Guus faces biggest battle if old pals’ act turns nasty

Matthew Norman
13 Feb 2009

How quickly things change in the crazy, crazy world of Roman Abramovich. Had this FA Cup derby come a week earlier, the family angle to dwell on would be the touching father-son clash between the Frank Lampards, Watford consultant' Snr and his son, beloved Jnr, the Chelsea midfielder.

The story today concerns a family at war. However Chelsea became the Borgias of the Premier League, machinating against coaches and each other as John Terry revealed, isn't clear, internecine strife is the usual result when an overpowering personality is brutally removed from power.

Much as those other Blues spent a decade riven by civil warfare after the pesticide of Mrs Thatcher, the ones from Stamford Bridge haven't begun to recover their harmony since Jose Mourinho's ousting 17 months ago.

In succession to the morose Avram Grant and the bemused Luiz Felipe Scolari, it now falls to Guus Hiddink to reunite a squad of opinionated geriatrics hooked on factional squabbling.

If anyone can do it, this witty, affable Dutchman is surely the one. An acute tactician and even better motivator, Hiddink is many people's idea of the world's leading coach with sound reason.
He may have not have won a World Cup but his international record is the equal of Scolari's.

He took Holland to within the width of a post of the 1998 final, dwarfed that by driving South Korea to the last four in 2002, and then roused that comatose giant Russia in Euro 2008.

Some wonder how effective Hiddink can be coaching Chelsea and Russia simultaneously but plenty doubted he could succeed with PSV Eindhoven and Australia a few years ago.

PSV won the Dutch League at a canter while his Aussies were hideously unlucky to leave the World Cup after dominating eventual champions Italy.

So should Abramovich decide to extend his contract beyond the summer, as one presumes he will, you suspect that the Russian authorities will make a fuss before deciding they have no choice but to live with it.

The big question, then, is not whether Hiddink can handle the workload but whether anyone on earth can handle his boss. In the way of the plutocrat down the ages, Abramovich wants it all.
He wants beautiful football and he wants winning football, and he wants them yesterday at the very latest. And while the twain do sometimes meet, as Manchester United and Barcelona can attest, they need time to come together and make gorgeous little silverware babies.

The immediate future is unlikely to be the problem. Tomorrow the players who have been so feckless and lacklustre of late will doubtless rediscover their form and motivation, as players do with a new boss to impress.

The timing is rotten luck for Watford, who might well have embarrassed Scolari's idlers but will surely be blown away by the winds of change.
After that the real the work begins as Hiddink addresses the small matter of remoulding an effective team from the remnants of the cliques he will have to dissolve — a task for which his stint with Holland, football's global capital of the viciously divided dressing room, should leave him well prepared.

Yet the players themselves, albeit the most visible symptoms, are not the root of the problem. They never are. Any club are only as good as their chairman/owner, as followers of Spurs so well understand, and at times Chelsea's appear to be on a kamikaze mission to destroy any remnant of the good his money originally conferred.

Currently, Hiddink regards Abramovich as a friend. One might recall that Messrs Mourinho and Grant both once said the same but friendship is a delightful thing so we musn't be churlish.

It's sustaining the friendship that is the tricky bit. Few doubt that Hiddink is close to a genius at managing players, even those as arrogant as some in the Chelsea dressing room. But can he manage an increasingly impatient and quixotic Abramovich? I wouldn't want to bet heavily either way but it should be tremendous fun finding out.