Tipping Point: Kylian Mbappé's PSG deal signals continued growth of player power

Proof about how times change and football changes with it emerged recently when scenes of fans invading pitches, and in some cases assaulting players, provoked memories of Brian Clough’s response to such moronic behaviour back in the day.

The legendary manager’s command of language didn’t extend to Latin so it’s fair to say ‘Tempora Mutantur’ wasn’t on his mind when Nottingham Forest’s pitch got swamped by fans after a 1989 League Cup game.

YouTube footage of Clough’s indignant response is startling, including at least three tasty jabs and one jackass unceremoniously flung off the grass as ‘Old Big ‘Ead’s’ fists delivered a resounding verdict on such stupidity.

Just as astounding to modern eyes is the response from those struck. At one point a guy takes a very respectable dig, twigs who the puncher is and sheepishly slopes off in a wordless display of deference.

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It’s an all but impossible scenario to imagine today. Either Clough would have got more than a taste of his own medicine in return or wound up sued for abuse and crying crocodile tears in front of a tribunal.

Back in 1989, though, such was Clough’s authority it was literally a case of kiss and make up. The recipients of his reprimands apologised, got a peck on the cheek from the man himself, leaving even non-throwbacks to ponder if it might have been a perfect solution in the circumstances.

It was the sort of command that extended to Clough’s players too. “If I have an argument with a player, we would sit down for 20 minutes, talk about it and then decide I was right,” he famously once said.

He said it in his inimitable way, but it was a sentiment that chimed with pretty much every one of his contemporaries from Shankly to Revie, Paisley and Ferguson.

The latter’s reign at Manchester United was fundamentally built on what he called a position of comprehensive control. Without it, Ferguson argued, the man at the top of the organisation has no chance.

“If the day came that the manager of Man Utd was controlled by the players – in other words if the players decided how the training should be, what days they should have off, what the discipline should be, and the tactics should be – then Man Utd would not be the Man Utd we know,” he said.

Ferguson wound up pedalling his views in the grandiose environment of Harvard Business School. But boiled down it amounted to nothing more fancy than dressingrooms not being democracies: one person has to be in charge and to be seen to be in charge.

It’s a credo with obvious resonance in the basket-case that Old Trafford has become. But anyone with experience of any kind of management situation knows that such control can only exist if there are consequences to stepping out of line.

The implications of this ever growing player power for decision making within clubs are potentially enormous

Clough & Co traded on a touch of fear at times. But their primary weapon was an ‘or else’. Do what I say or else you’re dropped. But how many managers at elite level can honestly claim to have a viable ‘or else’ any more?

Player power has grown exponentially and its impact is stamped all over this summer’s transfer dealings. But the biggest deal of all is already done and smacks of player power being taken to another level again.

As well as €50 million a year, and €100 million signing bonus, there are reports that Paris Saint-Germain’s efforts to keep Kylian Mbappé’s with them rather than Real Madrid included giving the French superstar a say on transfers.

Even the idea probably has Ferguson’s combustible temper revving.

Admittedly it’s not like top players have never let their feelings be known on potential signings. Not much happened at Barcelona when Messi was in his pomp that didn’t get a yea or nay from the mini-maestro.

So, formally putting something in writing might simply be an acknowledgment of the reality that no one has ever bought a ticket or a TV subscription fee to watch a suit on the sideline. Not even Clough.

But the implications of this ever growing player power for decision making within clubs are potentially enormous.

What kind of ‘or else’ has the PSG manager Mauricio Pochettino now got in his locker when trying to exert some authority on a notoriously turbulent squad. It is obvious to everyone that Mbappé is easily the club’s greatest asset, so keeping him onside is everyone’s greatest priority.

Apparently, Mbappé is an unusually mature personality whose form didn’t dip in the last few months despite intense speculation surrounding his future. But he is in a small minority in a business where egotistical talent is always more likely to focus on its own self-interest than any bigger picture.

All of it appears to make the job of football manager, always a precarious position anyway, look all but impossible in the future.

No club is going to depreciate their own assets in order to help out what is always the most disposable figure at any club, especially when those assets have a formal say in who’s hired and who’s fired to begin with.

None of which disputes how football is ultimately about players. With so much money floating around in the sport nobody deserves the lion’s share of the revenue more than the people actually generating it and more power to them.

But the result is that those nominally in charge are increasingly looking more and more irrelevant, struggling in the worst of both worlds by carrying all the responsibility but with little of the actual clout.

Maybe Mbappé’s best of both worlds is an experiment that signals football’s future. Insistence by dressingroom traditionalists on ‘Uno Duce Uno Voce’ might just be old hat in the face of such advancement.

But it won’t be only old fogeys who could point out how advancement and improvement are not the same thing.