The [insert club] Way

[tee rex]

You hear this all the time. Fans won't be happy until they play the "West Ham way", Mourinho's team is not playing "the Manchester United way", etc.

Are these "Ways" set in stone? Rhetorical question, because they aren't. Exhibit A for Arsenal: the Way was so well established and well known that it permeated popular culture (Full Monty offside trap, Hornby's "boring Arsenal", countless comedians' gags). Everybody knew that it was "one-nil to the Arsenal". But now the Arsenal Way is cited with just as much certainty as meaning more or less the opposite: "typical Arsenal, playing pretty passes but to no avail", says any report, most weeks of the season. The age of the commentator may be a factor here (personally I guffaw every time this New Arsenal Way is invoked, but then I grew up with back passes to the muddy keeper). But nobody seems to be suggesting that when Wenger departs, the Old Arsenal Way will return. The image re-invention has succeeded.

Is that simply an exception? I'm not talking about reality here, but conventional wisdom, the pat assumptions that are trotted out for each major club. In a sort of Pavlovian response, it's "dirty Leeds", "Everton's school of science", "only Tottenham", etc. Liverpool have kept alive the "European night at Anfield", while shredding the memory of the "Red Machine" or "Boot Room" in the league. Manchester City are well on the way to an Arsenal-like re-invention, no more yo-yoing between divisions with wacky inflatables.

And then there's the rest of the world. Idle question: has any club established a Way, and kept it unchanged for generations? Or is it just lazy old bollox?

[Sam]

The River Plate Way is very much and always has been about the 'three Gs: Ganar, Gustar y Golear; 'Win, Put on a show and Score a lot' (what can I say, it's snappier in Spanish). That goes back to around the time of La Máquina, the 1940s forward line whose main man Adolfo Pedernera taught Alfredo Di Stéfano a lot of what he knew according to Di Stéfano himself. The idea that they'd rather have an entertaining team than one that wins all the time is an easy one to trot out when they've got more league titles than anyone else in the country anyway, but there's definitely a contrast with The Boca Juniors Way, where fans demand dirty knees and more of a win-at-all-costs attitude. This is the sort of division that seems to come up a lot in big rivalries - I remember back when I was just starting to read about football outside England that Sid Lowe and Phil Ball used to say Barcelona fans were more demanding style-wise and Real Madrid weren't as bothered whether it was pretty as long as they hoovered up trophies, for example.

More 'Ways' in Argentina (and just to add the information that the country's 'Big Five', which is set in stone down here, are the above two clubs plus Racing, Independiente and San Lorenzo):
Racing have to play decent football when they're doing well, but the reputation they most frequently have is of frustrating their fans no end.
Independiente attack attack attack, and win continental trophies in style (more Copas Libertadores than any other club, though they prefer to brush over the fact that five of them were won in an era when the defending champions went straight in at the semis).
San Lorenzo ... have had a great attacking team or two in their history, for sure, but mostly just want to laugh at Huracán.
Huracán have to play gloriously entertaining football and win almost nothing.
Argentinos Juniors have to use the kids a lot, and play along the ground.
Estudiantes de La Plata are the classic win-at-all-costs team; the club where anti-fútbol was invented, and not in the modern Anglophone sense of defending a bit but in the original, true sense of sticking pins in your opponent when the referee's not looking, and psychologically profiling upcoming rivals so you know what line to use on their No. 10 to rile him up enough to get sent off (more than any of the other clubs mentioned here, they don't really live up to this reputation any more).
And then there's The Arsenal de Sarandí Way, which is 'have a founding president who later becomes the head of the Argentine FA for 34 years and FIFA Vice President for the last couple of decades of that time, rise through the divisions during his time at the top, and then mysteriously become absolutely awful shortly after he dies.' They'll be relegated from the top flight for the first time at the end of this season.

[EIM]

It's lazy old bollocks.

[Patrick Thistle]

See also "doing a Spurs".

There are some 'ways' associated with particular people. Pulisball gets used a lot.

Swansea had a style that survived several managerial changes. Although the wheels seem to have come off a bit.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

While he was at Everton, Alan Ball invented Teflon and a non-invasive gadget that monitored blood oxygen levels.

[Sean of the Shed]

West Ham haven't played the "West Ham way" since the fucking seventies. Whatever the "West Ham way" is, it's never really done them much good, has it.

[Satchmo Distel]

National teams are the same - Brazil rarely ever played in the way they are perceived. 1982 was the exception not the rule. 1970 team could dish out some thuggery (by necessity after being kicked to death in 66).

Conte supposedly plays the Italian way, except that his Euro 16 team had little in common with 70s Italian teams.

Milan had a recognized club style for maybe 10 years. Inter and Juventus have gone through a few transformations.

[sw2borshch]

Boring, boring Boro is a bit of a media trope along with the Boro boo boys (once the bootboys), but it alliterates, innit.

[Giggler]

I referred a lot to 'the Burnley way' in the book. Feel like a tit now after reading this thread.

[Sits]

The original Wimbledon "Crazy Gang" certainly had a Way.

[E10 Rifle]

The "West Ham way" has been defined more in recent times by Sam Allardyce and David Moyes than anything dashing and fancy. When Payet was doing his stuff, Bilic could conceivably try to boast it but generally it's a myth.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Colin Harvey had a PhD in nano-chemistry.

[Sam]

National teams are the same - Brazil rarely ever played in the way they are perceived. 1982 was the exception not the rule. 1970 team could dish out some thuggery (by necessity after being kicked to death in 66).

Uruguay being the exception that proves the rule.

[ad hoc]

The "West Ham way" has been defined more in recent times by Sam Allardyce and David Moyes than anything dashing and fancy. When Payet was doing his stuff, Bilic could conceivably try to boast it but generally it's a myth.

For every Trevor Brooking there was a Billy Bonds. For every Leroy Rosenior a Julian Dicks. They were never what their fans would like you to believe

[E10 Rifle]

They could get away with peddling it for a time though because their best ever side – the genuinely enthralling 85-86 one of Devonshire, McAvennie, Ward, Cottee etc – were doing their stuff at a time when most other top-flight teams were proper into-the-mixer route one merchants. But it was a very fleeting period really.

[Crystal Staples]

This discussion reminds me of a 5 live commentator about 20 years ago saying "West Ham have always liked to play football", my bemused Mum said "well they are a football team aren't they?"

[tee rex]

Swansea had a style that survived several managerial changes. Although the wheels seem to have come off a bit.

Yes, it was talk of the Swansea Way that prompted my musings. It feels not long ago they were battling it out with Exeter and Carlisle and co to avoid dropping out of the league (though in fact it's over a decade). There seem to be fewer Ways down there.

I suppose they lost their Way when the ownership changed. If the term has real meaning, it surely relates to clubs having long-standing ownership, even over generations of one family. A billionaire buyer picking up a Premier League club is happy to promote the image but probably doesn't lose sleep if traditions are tossed.

[tee rex]

Boring, boring Boro is a bit of a media trope along with the Boro boo boys (once the bootboys), but it alliterates, innit.

I think it was Brian James who called them the onomatopoeia team in the 70s (Craggs, Sproggon, Foggon ...).

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Very interesting Sam, thanks a lot for that (and thanks to all the others, great contributions. I remember writing a bit about the Swansea Way about 5 years ago, the media gushed a lot about “The Swansea Revolution” and “Swanselona” then, post the Kenny Jackett period, i.e the Martinez-Sousa-Rodgers-Laudrup era).

In France, the only real “_____ Way” I can think of is the FC Nantes Way, aka “Le jeu à la nantaise”, it is a classic football cliché, much less heard these days but used to excess and willy-nilly between the early 1990s (when the actual phrase was coined, by a L’Équipe journalist) and the mid-2000s roughly. It wasn’t just used about Nantes but it (wrongly) came to be lazily bandied about any team that played attractive football or even just who could string three passes together with a certain finesse. The phrase was ubiquitous and even entered the research and corporate jargon:



I suppose it must have sounded half erudite to young easily impressionable football fans, or older ignorant ones alike, a bit like when Boris Johnson uses Latin terms just to impress the masses (or the plebs, or the great unwashed, or even pond life, as he would himself call them I’m sure).

The “jeu à la nantaise” originally defined a free-flowing, slick-passing, fast one-touch football style shorn of artifice, a playing style that was initiated by José Arribas (whose football guiding principle was “vitesse, technique et intelligence”) in the early 1960s and then developed through a continuum of managers and staff of the fabled La Jonelière (Nantes Centre de formation, Academy) right up to the late 1990s/early 2000s (think Makélélé, Ouédec, Pedros, Karembeu, N’Doram and the aptly named Loko, a group who romped away with the league title in 1995 – 10 points clear of runners-up Lyon and only 1 league defeat – then reached the Champions League semi-finals where they were knocked out with difficulty by Juventus, 4-3 over the two games. The name “La Jonelière” came to symbolise the club tradition and was more or less considered to be the French La Masia – as we’ve know it since the early 2000s – in those halcyon days, roughly the periods 1965-1986 and 1992-1997

The “jeu à la nantaise”, to be successfully deployed, hinged greatly on a specific set of skills honed in the Nantes academy, so a great emphasis was placed on youth development and academy coaches would teach what the French call “automatismes” between players, simple technical skills and moves acquired through repetition and habit in the youth teams, so that it became a sort of innate, automatic process by the time they turned professional).



Those who followed in José Arribas’s footsteps (legendary manager Jean-Claude Suaudeau, aka Coco Suaudeau, the direct heir to Arribas – with Jean Vincent in between, less successful – and Raynald Denoueix as far as the managers were concerned) were said to perpetuate the Nantes Way, a lineage that sought to have fostered more than just a playing identity: it had been lovingly crafted and nurtured to function as a fully fledged “philosophy” meant to embody and champion fair-play, sportsmanship, humility, a strong ethos of hard graft and even a sense of unassuming panache. (Arribas’s role model was Bill Shankly, and Nantes’s sudden rise from total obscurity in the early 1960s – they were top-flight rookies – mirrored Liverpool’s renaissance after Shankly took over a moribund Liverpool mired in the depths of the second division.)


(Coco Suaudeau's photo on the right, from a talk-show on L’Équipe TV channel)

Like many of these mid-sized clubs with no sugar daddy to bankroll the show, Nantes heavily relied on their academy (pretty much created from scratch by Arribas in the early 1960s – again, shades of Bill Shankly here) so when the latter stopped churning out a seemingly endless stream of talented players (Loïc Amisse, Henri Michel, Maxime Bossis, JP Bertrand-Demanes, José “Le Brésilien” Touré, Desailly, Deschamps, Makélélé – a product of the Brest academy but “finished” and moulded the Nantes Way at La Jonelière, ditto Touré –, Karembeu, Landreau etc.), or failed to retain them anyhow, the club nose-dived (5 seasons in the second tier since the late 2000s and mid-table mediocrity ever since, although they’ve perked up in the last 2 seasons, 7th last year and 5th this term so far with Ranieri at the helm of a young group of players).

You may still occasionally come across the phrase “jeu à la nantaise” these days (for instance here in May 2017: FC Nantes: Sergio Conceiçao a-t-il ressuscité le jeu « à la Nantaise » ?) but it’s definitely more out of laziness or misplaced nostalgia than anything else.

Indeed, the Nantes academy still produces plenty of quality players, as illustrated by the table below (although I always get the impression that their last real gem was Jérémy Toulalan in the early 2000s, I’m probably wrong), but is no longer the talent factory it once was. The Jonelière might still be reasonably successful but it’s academic anyway as the best young prospects rarely stick around for long at Nantes, so any hope of resurrecting the glory days through a “jeu à la nantaise” is just pure wishful thinking.


http://fcnantes.com/articles/article2809.php?num=12035

A decade or so ago, the phrase “jeu à la lyonnaise” (the Olympique Lyonnais Way”) timidly cropped up at the fag end of their impressive string of League titles (7 in a row, 2002-2008) but that didn’t last long, not sure what it referred to really, maybe it was just to do with the fact Lyon bulldozed their way to the title every single season and were successful in Europe so some people (locals?) felt like coining this unoriginal phrase to celebrate the achievement, maybe the Lyon supporters, journalists from Lyon etc. wanted to leave their mark in the football lexicon or something, as their achievements didn't exactly set the country on fire. (And no, it wasn’t about Pétanque at all, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport-boules, but come to think of it may have wanted to allude to it, to local tradition, regional identity etc. just to remind the world that Lyon & area exist too, so maybe it had nothing to do with football and was just a cry for recognition. (Lyon was traditionally an area with a low sense of identity and poor self-image. Until the 1980s-90s it was derided for being a boring staid city that was dead past 10pm and for being that polluted place that you unfortunately had to drive through, or crawl through rather, on your way down south, as you’d invariably ended up being stuck in the dreaded Tunnel de Fourvière. There have been all sorts of weird things happening with regional identity and local pride since the 1990s.)

There’s now even a band called “Collectif Jeu à la nantaise” and all sorts of merchandising bearing the name.




(PLO= Pedros, Loko, Ouédec)

[Furtho]

Absolutely fascinating, Kev, cheers for that. OTF at its finest.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Yes, it was talk of the Swansea Way that prompted my musings. It feels not long ago they were battling it out with Exeter and Carlisle and co to avoid dropping out of the league (though in fact it's over a decade). There seem to be fewer Ways down there.

And battle they did - there was one game in particular that stands out from that time when they came to Brunton Park and kicked, elbowed, niggled and intimidated their way through 90 minutes of something that just wasn't football - so their later emergence as a silky smooth sexy football beast was ironic to me. The Hull side of that era were nasty bastards too.

I'm not claiming any moral high ground here by the way, we were no angels and this was around the time that it was hard to keep up with whether it was our chairman, manager or one of our players who was in trouble that particular week (sometimes football related, sometimes kebab shop related).

Came with the territory I guess, like you say it was a battle environment and no one was going to pass their way to survival.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Absolutely fascinating, Kev, cheers for that. OTF at its finest.

Echo that, I did feel guilty banging on about a lower division game from 15 years ago after that masterpiece, but had to get it out my system.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

WFD, have you seen The Rod Squad?

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

WFD, have you seen The Rod Squad?

I've seen bits of it but never watched the whole thing through - maybe now is far enough removed from that time that I can face it. The stories from that era are legendary, a strange episode in our history.

[tracteurgarcon]

West Ham haven't played the "West Ham way" since the fucking seventies. Whatever the "West Ham way" is, it's never really done them much good, has it.

I thought it won them the World Cup?