Shall we celebrate Atletico Madrid now?

Let’s take a minute to appreciate and thank Atletico Madrid. La Rojiblancos have just interrupted a 119-week stint in La Liga in which the Big Two rotated at the league’s apex – the last 59 manned solely by Barca – and mourned favourite son Luis Aragones in a loamy, rose-tinted weekend.

Former coach Aragones, who spent nearly a quarter of a century at the club as player and manager, passed away on Saturday as a result of leukaemia at the age of 75. In helming La Furia Roja to victory at Euro 2008, he managed Spain to their first major trophy since 1964.

Despite selling each of its past five most appealing assets* for significant sums and looking likely to do so again this Summer*, Atletico Madrid has invested in an exciting lineup of young playmakers who are able to build from a stoic defence. Despite a 3-0 loss to rivals Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey last night, their 2013-14 season has been a successful one.

courtesy: en.wikipedia.org

It’s time to recognize that achievement. Breaking football’s class caste system – even temporarily – occurs so rarely nowadays that it’s a pleasure to behold, sometimes if it comes at your own club’s expense. In Spain, the top tier contains Real Madrid and Barcelona; there is room for no one else. Underdog appeal underpins every sporting movie simply because the masses can relate, giving the trope box-office pop. When an unfancied squad (even if they are the fourth-largest club in the country) wins a battle in real life then, we should similarly enjoy those small victories.

An old adage states that the only way of finding out how good you are is to actually play the games.

Over the past decade or so, this statement has lost some of its cache as this class system has quickly become entrenched. In 2014, the major Euroleagues are dominated by a plutocracy derived from cash nouveau or Boston-type old money, resulting in nationwide competitions that have devolved into mini-leagues that limit hope to besting their immediate rivals at year’s end.

The rise to prominence of football-based computer games and social media editorialisation – with or without taking in more-available-than-ever match footage – only heightens this perceived stratification: excepting the odd Manchester United/Stoke City outlier, we now accept that the same predictable teams finish in (about) the same predictable positions.

While Atleti certainly aren’t paupers, they certainly haven’t been in the same strata as their now-direct rivals. A change at the top is nice, even if it isn’t always entirely successful or long term. Not only will Montpellier HSC fans forever embrace their 2010-12 Ligue 1 performances (that came straight from promotion), but so will football. La Rojiblancos have perhaps a more storied history than the la Pallaide, breaking into the Iberian duopoly is still a triumph that should have knowledgeable fans smiling.

* Fernando Torres, Sergio Aguero, David De Gea, Diego Forlan and Radamel Falcao

On Kevin Pietersen

The Kevin Pietersen era appears to have lasted only nine years. In that time, England has witnessed some the most successful and entertaining cricket in its history and the team is far less vital for his absence.

It was announced yesterday that Pietersen would not tour the West Indies with England later this month, nor would he be considered for the upcoming World Twenty20 Championships. It is acknowledged that this decision – taken by the England and Wales Cricket Board Managing Director Paul Downton after consulting with coach dauphin Ashley Giles, Alistair Cook and selector James Whitaker – will end Pietersen’s representative career.

The decision comes only a week after former coach and chief Pietersen antagonist Andy Flower resigned from his position, ostensibly in the wake of an “it’s him or me” ultimatum delivered to the ECB. Pietersen’s presence had been so disruptive that the coach no longer felt his remarkable talent was worth the man-hours spent harnessing it; despite public pronouncements to the opposite, it appears Cook and Giles feel similarly.

Jonathon Agnew wrote yesterday that KP is the archetypal bad breaker-upper: when turning to his past cricketing relationships, he surveys only bleak, charred soil. He is unquestionably an opinionated, headstrong player whose demise can be traced as far back as the retirement of Michael Vaughan as England captain and his subsequent star-cross’d succession.

Many things about this situation are most curious. Firstly, despite some truly awful dismissals, Pietersen was still the most formidable English bat during his last Tests and appeared to be making efforts not to rock the boat – any more than it already was upturned by Mitchell Johnson, anyway. Despite comments to the effect of “starting the rebuilding process”, we still don’t know exactly the nature of skeletons residing in his cricket coffin.

That rebuilding should start with Pietersen is also questionable. While pruning overladen branches to produce new growth is a gardening staple, one must be sure that the new growth is able to supply the demand. While the burden placed upon Simon Borthwick, Joe Root, Gary Ballance et al has been great, only Ben Stokes has genuinely taken his England opportunities. Summer opponents Australia know from hard experience how little succession planning can actually mean and, as Peter Miller pointed out in the most recent Geek and Wilde podcast, withdrawing one further bat from England’s rapidly vacating middle order flies in the face of addition-by-subtraction.

It is thought that while Pietersen failed “management”, he was in turn failed by them.  Perhaps this is why, like so many cricket personnel decisions now, resolution to this interminability was made by an executive rather than a coach (read: middle-manager). Those in power had tolerated management’s folly for too long not to act.

Despite the unremitting nature of the situation, that the ECB saw fit to arbitrarily enforce retirement on a player without a coach in place – that is, sans architect and implementer of the team’s vision – belies a lack of faith in their managers. Reasoning that life will be simpler and more profitable with new man and a clean slate is understandable in the circumstances, but also somewhat flawed.

Experience suggests that the right coach could achieve great things with Kevin Pietersen pumping out runs like a middle-order howitzer. With Giles apparently complicit in yesterday’s action, it would appear the likely new coach views the construction of a productive relationship as impossible even before an attempt has been made.

After five years’ frustration, management’s only recourse was to shuffle the problem upwards to the executives. In such situations, decision-makers are liable to make black-and-white choices promoting organizational efficiency. It is common sense that rehabilitation lacking buy-in from either side is almost certain to fail; when faced with persistent symptoms, the ECB opted for a surgical panacea rather than a tricksy rehab under the guidance of therapists in whom they may lack absolute belief.

While clean slates may offer unlimited possibilities, they also engender powerful vacuums. The hole at number four will be exceedingly tough to fill. 

Plus/minus: Aston Villa, Cardiff City, Man United, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, 4th February 2014

Aston Villa

Player	G	Min	GS	GA	+/-	Scored/90	Conc/90	Team GD
Guzan	24	2160	27	34	-7	1.125	1.417	-7
Westwood	21	1883	22	31	-9	1.052	1.482	-7
Delph	21	1833	25	29	-4	1.227	1.424	-7
Clark	21	1755	25	28	-3	1.282	1.436	-7
Weimann	23	1675	22	24	-2	1.182	1.290	-7
Vlaar	19	1635	23	22	1	1.266	1.211	-7
Bacuna	22	1617	21	24	-3	1.169	1.336	-7
Benteke	19	1548	19	26	-7	1.105	1.512	-7
El Ahmadi	21	1502	19	28	-9	1.138	1.678	-7
Agbonlahor	18	1482	16	22	-6	0.972	1.336	-7
Luna	17	1381	15	18	-3	0.978	1.173	-7
Baker	17	1304	14	21	-7	0.966	1.449	-7
Lowton	15	1210	17	20	-3	1.264	1.488	-7
Kozak	14	781	10	9	1	1.152	1.037	-7
Tonev	15	553	5	6	-1	0.814	0.976	-7
Sylla	9	462	5	7	-2	0.974	1.364	-7
Albrighton	8	330	2	7	-5	0.545	1.909	-7
Bertrand	3	261	7	7	0	2.414	2.414	-7
Herd	2	171	1	4	-3	0.526	2.105	-7
Okore	3	167	1	3	-2	0.539	1.617	-7
Holt	3	127	1	1	0	0.709	0.709	-7
Bowery	5	63	0	2	-2	0.000	2.857	-7
Helenius	3	49	0	1	-1	0.000	1.837	-7