“Football is a simple game, complicated by idiots.”
The famous quote from decades ago, from a legendary football manager who didn’t suffer fools on or off the pitch.
What Shankly would have made of the modern game is a question I’ve heard asked beyond Merseyside, where a new play has opened on the Scotsman’s life, Red or Dead, based on David Peace’s novel.
Cheering on your club at 3pm on a Saturday was overtaken by greed, hype and delusions of grandeur from too many in the dugout, boardroom or TV studio. That’s why so many of us have found ‘proper football’ at our hometown clubs.
It’s a simple game, complicated by egos.
Overall, elite football has been over-complicated by many coaches and self-appointed analysts, none of whom you’d ever want to stand near at a football match or have a pint with.
Some may point to the brilliant displays by Paris Saint-Germain as evidence that coaching and tactics are everything. I don’t. Luis Enrique is no fool, his tactics and leadership are sound, but crucially he hasn’t removed the individuality from his players. Those three goals against Villa weren’t so much ‘team goals’, as expressions of flair and skill. Wonderful. It’s what fans want to see. And an exception to recent years.
The egos of many coaches, both ‘qualified’ and wannabees, have veered out of control. The rigid application of football tactics made ‘big’ games increasingly unpalatable to so many of us.
It’s a simple game, complicated by those who make it about themselves.
Think about last weekend’s Manchester derby if you can bear to. What the fuck was that game meant to be? As you’ll know, it was two coaches extending their egos. It’s all about managers, because that’s what media and social media wants from the narrative.
A fixture that has given us so many wonderful talents, even in the bad times, was characterized by fear. Too many players just don’t seem to be able to shine beyond the precious systems.
Even old skool showmen with planet-sized egos like Ron Atkinson and John Bond, former managers of United and city respectively, kept it simple where possible, and asked players to play. You think those two didn’t understand football?! They loved a microphone, but when the whistle blew it was over to the footballers until half-time or full-time.
Now it’s a chess game. Too many elite coaches think they are grandmasters. And oil money increased inequality. This meant a decade of Manchester City trying to break down ten men behind the ball. Not football I want to watch. This season City have been found out and can’t even get through. No-one can take away their trophies, but football is more than that, particularly at those prices. And which neutral will look back fondly and recall much about City’s dominance beyond the Aguero goal and De Bruyne’s grace? He's on his way in the summer.
Like the post-Fergie managers who failed before him, Amorim at United is a man trying to prove himself rather than asking the players to express themselves. To create. Like Rashford is doing at Villa now, away from the pressure cooker. Villa boss Emery proves you can have systems, strategies and flair.
Thank goodness for Elanga at Forest, a throwback with his speed and dribbling, appropriately at a club in which Clough demanded John Robertson – one of my favourite all-time players - be given the ball without faffing around. He’ll turn them inside out, get some chalk on your boots son!”
I can’t remember Robertson passing backwards to Frank Clark.
If that sounds old-fashioned good. It’s one of society’s big misconceptions that referring back to something better is because of your age and best left in past. Oftentimes things were better. A point I try to make with humour via my fable Golden Eras (in the book Football Fables).
Yes, there have been Cloughies and Big Rons, but by the turn of the century managers of Premier League teams had completely usurped players as the game’s main stars. A rich source of headlines and theatre. Fergie v Wenger was the story, then Mourinho took it to another level. Pep’s Manchester City have been Pep’s Manchester City. Not the Manchester City we knew. His train set. Successful but lacking charisma. By the time the likes of Foden and Grealish reach England duty they can barely remember how to improvise.
In the week of the Manchester derby I watched basketball games on TV. The sheer joy of expression, the problem solving, the natural instinct displayed by Steph (overhead basket) Morant (buzzer beater), Giannis (an astonishingly executed block) was a different world. I see why many football fand are sniffy about basketball, I used to be. But I didn’t see an iota of this freedom, and that’s the word, freedom, from United and City’s frightened robots. Despite their organisation and commitment, the PSG players play with freedom and spontaneity too.
Empowering players to create is somethings that works throughout all levels of football (I saw a photo on a football site this week of unused subs on the bench at a kid’s game, the coach of that team should be ashamed).
I’ve watched my beloved Horsham FC for nearly a decade and the brilliant Dom Di Paola has been in charge all that time. It’s the tenth anniversary of his first game this week in fact (congratulations and thank you Dom). It’s been the most successful time in the Sussex club’s history with historic cup runs, promotions and trophies).
Dom sometimes reminds me of Eddie Howe (whose career and methods I’ve followed particularly closely since he was a player, as a close relative of his is a dear family friend). Like Eddie, Dom appears to have an even-temperament, refusing to panic at a bad performance of result, or get carried away by three points.
Throughout his time Horsham have usually had wide attackers, what I’d still call wingers. As I stand close to the right wing at home games that players has been particularly noticeable.
From Lee Harding to the current right winger Ola Ogunwamide. Sharp, fit, team players. But something else. They run at defenders. Imagine that. Footballers actually expressing themselves, running at the opposition with purpose. It’s simple and exciting. “Skin him!” we shout from close proximity. It often leads to something, flair and ambition usually does.
This is what fans want. How do I know? By listening to fans around me. We all love our football. We’re not stupid. We just want to go and enjoy and game and hopefully see our team win. We use the eye test – we know if a player can play, a team can play. It’s not hard is it? And slightly easier from watching from your laptop like the You Tube bluffers.
It’s being reported that the BBC (for whom I worked as a programme editor on 5 Live many years ago) are hiring a ‘Tactics Correspondent’. You what mate?! I am not a BBC basher, quite the opposite, but this is a ludicrous piece of decision-making from an organisation that needs to deliver important info, not pontificating and pretention.
Tactics correspondent?!! Do me a favour.
“It’s a simple game, complicated by the self-regarding.”
There was a time, and I was lucky to be a part of it that sports journalists had a more obvious purpose. Witnesses, at a time sport wasn’t so widely televised, and all over social media. And connected, using journalistic skills and contacts to gain information and relay it. This meant offering, within reason, analysis was part of the job, and from an informed source.
If anyone took this too far, and I hope I never even tried, the reader, listener or viewer would have every right to think or say, “Who the fuck are you to say that?!” Of course this didn’t stop anyone in the profession who suffered from a large ego, a lack of self-awareness or both.
But what we never purported to be, nor would we be labelled as, is ‘tactical analysts’. Anyone who gives this energy needs to be humoured, we’ve all seen them on TV furrowing their brow and talking about tactics as if war correspondents. On the frontline of bluffing.
Are interviewees going to bring a tactics board into the BBC interview?! What makes them qualified? Do they teach the UEFA licenses. And they know more about football than us why?
Which brings me to one of the best football analysts I’ve met. Barry the Baker. Who?…
“Our punditry has barely improved since Andy Townsend’s infamous ‘tactics truck’ of a few decades back - The least welcome truck since the one that terrorised Dennis Weaver in Steven Spielberg’s Duel…”