ATLETICO Madrid had pulled out all the stops to celebrate their new signing: strobing lasers and sparkling fireworks and, for reasons that were not entirely clear, a couple of thrumming motorcycles.
Standing in the middle of it all, waving happily at the crowd, Conor Gallagher seemed just a little dazed.
He had, after all, spent most of the last two years being treated essentially as a balance-sheet asset by Chelsea, the club where he had spent most of his career.
He had fought for, and won, a place on the team. He had, at times, served as their captain. He had played for England. And still, Chelsea just kept trying to sell him.
And now, before he had even kicked a ball for the team he had eventually joined, a thousand miles from home in Spain, he was being feted as a star.
He wore a broad, faintly startled grin and an Atletico jersey with his name on the back. There was just one element he did not understand: Why did the club keep referring to him as El Pit Bull?
Several players have been granted that nickname by the club over the years.
Gary Medel, the combative Chilean midfielder who once claimed that the police had used a Taser on him after a particularly fractious game, for example. Or Edgar Davids, the Dutchman given the moniker because of his tenacious man-marking: Once he had locked in, the logic went, he just would not let go.
Atletico Madrid’s Conor Gallagher goes past Benfica’s Nicolas Otamendi during the Champions League match at the Luz Stadium in Lisbon on Oct 2. — AFP
Gallagher is, it is fair to say, cast in a very different mold. He is not – as Medel and Davids were, in very different ways and, although you would not say it to Medel’s face, at very different levels – a player defined by his ferocity.
The 24-year-old Gallagher’s primary traits are his energy, his industry, his indefatigability. He is not a pit bull. He is a springer spaniel, or perhaps a Labrador.
Atletico, though, had their nickname, and they were not going to give it up easily. Gallagher’s signing was trailed with a graphic of a pit bull, complete with leather jacket and spiked collar, in the style of a 4Chan meme.
It was mentioned in the midst of his operatic unveiling. The fans have picked it up and run with it.
“It has kind of stuck,” Gallagher has said. “I don’t mind. I see it as a compliment.”
It is meant as one. From the perspective of the Premier League, the spectacle of his presentation to Atletico’s fans last month seemed just a little overblown.
By common consensus in England, Gallagher is a perfectly serviceable midfielder: hard-running and endlessly willing, but hardly a superstar.
The choice of nickname, for all its dubious accuracy, was telling, too. There are many ways to understand the rise of the Premier League over the last 30 years. It is a story of finance, media, developing technology, the power of marketing, the importance of language and, to some extent, kind of about football, too.
As much as anything, though, it is a story of trade. In the 1990s, English football found that its great leap into the future, bankrolled by broadcast money, was being hamstrung by a problem of history: It could not conceivably live up to its claim of being the best league in the world if, technically, its players were so obviously inferior to their foreign counterparts.
Gallagher is treated like a star since joining Atletico from Chelsea. — AFP
And so, with the impatience that is typical of insurgent businesses, it set about rectifying that shortfall, partly by spending time and money on improving how it produced players, but mainly by buying better ones from abroad.
The Premier League was flooded with imports. First came veteran players, a little past their sell-by dates. Then the hopefuls, and then genuine stars.
After a while, coaches and scouts and development staff members all started to follow. Now, the technical level of a Premier League game is essentially indistinguishable from a game in La Liga or Serie A. Often, it is notably higher.
Those attributes, of course, are precisely what drew Atletico to Gallagher. In the course of his early games for his new team, it is the intensity of his play, his dynamism, that his coach, Diego Simeone, has singled out for praise.
Gallagher has been brought to Spain to add a dash not of Premier League artistry, but of industry.
He is not alone in that. That the clubs of Germany’s Bundesliga have long seen England, in particular, as a source of undervalued young talent is well-known, and the most garlanded graduate of that particular pathway, Jude Bellingham, will face Gallagher while wearing the white of Real Madrid.
But rather less publicised has been Italy’s gradual drift toward Scotland. Bologna, Empoli and Torino all have Scottish players on their books.
Like Atletico, Napoli – helped by their coach, Antonio Conte, a Premier League veteran himself – has effectively recognised the modern reality of European fooball.
England remains a net importer of talent. But there is no better gauge of its supremacy than the fact that it has started to export its products, too.
The Premier League became the brand it is by becoming more international, by adding finesse and elegance to its blood and thunder.
Those are the qualities that its rivals crave now. To be successful, now, is to be just a little more British. — NYT
