Analyzing our Belorrusian

By: Isaiah | July 16th, 2009

I’m not sure I’m his biggest detractor, but there really isn’t anyway I can approach this without admitting that I’ve been advocating for Hleb’s transfer away from Barcelona since roughly the time he arrived. I wanted him to succeed, of course, but my heart was never really in it; I smacked my forehead with my hand whenever he would do his little “skate around a couple of players, run backwards, pass the ball out of a good situation into the defensive half despite someone else being wide open” thing and I gritted my teeth whenever he did his whole “I’ve got the ball in a good position, what if I just wait around for a bit?” thing. Perhaps I never really gave him a chance, perhaps I never really gave him the opportunity to prove me wrong about my anti-Hleb biases. I mean, I try to think of myself as open-minded, willing to admit that I’m wrong – in fact, at one point in the season I was basically begging to be wrong – but, unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find the silver lining in this whole Belarusian experiment.

Hleb has come out this offseason and stated that he hasn’t fully incorporated into the squad because Guardiola was unwilling to give him enough game time. He was, apparently, unable to find his rhythm in a team that played him for a total of 1,763 minutes over the course of 19 starts and 15 substitute appearances in the three competitions. He played a total of 1,542 minutes as a starter over those 19 starts (8 in the league, 4 in the Champions League, and 7 in the Copa del Rey) for an average of 81 minutes per start. He played all 90 minutes three times in the league, all 4 times in the Champions League, and three times in the Copa del Rey, meaning that when he was replaced he played roughly 71 minutes before being subbed out.

For him to claim that Guardiola was unwilling to give him enough game time is, at least on the surface, extraordinarily ridiculous, considering that he played more minutes than his stats suggest he should have. He had a total of 8 shots on goal in those 1,763 minutes on the field. For a comparison, Gerard Pique had 7 shots on goal in the league alone and 12 across all competitions. Perhaps that’s cherry picking some statistics because Puyol only had 4 shots on goal in all competitions, but would anyone say that Hleb was a greater offensive threat than most of our defenders? Marquez, Pique, and Puyol all scored, while Hleb never did. Sylvinho had 7 shots on goal across all three competitions. For comparison, over 545 minutes in all three competitions, Pedro had 6 shots on goal. Besides being given 4 quality starts in the Champions League and 8 in the league, he complains about playing time. Certainly he hasn’t featured as often as he did at Arsenal, but his statistics don’t lie: he hasn’t grasped the finer details of how to play at Barcelona and perhaps has missed the overarching concepts as well.

Delving further, we find that he also doesn’t really speak Spanish, which is probably a major reason for his “lack of inclusion” in the squad. It may seem a stupid concept – that you need to learn the local language before you can play adequate soccer – but think about it: any time a order comes from the coach or captain, you have to infer the concepts rather than directly understanding them. And it’s not as if you’re fluent in 8 other languages, which means you can make an excuse about your brain being full and it getting confused with other verb forms and grammatical structures. This is a man who readily admits that he never really figured out the English language over the course of his 3 years at Arsenal. I can fully understand and to a point readily appreciate that he’s more dedicated to his soccer skills than his language skills, but because he is a professional soccer player being paid millions of dollars, it seems that it would behoove him to, you know, integrate himself with the squad as much as possible. Thierry Henry arrived from Arsenal as well, only he spoke English and French and was able to communicate with several of his peers that way as he worked hard to learn Catalan and/or Spanish. Hleb, on the other hand, has not, by his own admission, has put himself at a major disadvantage by not studying Spanish even during the off-season. That, were I grading “effort” in the kindergarten way, would be an NI for Needs Improvement. His skills are not being questioned, really, but his dedication to the squad and his own future certainly is questionable.
Perhaps it is fair to criticize Guardiola’s tendency to keep starters on the field for longer than normal, especially when the team is winning by three or four goals, but it strikes me as if Hleb has been making personal statements about how Guardiola isn’t allowing him on the field enough. To quote Señor Kevin, “Guardiola didn’t have confidence in him because post-injury, whenever he was inserted, he was [a] festering dog crap.” Bojan never complains, Pedro! never runs to the media, and even under-paid and under-played The Yaya didn’t complain (he probably just affixed Guardiola with a death stare and let him know, via ESP of course, that Guardiola was going to play The Yaya soon or Guardiola was going to end up somewhere like Planet Quorg, waiting for Spaceman Spiff to rescue him.

Beyond the individual details of Hleb’s particular case, however, I think there lies a wider question: is it okay to judge a player by his willingness to integrate himself into local culture? There is a xenophobic aspect to the statement that everyone should indeed integrate themselves (the known is better than the unknown, the local better than the foreign) and I do think that Spain in general and Catalonia in particular are slightly obsessed with identity. However, we’re also talking about communication between a particular group of people in a dedicated, professional stetting. Were this any other business, would it be acceptable for your or I to move to Barcelona and set up shop and say “It’s just finance, I understand it, you understand it, I never had these language problems before”?

It becomes, then, not a question of xenophobia on the part of the club, but unwillingness on the part of the player to adapt not just to the specific rigors of living in a new culture (and what kind of a dick moves to a new city and doesn’t attempt to learn the language? Other than those American foreign exchange students who sit in their American expat bars and bitch about how bad the traffic is in [insert whatever country you’d like other than Canada]; it’s not a question of learning the language because that’s what you’re expected to do, it’s a question of going out and buying things in stores or conversing with your neighbors, or being able to understand how much things cost without someone having to write it down for you) but also the rigors of a professional life with colleagues who come from a series fo different backgrounds and can communicate most effectively via the same language. That language, then, should be the most universally useful one within that particular setting. There could be a debate on whether or not that should be Catalan in the case of Barcelona, but either way, it’s Catalan or Spanish because wider society (that is, beyond the Camp Nou dressing room) uses those two languages.

Closing yourself off from a society is, in my view, tantamount to saying either a) you’re uninterested in that particular society or b) you come from a better society or culture (however you define better). If either a or b is true (and I posit that one of them must be true in the case we’re discussing) then that player will not get as much playing time, doesn’t deserve as much, and should probably take the next plane out of town. To go back to the specific example we’ve been working with, Hleb is distinctly different from Keita, who despite an obvious problem with learning languages, is still working on his Spanish (granted, he had a head start via Sevilla, but his Spanish one year in appears to be better than Hleb’s one year in and, most importantly, he’s not quibbling about playing time and excusing his inability to speak the language by acting as if it’s some non-factor in, you know, being a part of a society).

Now, before I go any further, I’d like to address a potentially good counterpoint: chiefly that it is not okay to not know a language within a society. Unlike many immigrants who struggle to make ends meet in various countries and struggle to fully integrate themselves into their new surroundings, professional athletes at top clubs are highly paid individuals who can afford both translators (usually provided by the club for a bit) as well as classes (or Rosetta Stone) and while their physical training can certainly be detrimental to their studying, they are not in the position of working long hours for little pay so there shouldn’t be any excuse for not trying to learn. If poor wittle Alexi can’t study Spanish in his offseason and then wonders why he isn’t fully integrated into the squad, I fear there is some break with reality going on there.

And this, of course, comes on the heels of reports that Hleb will be loaned out to Inter Milan for the year, with an option to buy. It is certainly worth the “risk” of not having a backup in a crucial moment simply because Hleb has never shown himself capable of being an adequate backup. Name a moment from the last season that wouldn’t have happened without him? A positive moment, that is. Cause I think of several hats being thrown at TVs and curses launched Spainward that were directly caused by him. Shoot, damn you, shoot! Entire games were Hlebbed.