The pre-tournament excitement about this very talented Belgium squad has sobered after two narrow and uninspiring wins in Brazil. This has put them top of Group G and through to the Round of 16, yet it’s hardly been satisfying or convincing.

The arc of slow starts, flat middles, and late highs is not a path to dominance. The defense has proven consistent, but the problems lie in front of the strong defense and the best midfield combination seems yet to be determined. After going down 1-0 to Algeria, Moussa Dembélé and Nacer Chadli made manager Marc Wilmot’s decision to start them a poor one, but his substitutions inspired – one being Marouane Fellaini, the Everton version. Most surprising has been an ineffectual attack led by Romelu Lukaku’s absenteeism and behind him, Eden Hazard is still searching for influence. The three Belgian goals have been scored by substitutes, including the winner against Russia by 19 year-old Divock Origi.

South Korea could provide Belgium with an opportunity to successfully work some kinks out and improve as they advance at the expense of a vulnerable opponent.

South Korea’s qualifying campaign and lead-up to Brazil failed to impress. In their final warm-up matches they lost to Tunisia and, to given a sense of where they stand against teams that actually qualified for the World Cup, they lost to Ghana 4-0. They haven’t been given much of a chance to move on.

Then suddenly the whole sputtering journey looked buoyant following an opening 1-1 draw with Russia. A survey revealed that 7 out of 10 Koreans believed the team would get out of the group stage. Then the Algerians embarrassed them 4-2 and that confident majority was left crushed and angry. Some prayed, while others, walked:

“I requested vacation days for the first and third matches to cheer on the team properly, but now I’m planning on canceling my vacation day and just going to work on Thursday.”

South Korea can still qualify but with most of the tiebreakers unfavorable, chances are slim and vacation time precious. Nevertheless, there are those who carry on.

In the Korean Times, the battle cry came in the byline: “Belgian Waffles for Lunch!” The Hardworking and well-respected midfielder Han kook-young, distraught over his poor performance against Algeria, said he would be devastated to go home without making amends.

“I don’t really care if I get injured against Belgium and if it ends up being the last game of my career. I want to give everything I have until the final whistle.” Belgium are overwhelming favorites, yet odds matter little against the foolishly hopeful and blindly determined.

England’s disappointing 1-2 loss to Italy in Manaus should be tempered by the excitement generated by a genuinely fine performance, despite the defeat.

Although nothing was gained against Italy, England should be heartened by the fact that nothing was definitively lost. The smiles, harmony, and bonhomie (yes, even bonhomie) of an England camp whose preparation was described as the “happiest, most straightforward England build-up to a major tournament for years,” England had the feel of a good news story.

The genuine good vibes and positive world view displayed in South Florida should carry them into the temperate environment of Sao Paolo for the mutual do-or-die engagement with a shell-shocked Uruguay who were torn to pieces by an inspired Costa Rica.

Uruguay is the oldest squad in the tournament and it showed in the second half collapse. Luis Suarez’s absence, particularly when Costa Rice snatched a 2-1 lead, raises some doubt about his emphatic declaration of being 100% fit.

England’s energetic performance should make Roy Hodgson’s team selection a no brainer. Without the equivalent of Andrea Pirlo, Uruguay’s midfield won’t dominate the middle of the pitch. Hodgson retains the liberty to stick with the same XI in a 4-2-3-1, with Wayne Rooney swapping places with Raheem Sterling. In his favored central position, Rooney gains creative license while being relieved of defensive duties that he neither liked nor performed well. Hodgson is aware that Rooney’s assist against Italy came about once he jettisoned defensive duties. The youthful energy and confidence of Sturridge, Sterling, and Welbeck will be encouraged here once again to take the game to their opponents. Hodgson’s conservatism looks to have not made the flight to Brazil.

Uruguay’s tactics will be determined by Suarez’s fitness and to some degree by Maxi Pereira’s red card. As we witnessed against Costa Rica, a Suarez-less Uruguay is swagger-less Uruguay. Diego Forlan, well past his prime, was a poor proxy and Edison Cavani was even more isolated than poor Suarez on the sideline. With Suarez on the pitch, Forlan returns to the bench and Cavani will likely drop deeper.

Suarez’s presence and energy reverberate throughout the lineup and Uruguay is better from back to front with him stirring things up. But will it be enough to overcome a new-look England squad who may grow stronger even in defeat? Belief had withered in the long awaited dominance of the Golden Generation that never arrived. Now belief has a chance to return sooner than expected with the emergence of England’s new class of international elite who will take one step closer to qualification at expense of a Uruguay squad who, with Suarez, can never be written off.

The match has the potential to continue a run of exciting matches that have made this World Cup so immediately memorable.

At what point during Chelsea’s season did the difference between symptoms of discomfort and symptoms of illness become clear? For some time, they looked and felt the same. It was a bit like trying to figure out if you’re getting sick or just feeling a little crappy that afternoon.

Michael Ballack put it best in November. After Chelsea’s Champions League defeat to Bayern Leverkusen, the former Chelsea star’s experience pointed to the encroachment of something significant:

“We could feel it on the pitch every minute. They were not as strong as they normally are. Even when they went 1-0 up we could sense it. They didn’t have the strength, mentally, that they usually do. We knew before the game they were in a difficult moment, but it’s only when you play against a team on the pitch that you see what is really happening.”

Is the problem the squad’s ageing spine or the young manager’s flaws obscured by the unpredictable combination of success and inexperience?

Roman Abramovich’s hiring of the thirty-three year old Andre Villas-Boas indicated that the seafarer was tacking in a different direction. His strategy for immediate success and total control had been to spend money, but this has been replaced by a philosophical and measured approach presented by a new manager who has been handed an unusual degree of control.

Villas-Boas wasn’t hired to succeed where Carlo Ancelotti failed. No one is better than Ancelotti at maximizing a bag of established egos and decaying bodies. On these terms, there is no replacement. Expectations that Villas-Boas would lead a squad full of sediment to immediate success depend on the owner’s continued pathological impatience. A tepid half-season is not considered ground for dismissal under an owner who seems anything but ruthlessly impetuous.

Paying Villas-Boas’ £13m release from Porto is big spending, but it resembles strategic planning instead of impulsion, investment in human resources rather than purchase of expendable object. Villas-Boas has not been sacked because lowered expectation has been balanced with a vision of the future that defines the owner/manager relationship.

Even recent doubts raised about his capability to manage at this level have also been opportunities to reiterate support and belief in his potential. Abramovich’s silence and inaction tacitly agree.

The rarity of recent visits to training may be ominous or just a visit to see the guys, but it does highlight a distance that granted the manager a broad margin of error to accommodate the mistakes of measured decisions in difficult circumstances.

The season began by creating time and space for the epic death throes of José Mourinho’s great squad and the growing pains of a successful, but unproven manager. Yet Chelsea’s struggle cannot be reduced to questionable management of transition or age finally laying claim to the body; both are burrowing through the club, occasionally in sharp conflict. But Chelsea’s primary problem is age, and will remain so, unless the manager’s great promise fails to meet minimum expectation that most believe is Champions League qualification.

The Age Problem or, The So-Called Age Problem

Recent pre-seasons have raised questions about Chelsea’s age. Fair, but inconclusive, they remained suggestive and a little silly: Now that the players are three months older than they were in May, are they too old to win?

Age was elusive, in part because failures were pinned on inadequate managers. But the turn to the future has forced the club to address age indirectly, as if it was taboo. Age is a silent killer.

Ballack, with a little Chelsea still in him, believes that Chelsea still has what it takes, “There are enough big players, experienced players, still in that dressing room.”

After his game-winner against Wolverhampton, Frank Lampard cited the rediscovery of the old spirit—“the Chelsea of a few years ago” as Ashley Cole put it—that winning mentality forged by the club’s big players, “something we’ve prided ourselves on at Chelsea for many years, it won us titles…It’s something we can’t lose. If you do lose that then you can’t be at the top.”

Two days earlier, Villas-Boas offered something different after losing to mediocre Aston Villa, “Our squad is not good enough to win the league. Not this year…”

Incompatible perspectives both illustrate how age is talked about, a pattern going back to Torres’ “very slow” comment and Villas-Boas’ reply that proved as clever as his slumping striker at pointing to what is not being pointed to, “I don’t think it’s a perspective that the manager shares…I think we have competence, apart from the ‘age problem’, which for me is not a problem.”

There’s that age creep, lurking between what is lost when declared not lost, then glimpsed between the admission of a problem that is a so-called problem he doesn’t share, and again just below the surface of a squad that can’t win this year.

On arrival, Villas-Boas assured every player would be given a well-earned opportunity to prove future value. Terry would remain captain, “as long as he can perform to the utmost of his ability, as he has in the last six years”. The same standard applies to Lampard, Cole, Peter Cech, and Didier Drogba who have all been recognizably out of form this season.

Inevitably, discontent would follow the injustice of meritocracy, paving the way for the purging of the “disaffected” (the old?). Nicolas Anelka was first, excluded from the first team and later the Christmas party before departing on the ageing star’s route to an exotic football locale. In Shanghai, he can continue feeling important as he disappears from all that was familiar.

Anelka exemplifies Chelsea’s unique age problem, which is the emerging collective split between ego and performance. Backed by good results, the “big egos” remain alive and dynamic, free to move between titles and entitlements. But as performance drops and veers toward a cruel reality, belief in an out-sized self fights on from some calloused refuge, preserving exceptionalism by rejecting a reality it is losing touch with.

Anelka fled to the far-flung corner of the frontier like a shooting star. Compare Lampard, who stayed to fight against the twilight. He has been gracious, but the struggle with a substitute’s role is worn on his sleeve.

The tranquility of Villas-Boas’ first months allowed him to be philosophical and introduce himself through a worldview. The preseason was part retreat, focused on nurturing the “group dynamic”, of which he was part, preferring to be called the “Group One” instead of another “Special One”.

Equality and interdependence aimed to contain the destructive narcissism of ego that weakens cohesion. The group could self-govern, blunt sharp edges and fuse splintering, through a problem-solving strategy based on honest, open communication, which, when first tested, was betrayed by Villas-Boas’ authoritarian suspicion and unilateral interrogation of the truth in Fernando Torres’ interview, “We are going in-depth to regain the tape of that interview…We’ll see if things play exactly as they are in that interview.”

Torres spoke broadly about style and transition, hardly inflammatory, but Villas-Boas somehow heard “too old”. Strangely, he diffused criticism of the group with another indirect reference to age. Perhaps the interrogation aimed to test the viability of coded language that Villas-Boas also used to slowly confront age and dynastic end.

If owner and manager felt that the squad was too old, then why not make changes in the summer? Not for financial reasons, austerity is a choice for Abramovich. Perhaps it is his unflagging support, attachment, and protection of a group of senior players that have repaid him with three titles in seven years—the precedent to feed the hope of a glorious swan song. This senior group reached their prime together, solidified Chelsea’s global brand, but look to be fusing into one great dowager hump rather than the stuff of champions.

Why the double-talk? Coded language seems to function like an open secret, protecting the squad from criticism and loss of confidence while whispering the truth into their ears. If anything, Torres’ alleged crime was surrendering the advantage of ambiguity by disrupting the sensitive management of age within transition, and quite possibly dampening the irresistible hope of one last great run. Villas-Boas’ ambition could certainly embrace this challenge.

Reality can’t be dictated to the threatened and irascible without a fight. Villas-Boas has no intention to impose what he calls his “radical self”. Instead, the opportunity for each to prove future value was also designated as one to prove obsolescence, to self-interrogate and gradually reveal the reality from week to week as they slipped further behind table leaders.

Chelsea could accept the fitful growing pains of transition, but no longer the fitful twitching of life in the midst of slow decline. Six months in, one wonders how long the future of Chelsea will be fresh faces, a young seasoned manager (three months more seasoned than in May), and—a Champions League place?

“It’s just a shame that Van Persie, a world-class player, came up with a piece of magic at the end. He is worth the entrance fee alone.” – Steve Bruce

What constitutes leadership seems fairly obvious: there’s experience, charisma, success, temperament, and colleagues’ respect.  Yet what constitutes a captain is far less clear. What is captain material? In the effort to identify this elusive substance, debates toss around any number of attributes and then place them into types.

First, there’s the captain as a communicator. He’s a talker. Throughout a match he barks commands, wields criticism, points to things, and commends good play and hard work. He speaks in the huddle and has one-on-one conversations at halftime. Then there’s the leader by example, whose actions do the talking. Instead of screaming at a player to pick up his game, the crunching tackle the captain just made says it all for him.

Also present in these debates are natural and acquired leadership types. They are less clear-cut than they are made out to be. The reason for this may have something to do with assumptions about natural leadership that go unchallenged.

What most people look for in a leader are qualities that they don’t have—leaders must be first and foremost special. Natural leadership is the distinguishing quality; people are either born with it or not. As a result, the rare genetic or God-given gift of natural leadership is preferred to acquired leadership, which is achieved through education and experience; comparatively it is all to human.

At age 28, Robin van Persie has not been considered captain material until now. Even during his time as Arsenal’s vice captain, his promotion was not discussed as long as Cesc Fábregas was with the club. In making the strongest case, Arséne Wenger was candid about van Persie’s evolution, while never quite conceding the Dutchman’s natural leadership capabilities.

During speculation about Fábregas’s replacement, Jack Wilshere’s name was also tossed into the hat. In contrast to van Persie’s education, Wilshere, at age 19 and with one impressive season, has already been identified as a natural leader.  In some discussions, this inexplicable quality alone nearly put him on par for the promotion. Identifying natural leadership assumes that these attributes were already there in a player, if not at birth, then in some magical childhood experience. Did it form from a life lesson or some U11 blood-and-guts moment on the pitch? This then would only appear natural, having simply occurred before the player had our attention.

The truth may be far more ordinary. Recently, we learned that Apple CEO Steve Jobs found inspiration in a catalog. Zinedine Zidane found his through watching television. Where did that special and mysterious thing only he had come from? In the film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, an anecdote offers a glimpse, “I had a running commentary in my head when I was playing. It wasn’t really my own voice. It was the voice of Pierre Cangioni, a television anchor form the 1970s. Every time I heard his voice, I would run towards the TV. As close as I could. For as long as I could. It wasn’t that his words were so important, but the tone, the accent, the atmosphere was everything…”

On August 16th, 2011, van Persie replaced Fábregas as captain. Is he captain material? Opinion was split. Some, despite strong reservations, admittedly understood why Wenger appointed van Persie. His seven loyal years at the club or his incredible form of last season were sufficient reasons.

Additionally, his seniority, age, and respect meet a number of criteria. From Wenger’s comments, it’s clear that loyalty was added to the list (in this light, resigning van Persie is a must). But the clear sense and logic of Wenger’s decision also points to the unflattering assessment that van Persie was understandably the only choice from a club with a persistent leadership void. With a lack of viable candidates, who else but an injury-prone, non-communicative striker could have been chosen?

Leading a post-Invincibles Arsenal has been one of football’s tough jobs; it’s an exacting task to both inspire teammates and help develop their potential. The role is difficult to navigate, because success lies at the end of a fine line. On one hand, as Fábregas experienced, an Arsenal captain will be held responsible for failing to make the team better. On the other hand, an Arsenal captain’s qualifications are questioned, since he was appointed from a group without leaders. Any accomplished captain would find it difficult to create title-winning initiative out of nothing. In the post-Fábregas era, the task has become more difficult. This bind defined the challenge awaiting van Persie from the moment he cinched the elastic band around his arm.

Van Persie’s promotion also had to contend with legitimate red flags raised by those who didn’t consider him captain material. He is emotionally impulsive, too injury prone, and by nature non-communicative. Yet, there are countless counter-examples at hand to undermine the certainty of any argument. Roy Keane wasn’t so much emotionally impulsive as emotionally explosive. Gary Neville missed all of Manchester United’s 2007-2008 season without officially relinquishing the armband or the respect of his manager and teammates.

Van Persie’s non-communicative nature alludes to the deeper indictment that he is not a natural captain and therefore unfit to lead. Wenger agreed in part that the striker is not a natural captain in the strict sense, but sees his evolution as part of a natural process, “Robin is a man who speaks his mind. I think he is one of these guys who develops with responsibilities. You would think he is not a natural captain at the start but he really has grown well into the role…I think he has a combination of leadership on the pitch. He is technically a super-talent…Now he has added the second part, that means speaking his mind.”

Wenger may see a synthesis of leadership types that many would say is yet to be so firmly established. How important is it for van Persie to add communication to leadership by example? Any answer might consider Carlos Tevez who, having no command of English, captained Manchester City to third in the Premier League solely by example.

Determining what makes a good captain is not a science. Natural leadership is as much myth as fact, since no one is born with experience. Likely most captains today weren’t tipped to be leaders in their teens. Captains have succeeded with a few attributes, while some have disappointed despite seemingly to have them all. Captaincy is so difficult to assess on its own terms that even the dire leadership void at Arsenal fails to determine anything beyond being a potential handicap.

In a nightmarish season of defection, disillusion, and injury, most of Arsenal’s few bright spots can be directly attributed to van Persie performances. His equalizer at Udinese helped secure Arsenal’s 14th straight Champions League appearance. He secured an important 1-1 away draw against a quality Borrusia Dortmund team. He reached 100 career goals with two against Bolton in a 3-0 win.

His top class performances that single-handedly beat Sunderland and Stoke in successive weeks may say little about the true value of van Persie as captain, but it highlights the immediate effect of his messianic form. So far, the evidence accounts for all the captain material he needs. If this isn’t priceless, then it’s at least worth the entrance fee alone.

Photo by Gilyo

Andre Villas-Boas’s arrival at Chelsea over the summer was a sensation. Young, confident, and possessing a pedigree of mentorship, transformation at Chelsea was expected. But instilling new and unfamiliar ways would be palliative before firmly rooted—this was Chelsea after all, part exclusive nightclub, and part outpost of the new Moscow, an engineered beast resistant to obedience. Villas-Boas nearly made it three months before Fernando Torres’s untoward comments opened the door for his manager’s first encounter with sensationalism. The Villas-Boas era’s most tangible influence to date may be guiding Chelsea through an understated summer.

The Torres interview with the official website of La Liga was translated into English and posted on his personal website, rendering whatever he said in Spanish about Chelsea’s senior players as “very slow”. With this move, he effectively replaced the third-party publication as reliable scapegoat with his own, thereby making him both perpetrator and victim of that dastardly translation issue known as slippage. It is more likely that Torres simply undervalued the role of an editor than brazenly let loose a bilingual criticism of his colleagues. Still, he would have to answer.

Since the firebrand days of José Mourinho, Chelsea has produced their share of sensationalism; sex scandals and shootings are the prime cuts of daytime television. Historically, Torres’s comments hardly qualify as scandalous, yet under Villas-Boas’s reign of humility and self-restraint, “very slow” was sufficiently meaty for the media to grab and run toward disproportionate implications. For the first time as Chelsea manager, Villas-Boas was forced out of his low-key and contained persona to chase down his drifter striker and publicly address a club issue.

On Torres’s comments:

“We’d just talk. Just talk. To share opinion. If it was unauthorised, I’d fine him. Of course. Anyhow, it’s one player’s perspective.

“I don’t think it’s a perspective that the manager shares. I don’t have to share my players’ ideas sometimes…Maybe we just have to speak about that situation and he has to see our view as well.”

Consistent with his high regard for communication and empathy as the basis for professional relationships, Villas-Boas made it clear that he would remain a sincere and honest listener who in turn offers his take on matters without aggressive imposition, without—as he stated upon arrival— imposing his “radical-self”. Governing principles will take the lead.

When he speaks, one can see the abstract thinker in him, as if he’s visualizing the idea’s model at the same time, referencing some architectural or geometric shape hovering in front of him under a cone of light.

By way of ego, self-awareness, restraint, and motivation, Villas-Boas expansively detailed the central importance of the group dynamic and the place of the individual within it, both on and off the pitch. Aware that he can be occasionally wordy and indirect, he bookends the underpinnings and expositions with concise summaries impossible to misconstrue:

“The only thing I could never tolerate is an individual looking for individual objectives. Collective objectives go above everything else.”

His comments about Torres were similarly stern and clear, yet had an additional hard edge.

“We are going in-depth to regain the tape of that interview. We’ll see if things play exactly as they are in that interview.”

This communicator was now the interrogator. Torres’s comments were hardly incendiary or revelatory. Going outside the family always get the manager’s boxer briefs in a bunch, and Villas-Boas’s tone certainly conveyed an uncomfortable tightening. But the family does not mark the sanctified circle for him. If Torres’s translation had proved accurate, he would not have been guilty of insubordinate speech, but insubordinate action, a breach of the concept of the group, whose cohesion and health is dependent upon open communication and understanding. The possibility of the individual objective lying behind Torres’s comment could be damaging to the group.

Disclosing his request for the original text of the interview was the use of that model in his head as an investigative tool. It’s not the imposition of the radical self, but of the radical principle. Villas-Boas revealed another side of himself, for when it comes to what could never be tolerated, it is no longer about “just talking”.

This over-exposure comes about in the same week that perhaps his most hidden self was revealed. This requires a leap back five days to the previous Wednesday and Frank Lampard’s interview following England’s Euro 2012 qualifier with Wales.

A healthy Frank Lampard was left out of the match against Bulgaria before being reinstated for the Wales match. But questions were focused on his exclusion, which was particularly unusual when a second exclusion is considered. Jack Wilshere’s absence due to injury left an open slot in the lineup, or to put it another way, created a large receptacle for the speculation about Lampard’s future with England. Did the exclusion indicate that his international career was over?

There were a number of justifiable and diversionary answers at hand. At age thirty-three, Lampard could have explained his exclusion through injury and the slow, but proper recovery time for long-term fitness.

There was also the fail-safe ready-made reply, the been working hard in training everyday to get back into the squad. It would have been easy to cite player rotation and substitution policy, all teams have one, especially national sides often obliged to choose from a patchwork of available players. In addition to disarming the interviewer with mechanical dullness, stating the obvious numbs the inquest, as does the gracious compliment. He talked up the new kids establishing themselves in the squad, and could have left it there. Instead, Lampard chuckled, chose none of these options, and answered:

“People like to give off the idea that players are expecting to play every game and we’ve never been like that,” Lampard said. “We’re all professionals and driven, and our egos are only our desire to succeed individually and as a group, and we haven’t quite done that for England.

Just think that three months ago Villas-Boas was announced as the second coming of José Mourinho—the vessel for channeling his mentor’s presence in the form of clone, reincarnation, or host. It didn’t matter if it was done through science or Eastern religious ideas, Mourinho had found a way to be smuggled back into England for exclusive titillating banter and continental domination. Instead, Villas-Boas was instantly his own man, which then became just as fascinating.

From the beginning, Villas-Boas subtly demanded better listening from us. Now properly conditioned, we can hear him in Lampard’s self-effacing and substantive explanation for his exclusion. Put in terms of the tamed ego and group dynamic is a direct citation of his manager.

Generational transition is underway. England’s senior players have failed more than once to live up to expectations, yet continued to hold starting places without challenge. For the first time under Capello, England youth have an opportunity to establish themselves beyond roles as fillers and experiments. To start or hold a place in the squad, senior players like John Terry and Ashley Cole will be forced to prove themselves again or find themselves in Lampard’s shoes.

The measured transformation at Chelsea under Villas-Boas is a total mind-body rejuvenation that will come about first through perspective and attitude. The fresh worldview will be reflected in the success on the pitch and beyond, as part of group Chelsea or some other group. Here, it’s Lampard and England.  Next, it could be Terry, whose ambitions to coach one day have been set alight by the Chelsea manager’s approach.

If Chelsea benefit, then England could too.

“All of a sudden now, we can see these ones sprouting up and that’s great for the fans to see and us to see as a group,” Lampard said.

As the youth rise, the timing is right for the elders to find a way to remain physically and mentally strong. By next summer, England could finally claim the expectations no longer associated with them. Villas-Boas may have a part to play in this.

Did everyone have it backwards? Maybe it was the projection of Mourinho who snuck Villas-Boas into England instead.