What do Jennifer Lopez, Prince William and Javi Gracia have in common? Clearly, they’re all divas with beautiful singing voices, but they have also all reunited with an old flame, with mixed results.
J-Lo and Ben Affleck have been back working red carpets together this week but Lopez’s view that their divorce was the best thing that ever happened to her (confided to a close friend) may at least delay Bennifer: The Reboot. Kate Middleton and Prince William rekindled their university romance with what was reportedly a ‘passionate kiss’ in his ‘army barracks’.
But what will come of Gracia’s reunion with Watford? He this week returned to the side he managed to a club-record 11th-place Premier Leaguefinish and the 2019 FA Cup final with the inspirational words: ‘I’m enthused to be back and to enjoy again the Vicarage Road atmosphere.’
In the common refrain of football managers compulsively drawn to former flames, Gracia also said he feels he has unfinished business at the club. In both romance and football, this claim can feel instinctively sweet and kind of nostalgic.
But, Javi, love, have you seen what Watford have been up to since you left? The last guy only survived ten games – and he won two of his last three. The Pozzo family have appointed 22 different managers since taking over the club in 2012.
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Perhaps seeking out one of the old guard is purely a pragmatic attempt to keep the numbers down. But then Gracia himself has been unattached since leaving Leeds in May 2023, though he did have that very successful stint winning the Qatar Stars League with Al Sadd in 2022.
Perhaps it’s just a case of two lonely souls finding comfort in each other and what’s not to love about that? But with Steven Gerrard in talks to return to Rangers, and David Moyes loping tersely along the touchline at Everton once more, I’m reminded that elite football does have a problem with moving on.
Jose Mourinho, Frank Lampard, the West Ham David Moyes, Harry Redknapp, Neil Warnock and Chris Wilder (thrice) spring to mind as examples of a trend so common this column could just have been a list.
Redknapp is arguably the most successful there, since he not only returned to win the FA Cup with Portsmouth but also managed to relegate hated rivals Southampton during his and Pompey’s break.
The football manager gene pool is so small that these hopeful decisions made in flattering lighting are inevitable. But perhaps that’s the whole issue.
Mourinho’s second Chelsea spell ended in 2015 and is instructive. He claimed the club’s fourth Premier League title, then was sacked that December after overseeing their worst start to a season since 1978 (a season in which they were relegated after finishing bottom) and accusing his players of betrayal.
From a silverware perspective, the reunion was a success. But both parties’ same old patterns played out with absurd reliability.
So did the experiment fail? In the short-term world of elite football, the primacy of results means a toxic culture is a price worth paying – particularly if it is the devil you know, ie you can predict exactly how it will play out – and you don’t much care who gets hurt.
Einstein would warn that doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. But it seems as though, certainly in Chelsea’s case, the similarity of the results is the point.
All of which means that a healthier approach may be for Watford and Rangers to take heed of another close friend of Bennifer who observed, ‘they like each other so much more when they’re not married to each other’. And leave the past behind them.