West Ham Till I Die
Comments
Player Analysis

Let me take you down, cos I'm going to... Velez Sarsfield

Guest Post by Neil Clack

“He’s ‘Loco’, I’m tellin’ ya… a real fruit-cake… But fantastic player… really skilful… a bit selfish… well, very selfish actually, ha,ha, but all the best strikers are, aren’t they?”

Where better to get an opinion on the Hammers’ new striker than from those who watched him play in Argentina last season, where he topped the goalscoring charts of the ‘final’ league tournament with 13 goal in 19 matches, so, as I’m out here for a few weeks, I thought I’d investigate. It’s saturday evening and current champions Velez Sarsfield have just won 2-0 at home to ‘El Arse’ (the nickname affectionately, and quite innocently, given to Arsenal de Sarandi by both fans and the Argentina press alike).

Velez is a family club, one of the best run in Buenos Aires, and the old couple serving behind the bar in the Supporters’ club know the Zarate family well. Mauro is the youngest of four brothers, all professional footballers (Roland played briefly played for Real Madrid during the Galacticos period, as well as Velez and a host of other clubs), and their father, from Chile originally, was also a well-known professional footballer for Independiente.

“Of the four of them, Mauro is the most talented”, reckons Aunt Evelyn, “but he’s also the craziest!” That ties in with the view of journalist and club historian Eduardo who describes Mauro as “temperamental”, and a “spontaneous player”, who can “conjure up magic”, but who is also “very up and down”.

“I think that’s what happened at Lazio”, says Eduardo, “He did well there in the beginning, but then, by all accounts, went right off the boil. I think he needs to be loved, to feel wanted”. When I mention that Mauro didn’t play today against Tottenham, Eduardo shakes his head, “I can’t see him lasting long there then”, he says, “to be honest, I don’t know why he’s at West Ham. He should be playing for a Champions League team, in my opinion”.

Crazy? Moody? Spontaneous? Does that sound familiar to Hammers fans? And in another of those ‘only at West Ham’ anecdotes, we now have two players in our history who have returned the Nazi salute to the fascist Ultras amongst the Lazio fans. However, whereas, Di Canio tried to explain it away by giving an impromptu history lesson on how it is not a Nazi salute, but the Roman salute that Hitler stole from them, Zarate’s representatives simply claimed naivety, explaining that Zarate didn’t even know who Hitler and Mussolini were. As ludicrous as that may sound, the education system in the provinces of Buenos Aires, where Zarate grew up, isn’t the best, and unlike ourselves, kids in Argentina aren’t brought up on a stable television diet of World War 2 films and Dad’s Army repeats, it’s is actually feasible that he really didn’t know his dictators…

But enough of all that. Tactically, it’s difficult to see where Zarate fits into Allardyce’s system. At Velez last season, Zarate formed a striking partnership with Lucas Pratto, in the classic Argentine version of the 4-4-2 formation (4-3-1-2, the difference being that a playmaker, with few defensive duties, plays behind the 2 strikers – the other 3 midfileders have more defensive roles and play fairly central). Zarate is probably used to more elaboration in the build-up, while he moves laterally across the final 3rd, timing his runs and waiting for the killer pass to run onto. It’s difficult to see which players at West Ham will be capable of delivering that all important ‘defence-splitting’ pass, and he won’t be used to playing with wingers, so it will be interesting to see what he makes of players like Downing and Jarvis, with their crosses, and the diagonal balls from the full backs, and Sam’s famous PBEs (Penalty Box Entries), all of which will be a new way of playing for Zarate.

If the idea is to partner Zarate with Andy Carroll (or Carlton Cole when Carroll’s out), then there could be a worrying precedent in the way that Carroll and Luis Suarez failed to gel at Liverpool? Of course, it’s unfair to compare Zarate with one of the best players in the world, but they do both come from the same Rio Platense footballing background.

Despite Carroll wishing to stay at Liverpool two seasons ago, manager Brendan Rogers was adamant he should leave. I read a tactical article about Liverpool by Jonathon Northcroft in the Times last April and this bit caught my eye: "Rogers has filtered out the slow movers – ditching Joe Cole and Andy Carroll early in his reign and sidelining Lucas and Jose Enrique lately. His training involves ‘exercises built around the speed of the ball’.

Without Carroll, who got in Suarez’s way by operating in the same areas that the Uruguayan likes to move in, and without Downing too, which allowed Suarez to also pull out wide and attack from the left, Suarez reaped havoc on opposition defences, who never knew from which which part of the pitch, and from which angle, he was going to run at them, and in Daniel Sturridge, Suarez found an equally mobile and flexible strike-partner, on his wavelength. Pratto, Zarate’s strike-partner at Velez, was a lot more Sturridge than Andy Carroll/Carlton Cole in style of play.

In fact, logic says it can’t work. You can’t just graft a South American ball player onto Sam’s system and expect it to morph into flowing carpet football with all the players understanding one other.

Or can you?

By all accounts Zarate did well in his brief spell (4 months) at Birmingham, and Alex McLeish is an even bigger PBE-merchant than Allardyce! (although Zarate’s efforts weren’t enough to prevent Brum from being relegated that season it should be added).

The tactical theory says it can’t work, but my heart really wants it to, so thinking positive, could it be that the idea is so mad and illogical that maybe, just maybe, it could be a stroke of genius?

Beatles fans will tell you that Strawberry Fields is actually two, quite different, John Lennon songs. He was struggling to finish both of them before he hit upon the idea of just joining them together. Paul McCartney, and the 5th Beatle, producer George Martin, did their best to persuade Lennon that it was a bad idea that wouldn’t work. Martin, trained in classical music theory, even took Lennon aside to explain how the two songs were in a different key and had different tempos, but Lennon, drunk and stoned, insisted, “I can hear it in my head – why can’t you just slow and speed up the recordings and splice them together”. In the end, Martin and McCartney did that, just to appease Lennon and shut him up, to show him how it wouldn’t work. The result, to their astonishment, was one of the most emblematic, some would say most beautiful, songs of the era.

Which nicely leads me to the end. In Argentina, the crowds on the high standing terraces make a lot of noise, often reworking the lyrics of well known songs. For example, Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’, and Bonnie Tyler’s ’It’s a Heartache’ have been reworked into popular terrace chants, and Velez fans, to the melody of Strawberry Fields sometimes sing, "na,na,na,na,naaaarrr …. na,na,na,na,naaaaaarrr… Velez Sarsfield, Velez Sarsfield forever…

If it all works out well for both Zarate and Sam Allardyce at West Ham, if they are both at West Ham in six months time, with the club halfway up the league, then David Sullivan is a genius, the footballing equivalent of John Lennon.

About us

West Ham Till I Die is a website and blog designed for supporters of West Ham United to discuss the club, its fortunes and prospects. It is operated and hosted by West Ham season ticket holder, LBC radio presenter and political commentator Iain Dale.

More info

Follow us

Contact us

Iain Dale, WHTID, PO Box 663, Tunbridge Wells, TN9 9RZ

Visit iaindale.com, Iain Dale’s personal website & blog.

Get in touch

Copyright © 2024 Iain Dale Limited.