This is a feature article exploring the differences in football players’ performance when playing for their countries, as opposed to playing for their club teams.
Lionel Messi is the two-time reigning World Player of the Year, mostly on the back of his transcendent performances in FC Barcelona’s incredible dominance of European football. Despite his numerous exploits for Barcelona, however, he has not replicated that form while playing for Argentina. Any review of the top players in European club football suggests that this is not an isolated phenomenon. Players such as Steven Gerrard and Cristiano Ronaldo produce transcendent form for their club sides, yet struggle to play as well at the international level. Meanwhile, the famous Polish-born German strikers, Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose, continue to bang in the goals for die Mannschaft, while struggling mightily to get goals and even playing time at club level.
The former case is admittedly much more prominent, mainly because in countries where competition for places exists, club form should be and usually is the primary tool that a manager can use to decide who to pick. Players with bad club form don’t usually get games for their country (unless, as in the case of Klose and Podolski, they have an established reputation for overperforming for their country).
First, we must acknowledge that there are major differences between club and international football, as Fabio Capello found out the hard way in South Africa. For example, if an international manager discovers that one of his midfielders is not very good (or injury-prone), he’s got three options: find a better eligible player, change his system to fit the players he already has, or naturalize a Brazilian. He has a very finite pool of players to choose from, and this limitation can have an effect on the performances of individual players in their national teams. There are three main reasons for differences in performance; they will be covered in detail below. Understanding these reasons has practical implications for national team managers looking to figure out how to get a team of top players playing up to the levels expected of them, and also for club managers trying to get the most out of players who can’t seem to click in their systems, but have shown ability elsewhere.
1) The quality of the players in the player’s international side relative to those of his club side. Lionel Messi is obviously very capable of driving the offensive play of any team he plays in. However, it does matter who he’s passing to, who’s making the off-the-ball runs to create space, etc. A look at Argentina’s starting eleven for their group stage game against Colombia in this year’s Copa America suggests a problem: every player in that team is worse or less suited to his position than his Barcelona counterpart (this doesn’t necessarily mean worse; Ezequiel Lavezzi is overall a better player than Pedro, but he’s not suited to the role of an interchangeable winger as well as Pedro is). There’s no marauding Dani Alves on the right to create space in the middle. More importantly, there’s no Xavi to hold possession and pick out pass after pass after pass to unlock a defense; Ever Banega and Fernando Gago are decent players, but neither have the passing range and vision of a Xavi. Without such players, Messi is forced to carry a greater creative load, and that means a strategy that focuses on marking him out of a game is more likely to be successful, since he will have much more time on the ball and be forced to stay more central and farther away from goal.
This reason could also be used to explain Wayne Rooney’s awful performance at the 2010 World Cup, after having such a stellar season for Manchester United: instead of having the excellent Nani and Antonio Valencia sending in crosses for him, he had the rather less excellent (especially at crosses) Aaron Lennon and Shaun Wright-Phillips. While Rooney may also have been suffering from the effects of various injuries, fatigue from a long season for Manchester United, and distractions from off-field indiscretions, he also received little support from the players around him. Any striker without good support from wingers and central midfield will struggle to create chances on his own and will score fewer goals as a result.
Of course, in some cases, players benefit from having better teammates in their national team than in their club team. One could look to Lukas Podolski, who since returning to FC Köln in 2009 from Bayern Munich has endured a mostly mediocre time, despite maintaining his fine form for the German national team. Köln’s current squad only contains one player who played in the most recent World Cup (Slovenia’s Milivoje Novakovic), and is undoubtedly far poorer than the talents surrounding him in die Mannschaft. Yes, both he and Klose failed to establish themselves permanently at Bayern Munich, but both of them had injury problems that led to them being moved down the pecking order. It also didn’t help that Bayern have the (relative) economic might to outbid any German team, at least, for a player to replace someone if they choose.
Anyone looking at Messi and Rooney’s recent national team performances, in addition to noting how their international teammates have underperformed, might also point out that the team’s play as a whole can be undermined by misfiring teammates. Of course, if the manager sends the team out in a system that doesn’t suit these players, the problems can be magnified.
2) The system used by his national team versus the system used by his club team. The Chelsea striker and Spain international Fernando Torres had an astounding scoring record at Liverpool when playing as a lone striker with Gerrard in support or partnered with Dirk Kuyt, a player whose stamina and energy are not really replicated in the Spanish national team (or at Chelsea, for that matter). With the shift in playing style of Spain brought on by the Barcelona invasion, Torres has been far less prolific than he was previously, even while he was still banging in the goals for Liverpool before injuries seemed to slow him down and destroy his confidence, suggesting that the role that he is asked to play for Spain now suits him far less than the one he played pre-Euro 2008 and for Liverpool.
According to this analysis, a large portion of Torres’ league goals for Liverpool that aren’t poached inside the box are a result of running onto passes from a playmaker. While Spain certainly have players who make such passes all the time, the way Spain create chances and the way Liverpool created chances in Torres’ fruitful period are very different, in that Liverpool (through Gerrard and Xabi Alonso) were more likely to look for the killer ball more often, as opposed to Spain’s more patient approach. This also explains why Chelsea are so desperately pursuing Luka Modric, as someone who is actually a playmaker in the Xabi Alonso mold.
As discussed above, some of Messi’s problems with Argentina stem from the lack of quality of his teammates. But we must also consider whether the overall system that Argentina uses suits him and his abilities. During the World Cup, Diego Maradona’s system (if it can be called that) featured a mediocre right-winger (Jonas Gutierrez) at right-back, a slow-as-molasses Martin Demichelis, and, more generally, incoherent organization and team movement. Sergio Batista’s attempts to play just like Barcelona during the Copa America did not go much better with players who are mostly used to a much different style of play (plus, he used an extra holding midfielder in the place of an attacking one). One would think that a team that could call on Angel di Maria, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Sergio Aguero, and Carlos Tevez wouldn’t struggle to score goals, but that is exactly what happened at the recent Copa America.
What this boils down to is that Messi is also suffering from playing in tactical systems that don’t suit his game. If Argentina could successfully implement a system that moved a defense around and prevented teams from sitting deep and generally focusing on disrupting possession as much as possible, Messi would have more space to beat players and pick out passes. As top football mind Jonathan Wilson wrote in an article for SI.com, it would be almost impossible to teach a team of players, no matter how talented, to play like Barcelona in a few weeks if they weren’t used to playing that way already.
For example, the Spanish national team has been so successful in recent years in part because they play a Barcelona-style system of maintaining possession and pressing the opposition that most of the players in the team are already very familiar with. The Klinsmann-Löw revolution in Germany has also set out to have all their teams, from senior level to the earliest youth levels, playing the same kind of fast-moving style; a team featuring several players just promoted from their under-21 team shredded Australia and England in South Africa. In contrast, it seems that there are very few players for which the opposite is true, namely, that the system their teams play in at the international level suits them better than at club level.
Why is this? Perhaps because at club level, managers can buy and sell players that fit or don’t fit their desired system, and/or change their system to fit existing personnel (those who fail to do one or both of those things usually find themselves unemployed). However, one or two cheap players (or in the case of Manchester City, expensive players) who fail to perform to their supposed potential can usually be farmed out on loan or otherwise kept out of the team (alas, we can’t loan Jonathan Bornstein to Honduras, where they might actually appreciate him). Further, unless they’ve played well at a similar level before or play well for their national team, few will blame the manager for the players’ poor form (maybe for buying them in the first place, but that’s another column).
Unlike club managers, however, national team managers often face substantial outside pressure from media/fans to pick certain players or play a certain way. The famous Gerrard-Lampard problem, in which England managers have struggled how to fit two very similar players into the same team without destroying its balance when the prudent course of action is to pick one, is largely a function of media/fan pressure to play both. Even as Brazil cruised through World Cup qualification, Brazilians mercilessly criticized Dunga’s defensive style. This friction between what the people want and what the manager wants can result in some square pegs being jammed into round holes.
3) The role/position that he plays at club level versus the position he plays in for his national team. Speaking of square pegs into round holes, it often seems that some players flourish in the roles they play in at international level, while never seeming to play very well or even get consistent playing time at club level. USA fans will painfully recall how Giovani dos Santos shredded their defense in a free role just behind Javier Hernandez in the Gold Cup final; dos Santos was also the runner-up to Thomas Müller in Young Player of the Tournament voting at the World Cup. His excellent performances for Mexico may surprise followers of the Premier League, given his failure to secure consistent playing time at Tottenham Hotspur or anywhere else in England. However, I would argue this is due to him often being forced out on the wing, and generally in England (especially with a manager like Harry Redknapp), wingers are expected to stay close to the sidelines and send in crosses, rather than cut inside. When dos Santos has the freedom to move around and unsettle defenders, he has shown himself to be very dangerous.
The ex-Manchester City Brazilians Robinho and Elano also flourished in relatively freer roles for Brazil (especially at the most recent World Cup, the Copa America is hopefully a bit of an anomaly) than under Sven-Goran Eriksson and Mark Hughes at City, two managers who were very focused on building well-organized sides and wouldn’t be likely to indulge the tactical freedom that Brazilian teams usually play with. It should be noted that when Robinho moved to Milan, he played much better, partially because Serie A is a slower league than the Premier League, and partially because Milan are already such a strong defensive team, they can indulge a “luxury player” like Robinho who only adds offensive flair.
In contrast, Steven Gerrard has endured a mostly wretched time playing for England. He has rarely been played in his preferred position directly behind the striker(s) that has been so successful for him at Liverpool; he was even forced into a nominal left-wing position during the most recent World Cup. For a player that thrives on making runs into space to either take shots or lay passes on for his forwards, being shifted out to the wing can severely limit his game, especially since his crosses are wayward at times.
From what we can see now, it is very important for a team’s system and a player’s role in that system to suit him for maximum performance. Perhaps no other player in the world needs to be the center of attention more than Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish international striker currently playing for Milan. Simply, he has failed to perform as well for Sweden as he has for many of Europe’s top clubs. He went on an over two-year goal drought for Sweden from 2006-08, in contrast, he has won the league wherever he has played in the past eight seasons, including the two titles stripped from Juventus in the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal. Many people simply criticize Ibrahimovic as a “big-game bottler”, due to his sometimes underwhelming performances in crucial Champions League fixtures, and use that to explain why he struggles for Sweden. I would argue, that, yes, he does go missing in big games sometimes, but he is not simply a flat-track bully who racks up goals against the weaker teams in a league. During his one season with Barcelona, he scored the only goal in El Clasico against Real Madrid, which is one of the biggest games in world football, and he also scored vital goals during Milan’s scudetto*-winning campaign last season. Instead, it seems that his struggles with Sweden have to do more with how he is played.
*scudetto = Italian Serie A championship
Lars Lagerback, Sweden manager from 2004 to 2009, was known for “well-organized” football, usually in a 4-4-2 that didn’t allow much movement or freedom for Ibrahimovic. However, at Milan, Barcelona, Inter and Juventus, he has excelled when allowed a freer role up front (whether in a 4-3-3 or something similar), where he can use his pace and considerable technical ability to demolish defenders. Ibrahimovic, when he is at his best, is capable of dropping deep to receive the ball and drifting out wide to stretch defenses, much like the role Messi plays in the current-day Barcelona team. (Of course, the reason why a player of such skill and talent, and who brought a different dimension to the way Barcelona normally play, didn’t last more than one season there has much to do with his massive ego and general craziness. Barcelona is not a club that tolerates such personalities among its players most of the time.) In fact, when allowed a much freer role under the new Sweden manager Erik Hamren in a Euro 2012 qualifier against Finland, Ibrahimovic scored three goals in under thirty minutes of game time.
An astute reader will notice that no defensive players have been mentioned so far in this article. While there are cases of a few defenders that have had noticeable differences in club and international performance, these differences are less easily identified. Some of this is due to the difficulty in objectively assessing a defender’s performance, but such differences may also be less evident because they last less time. This is primarily down to two reasons: 1) defenders who play poorly for their national sides are unlikely to get picked often, since a poorly-playing defender can lose a match for a manager very easily and 2) the skills that make a good defender are generally translatable. For example, a strongly-defending right-back will, assuming the opposition is of comparable ability, be that way no matter what team he plays in, while there are far more layers to being an effective attacker, depending on the system/position. In any case, there seem to be few cases of defenders playing much better for their national team than for their club team, likely because bad club defenders are unlikely to get many opportunities to play for a national team unless already established. John Terry and Oguchi Onyewu, however, are two defenders who at least until recently were getting selected solely on the back of past international performances and other intangibles.
What can we learn from the above discussion? First of all, just because a player plays poorly under a particular manager or at a particular club, doesn’t mean that the player is no good. He may just be in an environment that is ill-suited to his abilities. This fact is often lost on fans and even journalists who cover the game for a living. The flip side of this, of course, is that some players simply will not be able to adapt to a slightly different role in their team. Further, some players may only be able to play well in an environment that is very difficult to replicate at club or international level. For American fans, who have seen many of their best players struggle to get games at sides in top European leagues, this may be a bit reassuring, since it suggests that they simply need to find clubs who will play them in systems and positions that they can flourish in. However, the struggle for new manager Jurgen Klinsmann and his staff will be not only to develop a system that maximizes the performance of the available players, but also to try to get those players to clubs where they will get match experience in roles they can perform in. Match experience at the top levels of world football is the only way that American players (and therefore the American team) can improve.
The above discussions also lend credence to the idea that the worst time to sign a player is after he has played well at a major international tournament. Besides the inflated price tag, if a player hasn’t performed well enough for a club to consider buying him before said tournament, the club should think about whether the playing environment that they have is similar enough to ones in which he has performed well in previously. In the case of a youth tournament, clubs should also remember that the competition is almost certainly less physically and technically skilled than said player will be facing in a top-level league. Some players have skills that adapt to a variety of roles. For example, Luis Suarez was and has been exemplary for Ajax in a 4-3-3 and for Uruguay and Liverpool in a 4-4-1-1, both as a lone striker up front, as a winger, or as a second striker. Versatile players like Luis Suarez can be a rare commodity, however, so it is often up to both club and international managers to try to figure out if they can (or want to) adapt their playing style to suit a player’s skills, or if the player themselves can fit into a particular role or system. Such things separate great managers from ordinary ones.
Special thanks to Zonal Marking for tactical insight on specific matches and players.
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