In most lines of work your job application would discarded straight away if you listed “getting it” as a key skill. Be aware that it might come across as slightly vague, a bit fluffy, damning evidence of a lack of substance. You would probably be written off as a spoofer attempting to blag your way through life. A bluffer. A charlatan. A fraud.
Unless, of course, you happen to be applying for a job as manager of a football club grasping for a way to connect with a discontented fanbase. Then it makes perfect sense to place a heavy focus on getting it, even if the meaning of “it” is not immediately possible to define, and take your cue from Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who built his initial success at Manchester United largely on making heavy reference to doing an important goal in Barcelona 20 years ago.
“Can Manchester United score? They always score!” Solskjaer might as well have said at his unveiling in December, sitting there dressed as Fred the Red, and in the first few post-José months the tactic did feel refreshing and innovative. When Solskjær spoke about playing attacking football, it meant just one thing: he got it. When he mentioned Sir Alex Ferguson, he got it. When he said his players had to work hard, as though it was a quality unique to Manchester United Football Club, he got it. He just got it. He really did.
Yet the ploy oozed desperation after the buzz faded. The act became predictable, its impact lessening the more it was rolled out, to the point where it was impossible not to laugh when Solskjær reacted to United’s 1-0 home defeat against Barcelona in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final by roaring: “We’ve scored goals at the Nou Camp before from corners and crosses.” Yes, well done. But the magic had worn off. Barcelona won 4-0 on aggregate and now, as United scramble to rebuild, Ole’s ability to get it resembles nothing more than fodder for Liverpool and Manchester City supporters.
Not that United are the only fumbling institution hoping to bring back the glory years by talking about them incessantly. Do you know who else gets it? Boris Johnson. He just gets the Tory party.
Meanwhile in other Tory news Chelsea are about to anoint Frank Lampard after managing to trick Serie A no-hopers Juventus into poaching Maurizio Sarri, who was defiant in his refusal to get it, suspicious even, too stubborn to listen to the pundits telling him that N’Golo Kanté is a defensive midfielder.
They never took to Sarri at Stamford Bridge, but they will love Lampard, whose unique and unrivalled selling point at the moment appears to be Being Frank. “Lamps is a legend and now is the right time for him to come home,” John Terry has offered, while Alan Shearer muses: “Does he know the club better than anyone else? Yes. Do the fans want him in? Absolutely.”
At this point the temptation is to dismiss Getting It as English anti-intellectualism and celebrity worship overwhelming logic and process. After all, what does it mean to know a club inside out? Basically Lampard won’t need a tour of the training ground on his first day. Plus he’ll know who to contact in HR when Roman Abramovich fires him.
Despite everything, though, it is worth trying to understand the Getting It phenomenon. At Newcastle supporters are mourning Rafael Benítez’s departure not only because they have lost an excellent manager. They also revered him because he connected with the city despite being an outsider. Similarly Jürgen Klopp, ruthless and scientific beneath the loud exterior, is smart enough to know how to tap into the psyche that powered Liverpool’s comeback against Barcelona.
Supporters want the soundbites. They want to feel special, to pretend that a desire for attacking football and a flourishing youth system is somehow a unique ambition. They want to believe that Lampard is one of them. For all that it makes more sense for Chelsea to seek a reunion with Benítez, there will be no Bring Rafa Home campaign – because of the Spaniard’s Liverpool connections.
Even if clubs are intrinsically the same at base level, with money so often the dividing factor and cultures honed over long periods of time liable to be ripped apart if the wrong person enters the boardroom, the fit still needs to be right. The same approach will not work everywhere. Deep down Chelsea supporters will know Lampard, a managerial novice who failed to get Derby County promoted, is a risk. Being Frank will not be enough on its own in the long run. Yet it will give him a decent head-start, just as getting Charlton undoubtedly worked in Lee Bowyer’s favour last season and being a local lad has helped the inexperienced Jonathan Woodgate to secure the Middlesbrough job.
Supporters, emotional and unpredictable, crave that bond. “A big thing for me is recruiting the Millwall mentality,” Neil Harris, Millwall’s manager, has said. “If you said to a Millwall fan, ‘What would you do if I picked you’, he’d say he’d run through a brick wall for you. It’s linking the terraces to the pitch and fans have to identify with the team.”
Contrast that insight into the manager‑supporter relationship with Sam Allardyce unwisely dismissing the West Ham Way or José Mourinho living out of a suitcase while he was at United; better to play the hits and warm up the crowd first. The sentimentality might be cloying. It might sound silly. It might even mean Newcastle end up appointing Andy Carroll as player-manager. But I think I get it.
(Source: The Guardian)
