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“Bielsa builds Mateusz Klich in a way that Brzęczek cannot”
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The very structure of the book is quite interesting. It consists of many conversations between Domagalik and Brzęczek over the last two years, when the coach started to lead the team, and conversations with his family, friends and bosses. These conversations interweave the author’s thoughts. He is asked about Brzęczek, among others Zbigniew Boniek.
Jerzy Brzęczek and James Bond
I assume all calls had to be authorized. And that the selector knew beforehand what Domagalik would write about. Whether he had the right to interfere with her thoughts, we do not know. If so, he might have objected to some passages. The mention of the coach’s Bond’s initials made him mockery together with the author, because in the context in which it appears in the book, it does not sound either convincing or funny. So is the illogical thread about selector testosterone. Domagalik writes: “I don’t know many men, especially those with high testosterone, who admit, especially to a woman, that they do not know something. This is how I measure testosterone levels. In the selector, the hero of this book, also.”
Zbigniew Boniek about Jurgen Klopp
The book about Brzęczek also does not serve the president of the Polish Football Association. Like, among others the passage in which he speaks about Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool coach.
Chapter two tells us that Boniek was not a supporter of the creation of this biography. He thought it was too early. But the timing is probably not the problem here. Just the idea for the book. Brzęczek has such an interesting biography that it could interest the reader even without any success at Euro. But the reader of “In the Game”, before reaching the really interesting biographical chapters, must survive several dozen pages dominated by author’s deliberations and analyzes.
It is also a pity that the talks on the heart of the problem that many commentators and fans have with the Brzęczek team, i.e. the style of the game, end too quickly. Brzęczek when asked about the style, whether it is important, he replies in the book: “Of course it is important. The fan wants his national team to win in a big way, just like the club teams do. But between them and kadr± there is a difference (…) ”. Elsewhere in the book, he admits that he has to fight with his players all the time to make them understand that the squad will not reproduce the training they have in clubs. He mentions how he had to convince Robert Lewandowski, initially distrustful. Buzzer calls it constant tugging, and it’s a very interesting thread. Unfortunately, there was no deepening.
All controversial statements by Jerzy Brzęczek in the book indirectly hit Zbigniew Bonek as well. It was the head of the Polish Football Association that decided to hire him two years ago. If the president was against the book, he could not convince the subordinate and the journalist that it was a bad idea?
A biography that is not a biography
The book advertised as “Jerzy Brzęczek’s biography” is only in theory a biography. There are stories from the selector’s childhood, a description of his football and then coaching career, there are tables with achievements, but all this is lost in the main thread, which is the response to the criticism of journalists and fans. Jerzy Brzęczek deserves a true biography, not a book mostly about his first two years with the representation.
“I’m a woman”. But it doesn’t really matter
– The accusations against me were easy to predict. First of all – I am a woman. Therefore, I have no right to know the ball. And writing about her is more of a whim, isn’t it? Secondly – as it turns out, I have views that do not match those currently in force in the topic of Brzęczek’s coach. After all, the percentage of those who think of him like me is marginal. Most are “no”. Besides – a graphic designer, a friend of the family, generally quite sucks – says Domagalik about the book in an interview with Interia.
The problem with this book is really not whether the author is a woman or a man, or a family friend or not. The arguments used to defend the coach are the problem. Małgorzata Domagalik really seems to believe that Jerzy Brzęczek is the most criticized selector in the history of Polish football, that Adam Nawałka in the first seasons of work with the team did not have to answer accusations about lack of style or his personal choices, that Arsene Wenger was really in a similar situation like Brzęczek when he started working at Arsenal. The book is full of instructions on how who should do their job, but the author would also need to reflect on whether she has gathered enough comparative material on the treatment of successive selectors in the media. Perhaps she would not have been creating storied theories if she remembered what was written at the beginning of the work about Jerzy Engel, how Paweł Janas was treated, and what Waldemar Fornalik was told about. And so on.
The opposite effect
Criticism that meets Jerzy Wort in social media, it is often not very substantive, personal, vulgar. But that’s the criticism on social media in general. Not only Brzęczek experiences this. One of the best advice you can give any public figure is: don’t read about yourself online. Not only that: don’t let others tell you what they write about you on the web. It never leads to anything good.
Domagalik writes: “It is enough to read the comments on the Internet after each match of the national team. All these: uncle, a foray, your nose is lit, you village, change your teeth, you can’t do anything, displace …” But why read this? Especially since the author writes in the book: the selector does not have an account on Facebook or Twitter. Since he himself has no such need, he doesn’t find it important enough to get involved himself, why report it to him? And devote so much space to it in the book. After reading this, the impression of a missed opportunity remains: instead of reading about an interesting person, about his path, problems. which he himself pays attention to when working with the staff, about what would allow us all to better understand the selector, we read long scoldings that we do not understand the selector. Detriment.
“In game” available in stores from September 30.
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