Argentina

Bitter humbling.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

(Pic from Al Jazeera).

We don’t like to let nuance or complexity nose their way in much these days, eh? Big Money and the algorithms of Big Tech don’t let them. But I have mixed feelings about many things – including football.

Foolishly, I’m gonna out myself as a (relative) supporter of Thomas Tuchel. I was medium-gobsmacked at his appointment, because the English Football Establishment doesn’t generally offer significant roles to mavericks &/or the highly-strung, but somehow the boy Tuchel swam through the net. That surprised and pleased me. I wonder to this day how the interview must have gone: I imagine he was superb and kinda thrillingly convincing. I’ve no doubt that (maybe particularly in a confined space), he could do that thing.

I have said many times that the now pilloried ‘hysterical German’ once turned Chelsea into the best club team in the world, at a time when Klopp’s Liverpool and Pep’s City were magbloodynificent.

It was a short peak – perhaps unsurprisingly – but Chelsea were fabulous, just for those few months. This, and the brilliance that TT gives off during interview and analysis (in a second language, of course) has medium-convinced me that the fella is either The Real Deal or A Real Deal. He’s good; yet hysterical. He’s better and brighter than Southgate… and I thought more likely to actually to win a major tourney, because he’s tougher and sharper. He’s explosive in the manner (well, almost) of a Ferguson and cerebrally strategic in the manner of a Wenger. He’s a mad, top-end, inspirational, obsessive, pro-active coach.

Yebbut most of you want to eat him alive – and I get that. So, not wanting to find myself entirely in the wrong camp here, let’s say that I reckon it’s fair to indulge the following arguments (or mitigations) that arise for some of us, post Argentina.

England had a decent, not brilliant squad. The defence, even at full strength was mediocre *at defending*. (Guehi/Konsa/Stones/Quansah. Neither genuinely robust nor especially watchful). Even when England were thrashing teams in the qualifiers, most of us looked at the chances offered, the holes in and around the box and thought ‘Jeeesus. Issues incoming’.

Zone right out and there may be a sense that this team is something of a symbol of the general malaise/improvement/culture-shift – delete according to prejudice – and not just because they wear the Three Lions, (although this is surely in play?) These guys are under massive, unreasonable scrutiny *and* they are of their era. It’s kinda like you have to be: there’s a mould.

They all play like academy defenders. Smoooooth on the ball; elegantly easing sideways; nonchalantly impervious (well, largely) to incoming attackers – taking the ball ‘under pressure’ in a way that would seem unthinkable and ridiculous to Terry Butcher. Doable, for the most part, because they are better in possession than Terry Butcher: better, in fact than generations of fine, fine players who played a different game. They used to defend and clear. Now they pass and look to draw the opposition in.

This new ‘academy game’, where everybody is comfortable on the ball, is significant progress. Skills have been upped – some of them. But it also means players who aren’t mentally or physically tough enough to defend may find themselves, nominally or otherwise, ‘defending’.

In my moments of anger after the Argentina debacle I called the England team ‘lily-livered’. In a sense I regret that because some folks will assume it has a deliberate racial undertow. It didn’t. It was about lack of spirit (or courage) letting lack of concentration seep in. About eyes glazing over just a little, as though to protect someone or something – probably me, probably us – allowing the feared or inevitable to wash through. I think this affected most of the team… and perhaps in a different way, the manager.

The bus-parking, the low-bloc(k)ing, the re-jig to ‘see the game out’ is being widely described as one of the grossest failures of strategy since the Light Brigade. Understandably, in a sense; we feel like we own that team – and it does, after all, represent us. It was embarrassing.

Argentina are not immediately renowned as great headers of the ball. How many crosses were met – often unchallenged – by Argentinian bonces, late in the game on Thurs? That in itself was a scandal; a scandal of bad defending. With extra bodies in there, how can it possibly be that even well-targeted crosses weren’t nutted away into row Z? (It’s a narrow example, I get that. But symptomatic of an extraordinary collective failure to defend, in the broadest sense. Yes, England should have tried to close on the opposition, win the ball and keep it… but with six or more defenders lined across the box it felt particularly painful that the tradition for committed nutting of the pill absented itself so completely).

He can’t come out and say it but I think that one of the things in Tuchel’s mind, after England finally flung in a great cross themselves (and surprsie, surprise, scored from it!) was that all of Saka, Rashford and Madueke had pretty much played their way out of his side by being somewhere between meek and depressingly wasteful in earlier games. He may have thought he had no option to ‘make positive changes’… and consequently erred towards Mourinho-esque negativity. “Burns; anybody else who’s played in defence. Get them on. And – oh, shit – where’s the lad Maguire when we need him?”

That move – the one that will haunt him and has destroyed his reputation in most quarters – was medium-probably unrepresentative of Tuchel the man and the coach. It almost certainly deserved to fail in the way it did. He was both wrong to seek that route and unable (actually) to drive, inspire or harass his players towards any heroic rearguard action. It was horrible; it was weak.

I do blame the players as much as Tuchel. A) They are nowhere near as good as we or they think they are. (Particularly the defenders). B) They did not do their jobs – particularly the defenders. C) (Argentina were predictably spiteful but) as a group, throughout the game, England spent as much energy looking to flop over the ball under any contact as they did trying to build a move/play some football.

That too, is a disease probably cultivated through academies. Anderson was notably guilty – and I do mean guilty – but the likes of Guehi at the back relentlessly look to feel contact and flop. We, as kids, would shield the ball then take the bloke ‘up our arse’ right out of the game with a smart pass or a shimmy. The sport of football dies just a little every time Kane or whoever ‘draws’ this kind of foul.

Oh – and D) Honestly? Argentina are not that great. Messi is a god but a god you can get at, nowadays. Stay cool, stay busy: get in their faces.

Look, England only very intermittently looked a good a side, in this World Cup. Bellingham and Kane showed quality but were almost non-existent against Argentina. The Three Lions best player and *best attacker* was Djed Spence. He alone(?) showed the spirit and dynamism that Tuchel has surely been after.

If the gaffer succumbed to the temptation to Bring It Home On A Parked Bus, this is profoundly disappointing and obviously, ultimately foolish. I wish he’d brought Rashford on and told the whole team to press. I wish he’d eschewed the low bloc approach for ambitious, cultural, crowd-pleasing reasons. Years later he can note in his autobiography that he knew his defenders weren’t up to it. Get fresh legs in to squeeze and press – just for 20 minutes. Force an error and the game is over in England’s favour. But no. It was a bitter humbling.

The best team won.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

The best team won, in the smiliest, sassiest, feelgoodiest cup of them all. Perfect – just what you want.

In the oven-warm afterglow of a final that was better than many (but hardly wedding-cake, aesthetically) our reviewing and re-living can be surely generally positive? We’ve enjoyed generally good, sometimes exceptional Group Stages leading to the delicious South American/European Giants confrontations in the last four. Though those semi’s see-sawed between the extraordinary (Haaysus Kreeeeest! Bra-zeeeeell!!) and the arch-typical staccato tease and counter-thrust, the simple rightness of the German victory over a relatively dull Argentina in last night’s showpiece surely artfully plonks the cherry.

But… before looking again at the meaning of all of this, I’ll hand over to the Morrissey lookalike sitting alongside me on the sofa. Because it’s time for my regular dance with miserablism, moralism and emphatic, quiff-swaying pomp.

This has unquestionably been a vibrant, colourful and sometimes brilliant World Cup but not one that allows me to go with the Best Thing Since Sliced Wotsists – not quite. Too many things cut across that notion – key examples include the measured negativism of Holland and Argentina; the low standard of the host country; the continuing drift towards anarchy on the park.

Let’s start with that last one… and get it out the way.

#Brazil2014 confirmed or reaffirmed the sad truth that ‘top’ players are now spending too much of the 90 minutes seeking advantage rather than playing. The Holy Grail is apparently that moment where you find yourself on the edge of the box – or in it – horny with the possibility that you may by some means draw a foul. The actual goal as an objective has receded into the distance, so that only the drawing of contact counts. That grieves me. For so many players to be rejecting the idea that the most life-affirming surge of adrenalin might best be employed to jink gleefully but cleanly past the defender before lashing the ball wholeheartedly into the roof of the net saddens me. However retro or unrealistic it may sound, I just wish they’d dismiss the very existence of the defenders, dart instinctively towards the red zone and smash the fucking thing. Like they used to.

I know how corny it sounds. Robben and Muller aren’t Malcolm MacDonald, eh? The game’s moved on. But I know I ain’t the only one thinking this drift towards games made ungovernable by the cynicism and the cheating of players is BIG and BAD.

Muller and Robben may be word-class footballers but they are both evidently shit sportsmen. They habitually cheat through shameless exaggeration or pure invention of that most contemporary (and cancerous?) of concepts – contact. Forgive me but cheating is unacceptable. Not regrettable, or inconvenient, or inevitable – unacceptable. You don’t have to be weirdly conservative to believe honesty is important in sport or anywhere else. Honesty is important – it’s a central part of that which makes life – and games – work.

I regret but don’t accept either the need to go on the defensive about that value; I’ve written many times about the need for a powerful step back towards that idealism. I still think a Gentlemanly Conduct law could be redrafted to bundle football back into line on this.

In Brazil (as in the Prem/La Liga etc etc) with a zillion witnesses we saw the following on countless occasions; an international player either chugging purposefully or bursting athletically towards the danger area with but a single thought in his head – to throw himself shamelessly as soon as a defender’s leg was stretched. I’ve heard it said that there is some skill in ‘drawing’ fouls this way but c’mon, really? What could be cheaper or more crushingly anti-sport? Players are plainly unable to restrain this appalling instinct so it falls on those who govern the game to sort this. (Surely this is do-able, given the 86 cameras on every significant event in world football?) For me, until it is dealt with there will be no relief from the drift away from full-on, life-affirming sport – from pure footie.

The second major disappointment was the unsurprising but still dispiriting funk that was the host team. Brazil have been ordinary for arguably 20 years – certainly they have rarely showed the expectant world the kind of football for which they are famed – but there was no avoiding the near-cataclysmic sense of well… despair that engulfed the host nation and provided an unwelcome mega-story for the tournament. SEVEN – ONE.

Let’s face it Brazil had a head-start in terms of goodwill, the buzz around this World Cup being manifestly sexier and buzzier than yer average quadrennial gathering. I can’t imagine a neutral anywhere not wanting to see some festival football from these hosts or at the very least downright expectant of an upful shindig given the context of beachy, beautiful, footie-daft people. Brazil (the nation – or nations?) was well up for it; the team, however, was simply inadequate.

I confess to some minor toldyouso-ism following an early-tournament twitter prediction that either #Ned or #Ger might stick 5 past the hosts given their diabolical defending. When it came to pass in such dramatic, nay traumatic style I felt angry rather than vindicated – angry for the arrogance of Luiz and Marcello and the rest, who have plainly been dreaming they are no. 10’s for aeons and have finally been found out for simply not bothering to work at their real jobs.

Scolari is of course culpable in this, for imagining a clubby, fatherly relationship would see his poorly selected, frankly inept crew through. Ultimately an obviously consistently negligent group got what they deserved, if somewhat cruelly. Is it strangely gratifying that our press aren’t the one’s screaming Show Ponies?

The generally more predictable inertia around the other semi (and mercifully, just a few of the other ‘knockout’ matches) was simply tournament football in action. Argentina were unlovely but successful against a Dutch side who did a whole lot more but without that finding, expressing or urgently seeking the freedom to unleash. Van Gaal enhanced his reputation (you do wonder if this was as important to him as the progress of his team, especially given the theatrics around That Goalkeeping Change?) but chose not to liberate up his side. Whilst the majority of coaches would do the same in the circumstances that ole idealist in me wants to believe he would have been better advised to have bawled ‘we’re plainly better than these Argies – go get ‘em, boys!’ before instructing Schneider and co to flood forward into the box. Except I suppose, that if they’d gone in there, they’d only be thinking of that one thing… contact.

So let’s remember the other stuff; the freshness and brilliance of James Rodrigues maybe, the sheer quality of the German’s teamwork, the gusto and the brilliant defiance of the Americans. Mini-glories from Iran and Costa Rica, gallantry and ecstasy, as well as local heartbreak or overly growed-up caution. If we can ever separate the obscenity of all that money spent on our indulgences – and perhaps we are simply wrong to do so? – this was a really good World Cup.