It's a beautiful game ... or sometimes not so much
March 7, 2015
Michael Lynch
Senior sports reporter with The Age

Is style more important than substance? Is winning all that matters, or is it the manner in which you play that counts?

Do fans prefer to see the beautiful game – or are they happy to barrack for a team that wins 1-0 and bores its way to the championship?

In a low-scoring game like football, there are plenty of ways to get a result. Each has its adherents, as I was reminded this week when I dipped into a lively Facebook discussion on coaching and training.

This debate was centred on the best way to educate and prepare youngsters just starting out in the game, but the views of the contributors were in many ways just as applicable to the grown-up version.

Should it be about winning at all costs? Should children be taught to play first, and then worry about results? Isn't coping with defeat part of the maturation process and just as much part of the game as winning?

Do too many coaches pick big kids at junior levels just to have a physical advantage, ignoring the more technical talents of smaller boys and girls? And does the national team and the A-League ultimately suffer because of that?

Would a 163cm Leo Messi or Diego Maradona even have been given a chance in a country like Australia?

These were all interesting questions with varying responses and illustrate the wildly divergent views that the game spawns.

Pretty much all my life I have been a Tottenham supporter. The club's tradition is synonymous with stylish, attacking football. There was an odd season-long dalliance with Fulham one year and, when young, I spent a season with a mate watching West Ham, but I have always come back to the Spurs, essentially because of the way they play the game.

The Tottenham credo is best summed up by a wonderful quote from the captain of its legendary double winning side of 1960-61, Northern Ireland international Danny Blanchflower.

"The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It's nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It's about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom."

It's a point of view that appeals to purists, not so much to pragmatists. These days the Arsenal of Arsene Wenger probably sums up the Blanchflower ethos of football more than anyone in the English game, but their fans are constantly moaning about their failure (aside from last year's FA Cup) to win anything.

It was very different in the pre-Wenger era. Arsenal were a synonym for boredom. They won games all right, and championships. They even emulated the Spurs' double-winning achievement a decade later (in 1970-71) but were perennially known as lucky Arsenal. Their fans, with a commendable sense of irony, knew this implicitly and adopted the old Pet Shop Boys standard Go West with their own lyrics: 1-0, to the Ars-en-al.

Back then Arsenal fans seemed to be happier than the present moaning mob demanding Wenger's removal on a weekly basis. Theirs was a sort of gleeful misery. They paid their money to be tortured and left on the rack most Saturdays, wondering if their side would hold on to a slender lead, then exulted in the relief and pride they felt glancing at the league table to see the Gunners sitting at the top. This wasn't entertainment as a joyful triumph, more as a stoic experience.

The truth of the matter, as the lively Facebook debate on educating youngsters ultimately seemed to divine, was that the game has to be a mixture of the sublime and the sober, the elevated and the efficient.

Teach the kids to enjoy what they are doing, let them learn through play and an unstructured approach while young, allow them to do their tricks and you will create the conditions for the fantasistas and artists to flourish, the game-changers whose vision and creativity can alter outcomes in an instant when they are the fully fledged professionals playing at high level a decade and more later.

Then at a later stage, once they have developed a love of the game for its own sake, tactics and structure can be brought into the equation, winning and losing can become – if not the be all and end all – part of the mix.

To pretend that youngsters don't keep score is self-deluding. They do. What they don't need is the pressure to get specific results to win leagues or titles at too early an age, as used to be the case in the junior game. That is time enough until they are in their teens at the earliest.

By then, as they become technically proficient and develop tactical awareness, they might remember another Blanchflower axiom: "Always play with a smile on your face. It's a beautiful game."

It is. It can be frustrating, maddening and uplifting, all at the same time. It provides a sense of community and continuity, and for some provides hope and meaning as a refuge from the cares of everyday life.

But it is, first and foremost, a game. It's easy to forget that in an era of media saturation, the corporatisation of sport and the withering, often spiteful and sometimes cowardly instantaneous insults of social media.

If it's not enjoyable, then it's not much of a diversion, is it?

Fans need to remember that just as much as players.


http://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/its-a-beautiful-game--or-sometimes-not-so-much-20150307-13xrny.html

A mate I coached with, who had a lot more experience than me, 30 years as opposed to 14, always used enjoyment as the criteria for the most important factor for a player playing football .