Once again the topic in the
playground had turned to football, and one by one, in no sort of coded or planned order,
we took it in turns to shout out the best and most memorable players we had
seen live. A number of people had seen Cristiano Ronaldo play; a few less had
seen Henry and even less than that had seen Suarez. The well-traveled 15 year
old of the group caught everyone’s attention when he mentioned the great
players of Europe, he had seen Ronaldinho at the Nou Camp, and Pirlo at the San
Siro. Of course, when one of the fanatic young fans proudly stated that he had
seen the Arsenal side of 2003-2004, more commonly known as the ‘Invincibles’, thrash Aston Villa 4-1 at
Villa Park it seemed to get little attention compared to the glamorous and jaw
dropping names of those individual players who have graced the highlight
montages on many occasions. In fact, the mention of a team when all this dreamy,
fantasising about young men’s heroes was the topic of conversation almost
seemed insulting and rather inappropriate.
This story is like many of my
memories from school, furiously competing to be heard in a discussion about
football, a lack of controlled debate, and, more importantly to this article, a
dedicated worship to the culture of the individual. We of course took this
individualism with us, to our playground matches, each titling ourselves with
distorted mixes or our own names and our favourite players. I always wore
gloves on the playground, because that is what my favourite players did,
although I never did quite make it to wearing the snood. You could perhaps
blame this disregard for the team as youthful naivety, however, our more
experienced and knowledgeable football minds still hold the battle between
Messi and Ronaldo far higher up our radar of interest than that of Real Madrid
and Barcelona. Everyone dreams of being the greatest player, but how many people
dream of being a vital cog in the greatest team?
In light of this, I would like to
investigate and discuss if and why, the culture of the individual is seen as so
ripe and so prevalent in today’s game compared to that of our ancestors. Recent
themes in the modern game, such as ever increasing salaries for players, a lack
of great defenders compared to forwards and a ‘Galatico’ culture taken on by any club that can afford it, are
accused of shaping today’s individual culture. However others will point to the
extraordinary characters in football that create this almost divine worship for
those special people, such as George Best, Bella Guttman or Diego Maradona. The
question that I pose is, has football changed in a way that it has our respect
of a strong team unit, or does the large sums of money, and worldwide attention
of our current stars just cover the enigmatic skeleton of football that has not
changed one bit?
This summer, David Luiz has been
sold for a whopping £52 million, and even after a fatal performance in the
semi-final against Germany, is still considered by some as a reasonably astute
buy from the French outfit who already are struggling to oblige by the new
financial fair play laws. The outlay of this sum, in a sensible, non-inflated
world would be ludicrous. However, the context of this signing must be taken into
account, football has a hugely inflated market, and how many defenders have
made 81 caps for a top club and featured in a number of international
tournaments? This signing was indicative of a football community that has far
more world class attacking talents then defending ones. Manchester United, are
themselves the epitome of this, with an array of class upfront and a lack of it
at the back. It seems that it is much harder to find a pair of world class
center backs today than it was, say even, five years ago. The new found belief in
attacking formations and a demand for more open, goal scoring teams is definitely
one of the reasons for this. It was mad very apparent at the World Cup in
Brazil.
However, another reason for this,
could be that the world has seem to have picked up a tradition, most commonly
utilised by the old English academies. If he is a good technical players, move
him up the field. The swelling of technically gifted footballers in the
attacking regions on the pitch is holding back the defensive side of the game.
I believe this directly correlates with the concept, ‘where is the glory in being a defender?’ The worship of the
individual draws the best players into the attacking positions; that is where
most of the stars are born. The last defensive minding player to win the World
Player of the Year aware, or now the Ballon d’Or was Cannavaro in 2006 and
before that was not since Lotha Matthaus won it in 1991. If players seek the
stardom that is offered to this by pursuing a life in football, then playing
upfront is the most effective way to reach this.
Prospects like being the feature
player on the new FIFA football game cover, or get that crucial role in Nikes
adverts are becoming more and more of the dream for young footballers. This entwines
itself with more general social phenomenon of celebrity and political culture.
When Margaret Thatcher claimed that we are all individuals now, I’m sure she didn’t
consider her words could be used so effectively to describe football culture.
This article is an introduction to a series of pieces looking at individualism
in football, touching on outside of footballs influences, footballing
individuals of the past and how the stats age encourages our focus on the
individual. Yes a theme that runs through this discussion is that it is not
that much different to football of yore.
