The exciting elements of football can be far more obvious to fans than those who study, write, play, manage and talk about the game for money. Things that we have always enjoyed are routinely slipping in and out of fashion with football’s intelligentsia and commentariat. Football is nothing if not a slave to the hive mind.
Who among us has not enjoyed a massive kick downfield for a striker to chase? It has always been one of football’s joys that for some reason became decried as unsophisticated, and doubtless will be again.
The current focus on set-pieces as a means to scoring goals strikes most of us as obvious. It’s the same with long throw-ins, which were common even 55 years ago with Ian Hutchinson – who could really hoy it for Chelsea – often reaching the opposite side of the penalty area. A distance I’ve subsequently not seen reached even with a lighter ball.
Fashions for style, tactics and types of players come and go but to my certain knowledge of watching football since the age of five, the same things have never gone out of favour with most crowds, even if they have with the more slavishly influenced in the game.
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You know what they are. At least you do if you’ve been to any game. Even when corners were regarded as an inconvenience, when did you ever hear indifference to your side winning one, even though the taker still can’t regularly beat the first man? When the keeper collects the ball and launches it down the middle, it bounces once and is chased down for a striker to get a shot off, did we complain about by-passing the midfield and not fannying around with it? No.
Did anyone not enjoy the confusion Rory Delap would cause with his long throws? It was hilarious. Who was decrying them as somehow crude or cheating? Was I imagining it when we cheered a looping, curling corner being met with a towering header by a meat wardrobe who wouldn’t be denied? We loved it, we didn’t moan about it and say, “oh you’re only winning through boring set-pieces”. Imagine the miserable killjoy who would even think such a thing?
When you win a free-kick on the edge of the box, did anyone ever think “oh I do hope they don’t kick it into the top corner, that is such a basic, unsophisticated way to score”? Of course not.
We’ve also been robbed of another crowd favourite: the sliding tackle which cleared man and ball into touch on a rainy afternoon, on a muck and nettles pitch. Never done without a massive cheer. I recall Stuart Pearce doing one which was a full-body challenge so brutal that it knocked the player up into the air and three rows into the crowd. No one was horrified and they still wouldn’t be. These things gave us joy.
I’ve often thought football understands less about itself than the crowd does, twisting itself into a post-ironic knot by trying to be modern. If they’d ever bothered to ask, no one would have thought this sadly temporary fashion for set-pieces and direct football was exceptional or even worthy of much comment. It obviously is a sensible way to try and score; it shouldn’t even need saying. Football might change but the basic excitement doesn’t. You don’t need to overthink it so much, it’s pretty simple. Don’t rob us of the game’s excitement by sacrificing it on a supposed altar of sophistication.
The groan from crowds as a team splits its centre-backs and starts trying to play out from the back, even as the opposition is bearing down on them, tells you how unpopular it is. Partly because so many aren’t comfortable enough to do it with speed and precision but also because it’s much, much less enjoyable than drop-kicking it downfield.
Premier League open play goals table
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Sometimes it’s as if the game, through managers and media, is trying to tell us what’s fun and what isn’t. Trying to pass it into the net was never enjoyed as much as a big hairy striker battering it from 20 yards. This bitching about Arsenal and set-pieces is just the negative, unrepresentative product of the terminally online commentariat. Listen, there are plenty of reasons to dislike Mikel Arteta and Arsenal, but set-pieces isn’t one of them. What are you even saying? “You didn’t pass it or run enough to score”?
Do you realise how stupid that sounds? I don’t believe any true fan who wasn’t an online gobsh\*te would say that. It isn’t synchronised swimming, with extra points for style. The whole point is to score. However it ends up in the net, you only score one.
The rebirth of the tall, robust centre-half who likes a tackle and can get his head on it cannot be far away. Similarly, the maverick player with skill overload but a terrible attitude. Hopefully anyway. We don’t want reliability, we want to be thrilled. 7/10 robots are so old – we want danger, creativity and direct (or vertical if you must) play. Just as we always did.
It was the game that locked itself into a pale imitation of a Guardiola-inspired approach, even while it drained money out of us for a critically acclaimed but more boring mode of play. You do it to yourself, football, and that’s what really hurts.
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