Archive for category BLOGADINHO
WHAT BARCELONA – CHELSEA MEANS
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in Arsenal, BLOGADINHO, Barcelona, Champions League, Chelsea, Manchester United, Premiership, Style on May 5th, 2009
Language and Contradictions in The Beautiful Game
The Barcelona – Chelsea game tomorrow is one of monumental implications. It might affect our conceptions of the game’s aesthetics, morality, and function. Don’t believe me? Check out all the philosophizing, pontificating and aggrandizing going on about the game in columns, soccer-culture blogs, and chat rooms the world over. In every imaginable language, fans are quoting Shelley to Garcia Marquez to Galileo in desperate attempts to place this game within an appropriately abstract and meaningful context. However trifling or hyperbolic, though, the narrative of this debate touches the core of the contradictions that drive the Beautiful Game.
Barcelona, a team steeped in vibrant Catalan culture and a history of stylish soccer, have understandably staked claim to an abstract moral high ground over Chelsea and the cowardly/negative tactics the Blues employed last week in the team’s first Champions League clash. As compared to the more mutable and calculating identity of Chelsea, Barcelona represent a heroic form of beauty. They cling to a form so pure that after the draw in the first leg many have questioned whether Barcelona falter by focusing more on achieving this ideal of the game than on the game’s purpose, ie. winning.
This notion has caused some serious discussion about the tensions between form and function central to the Beautiful Game. The main tension is this: As a competitive game, soccer functions via the one utilitarian goal of winning, but the game attracts us and resonates with us not because of results but because of its form. This can be true of any sport, but especially soccer for reasons that books have been written about. Brian Phillips probably hit the root of the matter when in a second post on the topic he said this: “The two words in the term ‘beautiful game’ are always struggling against each other in some ways, but they have to coexist. That’s why, for me, the necessary dream is to find a team that resolves the tension, that plays beautifully and coherently and defeats both the chaos of the game and all the studs-up, 10-men-behind-the-ball bullies who try to stop it.”
I think this is the dream for most of us (except maybe Chelsea fans and stubborn fans of the Premiership who, given circumstances, might not be able to admit it). We want a team’s function to grow out of its form, or vice versa. We want surreal and fluid soccer over calculated tactical positioning that stifles the organic nature of the game. This isn’t to say that defensive soccer cannot be beautiful, or that the tearing pace and sharp angles of the Premiership do not give it a form. But its form, both sleek and powerful, is somehow too real, too adaptable, too logical in the way it works to have the same kind of soul-lifting warmth as Barcelona’s. Barcelona plays like a dream. And us romantics want our dreams to bloom, to become more real. We want them to mean something. Right now, for those who pray to the lyrical Gods of the game, Barcelona represent a team on the trembling verge of a clarifying coherence between both form and function. For this reason, Barcelona’s season has taken on much more significance than results. They are playing for immortality, to uphold a form that fans might remember as it: the most beautiful soccer ever.
A team in the truest sense, this year’s Barcelona team plays a game so deft and connected that you don’t want to touch it. Their goals hang like dewy webs, too fragile and perfect and mysterious to replicate. Then you see another one, and another. They play whole games that hang together like the most illuminating prose of this, or any, language. As Phillips suggests, their artistry eschews the way most teams rely on, and adapt to, the game’s inherent elements of chaos and entropy. While big-money Premiership teams tend to employ negative defensive schemes, while they openly commit fouls to break up attacks, while they hammer the ball over-the-top to over-priced strikers in the hopes that one defensive mistake will change the game, Barcelona weave every stitch in time and space. They score despite perfect defenses. Not only do they control the game’s order, they create it.
Barcelona have scored a stunning number of goals this season by passing the ball into the net, as if they knew the result before it happened. They know where they want the ball to go and how to put it there, eventually and exactly. As Joao Jorge suggests in a recent response to Brian Phillips’ posts, Barcelona present “the possibility of truth in the random and chaotic world of a game.” I agree.
Jorge also suggests that Barcelona are “attempting to create a new paradigm of football. To create a dominant team from the front. Their success may force a rupture in the interpretation of the rules of success in football.” While I agree that in winning Barcelona might change the way we view success in modern soccer, the underlying force beneath such a change doesn’t represent anything new. It stems from an old faith in attacking soccer that not only deserves to re-emerge in the modern game, but needs to triumph for the game’s sanctity and progress. Soccer America’s Paul Gardner has been preaching such faith for a long time.
For the faithful, attacking with the right blend of touch, guile and pace produces at once both the most entertaining and effective version of the game. Jorge himself points to the way older Barcelona sides played inspired offensive styles. For example, see their 2006 team or the team in the 70’s led by Cruyff and Guardiola. There was also Arsenal earlier this decade, and the many incarnations of Brazilian and Dutch sides throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 90s. Some won. Some didn’t. These teams had flaws (not all of which were defensive, which I’ll attempt to address in a future post) but they all honorably strived for some immortal truth in union between form and function. Like all of us hopeless soccer-romantics, I hope Barcelona can win in a way that will help us more fully realize these truths. As Jorge suggests, although Barcelona are riding the wave of an old idea, they offer the possibility of changing the way we look at the game.
The only right way for Barcelona to achieve immortality would be to win. As Jorge suggests, “Barcelona is trapped in its own rhetoric of moral cause.” The truth behind their style is as important as winning; But you can’t achieve the first without the latter. This points back to the central paradox of the form/function relationship. As much as we pray the two work together, they can’t, in any perfect sense. This is because no matter how much Barcelona illuminates the game, no truth can overthrow the game’s fundamental entropic nature, the element of chance that ultimately determines wins and losses, the flawed and contradictory black and white terms that give the game definition and weight. In this sense, soccer creates a paradox much like the paradox of language that so many postmodernist authors point to. Soccer, caught in reflexive web similar to language itself, allows us to create order and beauty and even truth out of chaos – if only for fleeting moments. But such order can never transcend the laws of the game. Rather, it depends on the game, the rules and chaos it provides and allows, to mean anything. Truth means nothing without nothingness.
I’m not calling Chelsea evil or the equivalent of the Dark Side or anything. Their winning just means a less beautiful future, even if we can never know this future’s meaning.◊
Afterthoughts
Maybe each league, each team, is a different form of language. As Brian Phillips suggests, Barcelona could easily represent some effusive romantic poetry. Like Shelley or Keats, they are at once visual and sensual and mysterious. If this is true, then what are the Big Four Premiership teams? Against the gushing narrative of Barcelona’s intricate passing game, they appear more results-driven and fractured modern art forms, whether visual or literary. Maybe Liverpool are the blockbuster movie of a bloodied heroine down but never out, guns taped behind its sweaty back. Chelsea are the serial TV drama, with a revolving cast of actors and writers and interweaving plotlines. They will stoop to any level for ratings, as long as they deliver enough juicy drama to make us believe in the promise of more. Manchester United are somehow the Avant Garde flick that succeeded in the box office, a Coen Brothers film, safe form the snobby criticism of the other two, more powerful in effect but possibly no more brilliant. Or maybe each of these teams has a counterpart in modern literature and I’ll have to do some soul searching to see if Cormac McCarthy really writes most like United play.
All I know is that watching Chelsea refuse to play against Barcelona in the first leg was like trying to read poetry in a movie theatre, through blinding strobes of explosions while buttered popcorn and Coke spilled onto the pages. It was like trying to complete a word jumble for a non-existent word. It was like looking at stars from underwater. It made me wonder: is hoping for Barcelona to win like hoping younger generations of children retain a love for reading, for the playful but deeper truths of words? Or is this over-dramatic and absurd? Hopefully, I’ve ballooned the meaning of this game too far out of proportion and reality for anyone to say anything else of any meaning.
It’s fucking huge.
I could probably explain all this a little better. For those interested, Brian Phillips’ posts on these matters are pretty damn illuminating. And Don Delillo wrote a twisted book largely about the above topic called End Zone, except it uses American Football, instead of soccer, as a vehicle to explore the paradoxes of language and a whole lot of other apocalyptic and ascetic and head-bending shit.
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6 + 5 AND THE CELLING OF THE HIVE
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in 6 + 5 rule, Arsenal, BLOGADINHO, Blatter, Champions League, Chelsea, FIFA, Manchester United, Premiership, Style, globalization on April 13th, 2009
Why FIFA’s 6 + 5 Rule Represents The Wrong Fight Against the Globalization of the World’s Most Global Sport
FIFA’s proposed 6 + 5 rule is supposedly gaining traction. The law would require club teams to start a minimum of six players eligible for the national team of the country in which they play. This would affect the way the world sees, plays, and relates to the game – in a scary, and undetermined, way.
The guiding principles of the 6 + 5 rule puncture some of the softer spots in my already gooey emotional attachment to soccer. In theory, the 6+ 5 rule serves to improve the financial and competitive equality of club teams while protecting the national identity of those teams, and by association the identity of the national teams they feed. This sounds good. But the proposal doesn’t suggest a sensitive or realistic understanding of its own implications. Beneath FIFA’s ideal portrait of improved “equality” and “competition” lie vast questions about the proposal’s economic, moral, and cultural shortcomings. As FIFA and the European Union work out the crucial details and lawfulness of this proposal, maybe the argument will become more clear and convincing. Right now, it isn’t either, in principle or possible affect.
The 6 + 5 rule would shackle the international marketplace of soccer by design. I doubt that placing such limitations on the marketplace will produce any more financial equality than the current capitalistic system of club management. How will requiring club teams to field a certain number of homegrown players force the managers of these clubs to make more frugal investments in players? Won’t the biggest and richest clubs still buy whichever players they want? Without implementing spending caps or more economic-driven incentives, FIFA seems powerless to change the deep-rooted financial inequalities of clubs. As opposed to making more frugal expenditures, big clubs will pay inflated prices for homegrown talent. Market inefficiencies will balloon. More than fans or bottom table club teams, the big winners will be vastly overpaid English players – the Michael Owens and Darren Bents – who will benefit from their noble birthplace and bidding wars that make me sick even imagining.
Blatter seems to have his heart in the right place. He wants clubs to focus their resources inwards, on what should be the roots of their success, on developing players and national identity instead of on buying the best available talent. Overtime, this might produce more parity in domestic leagues, as more clubs develop and keep better domestic players. But how will this work when the roots of any club’s success are so clearly tied to capital? To change the roots of success, FIFA will need to change the form, or the rules, of club’s development systems. So I wonder: in addition to the 6 + 5 rule will FIFA need to include additional stipulations that wed players more completely to the clubs whose development academies they train under? Will the richest clubs start vying for national talents at younger and younger ages? Will clubs need to start signing players before grade school to best protect their assets? I worry about the gross culture of speculation and ownership such policies might accelerate.
I’m not saying that the current capitalist player-market is without its own gross inefficiencies. Inequalities in spending cash produce reckless, imprudent investments. The war-chest-sized budgets possessed by clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City have caused salaries to balloon worldwide. And that these clubs operate at losses causes concern about the economic stability of the marketplace they are producing.
There are other ways that FIFA might encourage clubs to spend more prudently and equally that don’t involve limiting players’ mobility. American policies like salary caps and revenue sharing, ironic in their anti-capitalist purpose, come to mind. Another innovative policy I’ve seen thrown around in forums is that of a “Deficit-Free Incentive,” which would reward clubs financially for prudent spending and staying in the black. For these policies to work, however, multiple different teams and leagues with vastly different budgets would need to accept the same stipulations – an unlikely event. Also, more budget-equalizing policies would loosen the stranglehold that the richest teams have on European and domestic titles. While FIFA representatives suggest they want this, proposing the 6 + 5 rule as evidence, I’m not so sure they mean it. The 6 + 5 rule might create more parity, over the long term and only with additional stipulations that castrate clubs’ spending power, or it might not. Also, losing the biggest teams from the Champions League would mean revenue losses from those teams, and therefore losses for FIFA, which depends on the cash-generating powers of those teams.
The main argument for the 6 + 5 rule seems an emotional or moral one rather than an economic one. As Blatter suggests, the proposal would give identity and autonomy back to nation’s players and fans. Or, as Jose Mourinho says in a recent ESPN interview: “The world is global. Football is global. We cannot be too much concerned about nationalities, but I think the clubs, they must invest in their formation, in players made in the club, made in the country. I think this is also about the empathy between the team and the fans.” Mourinho, ever-political, saying nothing while saying everything, adroitly points to the tenuous balance that the proposal tries to strike between the necessity of national identity and the centrifugal forces of global appeal. Investing in national players and styles would help preserve the unique and beautiful cultures of the game. If more local players played for local teams, then local fans would feel more connected to their club and their homegrown players. At the same time, however, focusing on national culture leaves clubs disconnected from the real, world-wide marketplace.
This recalls the “Eat Local” Food movement, except it deals with humans and not vegetables. This is the problem. The nationalism that the law promotes inevitably produces an inequality of opportunity, a value that lies at the heart of the democratic world. As Brian Phillips points out in his brilliant blog, The Run of Play, the 6 + 5 rule would prevent an African or Asian player from getting the same “money, fame, and glory” as a less-talented European player simply by an “accident of birth.”
There’s also a major aesthetic argument against 6 + 5, and this is that it would immediately decrease the quality of the game at the highest level. The best clubs in the world have pooled the best talent money can buy. This talent, gelling and flowing together, produces mesmerizing soccer. The Big Four all play it on their day. And Barcelona, at least right now, plays it almost every time they step on the field. Sabotaging the talent pool’s of major clubs would lower the pinnacle of play, at least in the short term. How could FIFA divest world eyes of the highest quality game once these eyes have already seen such angelic purity of form? Is such brilliance really wrong?
The argument for lessening clubs’ talent in the short term relies on the theory that national talent will increase in the long term. Blatter suggests that redistributing the most talented players back to the clubs of their home nations will benefit the level of competition in these nations, which will produce more good players. I’m not so sure. This might be true in nations with weaker domestic leagues. But at the highest level, maintaining competition requires gathering world talent. If a nation’s best are competing against more of the nation’s best, instead of against the world’s best, how is this good for competition, and for the overall evolution of the game?
Blatter is right to point to the fading identities of clubs and national teams. This has been happening for a while. Arsenal, for example, plays with style that rejects longtime English directness and aerial attacks. They have only a few English players on their roster. They have many more fans outside of England than inside. In a way, this is sad. One of the aspects of soccer I enjoy most is the way it informs, and is informed by, national cultures. Different nations play with different styles – they identify to soccer differently.
But I question if preserving national identity and cultural autonomy is possible in such a globalized sport. One could make a strong argument that soccer serves as one of the most globalizing forces in the world, right behind the internet itself. More than any other game on earth, soccer causes cultures to collide and interweave. It accelerates diversity and erodes national barriers to communication. For most of us, soccer has made us more aware of foreign cultures, languages, and peoples. Such awareness, placed in global context, makes us more sensitive to our own individual and cultural identity.
I fear that a law that functions to preserve nationalism indirectly, by placing strictures on players’ international mobility, stunts the game’s power to connect us all. Preserving national identity is important, but FIFA needs to rework its policy so that it more positively affects the roots of the game, more directly affects financial and competitive equality. As it stands, the proposed 6 + 5 rule would do more harm to the global game than good for any national one.◊
THE EVOLUTION OF STYLE (PART I): FUNDAMENTALS
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in BLOGADINHO, Brazil, Messi, Paul Gardner, Style, US Soccer, World Cup, globalization on March 12th, 2009
Part One of a Series on Style in American Soccer
*As the U.S. National Team attempts to qualify for the World Cup in 2010, I will write a series of pieces concentrating on the style, or lack of it, of American soccer.
As far as I can tell we’ve been “developing” a style in American soccer for the last century. Our attempts to produce one have hinged on lame imitations of successful international styles, namely European ones.
This once made a certain amount of sense. You learn from successes, from those who know better than you. So since the sixties we have flooded our coaching marketplace with Brits. Apparently they won a World Cup. And they sound like they know what they’re talking about even if they don’t. Since the seventies, we’ve bought into Dutch methodologies like weight loss pills for our dense soccer genes. In the nineties, after soccer became one of the most widely played youth sports in the nation, our youth soccer organizations continued to look to Europe (Eastern, Northern and Western), to those anglicized countries that spoke our language, for coaches and advice.
As Jay Martin notes in a 2000 NSCAA article entitled, “The Emerging American Style,” the aspects of these stylistic fads “became an end instead of a means to an end.”
Over the last decade or so, we have latched onto a new and much more executable fad, which is actually more of an ethos than a fad. We are finally starting to promote the simple and largely Latino sensibility of giving the game back to the players. Organizations like USSF and USYSA, for example, praise the value of small-sided-games that approximate the fluid street soccer environments so integral to the magic of the South American game. Letting players learn and think for themselves has become a more important goal in this country than ever before.
If American organizations, camps, and academies are practicing what they preach is another issue. Because so many coaches and governing bodies validate the money they make by selling their knowledge as erudite, I’m skeptical that we can ever truly give the game to the players in this country. But we are on the right track, however slowly and hypocritically we get there. And I hope we don’t bag this movement before it truly takes hold.
Does American Style Exist?
Although the word style can smell like gelled hair and expensive threads, it is not a material trait. For it to be real, it cannot simply be adopted. It comes from within and without, from the collision of instinct and environment, nature and nurture. We know this. We know that a nation’s soccer style has its roots in that country’s cultural and social fabric. Brazilians play with the flare that lives in samba. Germans play with lethal efficiency and technique. Italians play with a heart-rendering deceptiveness. Americans play with … Freedom?
There have been rudimentary studies on the defining characteristics of the model American soccer player. The ones Jay Martin gives from an “unscientific survey” are as follows: Athletic Ability, Attitude, Work Rate and Coachability.
These are all well and good, but what the hell do they really mean? These characteristics describe the valuable traits of American athletes in general, particularly American football players. And one could easily argue that these characteristics represent the problems with American soccer. They lead me to imagine the paradigm American player as a 6’2, 200 pound brute, who can run the 100 in 10 seconds flat, really freakin wants to freakin win, and does whatever the coach tells him. “Tackle harder. Fuck yeah!”
Sometimes I fear that the values our culture ingrains in American athletes dooms us in the one true world sport; that our culture pumps out athletes so good at following directions that they can’t think for themselves; that we value athletic physique and explosive ability much more than subtler traits like guile, deftness, and flare that we forget to develop the later; that our sporting culture favors condition over instinct – order and repetition over imagination and creativity. I fear that our culture makes it too easy for us to forget about the different, subtle type of athlete that soccer requires. As Paul Gardner succinctly points out: “Ask yourself if Maradona or Pele or Beckenbauer or Cruyff would have made their high school basketball or football teams. Too small, all of them. Not among the best ‘athletes.’” The same can still be said for most of the best players in the world today: Messi, Robinho, Ronaldinho. Some might eclipse the six-foot mark (Gerrard, Ronaldo, Kaka and Ibrahimovic), but none would qualify as “athletic” by any American definition of the word. Instead, they all play with unique styles, as unorthodox as they are beautiful.
Does our sporting culture doom soccer or can we use our supposed athletic values as a baseline, a springboard, to a style that can compete on the world stage? The optimist in me believes the later.
I think we are finally reaching a moment in the strange and protracted evolution of soccer in this country that requires us to trust our own culture, our own sensibility, to forge unique players and therefore a unique way of playing. This means trusting more than just our athletic values, which should be easy given this country produces freakish athletes in almost every imaginable sport. More fundamentally, we should trust our good old American values – cultural, social, and political. Yes, work ethic, but also thrift and self-sufficiency, toughness and brashness, ingenuity and multiculturalism. These are the elements of our national fabric that I can latch onto, that I see every day, that I brush up against when I take the bus in the morning. And I have faith that these are the elements that will one day lift us out of mediocrity and into the realms of the international elite in the soccer world.
Maybe I’ve been infected by the new president’s optimism for the future. I’m spewing sappy abstractions that have little relevance to a game played on the ground with feet and a ball. I know as well as Obama does that faith is worthless without the elbow-grease involved in execution. But faith comes first.
Of course we need to execute. We need to develop better technical training in our youth systems, to the point in which we blur the line between instinct and memory. How we do this is still unclear. But it seems like we are finally realizing that such results occur with the right balance of nature and nurture, not just the later. Trusting our own nature, letting our players figure out the game for themselves, will let our players imprint their own wills and minds on the rugged slates of international competition.
We are witnessing execution, however slowly it unfolds, in the way the game is developing at the youth and professional levels in this country. And as the American game develops, so too does style.
The U.S. National team, for example, has long made grit and work ethic core elements of its success. Although its convincing 2-0 win over Mexico revealed nothing new, it was also an impressive display of team defense and all around work. The U.S. players didn’t “let them breath,” as Michael Bradley said after the game. The U.S. attacked efficiently and with purpose.
This is the continuance of something good. It is very real. And it has lots of room to grow, even if it doesn’t have a name yet, or maybe especially because it doesn’t have a name yet, or a blueprint to follow.◊
*The second part of this piece will dilate from more abstractions, like the globalization of style in the international game, to more concrete details of the ways the U.S. is trying to improve to compete with the world’s top teams.
THE SECRET LIFE OF “GAME”
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in BLOGADINHO, Dean Ashton, Feet, Game Theory, James Beattie, Rooney, Sex, Style, Van Nistelrooy on February 5th, 2009
Stretching the Symbolic Meaning of “Game” to Shameless, Meaningless Depths
I wish I could come up with more meaningful relationships between soccer and politics, or art, or education, or Urban Architecture. But the most revealing connections I come up with usually have something to do with “knocking the boots.”
Introducing the “Symbolic Player’s Attacking Technique” game, or SPAT. This game was conceived by single males, for single males – to feed their depraved imaginations and inflated egos, and to add another use to their already edifying knowledge of sports.
The game relies on a simple idea: every man’s (or woman’s, I guess) “pick-up game,” or seduction skill for the layman, has a symbolic counterpart in the skills of a professional footballer. For example, a dude who makes up for lacking physical attributes with boorish hard work, persistence, and an instinct for the goal would be a “Wayne Rooney.” This “player” wouldn’t look like much of a lady-killer, but he has a fearsome sexual drive, and somehow pulls a lot of snatch.
People have probably exercised analogies like this for ages in off-hand conversation, with every sport. “Game” has long symbolized “game.” But I’ve always thought such analogies work best for soccer. And I wonder if anyone has fleshed it out as thoroughly as I, and some of my twisted and nerdy and hopeless friends, have.
The more rich, weird, or charged the symbolic connection, the better your SPAT. The nature of the symbolism is up to you, or the creators of your SPAT. But it helps to verse yourself in some of the theoretical vocabulary you can use to play (see below).
Rules of the Game
There aren’t really any rules, or any definite ones. The theory is out there to be explored and pushed, kind of like the actual Game Theory.
You should look for realistic likenesses. Most of us aren’t world-class strikers, as much as we pretend to be. We’re more in the Darius Vassell category – some potential, lots of frustration and missed opportunities.
Your SPAT can change, like your “pick-up game” can change. You might go through dry spells, rough patches, and hot streaks. You might get hurt or retire. You might improve or slouch enough to warrant a new symbol. But beware; when you do decide on a new SPAT, you should prepare to suffer the ups and downs, the glories and the frustrations, of this player.
“Remember,” my old roommate Robyn told me a few days ago. “I was Dean Ashton a few years ago – good with my head but overall not the most talented … Well Ashton has a long term injury. And man, I’ve let myself go a little, and I think I’m suffering the same fate.”
I don’t recommend taking your SPAT too seriously. But it can happen, understandably, if you find a really apt one. I have hope for Robyn. I’ve always thought he was more of a James Beattie, cocksure and unpredictable, who is starting to light it up right now…
Theoretical Terminology
First Touch – First touch refers to an understated first impression. A good first touch could come from a witty charm, a dignified appearance, or a glint in your eyes that melts the armor of unsuspecting suitors. A bad first touch means you have a rapists’ glaze over your eyes, you’re drooling, and you just spilled your drink. Archetypes: Deco, Frank Lampard, Pirlo, David Beckham. Opposites: Bouba Diop, Frankie Hejduk, the LA Galaxy.
Cherry Pickers/Garbage Men –These are your ass-hole friends who hit the weight room, slather their hair with gel, pop their collars, and step on their own friends for a lay. These are generally “bros” who will screw anything that resembles the human form, and aren’t above scooping up the drunkest, most disheveled prey out of pools of their own vomit. Archetypes: Van Nistelrooy, Berbatov, Luka Toni. Opposites: Arsenal, Rooney, Craig Bellamy.
Pace – I’m still not sure what “pace” means in the barroom arena. It could symbolize the unteachable, god-given gift of good looks. A player’s speed, however, doesn’t necessarily make them a good finisher. Despite all their athleticism, they can inexplicably miss open chances. Archetypes: Defoe, Jermaine Pennant, Sean Wright Phillips, Agbonlahor. Opposites: Mark Viduka, Adriano, Peter Crouch.
Technical Ability – This means you have good form, a measured elegance that comes with so much practice and precision that it appears second nature. This lot are typically well-dressed, stylish, well-kempt, and loaded. Possibilities: Shevchenko, Lampard, Ballack, the England National team. Opposites: Eddie Johnson, Puyol, Ricky Sproule.
Guile – Equivalent to the gift of gab. Guys who have it can make up for deficiencies in other departments through cunning and/or hilarity. They can talk their way out of a third world prison or into normally expensive and illusive panties. Archetypes: Italian National Team, Giggs, Riquelme, Viduka. Opposites: Hamman, the German National Team.
Snipers / Lethal Strikers – These players have an innate sense for goal. They have natural talent, or they wouldn’t be so successful. They’re good and they know it, but they’re not necessarily cocky. In fact, they don’t even try. This rare breed usually falls ass-backwards into pussy. They might spend all day taking bong rips and playing Halo, but if you give them a promising glimpse of the opposite sex they come alive just enough to “seal the deal,” clinically. Possibilities: Schevchenko, Torres, Del Pierro, Roque Santa Cruz, Teddy Sheringham. Opposites: Darius Vassell.
Set-Up Men – Good “wing men,” which is self-explanatory. Good set-up men also tend to control the pace of the game, to see the field and the best options available, even if they’re not going to take them. I’m not really sure what this means. Archetypes: Fabregas, Hleb, Gerrard, Riquelme, Schelotto, Arteta. Opposites: Drogba, Anelka, Arsenal minus Fabregas and Hleb.
Flair – Good dancers. Goddamn them. Archetypes: Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Rubinho, South Americans. Opposites: The US National team, Steven Gerrard, David Beckham.
Although you might wish you were Ashley Cole, you wouldn't really want to have Ashley Cole as your SPAT. Take that Ashley.
Good In The Air – One theory circulating is that “good in the air” describes someone whose instinct kills. They work well under pressure, in changing and turbulent circumstances, and without much of a game plan. But I find this idea too vague. Since the nature of the whole SPAT theory revolves around goals, I have always thought of someone who is “good in the air” as a character who needs the right circumstance to score. They might not venture forward often, or take many risks, but when they do they are vicious, and hard to mark. This type often has girlfriends, and probably won’t be single for very long. They’re usually scrappy and smart. Archetypes: Often defenders, John Terry, Vidic, Sammy Hypia, James Beatie, Brian McBride. Opposites: Thierry Henry, Argentina National Team, Joe Cole.
Set Piece Specialist – Thrives on the kind of scenario that you can prepare for but still have to execute clinically to capitalize on. Robyn says, “Set Piece kings prey on emotional drunk chicks.” I think this symbolism works pretty well. You can count on emotional drunks to provide promising, or dangerous (depending on your perspective) scenarios. Archetypes: Nakamura, Riquelme, Juninho, Arteta. Opposites: If you aren’t good at set pieces, you probably shouldn’t be taking them.
This is just the tip of the ice burg. Much more terminology exists, or has yet to uncovered. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Tackle? Penalty Shot? Long ball? Diver?
Origins
The roots of this game began a few years ago in Edinburgh, when one of my roommates’ friends, who we’ll call Karl to preserve his pride, came to visit from South Africa. This young man was a virgin at the time, for some of the same reasons we were all once virgins – self-respect, circumstance, and fear.
But this trip, he somehow decided, marked his time, while he was still young and in a foreign country swimming in slags and alcohol. Every night, no matter who had to work the next day, he pestered all of us in the flat to go out, to see what we could pick up.
One weeknight I abided. Fueled by beers and Karl’s starry-eyed excitement to deposit his V-Card, I took Karl to a nightclub known for its rave scene and carnivorous women. Somehow, without even speaking to them, we ended up stumbling back with two chicks to their flat. Side note: I highly suggest that struggling single men try going to rave clubs mid-week. It’s like shooting a penalty kick against a cross-eyed keeper with his shoelaces tied together.
Not to toot my own horn, but the girl I ended up with was pretty good looking. Even in the harsh kitchen light of her apartment she looked like Scarlett Johansson – without breasts and with layers of makeup hiding some acne. Same eyes though. Karl’s girl, on the other hand, was, to put it bluntly, an Orca Whale.
As the night wore on Karl got more and more stuck in with this girl (I think he might have been sitting in her lap at some point) while I, in typical fashion, blew a promising opportunity. That I took one of the raunchiest dumps of my life at about 5 a.m. in their apartment probably didn’t help my chances. Eventually she told me to go home. I left early in the morning, defeated, to take a shower and get ready for work. Karl slept there.
That day Karl returned to the flat, where Tom, Robyn, and I were eating lunch. He beamed, “I’m clinical.”
“What happened?” Everyone wanted to know.
“I’m like fucking Van Nistelroy, man. Clinical. Bang!”
“What happened?”
Instead of telling us what we wanted to hear, he rubbed my failure in my face.
“You should have seen this guy,” he nodded at me. “Open goal. And he choaked. Ha!”
“Woah, Karl,” I said. “Don’t forget who took you to the club, most likely picked up the chicks, and set it up for you on a silver platter.”
“Whatever man. You should have seen his girl. She was disgusting. She had this disgusting face, and the most disgusting toes I’ve ever seen.”
I’m not sure if foot fetishes are rampant in South Africa, but for some reason every South African I know looks at a women’s toes before many other seemingly relevant features.
“She wasn’t that bad,” I said.
“She was disgusting. She had these green and yellow toenails. Probably some kind of fungus…”
“Watch yourself Karl. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so cocky after one lay.”
I didn’t have the heart, or the jealousy, to tear apart Karl’s depiction of the night. I was proud of him. I wanted to give him his moment, wait until it sank in to reveal that this girl weighed at least twice what he did.
“I don’t think you can call yourself Van Nistelroy after one lay,” Robyn said. “Maybe you’re more like Theo Walcott. Just starting your career.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You have unlimited potential.”
“Potential?” Karl said. “Fuck that. I’m already clinical.” He wore a smug smile that he didn’t wipe off for a week.
This was a classic case of the sort of big-headedness that can either skyrocket a player’s career or set them up for a crushing awakening when they realize the true extent of their talent
I wonder how Karl’s doing cause Van Nistelroy’s career is probably over.
KOBE’S NEW KICKS, AND OTHER WAYS SOCCER IMPACTS BASKETBALL
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in BLOGADINHO, Basketball, Brands, Feet on January 14th, 2009
When I was twelve I used to play basketball in indoor soccer shoes. Everyone on my team, decked out in the newest C-Webs and Air Penny’s, laughed at me. They said I would turn my ankle, and that I looked stupid.
Out of stubborn pride, I maintained that basketball shoes were too heavy, and that I was quicker and more explosive wearing soccer shoes, which always felt more natural. The truth is, during car rides home I asked my mom to buy me the C-Webbs, but she always said they were too expensive. So I kept on telling my teammates that I was quicker in soccer shoes.
Who’s laughing now?
Kobe Bryant has just unveiled the Zoom IV’s, the first soccer-inspired basketball shoes. Weighing the same as some soccer cleats on the market (11.6 oz), the shoes will apparently help Kobe jump higher, cut faster, and respond quicker. And they might revolutionize basketball footwear.
A known soccer fan, Kobe says he’s learning from the game.
“You have to continue to evolve,” Kobe said. “You watch soccer players play, and the amount of stress they put on their ankle joints is far greater than basketball players, for a longer period of time, so I felt like it was the right time to do it.”
I’m not sure if this is true, but Kobe and Nike could make me a believer. I don’t care how many impressionable overweight kids sprain their ankles in the new KB IVs, I’m rooting for the shoes. They just look right.
Kobe, getting all mystical, described how watching Spiderman helped give him the inspiration for the bottoms of the shoe:
“[Spiderman] was struggling to take the [Venom] suit off. He couldn’t get it off, because it was a part of him. And that got my brain thinking about the shoe and it being one with the foot, having it be one and the same. You can’t separate them.”
Besides implying that he wants his shoes to act like the venom suit, which is pretty bad ass and might describe some of his inner turmoil, Kobe also makes the scientifically apt point that his foot slides and moves too much in high tops, causing losses of energy and responsiveness.
“I wanted my ankle to move in its natural state, the way it was designed to move,” he said.
Kobe’s shoes are one of the many ways that the world game has impacted basketball, and especially the Association, over the past few years. Soccer fans like Kobe, Kevin Garnett, and Steve Nash (who has worn low tops for a while but has only a fraction of Bryant’s marketability) have all promoted using soccer as cross-training during the off-season.
Soccer has also affected the way basketball is played. Nash, with his deep roots in soccer, has made basketball a more spatial and three dimensional game. Nash’s Suns, particularly the 04-05 and 06-07 versions, were the prettiest basketball teams to watch, maybe ever. I wasn’t around for the 60’s or 80’s Celtics, or the 80’s Lakers, so I could be biased, but the Suns attacked more fluidly and connected with quicker and more dynamic passes than previously possible.
The Suns’ brand of basketball was (and still is, to a lesser extent) more spatial than any other team. Instead of personnel mismatches, it was about exploiting open gaps. It relied on creating 2 vs. 1s, advantageous angles to attack the hoop, and open shots. It focused on speed and fluidity more than physicality. This run and gun offensive style rubbed off on a number of Western Conference teams.
Was this a natural evolution of the game? Or did it reflect the impact of soccer and foreign-born players in the league?
Over the last decade an influx of European and South American players to the NBA has brought a different perspective to the game. Reflecting their soccer roots, foreign players typically rely more on spacing. They have unique flair and style. They pass a lot more. They also flop a lot more.
Is it a coincidence that both Kobe and KG reached the top of their games after they came out as soccer fans?
And what about the inspiration for Phil Jackson’s infamous triangle offense, which uses the most important shape in soccer to dissect man-defenses? I’m waiting for the truth behind this one to come out. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the key player in this successful offense for the Chicago Bulls wasn’t the American born superstar, Jordan, but the crafty Croatian soccer fan, Kukoc.
THE BECALMING OF BECKHAM, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF AN ICON
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in AC Milan, BLOGADINHO, Beckham, MLS, Manchester United, Media, Real Madrid, Sex, Style on January 2nd, 2009
Can we stop bitching about Beckham, and all his selfishness?
Don’t people realize that Beckham is on a mission from God – to become the most iconic athlete, or maybe even the most iconic icon, in the world … ever?
Jesus’ iconic status has always been hampered by the way different religions produced varying depictions of him. It’s hard to know the real Jesus. We might not recognize him in the bus seat next to us. And John Lennon was hurt by the whole language barrier. But Beckham … He plays a sport that translates to every culturally unique corner of the globe. His smile makes men and women swoon no matter what language, national or sexual, they speak. And he preaches more accessible ethics than piety or peace on earth. For Beckham, it’s all about hard work and taking care of his “down to earth” family.
Beckham seems like the only one these days that sees clearly the purpose of his life on earth: global domination. He realizes that the time for such control may never come for any one individual again. It takes the right person in the right sport in the right global marketplace.
But companies like Gillette and Pepsi have started to dent Beckham’s worldwide appeal by ending his advertising contracts. And the rest of us are inexplicably slowing Beckham’s rise to dominance with our indifference to his recent loan to Milan. Such a move should be celebrated with new jerseys for everyone in the family and the mandatory creation of fan-appreciation websites or YouTube videos that involve pasting Beckham’s head onto existing photographs of Milan players. Make sure you get the music right though!
A number of us are even pessimistic about the move, griping about his lack of integrity and respect for American soccer. Such a criticism disrespects the scope of Beckham’s vision. Of course he cares about the state of the game in one of his outposts (America), but he cares more about the state of his worldwide brand.
When the world explodes in a few (hundred) years, what will be left? Hopefully, a complete picture of the legacy and importance of David Beckham: millions of tattered jerseys of dozens of teams bearing Beckham’s name in hundreds of language, Pepsi bottles smeared with his face, some titanium-plated Adidas Predator boots, crumbling stadiums graced with follicles of his golden hair, computers and cables spouting records of his search-engine hits, and insects humming his name.
When aliens from another galaxy sift through these relics, don’t we want them to see the object of our affection? They would have to be stunned by his beauty, by his grace and poise. And they would have to be jealous; there is no way any being from their home planet could strike a ball better than Becks.
Is world domination really such a bad goal? What’s more important? Saving the environment? The global economy?
Although Beckham has the biggest carbon footprint in the world, he will get to these things. He simply needs to consolidate more power and influence first. He needs to conquer a few more geopolitical strongholds. He’s working on Italy, if the media would simply help him do his work and quit asking distracting questions.
Beckham still has a way to go. We need to wait for him to take Asia, which he’s well on his way to doing, but might require a stint with Inter Shanghai. He’ll be back for America, which probably proved tougher than he imagined with so many stars jockeying for attention in Beverley Hills.
Eventually, Beckham will reach the all-powerful deified pedestal he seeks. And from there, he will make it all right. He will cure global warming and starvation. He will singlehandedly rectify the economy. He will tell all of us the secret to happiness, in that melting Londoner accent of his.
Hopefully it won’t be as incomprehensible as his one line in this Pepsi commercial. Admittedly, he needs to spend a little more time in Hollywood. When do the movie deals start? We need to get on this.
MAGIC IN THE TOES OF THE PIGEON?
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in BLOGADINHO, Feet, La Liga, Premiership, US Soccer, Zidane on October 27th, 2008
*This post summarizes one chapter from a book that I am working on with Dr. William McGuire, who is a “longtime student of pigeon toes, bow legs, and other advantageous abnormalities,” tentatively titled “Never Sleep on the Toes of a Pigeon.”
The Webster-Merriam dictionary defines pigeon toes as, “Having the toes and forefoot turned inward.”
Pigeontoedus minoricus
Although a vague definition, this describes many of the best soccer players in the world. Is this a coincidence? Soccer players come in all forms, but maybe pigeon toes provide a natural advantage.
Consider a few examples. Zidane played with feet turned slightly inwards. His feet acted like blades that protected the ball from all angles. Viera, Zidane’s counterpart in the France midfield, has feet with an even more pronounced inward turn.
Two of the best current players in the world, Messi and Ronaldinho, wield feet-shape that make them appear more comfortable running with the ball, pushing it along with the outside of their feet, than without it.
Pigeon-toed players just have more character
I came across some possibly scientific theories online of why pigeon toes might provide athletic advantages. Most of these focus on the superior speed that pigeon-toes can provide, given their inherent “stiffness.”
Mike Young, who I can only assume is a doctor, wrote a blog entry on elitetrack.com suggesting that when pigeon-toed athletes “contact the ground their foot and ankle joint tends to be stiffer with less ‘give.’ It is this lack of medial or inward foot roll that causes people who are pigeon-toed to also appear flat-footed. It’s also what may give them their advantage. The stiffer the foot is at ground contact the less energy is absorbed and dissipated. This is an important point considering that the impact forces experienced during running are on the order of 3-6x an athlete’s bodyweight and an athlete’s capacity to handle this impact and quickly accelerate their body in the opposite direction is the key to running speed.”
I’m not sure about overall speed, but my intuition has always told me that pigeon-toes can provide a lethal first few steps. I liken pushing off with pigeon toes to pushing off a natural starting block.
Some nations produce a much higher proportion of pigeon-toed talent. Off the top of my head, Brazil and Nigeria seem the most fruitful. Besides Ronaldinho, recent Brazilian stars with acute feet include Cafu, Roberto Carlos, and Adriano. Nigeria has Kanu and Okocha, two of the most underrated playmakers in world football.
Okocha’s highlight package ranks up there with the world-class studs of the game.
Besides their pace, all of these players were born with the natural ability to cradle the ball, using their foot-shape to cup and swerve the ball away from defenders.
The effectiveness of pigeon-toed players is not a recent phenomenon. Eduardo Galeano, author of the allegory-packed soccer history, “Soccer in Sun and Shadow,” highlights the effectiveness of odd foot shapes over the years:
“The Columbian Carlos Valderrama has warped feet, and the curvature helps him hide the ball. It’s the same story with Garrincha’s twisted feet. Where is the ball? In his ear? Inside his shoe? Where did it go? The Uruguayan ‘Cococho’ Alvarez, who walked with a lip, had one foot pointing toward the other, and he was one of the few defenders who could stop Pele without punching or kicking him.”
I could watch videos of legendary Brazilians all day. But this one of Garrincha suggests that his feet were more crooked than pigeon-toed. Same with Valderrama.
A limit probably exists to the degree of inward angle that a footballer’s feet can take. Because the sport requires a lot of running, it doesn’t favor inefficient strides. Most of the above players have mild, and not extreme, pigeon toes or bow legs.
More extreme cases exist in other sports, like professional baseball and basketball. Vladimir Guerrerro, Moises Alou, and Rajon Rondo make Zidane’s feet look parallel.
The bowed legs and flat feet often associated with pigeon-toes don’t help a soccer player’s endurance.
Drmirken.com suggests, “People with these traits often incur ankle, knee and hip injuries both during their playing days and later in life due to the fact that their feet are acting like a very tightly wound spring rather than a cushy crash-pad.”
Do pigeon-toed players get injured more? Is this the price they pay for their evolutionary advantage? Is there an ideal degree of pigeontoedness?
CLOSE TO NOTHING: DISSECTING “ZIDANE: A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT”
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in BLOGADINHO, La Liga, Real Madrid, Zidane on October 27th, 2008
“Sometimes magic is very close to nothing at all. Nothing at all.”
-Zinedine Zidane
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait immediately calls attention to the difference between experiencing a soccer game on television and the unique experience the viewer gets with this film – intense and personal. The film cuts from a regular televised broadcast of the game, the screen pixilated and fuzzy, to a crisp shot of Zidane tearing along at full speed; from muted crowd sounds, buried beneath the commentator’s voice, to the chilling roar of the thousands of fans at the Bernabeau in Madrid; from minute players in the distance to sweat dripping down Zidane’s chiseled face.
He is the specimen under a microscope, or, in this case, under the gaze of seventeen cameras that look more like rocket launchers, with military-grade zoom capabilities and lenses the size of small pizzas. We get as close as humanly possible to the player’s individual experience. We enter his space, insulated – but still affected – from all that surrounds him.
In doing so we don’t get the contextual information that naturally accompanies a game on television. We don’t know who Zidane passes to, or where, or why. We lose the typical measuring devices that we rely on when watching soccer. It is hard to read the flow of the game, or gauge the momentum of each team. We don’t have a narrator providing a story line or imposing significance on events. We don’t have a clock ticking in the upper left hand corner of the screen or ball-possession statistics confirming our suspicions about the game flow. We need to read the game through Zidane’s movements: his actions, his body language, and his expressions. Zidane is the protagonist. This is what lets us in. We begin to experience aspects of the game that he does, while he does.
Without context, we get an unfamiliar but personal sense of time and place. The soundtrack of the film, for example, approximates how Zidane, or possibly any player, hears things throughout a game. The sounds build and fall in layers, isolating noises from the crowd and then the yells and grunts from other players on the pitch. In this hyper-sensitive world even the most subtle sounds receive attention. At one point we get only the gentle scuffs of Zidane’s boots along the turf.
“You can almost decide for yourself what you want to hear,” Zidane says, in a caption that flashes at the bottom of the screen. He describes how he can hear coughing, or “someone shifting around in their chair,” or a whisper in the crowd culled through all the noise.
The affect of this shifting sonic landscape is both real, in the way it captures Zidane’s experience, and also dreamlike, in the way sounds impossibly uncover themselves, as if a giant stethoscope presses on different areas of the field. The hypnotic music of the Scottish group Mogwai, which slowly replaces the sounds of the game at different points of the movie, adds to this limbo between dream and reality. The music carries us along, mesmerizing us with the rhythms of the game, at the same time it pushes us to heighten our awareness of what we see. Details become unreal.
While the film purposely limits contextual information, it also serves to place Zidane in a time and place better than any footage or description has ever done before. It gives us a detailed and thorough record of the man at work, doing what he was meant to do week in and week out, in an environment that is more natural to him than any. By letting us in, the film gives a weight to Zidane’s work, or even that of any modern athlete, which forces us to feel and think about his vocation in a more human and real way. The film therefore doesn’t add to Zidane’s legend, his larger than life magnetism, as much as it tears it down.
Not only do we see what is unique about Zidane as a player, but we see what is unique about him as a man. Under the microscope, his attitude bores through the frame. He scars the screen with the grave concentration he levies into everything. He plays with a “coiled intensity,” as Peter Bradshaw writes in his review of the film in The Guardian. Even at his most relaxed and still Zidane’s intensity boils through his skin, threatening to explode at any moment.
He is a warrior from another era. We see it in his actions, and even his words. After Villareal scores the first goal of the match, on a questionable penalty call, Zidane comes back to his side and stares through the referee with piercing eyes. He says only, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” Then play resumes.
As my good friend put it: “It harkens back to a day when things like shame and honor meant something.”
They mean something to Zidane. He demands performance. He gives Roberto Carlos a quick, “Come on,” after Carlos looses the ball. And after Zidane makes a dazzling run down the left wing, producing the assist for the equalizing goal, he doesn’t even crack a look of satisfaction. He grunts, and he returns to his half. When he gets the red card in the game’s dying minutes, for tearing fists-first into a Villareal player, we don’t know what happened, but we are sure that the offending player has somehow offended Zidane’s honor.
Our viewpoint also allows us to get a unique sense of Zidane’s efficiency in his movements and touches. We don’t need to see the context of all Zidane’s passes and moves to know how he plays on this night. He plays fucking brilliantly, as usual. He kills balls on his chest, his thighs, his feet, then knocks them on to relieve pressure. He almost never loses possession, even after dozens of touches. He appears more at ease when he actually gets the ball, as if he knows the precious object is safe under his control. He spends so much time calling for it, showing for it, chasing it, that when he gets it he is grateful, comforted. He shuffles effortlessly around opponents, the ball glued to his feet.
We see Zidane as a specimen built to play the game. He romps around his natural environment like a wild steed around a meadow. In between action he spits, or he toes the earth. He snarls. These natural habits serve as tiny, but revealing, outlets of his pent up energy.
The film provides a number of still shots that recall elements of a Western, or even a Nature film. We see Zidane as a man, or beast, alone. He is both at home and at war with his environment. We see him in the twilight of his career, trying to make the most out of his abilities and his rusting joints. The field and the game become the things that give him purpose—sustaining his powers—while they also wear him down. In this way, as much as Zidane astounds as a specimen of strength, he also appears in a uniquely fragile light. We see the urgency in everything he does, expending strength and effort over and over to no result.
These are the details that allow the film to deliver heavy truths about the modern athlete that no other media outlet could. Up close, we see that despite Zidane’s ferocity, or maybe because of it, his life on the field seems impermanent and endangered. We become more aware that this life will come to a close after ninety minutes on this night, and then forever after just a few more years, in his early thirties. In experiencing more deeply the intensity of an athlete’s job, we also realize how short and temporary it really is. Zidane plays against all forms of time, not just the time in the game, but his time doing what he was irrevocably meant, and impeccably trained, to do.
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait serves as a way to record, and preserve, Zidane’s existence. As filmmakers Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno comment in the “Making of Film” piece on the DVD, the finished product works as something much more permanent and significant than the highlight reels and stock images that will survive Zidane’s retirement. It ensures that the end of Zidane’s career will be remembered for more than just a head butt to the chest of a trash-talking Italian.
Could one of these slime balls be the next Zizou of the frog world?
The filmmakers do their best to give this particular game, played on Sunday, April 23rd, 2005, a dilating context that it couldn’t get from any typical media coverage. During half time, images of Zidane get replaced by images of an assortment of world events that happened on the same day. Some are newsworthy, like a report about lethal floods in Serbia and Montenegro. Some aren’t, like toads “swelling to three times their size” in some pond in Germany. Death happens. And birth happens. Inconsequence happens. Gordon and Parreno might have stretched themselves in trying to couch Zidane’s one performance in such epic scope. But they make the point quickly and emphatically. After this brief detour around “world events” the picture cuts back to the game – the magnetic appeal it has to so many thousands of fans at the Bernabeau and so many millions the world over. Then it cuts to Zidane, breathing. And again, we watch.
This technique reveals a paradox of soccer and one player’s place within such a massive attraction. For everyone tuned in, the game holds an immense significance. But, in shifting frames from extremely wide to extremely close, we also see the game as something as meaningless as one man’s workday, or like a repeated caption suggests, “a walk in the park.” If we tweak our perspective, we can see the sport as the silly and tireless pursuit of an illusive ball. The game Zidane plays in is as significant or insignificant as anything else to occur on this day. Its meaning depends on our focus.
Soccer might go on forever, gathering momentum as the earth turns. But Zidane, like a dream we had that can never be fully recovered, won’t. This film captures crucial elements of that dream. It holds both a lightness and weight that everyone can experience in a different way. It captures Zidane at a moment that is both timeless and infinitely temporary, in moments that are dazzling and also ordinary, with a momentum that is effortless but also arduous.
As Christopher Clarey writes in his Herald Tribune review, “When Zidane makes something out of nothing down the left wing in the first half, avoiding a thicket of extended legs to get a cross to Ronaldo for a headed goal, there is more hard labor than magic dust in it.” In using a focus that flows between the peripheral, the detailed, and the hyper-detailed, the film dilates in a way that tunes us to frequencies of the game that we didn’t know existed. We can’t help but question and examine the thinnest differences between work and play, between the qualities we worship and those we neglect, and, as Zidane suggests as the camera pans above the stadium into the night sky, between magic and nothing.
FACT OR FAITH: CONSIDERING THE IMPACT OF STATISTICS ON THE BEAUTIFUL GAME
Posted by Cyrus Philbrick in Arsenal, BLOGADINHO, Managers, Manchester United, Premiership, Statistics on October 27th, 2008
*Originally published in April, 2008
Soccer has long had less capacity for statistical analysis than any other major sport. This is primarily because of the nature of the game, free-flowing and low scoring and simple to its core. It doesn’t offer the many frames for measurement that so many American sports rely on. Baseball, basketball, and football offer a slew of averages, splits, percentages and ratios that keep Phd-level mathematicians employed.
Soccer’s insulation from data and numbers is part of what has kept it romantic and hard for so many Americans, addicted to statistics-saturated fantasy sports leagues, to stomach. It is truly all about feeling—for players, managers and fans alike. Every sport runs on illogical passions and beer-fueled arguments, but none more than soccer. It is innately subjective. This preserves the ignorance and bias of all who analyze games and players, but it also preserves the game’s lyrical nature, the color and light of perspective and narrative. It protects soccer from the type of statistics-drooling fans that infest baseball—the kind that give you regrettably well-researched evidence of a player’s rating as based on fielding metrics technology even though they don’t know how a shortstop should straddle second base when making a tag out. In soccer, by contrast, maintaining an informed opinion about a game or a player has always required two things: you need to have a deep understanding of the sport, and you need to watch games unfold.
In the last ten years, however, the hot probes of science have been busy giving soccer a lobotomy. Software companies like ProZone, which give computerized video and statistical analysis of games, claim to provide an objective picture of both a player and team’s performance. ProZone, which doesn’t come cheep for the pro and amateur clubs that use it (yearly subscriptions cost around £130,000), can cut through some crucial aspects of soccer’s obscurity. Managers use it as a tool to improve team tactics and player technique. But how deep an impact can these programs have on a game so rooted to subjectivity?
Although they will have a permanent and valuable place in the game, computerized analysis programs will probably never replace the good old empirical one, a keen set of eyes. And although such programs make some aspects of soccer more transparent, they are also adding a new language to the surface of the game that tangles us in new arguments and new questions. They compound the game’s subjective mystique at the same time they erase it.
Some managers claim that ProZone proves most valuable when evaluating player performance. ProZone’s biggest champion, Arsene Wenger, praises the program’s ability to reveal the quality and speed of a player’s decisions on the ball.
“Technical superiority is measurable,” Wenger stated in a recent and often-quoted interview conducted by Total Youth Football Magazine. “In the past it was just about feelings, opinions. So I thought, ‘that’s not good enough,’ and I wanted to know a little bit more. I am always in the situation where I have to judge people, and the more concrete objective numbers you have the better you can achieve that.”
ProZone, which uses eight cameras to track infinitesimal movements of every player on the pitch, doesn’t only measure completed passes. It can gauge the circumstances of these passes, where they went, and the other options available. So a player can no longer blame a poor performance on his teammates’ lack of movement, or a lack of options, without this excuse getting scrutinized.
Getting such visual and statistical data gives perspective on a player’s performance, but it seems to prove more valuable as a coaching tool than as a way to rate player value. Reviewing a player’s decisions with the ball, seeing where they maintained possession and where they lost it, could help a player make more positive decisions or movements in a game. But breaking a player’s success down to statistics has flaws and gray areas. Unlike baseball, in which numbers reveal truth over time, soccer relies too heavily on intangible and immeasurable elements, like team chemistry and deception and creativity, for statistics to conclusively quantify an individual’s value. For this reason soccer will never see an equivalent to a book like Moneyball, which showed how certain stats (batting average and stolen bases) had long been overvalued at the expense of others (like walks). No matter how much we try to break soccer down, minute frame by minute frame, it can never have the same statistical framework as baseball.
In a 2005 article on ProZone published in The Independent, former Derby County Manager Phil Brown puts it succinctly: “You wouldn’t pick a team on it but it can back up your gut instinct.”
Relying purely on data to judge or scout players would skew pictures of player value and potential. For example, I am convinced that Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the best player in the world, would have been rated as one of the most unproductive and inefficient players in the Premiership had he been gauged on ProZone software back in 2003-04. Maybe someone at Manchester United with access to these archives could prove me wrong, but I believe that only observing a budding Ronaldo in the flesh, bearing witness to his supernatural quickness and touch, could have suggested that he would become such a dynamo. The same can be said about great athletes in other sports. But in other sports statistics are more closely linked with ability.
ProZone’s programs can, however, undoubtedly improve a team’s tactical sense and precision. In a 2005 interview with The Independent, Alan Pardew talked about how ProZone helped him see passing patterns in an opposing team’s offense that his team (then Reading) worked to cut out.
“For scouting the opposition and analyzing your team it gives you a wealth of information you cannot get with the naked eye,” Pardew said. “It is a supplement to your judgment.”
ProZone can make defenses more aware, so that they know where they break down and which spaces they need to better cover. And it can make offenses more aware of how they can link passes and find gaps in an opposing team’s defense.
Big Sam Allardyce - a big fan of using statistics to gauge player performance
But coaching by placing too much weight on data threatens to make teams one-dimensional. It can force teams into using too many pre-determined movements, stiffening a game that depends on the magic of creativity and improvisation. A few managers, for example, have used statistics to produce brutally predictable styles. As Matt Dickinson points out in a recent article for The Times Online: “You cannot mention [Aidy] Boothroyd and [Sam] Allardyce in the same sentence without someone saying that all statistics produce is robotic football.” Dickinson highlights the importance Allardyce places on getting measurable production out of each position, such as a “quota of crosses” from his outside wingers. And some pub teams play with more fluidity that Boothroyd’s Watford.
Despite the boring nature of these two manager’s styles, however, they have both enjoyed success. And then, as a crushing counterpoint to the assumption that statistics-based coaching produces stiff soccer, there is Wenger’s Arsenal, a team that wins while playing one of the most fluid, incisive, and enthralling passing styles in the game.
Statistical analysis suggests that efficiency can take many forms. If anything, the meaning of the word efficiency has become increasingly blurred in the sport. Does it mean producing a certain amount of crosses? Does it mean linking the most passes in the least amount of time while going forward? Does it mean producing the highest levels of measurable technical superiority on ProZone? Although statistical programs can offer managers some logical conclusions about strategy and player performance, they also breed more questions. Because managers still need to interpret the heaps of data that ProZone gives them—deciphering a radar-like language of arrows, dots, and numbers—many interpretations exist. Different managers will have different opinions about how they can tweak their shape, strategy, and player roles to improve their team. Better information requires more refined and complex strategies, and also vastly different ones.
An overflow of statistics also poses another hang-up for managers. It can cause managers to focus on the minutia of the sport instead of taking a more comprehensive perspective. In striving for certain levels of efficiency, stat-obsessed managers might forget the root purpose of the game: putting the ball in the back of the net. Although we can attribute Arsenal’s drop in the league table to a number of factors, it might suggest that obsessing over efficiency can sacrifice results. Maybe Wenger will have the last laugh when his test-tube babies come of age in the next few years. But this season’s tables might suggest that while Wenger was busy grooming players to rate highly on ProZone, Chelsea and Manchester United followed the tried and true formula of stockpiling proven players that produce goals and win games. Call me crazy, but I think the most “efficient” team is usually the one with the best goal differential at the end of the season.
Maybe in the future, when every club employs PHD-level statisticians and when ProZone-inspired technologies will be available in real time for the masses watching games from home, we will have a more refined statistical language that will come closer to revealing what efficiency truly means. We will throw around stats like “Attacking Third Productivity Rating” or “Forward Passing Success Rate” that could highlight underrated players and show which teams have been more effective advancing the ball. When this occurs I might eat some of my words. But I predict that even using this sort of statistical language will only produce more arguments about player value and playing style. We will more firmly pit statistical fact against observation and gut feeling.
More "Wenger" than evil?
Maybe scientific managers like Wenger have set the stage for a war of Lost-like proportions within the game. Soccer is the island, a mysterious, untamable, and beautiful beast. Wenger is (maybe a little unfairly) the character Ben, leader of the “Others,” a master of manipulation, bent on scientific methods of deconstruction. His tinkering has bred tensions between future and past, brain and heart, fact and faith, design and free will
These tensions are not new in the sport, or any other sport. But as with Lost, in soccer it has never been more difficult than now to pull these forces apart from each other, to know which one is at work and which one to believe in. To dismiss ProZone and new forms of statistical analysis would be ignorant, but believing in them unconditionally might be more dangerous. Fans that do so will miss the true picture and beauty of the game. And managers that do so won’t survive.
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