Chelsea winger Florent Malouda deliberately goes out of his way to be unsocial. The Frenchman is keen to actively separate himself from any people who could become hangers-on and sees teammate Didier Drogba as his only friend within the game. Bucking the traditional football trend of having many people, agents and an entourage surrounding footballers, Malouda is keen to go it solo.
It marks a stark contrast with the approach of former Blues manager Luiz Felipe Scolari, who bemoaned the lack of camaraderie and togetherness at the Stamford Bridge outfit. Big Phil was keen to set up relationships than transcended the football pitch, a coach-player relationship that is common throughout South American football culture. Both he and Robinho seem most at home when there is more of a family and close knitted feel to the football team, with the coach providing more of a father or mentor role to his players. Both these two have commented on how there was a lack of this kind of relationship off the pitch in the Premier League and were more comfortable with the game in Brazil. Yet it is not just South American culture that encourages this kind of relationship amongst those involved with football.
To a lesser extent a similar process has developed at Old Trafford with Alex Ferguson and what is now the Manchester United Old Guard, with Ferguson being very involved in the early development of Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville, but always secondary to their family.
In light of what these players have been able to achieve and how tough it could be on your own in football if things start to turn against you, it is perhaps strange to see that Malouda is so forthright in distancing himself from a close bond with anyone at the club or involved in football. Yet away from these relationships at clubs between manager and player comes a new generation of over-involved agents and companies. Kia Joorabchian is someone who has come to epitomise an external actor who is too involved with players and exerts too much influence on them and their careers, whilst making huge personal profits. Paul Stretford is another name that springs to mind, these two may be the most infamous, given the recent events in Manchester, but their positions and influence over players are far from unique.
It would appear that the days that a player just wishes to play for a club with perhaps his dad, as is the case with Ryan Giggs, offering him some advice and handling the necessities of paper work are long gone. Nowadays agents engineer moves in order to secure signing on bonuses and the like. Modern day footballers have no shortage of people wanting to hang on to their coat tails, in an attempt to get a piece of the pie and lots of their influence can be damaging to the players development not only as a player but as a person and ultimately to the game as well. Perhaps Malouda’s stance of not wishing to get too involved with others in a bid to not be adversely is a wise one. By excluding the entourages associated with players, maybe a sense of normality can return to football which would surely be beneficial. So far from being an aggressive and lonely outlook on football, this attitude is in fact a fine example being set by Malouda.
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