Today I learned that David Moyes “left” the football club
Manchester United, ending a tumultuous
and extremely brief stint at the vaunted team. As we all know, this is just
newspeak for he was fired. To some executives, I am sure it sounded better than
“he was relieved of his duties” although I am sure many Red Devil fans were
relieved that he was removed from the premises of Old Trafford.
Moyes’s work at Everton is proof that he is an excellent
coach, but I think he had a lot of forces against him. For one, he had to
follow in the footsteps of a legend—Sir Alex Ferguson. No one could have succeed
in a reasonable amount of time after what Ferguson did for Manchester United
over the last 25 years. It is a shame that the club did not give Moyes more
time. The impatience of the Manchester
United board of directors aside, there was another element at play….one that we
have seen before….during the World Cup of 2010 in South Africa.
It was there in the first round of the tournament that we
all witnessed awful behavior on the part of athletes. The French team imploded
and rebelled in a petty and immature fashion against the coach Raymond Domenech
in what became an embarrassment for the French nation. One of the culprits in
that team was Patrice Evra who currently plays for Manchester United. He displayed a callous and juvenile attitude
that infected the rest of the team that resulted in Domenech losing authority
over the players.
