Abnormally,
the sun is rising in south-west London but the dust has not yet settled on Chelsea’s
magnificent Champions League campaign. There are those still who hold Barcelona
up as a paradigm of footballing virtue and still fail to applaud Chelsea for
beating them over 180 minutes of football. There are still those who fail to
recognise the achievement of beating a Bayern Munich team in their own back
yard, a team who had progressed past the best team in Spain, Real Madrid.
The point of
this article is to dispel the myths of modern football, to outlaw certain words
and to maybe provide a new slant on what it means to be “better” at football
than another team. I will take Chelsea as my primary example and seek to
undermine various phrases that currently blight the modern game.
1. “Chelsea played negative football”
Negative football? What does this mean? Did they
deliberately score own goals? That is the only way I can conceive of a team
playing negative football. So long as a team is not deliberately kicking the
ball into their own net, they are playing positive
football. I would ban the use of the words positive and negative – they are
meaningless and have arisen out of a culture that has seen football stray from
its core purpose into the entertainment business. Normally, and always at the
elite end of the game, there are far more neutrals watching a game than fans of
either team. These neutrals want to be entertained and they privilege the team
that entertains them. Entertainment usually means going out to score as many
goals as possible. Most neutrals are not the absolute connoisseur who admires
heroic defence as much as silky attack. This is a shame, but it’s also a fact
of life.
So the
friction is between Chelsea’s desire to win the match (tie) and the neutrals
desire to be entertained. I make no apologies for respecting the team that is
doing right by its fans in its efforts to win. A team has no responsibility to
please the neutral. They are obliged to win, to try to win, and therefore to
please the fans. Playing well is a bonus. Every right-minded fan would rather
win a Champions League “ugly” (whatever that means...) than lose in a
semi-final playing beautiful football. Sport at the highest level is about
winning.
Chelsea had
no responsibility to go out all guns blazing, throwing caution to the wind and
paying scant regard to their team’s ability in relation to that of the eleven
supremos opposite you. Whoever said attack is the best form of defence is a
liar and has never had Messi, Xavi and Iniesta running full pelt at them.
2. “Barca were the better team”
We love
sport because of its inherently empirical nature. There is a winner determined
by a score. As far as I’m concerned, the score does not lie. We love sport
because sport really pays no attention to subjective measures like ‘better’
except the score. That is why the score exists, as a judge for who is better.
Undoubtedly,
Barcelona are a better football team than Chelsea. If they played each other 10
times Barca would probably win 7, Chelsea 1 and they might draw 2. But that’s
not how football works. League football is closer to this model, hence why
teams would rather win a league than a cup – it’s a better judge. But over 180
minutes, Chelsea were better. They managed to produce the performance that led
to the one victory and one of the draws. Do they not deserve credit for
producing the two performances that led to them scoring more goals than
Barcelona?
Simply,
Barcelona played the most wonderful attacking football and Chelsea played the
most dogged defensive football. Football is about blocking shots just as much
as it is about shooting. Barcelona’s attack is wonderful, though, isn’t it? Or
is it? What is the point of attacking? How do you judge an attack? Goals.
Barcelona’s attack was successful in every way except in the final analysis of actually
putting the ball in the back of the net. You can have as many shots as you like
but if you don’t hit the target then what’s the point? I’m not going to join in
the fetishising of Barcelona’s liquid
football if their shooting is so poor as it was against Chelsea. They missed
a penalty, too, possibly one of the few moments in football where the
responsibility lies so heavily with the taker.
Chelsea set
their stall out to play a certain way. They pulled it off. Barcelona set their
stall out to play a certain way. They failed. And despite the fact that Chelsea
were playing such defensive minded football (not negative), they still outscored Barca by three goals to two over
180 minutes of football.
Chelsea were the victims of the fetishising of Barcelona. Such
contrived fawning is an unpleasant sight in sport and it’s a hangover from when
Barcelona truly were great. They would win with such grace and style and
panache. But when these qualities are prized above winning, I lose interest. Sure,
Chelsea fans would have loved to have progressed playing wonderful football but
every team has its limits and you have to play the opposition. They succeeded
magnificently. Beating Barcelona over two legs is impressive, outscoring them
is heroic. So I salute the shot-blocking winners of Chelsea more than the
squandering wastefulness of Barcelona and say that the better team is that
which carries out its intentions in such a way that results in a victory. The
only thing to say to those who claim Barcelona were the better team is “prove
it”. They did not, could not. Hence, Chelsea progressed.
3. “Chelsea didn’t deserve to win”
Who ‘deserves’ to win? Who decides who ‘deserves’ to win?
What on earth means that one team has the divine right to score more goals than
the opposition, seeing as that is what winning is?
The word ‘deserve’ should be removed from sporting lexicon
and we should all accept that in 99.9% of cases, the team who wins is the team
who ‘deserved to win’. Why should a team who records 50 shots and scores no
goal ‘deserve’ to beat a team who shoots once and scores? Either one team has
an excellent goalkeeper who saves all these shots (in which case, credit to
them for having a good goalkeeper), the shots need to be of a higher quality to
beat the goalkeeper or the team that manages to let that one shot become a goal
needs to have a look at why it managed to let a team with what appears to be an
awful attack score a goal against them.
Bayern had wasted 14 corners before Chelsea took full
advantage of their first. Well done Bayern for playing in such a way that resulted
in those corners but either the delivery wasn’t good enough or their heading is
not good enough or Chelsea’s defending of those corners was excellent. Whatever
the combination of reasons, it is the team that manages to defend 14 corners and
score from 1 that I admire rather than the team that fails to score from 14 and
lets in 1.
Why is it that so many privilege the wasteful team with the
poor defence over the solid team with the potent attack that takes its chances.
No team ‘deserves’ to win as a result of creating lots of opportunities that
please the neutral viewer. Such a team may well be better at football but that
is largely irrelevant if they cannot, on the day, put the ball in the back of
the net.
Bayern were apparently the better team and ‘deserved’ to win.
But they, like Barcelona, missed a penalty. Messi and Robben were wasteful. Why
should a team which takes an awful penalty kick win? I see no reason why they
should. Chelsea’s goalkeeper beat Bayern’s penalty taker so why do people say
Bayern ‘deserved’ to win?
4. Conclusion
Let us ignore those who make pronouncements about what is positive and what is negative. To use these terms is to
mistake the point of sport. I love attacking football and certainly prefer it
to defensive minded football but not at the expense of victory. Anyone who
disagrees when it comes to their team has questionable ideas about what they
want from their team. I repeat, give me the victoriously heroic shot-blockers
of Chelsea over the creative yet ultimately wasteful Barcelona every time.
Let us ignore those who think the team who wastes 14 corners is
better than the team who scores a wonderful goal from their 1 corner.
And finally, let us ignore those who say that one team
deserves a victory over another. Sport is the great equaliser. It may appear
that Barcelona and Bayern are better football teams than Chelsea but football
disagrees. It challenges your preconceived notions of what it means to be a
good football team. In 99.9% of cases, the team that wins deserves to win. To say
that Bayern deserve to win is to
excuse the wanton wastefulness of Gomes, the lack of bottle exhibited by Arjen
Robben and to deny the terrific lesson in defence given by Ashley Cole and the
whole-hearted performance given by Didier Drogba. That, I cannot bring myself
to do.
