Bachmann captaincy a surprise — but only in England would we care
Nothing quite sums up the antipathy towards Watford and boredom of pre-season like the furore that followed the news goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann had signed a five-year contract with the club — and been appointed captain.
I’ll lay my cards on the table straight away, he would not have been my first choice. But I’m not privy to what goes on around the training ground or pitch on a matchday. Nor are the majority of us. We make our judgments based on snapshots and isolated moments from our seats at Vicarage Road once a fortnight.
Regardless, I’m not really sure it matters very much at all.
Show of hands, who knows who will be Real Madrid’s club captain this season? The answer is Nacho Fernández, 33-year-old fourth-choice centre-back behind Éder Militão, Antonio Rüdiger and David Alaba. He’ll play plenty because he’s versatile and Los Blancos will compete for honours domestically and abroad. But it’s a largely ceremonial role dished out to the longest-serving player at the club.
Want to take a stab at who will be Barcelona’s club captain this season? It’s Sergi Roberto, a perennial utility man who will probably end up deputising at right-back instead of playing in his preferred central midfield role. Again.
In other words, two of the world’s biggest clubs have appointed captains based on tenure, rather than some idealised notion of what a captain should be. In England, we are in a minority in putting a great deal of stock in the captaincy. It’s a debate that regularly reared its head with the national team before Gareth Southgate nipped it in the bud and we are unlike most of our continental cousins in that regard.
We all know what a good captain is meant to do. In reality, how far does their influence really stretch? We’re not talking about Ben Stokes, here, whose on-field decisions and strategies will help decide how a Test match unfolds for England’s cricket team. In football, the role of captain on a matchday is largely ceremonial. It’s looking after the mascots, taking part in the coin toss, leading the team out and representing the team in discussion with the officials. There’s more to it in the days building up to matchday. It needs to be someone who commands authority and respect across the squad and can act as a conduit between the players and staff. While he hasn’t played hundreds of games, Bachmann has been at the club longer than anyone else, played for Austria and at a major international tournament. He probably fits into that category, we just don’t know it without being on the ground at London Colney day-to-day.
The real issue here is that the more leaders in the team, the better, and the current crop leaves something to be desired here. Of course, it’s hard to determine who is and isn’t a leader. Plenty have called for Ryan Porteous to be named captain, virtually from the moment he arrived from Hibernian. That appears to be based on his knack for shouting a lot, looking like he cares and ‘getting it’. I can’t be the only one who remembers Bachmann being incredibly audible on Hive Live during Lockdown. Is his shouting not enough to qualify him for the captaincy, or is there a right sort of shouting?
Add to that, there are different types of leaders. The key is commanding the respect of those you are meant to lead. Not how you do it. But the history of British football dictates your captain must be a blood-and-thunder type, the sort who would run through a brick wall or tackle their own gran for three points. Tony Adams, Roy Keane, Steven Gerrard, John Terry and Patrick Vieira are usually heralded as bastions of captaincy in this country. They all tick at least one of those criteria listed above. What also aids their claims is on-field success. All, except Gerrard, were Premier League winners. Instead, he lifted the Champions League and a series of domestic trophies with Liverpool, so is viewed as a good captain. Legacy plays a huge part in how we view these greats. No one ever highlights the captain of perennial strugglers in the same way, after all.
The other thing that ties these players together is they were all flawed in one way or another. Adams’ personal problems were well-documented. Keane regularly strayed beyond the boundaries of good sportsmanship and threw his younger teammates under the bus, leading to his exit. Gerrard’s tactical indiscipline inhibited his team, while he flirted with leaving regularly. Terry was caught up in off-field scandal more than once. Admittedly, I haven’t got anything to stick on Vieira but, I’m sure he was flawed too — as we all are.
If we apply the same level of scrutiny to the last great Watford captain, it’s a similar story. Troy Deeney had a pretty uninspiring first 12–18 months at Vicarage Road, lived — by his own admissions — anything but like a professional, ended up in prison and then tried to leave most summers before (arguably) staying too long for his and the club’s good. There was the Leeds red card, cojones-gate and doubtless other things. Yet he is — or at least was until his recent comments — remembered fondly and there was even talk of him returning in some capacity this summer to provide his own unique brand of leadership and a link to better days.
As for the notion goalkeepers can’t be captains, don’t get me started. Oliver Khan, Íker Casillas, Hugo Lloris, Gianluigi Buffon, Dino Zoff and Lev Yashin would like a word. Oh, and who was the power behind Deeney’s throne? Goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes.
Now there is a case to be brought against Bachmann, too. His show of petulance against Huddersfield Town defeat on Good (Bad) Friday was the nadir of a season that saw him collect seven bookings, mostly for dissent. Being dismissed for two yellows in as many minutes for squabbling with the referee and a high boot in the opposing box was, frankly, ridiculous and underlined the general lack of discipline at the club last season. There’s a very fair argument that he isn’t the best representative for the team when speaking to the officials.
But that really is all we’ve got to go on. I certainly don’t see how he conducts himself around London Colney or behind the scenes at the Vic and I doubt many supporters do either. But one assumes Valérien Ismaël has been impressed by that in the short time he’s been here and believes Bachmann has the squad’s respect. Beyond that, I trust him to turn left out of the tunnel and win at least 50 per cent of the coin tosses this season.
The other issue here is the awarding of a new five-year contract. I’m not going to go too in-depth here but I will say this: it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Bachmann would have become a free agent next summer and we know Gino Pozzo hates to lose players for nothing. They have awarded plenty of other players multi-year contracts in what would be seen as the twilight of their careers — think Étienne Capoue, Christian Kabasele and Tom Cleverley — when many would have cut them loose.
But Bachmann is different.
This is a player who was linked with Ajax, Manchester United and others in the not-too-distant past. It’s not a leap to imagine the club see him as someone worth keeping and with potential value at some point. These are his prime years as a goalkeeper and he will still be within the upper limits of that prime by the time his new deal expires at the age of 34.
This extension hands Watford all the power. If Bachmann has a good season, he will not be in a strong negotiating position to go to Pozzo in 12 months and ask for a pay rise. Much like Harry Kane at Tottenham Hotspur, the owner will simply be able to point to his existing deal and send him on his way with his tail between his legs.
Some have pointed to Scott Duxbury’s recent comments about holding onto players too long, and that is a fair point — to an extent. But some of those players were hangovers from a time when Watford could spend more freely and award better contracts. Bachmann is now locked into a deal the Hornets are comfortable paying in the Championship. He was, by all accounts, not earning a huge amount before this renewal so any increase will have been relative to that starting position. Which makes sense given he was signed from Stoke City’s under-21s to be third-choice in 2017. At that point he had played 20 career games, the vast majority for Wrexham in the National League. It’s hard to imagine him being on a particularly handsome salary and some realignment was only fair.
As far as I can tell, he is a divisive character for two reasons.
Firstly, people haven’t forgotten that he talked about wanting to leave if he wasn’t going to be №1 while away on Austria duty. Personally, I didn’t think that unreasonable for a goalkeeper who was already in his mid-20s and had just enjoyed his first run in the side at Championship level, excelling as we won promotion with the best defensive record in divisional history. There was a perceived arrogance there but players regularly speak more openly when they’re on international duty. Given how quickly Ben Foster became ‘the problem’ during the 2021/22 season, who could have blamed Bachmann for wanting to be first-choice keeper?
Secondly, there’s a belief that he is truly awful; the worst keeper in the Championship. Most stoppers at this level are flawed in some way and Bachmann’s big weakness is the command of his area at crosses. That isn’t uncommon. If he was better, he’d probably be a Premier League keeper — like half the rest of the division. The reality is he’s not the worst. But he’s not the best either. He is a perfectly adequate, average, middle-of-the-road goalkeeper for the level. Most weeks, he’s 7/10, some weeks he drops a five, some weeks he produces a nine.
That is exactly where Watford are right now.