3 Big Questions (And Answers) For Soccer In 2011

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1- Will Jose Mourinho leave Real Madrid if he fails to take the Spanish title from Barcelona?

No. Whether the Portuguese stays might not be entirely his choice, because Real’s president Florentino Pérez changes his coaches more often than he changes his shoes. But Jose Mourinho knows that unseating Barcelona would both crown his career and redefine global football. It’s a project he’s prepared to devote some time to.

Already, match for match, Mourinho must be the winningest coach in soccer’s history. Since 2003, he has completed seven full seasons as coach, and won six league titles: two each in Portugal, England and Italy. (The only year he missed the league, with Chelsea in 2007, he pocketed both English cups.) But the man doesn't plan to stay a club coach forever. He seems to find the job exhausting, and has mused about taking over a national team (the part-time senior track of coaching) before retiring early on Portugal’s Algarve coast. So he has to choose his challenges with care, and this one is worth it.



The men of Barcelona and their short passing — tiki-taka — rule both club and international soccer. This summer, dressed in Spanish shirts, seven of them lifted the World Cup. The sport’s greatest minds are now trying to crack their code. If anyone can, it’s Mourinho, the coach who delights in “throwing sugar in the tank” of other teams. And he seemed to have cracked it last season with Inter Milan. He drew up a mobile nine-man wall just in front of his own penalty area, with each player covering each other in complicated patterns, he counterattacked through the space that Xavi leaves, and he knocked out Barcelona. He had already learned how to neutralize soccer’s best player: Lionel Messi has still never scored against a Mourinho team.



Weirdly, Mourinho seemed to have forgotten his own lessons when Real visited the Nou Camp in November. He drew up a defense on the halfway line, and almost every Catalan through-ball produced a goal. Most likely, he was showing off: trying to beat Barcelona with a new tactic, to ensure that he personally, rather than his players, would get the credit. He duly admitted that he had “been to blame” too for the 5-0. But he also noted: "Last season I lost here with Inter before returning for the semifinal. We were the ones who reached the final — they watched it on television."



If he repeats the trick with this excellent Real team, it wouldn’t just win him yet another league title. It would end the era of tiki-taka in soccer.



2- Will the Premier League lose its status as “best league in the world”?

No. Admittedly the English had a poor 2010. None of their teams reached even the semis of the Champions League; Portsmouth went from winning the FA Cup to almost going bust in record time; Liverpool was so desperate for a while that it almost sold itself to the Chinese government; and English clubs account for most of the $8 billion that European clubs cumulatively owe.Clearly the best English teams are no longer best in the world. Arsenal, the English club with the greatest ambitions to produce good soccer, got played off the park by a better version of itself in Barcelona. Manchester City is busy proving the maxim that you can’t buy a winning team. Chelsea is aging, and its owner, Roman Abramovich, no longer seems interested in replenishing his team. Manchester United has built a team around an exhausted man who doesn’t appear to want to be there. Liverpool currently doesn’t even belong in this debate.

Do the faltering results of English clubs spell doom for the Premier League?...