Most sports are known to put an extraneous amount of work on the shoulders of their athletes, but it seems that in soccer (or, more appropriately, football as the rest of the world calls it) it’s the coaches that seem to be taking the biggest hits, especially with the pressure of the World Cup looming over them.
Soccer games themselves-their wins, their triumphs, and their losses- are ephemeral. Some teams win, some teams lose, others reach for the top, while others crumble to the bottom. But they are far from ever-lasting. Behind the scenes, we have coaches: semi-permanent fixtures in their reign of power, “suffer[ing] consequences long after the results on the field.”
Metsu, “the white sorcerer,” did not stand idly by to watch his team lose. His undying passion for the game manifested itself through several cancers that, unfortunately, took his life.
Hodgson, the thinker, was as cool and contained as Metsu was impassioned and flamboyant. Watching his team from the sidelines, despite a composed facade, he suffers “a thousand deaths” to watch his team win.
It is the emotions of the team that is passed on through the words of the coach. The team’s actions are as a result of the coach’s commands. And, all in all, although we travel to the stadium to watch the game, it’s almost as though we’re visiting the museums of the coaches, each displaying their own “Mona Lisa” masterpiece.
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