The Cult of the Individual - Introduction

A series looking at modern football, starting with an introduction to a three part piece on individualism within football. 

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.