The changing face of the game

I find it quite apt now to discuss about the changing face of the modern football. Is it any longer the all beautiful game? Or is the beautiful game on the descend and the pure physical play on the ascend? 

Football has gone through many changes since its inception into the hearts of millions of lovers all over the world. Football was started by the blue collar people as a brute contact sport which required loads of athleticism and then it captured the imagination of the more privileged classes much later on when people around the world started to take up the game as a profession to earn their daily bread. 

Football is a religion in Brazil and it is often said that a Brazilian infant is actually introduced to a football before being handed over to its parents. Brazil and the way it played its football in the 20^th century must be the best thing that has ever happened to the game. Watching Pele and Garrincha at their peaks must surely have been one of the best sights of football ever. Their imagination and pure genius captured the hearts of many and the game soon started to grow in Europe. When Cryuff and his Dutch team played ‘total football’ it looked like the second coming of the beautiful game. But the loss of that extraordinary team in the final of 1974 world cup will surely be registered as one of the worst things to have happened to modern football for it exposed the deficiencies that might creep in when playing the game as it should be. Pundits around the world argued that an intricate pass and move kind of play can get you as far as being second best and that teams needed to have a mental and a physical edge over the rest to be regarded as the best. They suggested that football was always not as much about the beautiful artistry like a lovely Van Gogh painting but also it was a game of hard battle hungry players. 

The late 70’s and early 80’s saw the emergence of a pragmatic approach to the game with teams like Italy, Liverpool and Everton mastering that art or rather the lack of it. Football started to change its face during this period; it was like a Da Vinci painting being tampered with and dabbled with colours by an amateur artist. This kind of style brought success to the game; teams started winning using tactics which emphasized more on the shape of the team than on the imagination of its players.

Football has also witnessed a change in the style of its exponents. There is almost no room for a player who is slow or rather sluggish. Tim Vickery, a columnist for the BBC, recently mentioned in his blog that players like Riquelme are a dying breed. The game has completely changed its face and is no longer a game of the skilful artists with the ball at their feet. But if the game has taught us a lesson then that is it never losses its capacity to attract viewers. That is the reason we should actually take our hats of and celebrate players such as Zidane, Riquelme, Scholes, Fabregas, Deco, Iniesta and as a matter of fact Berbatov who still continue to make the game look so simple and easy on the eye. There are a few managers around the world who like their players to express themselves on the pitch and it is really a testament to their managerial ability and footballing acumen to keep these kind of players perform what they are best at yet have players around them who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the team.

As a football fan the last thing I would want to see is a dying tradition of playing the game the way it should be. Long may it continue.

Amen