This is post one of a wider series. A new series for FM22.
“Can innovation really be named as such if the result isn’t successful?”
The Apartment
RIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGG!
A mobile phone clangs in a familiar tone from under a pile of clothes strewn across a dated, patterned carpet.
A grunt escapes from a middle-aged man of slight build with bags under his eyes.
It’s dark outside, but the bars are still open.
He rolls over, clinging to a single duvet on a battered old sofa in a friend’s rented apartment in Reykjavík, trying to hide from the jarring sound. “This is only temporary,” he’d regularly tell himself.
RIIINNNNNNGGGGGGG!
It wasn’t going to stop.
The man sits up and stifles a sharp cough, picking up the phone, puzzled. He would eventually answer, but not before lighting a cigarette and taking a cursory glance at his watch. Like the concept of receiving a phone call was offensive at this hour.
The unusual accent speaking in crystal clear English on the other end of the phone took him by surprise.
“Is that Glenn? Is that Glenn Árnason?”
It was Gábor Kun, the managing director of Hungarian side Budapest Honvéd, and for some reason he was calling with a job offer.
Glenn coughed sharply again, as his half-awake mind tried to formulate words that would build a meaningful response.
But wait.
Slow down.
Let’s rewind a second.
Inhabited by Honvéd. Owned by the Hungarian government.
Who?
Glenn Árnason is a football manager. Well, rather he was a football manager.
Árnason was the head coach of Slovenian second tier side NŠ Drava Ptuj for 14 matches in 2019. He oversaw two wins, three draws and nine defeats. That’s it. It was the Icelander’s first and only role managing a senior side. A mutual friend of a club director had made the connection. Unfortunately it was a match made in hell and Drava suffered as a result. As did Árnason, as the arrangement was cut short by mutual consent after less than four months. Although we all know what mutual consent usually means.
Life hasn’t been kind since then. Despite writing the occasional theangrylinesmen paid article as a self-employed journalist and making a few appearances on Icelandic radio to talk about whichever league match was being covered that evening; the sofa and the smoking are what kept Árnason going.
Now Glenn is being offered a career lifeline by the gravelly voice on the other end of the phone.
But why?
Well first you need to know a bit more about who Glenn Árnason really is.
Let’s rewind a little further.
The Thunderclap
Remember Euro 2016? The invasion of moths at the final? Ex-Swansea flop Eder scoring to win it for Portugal after Ronaldo’s early injury forced him off? Of course you do.
Do you remember the valiant Icelandic side? The famed volcano clap or Thunderclap and the incredible 2-1 victory as the ultimate underdogs against England? Most people remember that too.
Some people even remember that the joint management team of Lars Lagerbäck and Heimir Hallgrímsson were an interesting double-act as the tiny country of less than 350,000 people became everybody’s second favourite national football side for a month that year.
What people don’t remember or perhaps don’t even know, is that a hard-working analyst was a key part of that team. Behind the scenes, constantly looking for marginal tactical gains wherever the Icelanders could find them.
An unusual dribbling penchant of an opposition full-back that could possibly be exploited? He would find it. A clever set-piece routine that could capitalise on a potential weakness in an opposing centre-back? He would write about it. And those documents would give Lagerbäck and Hallgrímsson a much-needed strategic edge multiple times in a competition of perpetual David vs Goliath football mismatches.
That analyst was Glenn Árnason, and despite five years in the relative football wilderness since that summer in France, the 2020 winners of the Magyar Kupa were looking to give him a way back into management.
Let’s find out why.
Football in Hungary
Football in Hungary has a rich and hugely influential past. Especially in the 1950s, when the national team Aranycsapat, or the Mighty Magyars as they were known elsewhere, recorded only a single defeat in six years, reaching the final of the 1954 World Cup (see The Miracle of Bern) after winning the Central European Championship in 1953 and the Olympic Games the year before.
That golden Hungary team had many icons who were Honvéd regulars in the 50s.
Sándor Kocsis, Zoltán Czibor, József Bozsik and Gyula Grosics made over 840 league appearances for the Oroszlánok between them.
None were held in the same regard as Ferenc Puskás, however.
Puskás is wildly considered one of the greatest footballers of all time. His legendary status at Real Madrid is matched only by the regard he is held in by his countrymen in Hungary and fans of the club he spent 13 years at and scored over 350 goals for. Honvéd.
In 1956, the Hungarian Revolution or Uprising was a major flashpoint and political milestone in Hungarian history. Among the tragedy of lives lost and imprisonments, it led to 200,000 Hungarians fleeing the country to escape Soviet rule. Many high-profile sportspeople, including Puskás, Kocsis and Czibor left too. Puskás did not return to Hungary until 1981.
What happened next?
In the years that followed, Hungarian football suffered a malaise for more than 30 years. The fall of the communist regime in 1989 caused serious financial issues for most of the country’s football clubs after the withdrawal of state funding. The legacy of many of these financial issues are still felt today.
This led to another 16 or so years where the national team didn’t even make a major tournament. Until Euro 2016 where they incredibly topped Group F, where eventual winner Portugal finished third. Hungary were dumped out 4-0 by Belgium in the following round. Normal service was more or less restored immediately, crushing any nascent optimism.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a massive football fan. So much so that £1.8bn has been invested in the sport since 2010 under his direction and instruction. Hugely promising players like Ádám Szalai and more recently Dominik Szoboszlai have emerged and made profitable moves to other European leagues; but Hungarian football, although on the rise, is very much still a work in progress.
This level of government funding also can’t last forever.
The offer
So back to Glenn Árnason and this phone call from Gábor Kun with the Honvéd job offer.
Famed economist Theodore Levitt once said “Creativity is thinking up news things. Innovation is doing new things.”
Kun even quoted Levitt to Árnason during this phone call, if you can believe it.
Put bluntly, Hungarian football, and Honvéd in particular, are at a crucial crossroads after the departure of previous manager Tamás Bódog and the state of government funding.
If you can’t do bigger and better, and with the green and white giants Ferencváros dominating the domestic league and the gap only getting bigger since Honvéd’s last title in 2017 (their first since 1993), bigger and better is exceptionally unlikely…so Honvéd have to do differently.
Hiring an Icelandic analyst with a keen football mind but limited managerial experience is certainly “doing it differently,” but can innovation really be named as such if the result isn’t successful?
Could the golden age of early 1950s Hungarian football ever return? Will there ever be another Ferenc Puskás in Honvéd colours? Or will there be another “mutual” parting of ways for Árnason after some short-lived positivity?
Can I keep up the time investment it took to make that ‘1950s post-war optimism’-style promotional image for this blog post that covers the character’s eyes as a nod to communist cultural censorship; while actually managing some matches of football in FM22 and writing about it in future posts?
Time will tell.
Thanks for reading.
FM Stag
P.S. He took the job.