Is the alleged spat between the Dutch pair at Real Madrid is in any way decisive...
16 Mar 2009 16:35:42
Football is a game, you need hardly be told, in which passions run high. Opposing teams will fight as if lives depend on it; fans will shout and sing non-stop for 90 minutes, and coaches will, as they say, kick every ball.But sometimes such emotions spill even among those of the same shirt. Training-ground bust-ups, after all, are that most iconic of dramatic images, and just as those who once sailed the high seas found a disagreeable shipmate to be insufferable and inescapable, so too do today's athletes find their patience tested by men with whom they must not just share a starting XI, but a training ground, a locker room - a way of life.Curiously, when Dutchman meets Dutchman sparks seem to fly with regularity and ferocity, and that seems to be the case at Real Madrid this season. With a hefty Oranje contingent, it was only a matter of time before some drama appeared: it's come courtesy of Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Arjen Robben.Reports from the Spanish capital indicate that the pair exchanged a few choice phrases of mutual disapproval in Bilbao on Saturday as the Blancos managed a 5-2 win at San Mames against Athletic. This may not be unusual - show me a team in which the players don't occasionally castigate each other and I'll show you a team without spirit - but what is notable here is that this has apparently been building up for a while.Indeed, the two Oranje stars are said to be on pretty poor terms, and as such Saturday's incident was not so much a meaningless one-off as an early culmination of what could potentially cause future problems.Well, potentially. We must ask, given that these two aren't the first pair of footballers to seemingly share a mutual dislike, is such an issue really problematic? Or will professionalism take over and results continue to come?We needn't look too far to find a frame of reference. After all, at Barcelona, it was said that Samuel Eto'o and Ronaldinho were, to put it mildly, not the best of friends.Still, the two lined up alongside each other more often than not and, as one would expect of men of their income levels, at least tried to conduct themselves professionally on the pitch. As Eto'o himself put it, he didn't need to be friends with everyone on the team. Ronaldinho, meanwhile, sometimes fought back in a passive-aggressive manner, quietly berating his comrade for allegedly refusing to come on as a substitute against Racing just over a year ago.For all their (one assumes) stage-managed public hugs and smiles, there did seem to be real trouble brewing under the surface. Ronaldinho, after all, is a superstar, and as such will have strong ideas of his own; Eto'o is well-known for his effervescent, smouldering nature. In this sense some forthright exchanges are not only expected but inevitable. But when this boils over onto the training pitch, that is where problems begin. If it happens on the pitch proper, that is even worse.At Barcelona, such outcomes were commonplace in the latter days of the Frank Rijkaard era as the Dutchman singularly failed to rein in the dominant personalities of his dressing room. At Madrid, though, neither Huntelaar nor Robben is top dog, nor even close. (That honour falls to the likes of Raul and Iker Casillas.) With this in mind the coach has little to fear - for now. But he would do well to learn from Barcelona that failing to nip such issues in the bud can lead to future problems.
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