Scene one: Sunderland, April 2017
David Moyes is discussing culture shock, regional imbalances and their role in his club’s relegation. “Along with Manchester, London is the capital of English football and those cities will always attract the best players,” says Sunderland’s manager, a few weeks before his resignation.
“This club is most suited to British-type players who understand this region, to people who’ve been brought up here, are used to it and for whom the north-east is not such a big shock. A lot of players from overseas or other parts of the country haven’t found it quite so easy to settle here.”
Scene two: Newcastle upon Tyne, April 2017
Rafael Benítez listens to the question, shakes his head and turns unusually strident. “No, no, no,” he says. Newcastle United’s manager has just been asked if Tyneside’s geographical position dictates that it might be difficult for him to attract some of Europe’s better footballers this summer. “Players want to join a club that’s ambitious,” the Spaniard continues. “They want a club that can match their ambitions and I am ambitious and I want Newcastle United to be ambitious. After that, players look at the financial package, the manager, the style of football. I don’t think where they live is important to footballers. Maybe it is for their families but I don’t see any problems getting them to live in Newcastle. They will come.”
In their former incarnations, as the respective managers of Everton and Liverpool, Benítez and Moyes did not always see eye to eye. It seems little has changed. Whereas the Spaniard regards the Premier League’s undeniable tilt southwards – (only seven top-tier teams are now situated north of Stoke) – as largely coincidental, Moyes joins Gary Neville in regarding Manchester as “an island in a sea of northern decline”.
The Manchester United right-back-turned-Sky-pundit has even discussed an apocalyptic scenario involving teams from Yorkshire and the north-east relocating their training grounds to London, with southern-based players simply flying to and from “home” games.
Benítez has a history of disagreeing with Neville but his adamant opposition to this idea has nothing to do with old rivalries. As a proud joint-resident of Jesmond, an affluent inner Newcastle suburb, and Merseyside, with his longstanding family home on the Wirral, the former Liverpool, Chelsea, Internazionale, Napoli and Real Madrid coach relishes life in northern England.
Refusing to buy into Moyes’s “culture-shock thesis”, Benítez believes that, for multimillionaire footballers at least, this country is far more homogenous than received wisdoms about the north-south divide sometimes indicate.
Tour Newcastle and its surrounding areas and as you drive past the numerous gated mini-mansions of resolutely middle-class Woolsington, Gosforth, Jesmond, Ponteland and, above all, Darras Hall, this theory gains credence.
All shiny 4x4s on the drive and Farrow and Ball on the walls, Darras Hall (home to several Newcastle and Sunderland footballers) bears an almost uncanny resemblance to similar developments in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, and Sevenoaks, Kent.
Conveniently, it is also a stone’s throw from Newcastle’s airport. Any wives or girlfriends in search of away-day options can easily board the daily Dubai-bound flight, travel to London on one of the six-a-day Heathrow shuttles or take frequent direct services to Paris (thrice daily), Amsterdam (five a day), Barcelona, Madrid and beyond.
Such connectivity renders suggestions that Sunderland recently explored (and swiftly abandoned) the idea of transplanting their weekday headquarters to QPR’s old training ground near Heathrow, positively bizarre.
After all as wonderful a “world city” as London is, how many footballers representing its teams live inside the congestion charge zone? How many really utilise the capital’s cultural scene?
Admittedly there is a precedent – of sorts – for Sunderland’s mooted switch. Anzhi Makhachkala train and reside in the Moscow area while flying 1,200 miles east for heavily guarded home games in Dagestan.
Wearside is slightly more sedate but does house one of the continent’s most unstable clubs. Indeed its current woes are arguably much more about Ellis Short, the owner, getting through seven managers in six years than location.
If there are undeniable economic gulfs between parts of the north (as well as the Midlands and the south-west) and the south-east, the socio-economic map of England is a complicated mosaic. To varying degrees, almost every area contains pockets of social deprivation and patches of real prosperity where well-remunerated footballers can live exceedingly well.
Much has been made of Hull, Middlesbrough and Sunderland all dropping out of the top tier last month but rather than being emblematic of a wider regional decline, it is surely more about individual cock-ups than a case of economics and demographics conspiring to gang up against that trio.
Boro’s training ground near Darlington is situated alongside Rockliffe Hall – up there with London’s Mandarin Oriental and the Ritz in being consistently voted one of England’s top 10 luxury hotels – and has “sold” the club to scores of players. Many live around Yarm, a beautifully preserved, boutique- and bistro-filled Georgian market town which could easily be part of Surrey or Cheshire.
Gaizka Mendieta liked it so much that the former Spain midfielder stayed on in the Tees Valley for several years after retiring. He would presumably agree that the former manager Aitor Karanka’s tactical caution and the former head of recruitment Victor Orta’s poor signings played a considerably bigger part than geography in Boro’s relegation.
Similarly, responsibility for Hull’s relegation rests firmly with the refusal of the owner, the Allam family, to invest sufficiently in squad strengthening last summer.
Right now, Neville, Moyes and friends may appear to be winning the north-south argument but what price Middlesbrough, Sheffield Wednesday, Sunderland, Leeds United and Hull pushing strongly for promotion next season while Brighton, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Watford skirmish with relegation?
