Talking Tactics

In my blog a couple of weeks ago I mentioned how football has a strange duality in being simultaneously simple and complicated; a street game that can be played with just about anything spherical (and, I dunno, perhaps a couple of jumpers for goalposts?) and a complex tactical chess match played between two grandmasters, except with drunker spectators and grotesquely overpaid pieces.

Football tactics are constantly evolving thanks to pioneering managers such as Arthur Rowe (push-and-run), Rinus Michels (total football) and Tony Pulis (find-someone-who-can-throw-really-far).  It can be argued that in this sense the modern English game has lagged behind a bit – a cyclical criticism that often breaks the surface of public consciousness after a humiliating summer spanking by tactically astute Germans.

Over the past few years, it’s evident that the average English football punter has started to take knowledge of tactics a little more seriously. This is reflected by a proliferation of websites and blogs dedicated to the subject, such as http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/football-tactics and www.zonalmarking.net. Last week I was at AFC Wimbledon against Morecombe and picked up a new Dons fanzine, “Wise Men Say”. The editors had obviously picked up on this new found appetite for tactical knowledge and dedicated six pages to an interview with the club’s academy director to help readers savvy up in this area. The article was genuinely insightful, covering a broad range of tactical titbits ranging from the defensive idiosyncrasies of the Spanish national team to the utilisation of natural rotation in the AFC Wimbledon under 15s. Frankly, after the game I thought they should’ve stuck the under 15s out instead, as the first team played like a pub side that had been on the piss all night.

So where has this hunger for tactical knowledge come from? Personally, I think many of us have had to admit that we don’t know as much about tactics as we like to think. Maybe that’s putting it too nicely: We’ve finally realised that we’ve all been shouting at managers/players and TV screens for years without having a fucking clue what we’re going on about, hopelessly deluding ourselves that a few years under our collective belts playing schoolboy football makes us all oracles of the game.

Our ignorance runs deep. Like many kids, I grew up playing 4-4-2. You knew your position and you stuck to it – rigidly. As left-winger, my job was to attack the flanks when we had the ball, and mark the opposition’s right winger when we didn’t – simple.  When I was 13 I was switched to striker. This job was even easier – hang around on the halfway line and chat to the centre backs –usually about Byker Grove or “fingering” girls – until one of our midfielders hoofed the ball over the defensive line for me to chase. I actually wasn’t a bad player at that level and got picked up by a scout for my local side, Crystal Palace. When I got to the training session I was in for big shock – this was proper football. We played mini-games where we were taught about positioning, movement and switching fluidly between attacking and defensive formations. Still pretty basic stuff, but neuroscience compared to what I’d been taught before. Unfortunately, I was used to being a big fish in a small pond and I suddenly felt like I was now swimming out of my depth. I stupidly decided to knock Palace on my head and return to blissful ignorance.

Playing at schoolboy level helped me enjoy football more, but the Tesco Value tutorage I received from unqualified coaches only gave me a limited understanding of the game. As the frailties of England’s flat 4-4-2 became exposed by more advanced nations, I - along with many others - suddenly realised at age 30 that my knowledge of the game was already archaic. Thankfully, it seems that the quality of coaching has vastly improved since I was a kid.  They are being taught the game in a structured way rather than just being stuck in a position and told “off you go” (while the coach goes for a snout) – so hopefully they won’t be left behind in the same way my generation was. As for me, like many other fans, I’ve been hitting the books to make up for lost time and have started to see the game in a new light after all these years. And, of course, I now have the right to tell Harry Redknapp EXACTLY what to do.

Milan Restore Balance of World Football.

When I was ten I played for a football team called Pirates, and we were rubbish. Not ordinary Blackburn rubbish, but hammered-ten-nil-every-week crap. Our coach was a Neanderthal called Steve who could’ve easily made a decent living as a Grant Mitchell lookalike. Memories of my first competitive forays on the football pitch are dominated by Steve barking orders on the sidelines beside his long-suffering wife, whose job it was to cut the half-time oranges and stop Steve smashing the shit out of opposition managers. One evening at training, Steve bounded over to where we were assembled with the excitement of a kid who had just found a shiny of his favourite club in a packet of Panini. “We’ve got a new player!” he beamed, leaving a dramatic pause before adding “and he’s Italian! PROPER Italian!” We all looked at each other, suddenly understanding Steve’s exuberance. Italian? Wow!

This was 1990 and Italian football held an almost mythical status among us kids. We knew it was where the greatest players from across the globe (and Ray Wilkins) plied their trade. The mystique was enhanced by the fact that, contrary to today’s plethora, there was little European/UEFA/Cup-Winners cup coverage on TV as English teams were still affected by the ban imposed by UEFA following the Heysel disaster. What we did know was that Arrigo Saatchi’s great Milan side were Kings of Europe, having lifted the continent’s top prize the previous season. For me, Milan represented the best of the best – club football’s Brazil – a super-team packed with the era’s Galacticos.  It’s home-grown heroes, Baresi, Donadoni, Albertini and Costacurta, along with the Dutchman Frank Rijkaard formed the core of the team. But for me, there were three that stood above all. First and foremost was the steely-eyed, elegant and down-right beautiful Paulo Maldini , Milan’s left-back who could’ve been mistaken for a young Italian nobleman  stepped straight out of a Canaletto crowd scene. Next, Marco Van Basten, who exuded a nonchalant, understated arrogance combined with the cold detachment and ruthlessness of Edward Fox’s assassin in The Day of the Jackal. It wouldn't surprise me if Van Basten's pre match ritual was to buy a melon, duab it with a likeness of that weekend's opposition goalkeeper, drive out to the countryside and shoot it to bits with a high-powered sniper rifle. And, of course, there was the wonderfully versatile Ruud Gullit, at home in any position on the pitch (and in the bedroom if Johan Cruyff’s daughter is to be believed), who came to epitomise “sexy football” despite looking a bit like one of the geezers from Aswad.  These players personified the grace, style and swagger that were unattainable to English football. Italian football, encapsulated by Milan, had it all.

Since those glory days, much has been made of the demise of Italian football, as the world’s best gradually started upping sticks to follow the money to the nouveau riche clubs of England and Spain. While some have welcomed the shift of power away from what they see as a league that advocates negative, unexciting football, being a child of the 80s I have always believed that Italy is where the world’s best players and teams belong. Despite being English, I feel like the new money that’s poured into our league has somehow upset football’s cosmic natural balance and our clubs have become like gangsters who rock up to the Estate Agent in the posh part of town and pay for their mansions in used notes.

So it was with great satisfaction and a warm nostalgic buzz that I enjoyed Milan outclass and clinically despatch my behated Arsenal last Wednesday night. Right from the off I felt that I was about to witness something very special. As the game kicked off the San Siro was pulsating with energy. Goodness knows what it was like playing there, but at home the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. The atmosphere in the big Italian stadiums is different gear; no delusional chants about *INSERT NAME HERE* being the greatest team the world has ever seen or infantile ditties about Shaun Wright-Phillip’s mum, just pure, undiluted intimidation. A perfect example was Milan’s call-and-response chant of, er… something in Italian (it doesn’t matter anyway). The call part, presumably shouted by only a handful of supporters, was inaudible on the telly and made the booming response – from about 70,000 mouths – sound completely spontaneous. It was enough to make Russell Crowe piss his tunic. Like the bit in Jaws where some poor sod’s bitten-off loaf pops out of a hole in a boat, it made me jump every time, even though I knew it was coming.

Arsenal were like timid kittens that had been chucked into a pit of black and red striped tigers. It was all a bit too much for the North Londoners. Despite having decent possession they looked about as threatening as a machete made of wafer. Milan on the other hand looked happy to let them have the ball before winning it back – by saying “boo” really loudly – and attacking at will. Kevin-Prince Boateng’s blazing opener set the San Siro on fire – an absolute screamer that was straight out of a kid’s computer game. I half expected to see the ball ignite in blue flame and evaporate the net on impact. Professional unit Phillipe Mexes patrolled the back line like an uncompromising, belligerent bouncer, Robinho looked like he was having the time of his life and even the mercurial Zlatan Ibrahimovic broke the habit of a lifetime and stuck in a performance against an English side, showing us for once EXACTLY what all the fuss is about.  The performance was a glorious reminder of why I grew up loving Milan and Italian football, and after the game I felt like the equilibrium of world football had been restored.

With the likes of Baggio and Maldini stirring our young imaginations it was obvious in hindsight that Giuseppe wasn’t going to live up to our childish expectations. Steve wasn’t lying – he was proper Italian. As in didn’t-speak-a-word –of-English Italian. We first saw him trotting along beside his father, a tall and sophisticated Roman, who was talking to his antithesis Steve (who had, by this time, been reduced to a squealing Japanese schoolgirl) with a look of polite bemusement on his tanned face as the Englishman desperately tried to establish a rapport with a man with whom he would clearly never have anything on common (“my nan was Italian y’know!”). Giuseppe was a lovely kid, but an awful footballer who, not being accustomed to the climate, tended to cry during games when the weather got colder. I guess it was on those frozen Saturday mornings that Italian football started to waver on its plinth, and despite our new import we remained rooted to the bottom of the division for the duration of the season. And the champions of the Tolworth Primary Boys Football League that year? None other than the great A3 Milan.

What's in a handshake?

The great thing about football is that it can be enjoyed on so many levels. It’s a game that’s easily accessible in terms of spectatorship and participation. Paradoxically, it’s both simple (you need to get more goals than the other lot) and mind bogglingly complicated (have a read of a tactical review of a game on www.zonalmarking.net which will leave you convinced that Neil Warnock is a strategist extraordinaire on a par with General Patton and Gary Kaspirov).

You follow a team – maybe more than one. They might play in front of crowds of 80,000 or 80. They could be on your doorstep or you might have a 600 mile round trip for a home game. Anyone watching the ESPN coverage of Spurs v Newcastle last night would’ve seen the shaven-headed Geordie hard-nut, stripped to the waist (on the top half thank goodness) in sub-zero temperatures baring his considerable beer-induced bulk and displaying his many tattoos relating to his beloved Newcastle United. The Prime Minister supports them too.

As it’s a sport so inextricably embedded into our culture it makes it fascinating from a sociological perspective as well – look at how many academic texts were written about the hooligan sub-culture and masculinity in the 1990s. It’s often said that football is a microcosm (a pretty fucking big one if you ask me) of our wider society. The problem is that it all too often reflects its darker cultural configurations such as racism (most recently the Terry and Suarez incidents) and sexism (Paul Jewell’s comments about Sian Massey a few weeks back). This disconcerting blot on the game was again brought sharply back into focus yesterday when Luis Suarez spectacularly custard-pied Patrice Evra (metaphorically, praise be) before the Man Utd v Liverpool game. I won’t go into what happened here, because unless you have been stuck on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic for the last 36 hours you would’ve already seen the incident at least 182 times in 3-D, HD and good, old fashioned slow motion from a multitude of angles.

It’s of course not the first time the pre-match handshake has come under such intense scrutiny; originally there was Beckham/Simeone (handshake successfully completed, albeit with a dirty look from Becks), Bridge/Terry (no handshake) and A. Ferdinand/Terry (there’s a pattern here…), which saw the F.A take the most sensible approach and ditch the whole meaningless ritual to avoid exactly the kind of scene we saw at Old Trafford yesterday.

Unfortunately the FA has today categorically stated that the pre-match handshake will remain. But why? What is the point of this sportsmanship at gun-point if there is no real meaning behind it? Stuart Pearce once said that he didn’t want to shake hand with his opponents before the game and while going through the physical motions refused to make eye contact with players from the other team. Why make him do it in the first place, then? What’s wrong with giving people the freedom to shake hands with those they want to shake hands with in the tunnel before they go out on the pitch?

Of course it’s all to do with the FA’s well-meaning-but-doomed RESPECT campaign, where the shining beacons of valour and chivalry that are our professional footballers (are supposed to) set a good example for our little cherubs to emulate on the pitch and in society (and everyone lives happily ever after). I have no doubt that the handshake would be a credible gesture of sportsmanship if it wasn’t completely undermined by players spending the rest of the game cheating, repeatedly telling the ref to “fuck off” with impunity and occasionally calling each other “black cunts” (allegedly). It’s this sort of disrespect to each other and attitudes to authority that kids take with them onto the pitches and into classrooms, and unless the FA starts clamping down on this by making examples of these “role-models” then the whole handshake thing will continue to serve only idiots like Luis Suarez, who can use the all-eyes-on-me moment to make a point.

The most depressing thing that’s sprung from the whole Suarez fiasco is that Liverpool F.C’s handling of the situation has caused some of the club’s long-standing supporters to stop following the team at all. One fan, Jeff Wiltshire said “I became increasingly disgusted by the clubs reaction. I haven’t been able to watch them since”.  Nuff said really.

FIFA Poppy Outcry - What does it mean?

Over the past week or so a storm has raged over FIFA's decree that England players should not be allowed to wear embroidered poppies on their shirts during tonight’s friendly against Spain. Football’s governing body has stood firm despite criticism from leading politicians (including our Prime Minister) and a wave of outrage from many aggrieved members of the British public. FIFA have declared that having poppies on shirts breaks its rule that state national football shirts "should not carry political, religious or commercial messages". Many fans see the action as yet another example of Sep Blatter and his FIFA cronies indulging in their favourite pastime of England-bashing.

Whatever FIFA’s motive behind the decision, the furore raises a few interesting points about the poppy and what it represents. It’s now commonplace to see football shirts embroidered with poppies being worn by footballers in the top flight in the period around Remembrance Day, presumably on the say-so of the Premier League (I doubt that each player decides spontaneously to break out the needle and thread themselves). While the poppy has been a symbol of remembrance since 1920, the trend of its placement on Premier League football shirts is only a few seasons old. This strikes me as strange as it coincides with a period in English football where we have unprecedented numbers of foreign players plying their trade in the Premier League, many of whom come from countries that have no connection to "our" wars or those being remembered at all. This begs the questions; what is the point of these players wearing the poppy, and – assuming the players had the decision to wear the poppies made for them - has the notion of the poppy as an individual expression, made out of choice, been replaced by the idea of it representing something more homogenous and compulsory?

Similarly, if you watch television around Remembrance Day almost every presenter you see on any given show is wearing a poppy, which almost certainly suggests they are at the very least "asked" to wear one. Again this appears to be something quite new in relation to how long the poppy has been used as a symbol. Jon Snow sparked debate over the poppy last year when he was criticised for not wearing one whilst presenting Channel 4 News. In response he coined the phrase "poppy fascism" to describe the social pressure to wear the symbol if you’re in the public eye. The fact that Snow was criticised in the first place suggests that the poppy has shifted from a simple symbol of remembrance into an indicator of whether or not an individual is part of “something”, with an underlying "if you're not for us you're against us" attitude from a small but vocal number. The FIFA ban has given the exponents of this attitude fresh vigour and produced a new indicator in terms of who is part of this “something” and who isn’t: Anger. When it comes to this particular issue to be angry is to belong.

I don’t recall these kind of debates surrounding poppies in the past, which suggests that something significant has changed fairly recently. In fact the act of Remembrance itself appears to be going through some kind of metamorphosis in terms of what it represents culturally. The outrage over the FIFA decision to "ban the poppy" and indeed the FA's decision to put it on the shirt in the first place, combined with the prevalence of the poppy on television and other media suggest that feeling surrounding Remembrance Sunday is especially strong at this particular moment in time. Anyone who saw this evening’s game at Wembley could not have escaped the visual bombardment of images of the poppy, particularly from the electronic advertising boards around the pitch (companies eager to associate their brand with the image to let the English public know that it “belongs”?). There was even a poppy etched into the grass in England’s technical area! So why has Remembrance Day and the poppy suddenly become more "in your face"?

I believe there could be a couple of reasons. Firstly, we are still fighting an unpopular war in Afghanistan. What I think has been realised by those in power is that while many of the electorate question the cause, there is widespread support for the troops fighting, and dying for it. I am one of these people – while I oppose the war I support the soldiers who are doing their job for a criminally low wage considering they are constantly putting their lives on the line.

The conflicts with which Remembrance Day has become synonymous due to the sheer numbers of those lost - the Great War and World War 2 - are wars which received almost unanimous support from the people of our country. There are very few people who would’ve objected to a very real threat of invasion from an aggressive enemy such as the Nazis. Because the dead of Afghanistan are (quite rightly) “included” on Remembrance Day there is an opportunity, for those that want to (i.e. The Government), to make all “our” wars – popular and unpopular – appear  ideologically amorphous, thus raising support for unpopular conflicts like Afghanistan by association. I believe that the way that more “overt” remembrance has been encouraged (through TV and football shirts for example), as opposed to the traditional dignified, subtle and quiet reflection, has served to manipulate the public towards this end. Therefore it’s important for me on Remembrance Day to maintain the line that is sometimes blurred between my support for the troops in Afghanistan and my objection to the ideology.

The other factor, I believe, could be about coming to terms with the fact that we are collectively forgetting those who died in the conflicts traditionally associated with Remembrance Day – the millions who died in the Great War and World war 2. By this I don’t mean forgetting what those who died did for us and their ultimate sacrifice, but who they were. Those who truly remember these people as individuals – their friends, families and loved ones – are getting fewer in number each year. What are those (now the majority of us) who never knew any of those who died personally – doing when we remember them? Probably thinking about their collective sacrifice in more general terms, which is fine, but still lacks the poignancy of mourning someone you actually knew. For example, I think that this Remembrance Day will be far more meaningful for anyone who knew and loved someone who was killed in Afghanistan, Iraq or the Falklands. The rest of us have no-one with whom we shared our lives to personally remember.  How do we make up for this collective - dare I say it - guilt of forgetting? Possibly through these more overt displays of remembrance. And when these overt displays are challenged (by FIFA for example) these feelings of guilt are expressed in the far more palatable form (to ourselves) of anger.

I hope that however you mark Remembrance Day, quietly or ceremoniously, you do it that way because it reflects how you feel, not out of obligation. The people we are remembering died for us to have that choice, so the very fact it exists is in itself a celebration of their sacrifice. If you choose to wear your poppy, wear it with pride or whatever feeling it invokes in you. But whatever you do – please don’t wear it with guilt.