He prefers to develop his own players than buy them off the shelf. He has overseen his club's move to a fine new stadium. He has railed against over-physicality in the game and is without a key midfielder after a horrific broken leg. And, despite quibbles over a lack of overt success, he is as secure in his job as it's possible for any football manager to be. Mircea Lucescu has a lot in common with Arsène Wenger.
The two meet tonight for the second time in a fortnight, with Lucescu, who sees conspiracy at every turn, still complaining that Shakhtar Donetsk's 5-1 defeat to Arsenal at the Emirates was down to the referee, Svein Oddvar Moen, on the dubious logic that Scandinavians always favour English sides. This time the Swiss referee Massimo Busacca will hopefully provide the requisite neutrality. He did, though, admit that his side had defended appallingly, giving away a penalty and two "ridiculous" goals. A propensity to capitulate has always been a problem with Lucescu sides; he insists on such a high-risk approach that when things go wrong and confidence drops, they can go spectacularly wrong.
He has also, like Wenger, at times seemed to regard defending less as an essential part of the game than as an irritating chore. His first job outside Romania came in 1990, when he was appointed coach of Pisa. "After a 6-3 defeat to Inter he came to me smiling and said he was very happy to have scored three goals," said the club owner, Romeo Anconetani. "I looked at him thinking he might be joking, but he was serious. I pointed out that although we had scored three, we had let in six, which was disastrous."
He lasted only 15 games as coach of Internazionale, but it was a memorable stint. One-nil down at home to Roma on 20 December 1998, goals from Benoît Cauet, Iván Zamorano, Roberto Baggio and Javier Zanetti gave his side a 4-1 win. Massimo Moratti, the Inter president, said at the time that it was the best he had ever seen Inter play. In their next four home games, Inter scored a further 21 goals. In the month and a half spanned by that run, though, Inter picked up just one point away from home, and Lucescu was sacked after a 4-0 defeat at Sampdoria at the end of March. "There were some injuries so I was playing with the young players, but then the stars came back, and that's difficult, because they don't accept working tactically," he explained. "I prefer working with younger players because it's very difficult to change the mind of those who are 30 years old."
It is in that that he is most like Wenger. When the usual hubbub strikes up about Arsenal's supposed need to buy big, it is often overlooked that established players cannot simply be dropped into a line-up, particularly one as idiosyncratic and as predicated on passing and inter-movement as Arsenal's. It is much easier if they have been schooled in those principles from a young age. If they have, then the unit can be stronger than the sum of its parts, as was the case with, say, the Ajax Champions League winners of 1995.
Under Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, Liverpool would commonly sign a player and give him several months in the reserves to become accustomed to "the Liverpool way". Modern football, with its demand for instant impact, cannot accept such a thing. Worse, examples like that of Ajax's struggle to establish themselves because the economics of the game dictate that young players are whisked away to wealthier leagues as soon as they demonstrate a sniff of talent. The result is that, with the exception of Barcelona, who are economic giants in their own right, and perhaps Arsenal, although even they have struggled in the recent past to match the wages on offer elsewhere, it is almost impossible for a generation of talent to mature together. That is the main reason Arrigo Sacchi laments modern football's cult of the individual and believes tactics haven't progressed since his Milan side defended the European Cup in 1990.
Whether it's what he'd have chosen or not, Lucescu is at the centre of the market. His policy is very clear; he buys Brazilians to play in the creative and attacking roles, and eastern Europeans to play at the back. Of the 13 Brazilians to have played for Shakhtar, 12 were signed by Lucescu – plus Eduardo, born in Brazil but a naturalised Croatian, and Marcelo Moreno, who is Bolivian but has a Brazilian father. Some Brazilians linger – Jádson, for instance, is in his seventh season – but for most, Shakhtar is merely a stepping stone on the way to the wealthier leagues of western Europe.
Although Shakhtar played a 4-4-2 for the 1-0 win away to Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk in their last league game, it seems all but certain the 4-2-3-1 will return tonight, although Lucescu has been frustrated by the lack of a creative holder to replace Fernandinho, who has a broken leg. That means Darijo Srna and Razvan Rat pushing on from full-back, with Olexiy Gai and Tomas Hubschman sitting in midfield and Luiz Adriano at centre-forward. The composition of the trident is less clear: at the Emirates, Lucescu opted for Willian on the left and Alex Teixeira in the middle, with Henrik Mkhitaryan in a nominal right-sided role, but actually operating almost as a second striker behind Luiz Adriano. With Lucescu, nothing is certain, but with Mkhitaryan laid low by a virus, it seems likely that Douglas Costa will come in as a more natural right-sided forward, with Jádson used as the central playmaker, assuming he has recovered from the foot injury that kept him out of the trip to Dnipropetrovsk.
Jádson was one of Lucecsu's first signings, which in itself is testimony to the Romanian's astonishing longevity. He was Shakhtar's fifth appointment as coach in six years, and in the six years he has been at the club Dynamo Kyiv have gone through six coaches, two of whom have had two stints in charge. The rule that says oligarchs demand immediate and constant success seems not to apply here. Shakhtar have, in that time, won four Ukrainian championships and, with a five-point lead at the halfway stage this season, look well set to make it five, and they did win the Uefa Cup, but it's hard to look on their inability to make it through the group stages of the Champions League as anything but a failure.
Rinat Akhmetov, though, almost uniquely among not just oligarchs but club owners in general, has shown patience, persuaded as much by the style and quality of Shakhtar's football as by domestic honours that effectively come down to a head-to-head with Dynamo. Wins against Partizan and Braga in their opening games made it look as though this would be their year for progress but, while defeat at the Emirates was no great shock, the scale of it has raised doubts. Although Braga will hardly fancy a trip to Donetsk in their final group game, the trip to Belgrade to face Partizan on 23 November is testing, and Shakhtar could do with taking something against Arsenal tonight if only to settle their nerves.
Jonathan Wilson
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