Torres

Fear not, friends, for this is the way…

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Those of you familiar with that parallel universe inhabited and perhaps even created by yours (f) truly – the vinnymeister – will no doubt appreciate the challenges presented thissaway by ‘covering’ the Spain/Italy final. Whether you will sympathise may be another matter. Put simply, my tendency for foamy action-painting-writing may, with each reminiscence of each threaded pass or nuanced offering, backwash the hell out of whatever was/is reported/intended. Leading to fruiticious anarchy of the most aromatic or indulged sort. I care not; it is my intention to reflect the death-defying poetry of these hypnotically controlling romantics, these brave revolutionaries, these um… Spaniards.

Thus, in psycho-purist good faith…and having denied myself the right to instantaneously orgasmic response… an appreciation.

In their pirouetting and their brimful/loveful dance towards Sunday’s very special victory, Spain have simply changed the football world; for the better. Breathe it in.  In restating and even re-imagining, re-validating their own brilliant and joyous conceptions of footie trust and belief and execution, the diddy, ticky-tacky ones have not so much entertained us as bathed us lucky lucky punters in their elixir.

Such was the lushness, the irresistibly elevating nature of this seminal game of togger. Whether or when the question was meekly or impudently asked – by innocent or heathen or centre-forward-obsessed reactionary – the Spanish, gathering us all up, strode to the mount to deliver their loved-up sermon; in repudiation of the necrophiliac 4-4-2; in glorious praise of liberated though team-hung expression.

Fear not, friends, for this is the way. Gaze or gawp upon it and repent. (Roy).

Well, it had something of the #biblical about it, eh? That utter and almost otherworldly grace; that resonance; that hayzooss gorblimey darting to the heart. Spain – to borrow James Blood Ulmer’s description of an inspired pil – went right past football.

Right past it and into something lovely and rather deep as well as bewildering; something that we surely need to both appreciate and in some measure try to understand, methinks – we Brits in particular.

So, what did they do?

  • They wee-weed purringly, ecstatically over notions of mediocrity
  • They championed skill over hardness
  • They beautifully extended the possibilities of the beautiful game

But what does that mean?

  • That small can be beautiful/effective/strong
  • That intelligence trumps mere effort
  • That they understand and we don’t.

I am clear that Spain’s triumph was a triumph for the game in the sense that they really have taken us somewhere better. In terms of what we might call/are calling inevitably culture. Previous truly great footballing sides – whether Brazilian, Dutch or possibly French – may or may not be meaningfully compared but my suspicion is that what Spain have over all of them is the quality, the depth of their understanding and belief in their own way. Plus a purity from first to last; in comfort and ‘under pressure’; from nominal centre half to False 9 – an unshakeably pure faith in passing and moving and threading and darting a way through, without compromise. In a carousel of triangles of awareness. Options, always-available options, improving or momentum-changing, arising from good, purposeful, communal work.

There is unquestionably a moral dimension to this – listen to them talk. Humbly, generally but always in the certain knowledge of this daft-wondrous footie righteousness, this faith in the power of their skills being evidentially more powerful than fifty yard passes; more certain.

So, what we get is a line-up of New Age Total Footballers. No strikers; because they believe that Fabregas or Silva or Alonso or Iniesta can finish and that they are manifestly better and more influential and more threatening than the current Torres. (And there is no Villa.) And acute or focussed surges from midfield are then the key to unlocking the modern defence.

In fact these uber-hombres believe that they have 10 likely goal-scorers on the park, not one or two. The fluency and the rotation and the efficacy of their alleged midfield – numbering what, 6? – making a mockery of dumb crusty Brits bemoaning Spain’s lack of a Jackie Milburn. Spain (not entirely incidentally Cindy) won the final 4-0, with no forwards but a forward threat that Italy, that great bastion of streetwise defending could not cope with!

Yet Spain have been labelled boring. This is just lazy. There are times when they may not be as exciting as a rampant Brazilian side in mid salsa down the pitch (last seen 15 years ago?) but… come on… boring?

Okay, feasible to remain unmoved by the playing of percentages as the ball is shuffled (occasionally) blandly around… but don’t please go mistaking their ball-retention as boring when it surely reflects the patient ticking of a brilliant mind. Something sensational and inventive will happen – with or without David Villa or Fernando Torres at its thrilling peak. That 4-0 – these 3 tournaments! – annihilate the arguments; both in terms of what is right and what is beautiful; Spain win. Where does that leave us?

Not all England players are as bad as might be apparent to the average Ukrainian onlooker at his or her home tournament. But as a squad, as a ‘nation’, England strode idiotically and embarrassingly backwards yet again. They may have discovered some team spirit but this was not reflected in teamwork; or certainly not in what we might call linking, or interplay, of which there was catastrophically little.

I watched every minute of England’s games and can barely recall anything resembling joined up footie. Even Gerrard, who carried his side with some honour in three of the games, achieved very little constructively. More typical was the contribution of Parker – whom I rate – but whose passing was either lame or non-existent for virtually the entire period. It is barely credible that a footballing nation of any stature could again produce such a void where football should be. Except that we do precisely that at every tournament we attend; one reason I came to resent this latest shambles.

Hodgson may yet do okay but it is not too early to challenge some of the central tenets of his footballing philosophy – a philosophy itself in need of arguably seriously independent review following the exhibition by Spain – the revelations from Spain – in Euro 2012. We might understand a manager with only a matter of a few weeks in charge of a group of generally mediocre players ‘needing’ to play safe -circle those metaphorically predictable wagons – avoiding ‘disaster’ being the immediate objective of this ungenerous worldview.  People, there has to be more.

In a Group Stage that was both absurd and utterly predictable England were close to appalling but won their group. For twenty minutes they made a decent contribution to a quarter-final against a workmanlike Italian side but then were soundly beaten before deservedly losing on penalties. Some folks talked of positives at the time of the Group Stage win but meaningful assessments became largely swamped by penno-trauma. We need to get past this.

The new England boss went for a caricature of English ‘dependability’ from the outset. The kind of 2 Banks of 4 that might launch now a thousand aching post-modern odes to Imperial Delusion. In one sense, it kinda worked – that Group win. In another it was like some deeply cartoonlike or ironic thing whereby slumbering giant fails to notice diddymen tying up gargantuan laces before then entering Giant Sportsday. Cue resounding kerrlummpp… and giant returning to slumber.

Except maybe the giant link flatters England these days. But there was something of a return to a fall from grace, or at least a further falling away and behind in that ultimately, predictably sterile 2 banks of 4.

Given the obvious and appealing supremacy now of what I once coined ‘twinkle over clonk’ and the need for a tectonic shift in emphasis in what remains the English national game, we may need to look carefully at whether Hodgson is really the man to preside over England FC. He may be some kind of a sophisticate – possibly – but the former Fulham man seems unlikely to lead us so necessarily and so dramatically forward after his initial and emphatic steps back.

A memory alights; that Brian Clough once said something typically acerbic, throwaway and profound about raising the skill level when competition was at its most pressured peak. In other words, you stoo-pid pee-ple… skill will out.

No fat lady has sung; to my knowledge.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Read something really quite interesting the other day. On the subject of fickleness, I suppose, or at least regarding the alleged facts of fandom – whether or not this notion of the part-time or unreal fan is a fair kop. (That worth a ha ha?) Or whether it’s always been statistically the case that most fans either have more than one true love in their football ether, or actually go to watch more than one club; god forbid. Anthropologists studying that commonly identified sub-group The Bloke will be unsurprised I think that within this revealingly sharp and often vitriolic debate about Prawn Sarnie Munchers being Scum-a-the-earth or the Financial Lifeblood of the Premier League, there is a historical narrative for infidelity. Apparently, for yonks, it has been gently gently secretly the case that supporters have been de-tribalising themselves in order to watch better teams outside the immediate thrall of The Manor, or shouting Ev’ton one week and Liv’pool the next (for example.) Thereby dancing silently upon the grave of their own authenticity in the eyes of all right-minded people – like themselves.

God it’s a twisted world.

In life I make a point of a) being a huge optimist but b) never really believing anybodies facts and figures, so I won’t mention that the above research on home supporters is liberated from an article in Spiel magazine, lest you go accepting/reading it. Besides, I’m dealing in the woozily general again here, and do not intend (even) to write an article about football. I merely throw in this psycho-geographically resonating lifebuoy to provide comfort to those unable to persist with a post that turns out… against the early expectations… to be, in a roundabout way, about rugbystuff.

So what are we like, eh? One minute we’re crowing or guffawing at either George North or the Irish Pack; the next we’ve drifted. Back to the Real Sporting Giants – Drogba/Suarez/Torres and soon enough Rooney. As though they can or rightfully do satiate our needs both for sporting drama and mighty role-models. Providing us with everything a fan – fickle or sanctimoniously beyond those apparently spurious judgements – could ever ask for.

The Six Nations comes to an unseemly deadstop, like some campaign in the Daily Mail undermined because it suddenly seemed Leftie; quietly and terminally, mirroring something of the muffled bitterness articulated by those dubiously rugby-converted purple rinses with their suddenly cultivated obsession for Our Stuart Getting That England Job, ahead of that Mallett man, with his unsettlingly dark features. The natural order of things succeeding, in The Mail and the proper world; properly.

The sudden smotheration of not just The Six Nations but of the existence of rugby in the British(?) consciousness so soon after that final toot at Twickenham last weekend must surely be a metaphor for something. As well as being another one of those alleged facts. Perhaps it means that – shock horror probe – folks are not died-in-the-wool, touch-pause-engaged fans in the real head-to-the-left-now-hit-like-fuck sense. They – like most of the referees at international level – have no genuine feeling for, or understanding of the dark arts or finer points of frontrowdom. They admire something of that knightish physicality; wonder how that game can go on like that with that bloke reeling around under the trainer’s insensitive touch, four foot six away from the ongoing action. Why don’t they stop, like in proper games? And how does that counter-rucking thing work anyway? And how can that thing there be right, when thingumee just pawed oosit with his studs? Like that!?! Deliberately. What ARE the rules exactly, about that?

In Wales and quite possibly Ireland there is some general understanding. The Vinnygeez has waxed lyrical often enough about this. (In Wales) red cloudbursts of communal expression; joy through clumping; tries against the English as symbols of nothing more than reasons to exist as a nation. Proper engagement on a national, visceral and poetic level. Max Boyce as the Pope/Tom Jones as The Singing Pope – or something. Something like a very much friendlier triptych than might be produced (on a post Grand Slam bender?) by Francis Bacon, let’s say, who despite his fringe-celtic toff-centric out-there-ism I suspect didn’t know much about the game of rugby. Like many residents of Soho. Apart from Brian Moore. Who really does know plenty.

But I fear I digress. (Like for a living, almost.) The point I wish to make is that there is some sudden flopping off the continental shelf going on here, as the Fact Of Rugby slips like some unappreciated gloop into the all-consuming depths. And I am interested in the reasons for that. I have a hope that because the general level of sportsmanship, commitment, fitness and honourability amongst top rugby players is so absurdly high that therefore its profile and relevance and capacity to touch the hearts of (ideally) nine year-old boys and girls will deservedly soar. Leading to – amongst other things but as a suggested minimum – a manifest improvement in respect for the planet and all who inhabit it/the necessary election of a series of humanitarian socialist governments. Because rugby really is pretty wonderful, containing as it does a uniquely focused and encapsulated form of selflessness, teamwork and bravery that entitles it fully to snort derisively at (for example) Drogba’s ham-and-pineapple quattro-staggione-in-one-day blousy affectations. Rugby I know not being perfect but rarely being that embarrassing. But I fear I digress.

Look the rugby season for our friendly Six didn’t finish just because those games did. In fact right now the club season approaches its critical phase; Heineken Cup; Premiership Trophy; equivalents and more to the massively more exposed football carnivals. So let there be space for both in your own personal calendar.

And on the international scene this enthralling but actually parochial knockabout recently enjoyed may well feel disappointingly clubby compared to summer tours or autumn internationals against the acknowledged kingly beasts and champions of the game – the Tri-Nations posse. Either way, don’t look away so prematurely, so part-time-supportedly, so uninformedly now. Because quite frankly if you invest a touch more of your time into appreciating what these backs and forwards are up to, you may well find it’s shockingly expressive of the greater sporting instincts. Those that touch pause engage upon support; heart; camaraderie. Remember them?