It has to be one of the most inevitable, yet brutal, sackings in Premiership history. West Ham have, quite possibly, discarded one of the finest young managers in the game today, but they would argue, in the cut-throat Premier League where we amassed our worst points total ever, he showed that he didn’t have the stomach for the fight. One undeniable fact, however, is that without Gianfranco Zola the Premiership is worse off.
Along with Dennis Bergkamp, it was Zola who brought the culture of foreign flair to the Premiership, upon signing for Chelsea in 1996. With more of a penchant for cheeky flicks, mazy runs and playing to the crowd than the Arsenal striker, Zola was almost instantly beloved by his own fans and those throughout the league, who began to demand their own clubs’ investment in overseas stars. I had the pleasure of watching him only once, in a pre-season friendly at Reading. I’d never seen anything like it. At the age of 12, here was a man barely my height, who could not be shrugged off the ball, always found a team-mate with his passes, made the ball vanish before re-appearing behind the centre-back, and enjoyed every second with an unforgettable smile.
He arrived at West Ham with barely any managerial experience to his name; an undeniable gamble. His squad had been chastised for failing to match expectations, while the board sold talent that the previous manager had wanted to keep hold of. For a club in crisis, this was an appointment few expected. Yet after one game against Newcastle, many were already changing their minds.
West Ham under Zola immediately had style; what the players lacked in quality they made up for in common sense – choosing the easy ball when under pressure, filling in when a team-mate stepped out of position, and always, always looking to go forward and create. Zola reacted to each and every goal by leaping into the air beaming; the crowd responded and roared for more, the players were infected by this enthusiasm and went for the jugular. More often than not they succeeded. Zola’s legacy of young British talent, the latest in a long line from our academy; Collison, Noble, Tomkins, Stanislas, will be a lasting tribute to his philosophy of letting the players simply play the game, enjoying themselves. Carlton Cole has become England’s fourth or fifth choice striker because the manager took the shackles off him, encouraged him to run at defenders, shoot on sight and showed him nothing but positivity and encouragement. Many Hammers fans will see this feat as nothing short of a miracle.
This season, the team started positively, convincingly dispatching Wolves. Defeats to Tottenham, Liverpool and Wigan happened despite universal agreement that we were the better side. Finding ourselves in the relegation zone, we ground out a win against Villa to highlight that we could mix style with substance. Where Zola’s achilles heel existed was in defense; the enforced sale of James Collins at the close of the transfer window left him with a six-month hole to fill, and he couldn’t quite do it. Sloppy goals conceded to Fulham, Sunderland and Hull cost us the points that would have lifted the club to mid-table. In the previous season, those teams would have been shut out.
Did Zola’s transfer activity help his cause? No. On one hand, he suffered hugely from the trail of inadequate, over-paid players brought in by the previous team; the board were now tightening their purse strings. But when money did become available, Savio Nsereko was not the way to spend £9 million of it. This one error, on a player recommended by Gianluca Nani, cost the manager much-needed funds last summer, when a centre-forward was badly needed. Second time around, he got it right, bringing in Alsessandro Diamanti who has proved one of the best foreign imports of the season. But more often that not, players did not hit the ground running as he would have liked.
The club’s takeover, as with any takeover, spelled doom for the manager unless he went on to take maximum points from the following 20 games. The team he had were already at sixes and sevens, suffering after reams of negative press following the bust-up with Millwall fans, and struggling to focus on the fact that their league position belied a style of football that took points from both Arsenal and Chelsea in previous months.
Our run-in was easy and the team should have walked to safety, but now the frighteners were on. Murmurings in the press questioned Zola’s competence. The players, who had been convinced they could do anything, paid this speculation too much attention. Zola’s spell over them had been broken, helped in no part by the new owners declaring that every single one of them bar Scott Parker were up for sale.
Still, when it really mattered, Zola delivered. Wins over Birmingham, Sunderland and Wigan were all alike in one way – both fans and players poured their relief and joy onto the manager’s head. Images of players running, pointing towards the dug-out followed by a team embrace with the coach, revealed that Zola’s influence remained as strong as it had in his brilliant first season, they just needed everybody else to realise it.
Our survival was ultimately comfortable, but by now it was clear that two East-End heavies were not going to get on with their bouncy Sardinian colleague. To his infinite credit, Zola never walked away from the job, choosing to wait for the chop to be delivered. His last two months in the job were the unhappiest of his career in football, yet he kept smiling through it all, kept translating his enthusiasm and joy for the game into his players, who will now need a serious motivator to rediscover the form they have shown over the last two years.
As he leaves the club, Zola’s integrity and talent is up there with the game’s top managers, and the future holds endless success. One can only hope that some of his fairy dust has been rubbed off in his time at Upton Park. We will be all the better for it.
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