Egil Olsen
Player Valuation: £8m
It's the little things, the little things that the academies grind away from the players; "stand here", "move here", "don't run with the ball", "never more than 2 touches", etc., which McNeil has somehow escaped. He has escaped the factory where the players are mass-produced and standardized. As if they were some cheap junk food. He has escaped Weber's iron cage. Where every action must be rational, until it stifles any originality, and turns against itself.
He belongs to the streets, in the streets we've all played. Here where all movements are redundant and excessive. Where the extremes of the structure belong to the screaming mothers, and the setting sun. His world view is a labyrinth.
For the children born under the Guardiola prism. The children who prefer the straight line. The children who count and read, instead of seeing, touching, hearing, tasting and smelling, this is just an unnecessary detour on the way to the goal. For them, the goal is to get through life, from start to finish, in the most rational and convenient way possible. The straight line.
They, the last man, can never understand a superman like McNeil. Only we who have known the dreams from the streets, and the bounce the ball got from the hard surfaces, can do that.
He belongs to the streets, in the streets we've all played. Here where all movements are redundant and excessive. Where the extremes of the structure belong to the screaming mothers, and the setting sun. His world view is a labyrinth.
For the children born under the Guardiola prism. The children who prefer the straight line. The children who count and read, instead of seeing, touching, hearing, tasting and smelling, this is just an unnecessary detour on the way to the goal. For them, the goal is to get through life, from start to finish, in the most rational and convenient way possible. The straight line.
They, the last man, can never understand a superman like McNeil. Only we who have known the dreams from the streets, and the bounce the ball got from the hard surfaces, can do that.








