Football

by Stephen Mumford

  This account dispels any suspicion towards the notion that there can be teams that are greater than the sums of their parts. There can be great teams that are not made up of great players but players who nevertheless function well as a whole. Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough were perhaps like this. Historically, Germany are an example of an international side that also seems to function perfectly as a team even though they apparently do not have the best players. This comment should be qualified, of course. Given that football is about winning, and is a team sport, perhaps this should make us reassess what we take a great player to be. It is not necessarily one with lots of flair and ‘individuality’, perhaps as Wayne Rooney was in his heyday. Rooney won no honours at international level. Instead we could think of a great player as one who can function within and contribute towards a great team. In the German side that beat Brazil 7–1, there was a group of players who knew their roles within the system and could operate as a whole. Their football was so fluid and scintillating that it looked effortless at times, almost as if they had a single collective mind between them. In particular, the fourth and fifth goals that they scored in that game looked as if there was a telepathic understanding between the players. How else could one explain the swiftness of the passes and the anticipation of the movements of teammates? The German team was a single, organic entity that night. Rightly, they became champions, and the players did not need fancy step-overs or trick shots to be supreme.

  The opposite case is clearly possible, of course, where a badly constructed team fails. There might be good players who bring out the worst in each other and the whole is considerably less than the sum of the parts. It is also possible that those who seem like poor players in a bad team could eventually become good players in a good team. One job of a club scout is to spot players in the lower leagues who could be a cheap transfer but of whom it is suspected that they could do a good job in a much better side.

  Opposition

  There is one factor which is highly relevant to this but which I have barely even mentioned yet. As well as being a team sport, football is an oppositional sport. Of course, all competitive sports are against others, but by oppositional I mean something specific. In some sports, the competitors take turns, as in darts, golf and bobsleigh. While one player or team has their turn, the other has to wait and can do nothing other than prepare. Significantly, there is nothing that one opponent can do within the rules of the game to stop or interfere with the turn of the other opponent. Thus, in golf, one player cannot push another just as their putter is about to strike the ball, and in bobsleigh, one team cannot barge the other’s sleigh as they are on their way down. By oppositional, I mean a sport where both sides are trying to play to the best of their ability while at the same time trying to stop the other team from doing so. Hence, it is all well and good having a plan to win the game, but the problem is that there is another team in the way. Opponents will have their own plan that you must try to stop. We also see that in some sports the teams have their turns simultaneously, but it is still not oppositional in my sense, such as in rowing, where the crews all set off together but are not allowed legally to interfere with each other’s efforts. The only legal and acceptable interference I can think of for non-oppositional sports is psychological, where you can put mental pressure on an opponent by a relentlessly excellent performance. If one crew sees the other row away powerfully into the lead, it might discourage them. Or if one darts player seems unfailingly to throw 180s each turn, the opponent could crumble.

  This chapter has developed a defence of holism about teams, taking them as single entities and, when they are functioning well, performing like individual organic units in their own right, almost as if the team possesses a collective mind. The fact that football is oppositional adds a further complication to this. A team does not merely interact within itself, with team members affecting how each other plays; a team has no choice but to interact with the opposing team too. Football might be understood as all about this interaction. A player has the task of not just playing well but also stopping their opponents from playing well, by outrunning, outjumping, outpassing and out-scoring them. It’s great if Sheffield United score four, but not if Fulham score five in return. A football match is like the story of the two men and the bear. Neither man can outrun the bear but they each need only outrun the other. Similarly, a forward run might be enough to latch on to a long ball against one defender but not against another. A good performance then becomes a relative matter.

  With the account of teams as wholes, we are justified in the attributions we make to teams. We say that the team has played well or badly, that the team won, lost or drew, that it is low on confidence, and so on. These things can be true even when they are not true of the individual players within the team. Luka Modrić might not have won the game in which he played, even though his Croatia team did. The oppositional aspect of football takes this idea up a level in that we have to consider the whole game as a complex, adversarial interaction between two teams. Another aspect of this interaction will be considered in the next chapter.

  4

  Space

  Spatial awareness

  In watching a game of football, our attention is often taken by individual players, especially those in possession of the ball, and the tackles, encounters, shots saved or successful, the actions of the referee, and so on. Television coverage usually focuses on these kinds of incidents, almost always following the ball. But there is something equally important that is easy for the casual spectator to overlook. Football is just as much about empty space, where the ball isn’t, as it is about the places on the field that are filled with action. To understand football, and what leads to success in the game, you need to understand space. The key attribute is spatial awareness, though this can mean a lot of different things.

  Very obviously, football is played within a space, even if it is vaguely delineated. This space is not simply the playing field. The pitch is marked out by lines, giving it an extension in two dimensions, length and breadth. But the boundaries have a degree of vagueness in that while the ball must not go beyond the touchlines, the players can. Momentum often carries players outside on to what we are starting to call the ‘apron’ of the pitch, and it is perfectly legitimate for a player to run along just over the touchline, dribbling the ball, as long as it does not completely cross that line. As space becomes limited, it is quite normal for much of the action to take place on or around this boundary. In the design of new stadiums, this apron area is getting bigger and bigger. One might compare its extent at the new Wembley, for example, with that of an old-fashioned ground, such as Rochdale’s Spotland. As the game gets faster and more powerful, players need a larger area out of touch.

  What about the space of football’s third dimension? Neither the ball nor the players are confined to movements in the first two dimensions, since not all passes and shots are completely along the grass. Crosses and shots are usually off the ground, hence height comes into the equation. The header is a vital part of the game precisely because it has this third dimension. Unlike the first two, however, this has no theoretical limit (except for those games that occur at indoor stadiums, with a roof). While the crossbar has a specific height, and there is thus a height limit for a shot to be on target, in theory the space in which a game occurs is of infinite height. In practice, however, there are, of course, limits to how high players can jump and balls can be kicked.

  Football is played within a fourth dimension, too: namely within a temporal space. In almost all games, this is 90 minutes in two equal halves plus additional stoppage time at the referee’s discretion. In some amateur games this duration is shortened, while in some games there is a necessity of 30 minutes of extra time. When a game kicks off, or extra time kicks off, players and spectators understand that this temporal space is of a known duration and now even the referee’s additional time is announced at its commencement. There was a period when this was not so, however. In the 1990s
the ‘golden goal’ was introduced for games in extra time. This meant that no one knew how long the match would last since it was stopped the instant a team scored. It is notable that this experiment did not last, probably for the broadly aesthetic reason that it felt unsatisfactory when a game was halted suddenly with the other side having no chance of reply.

  Contested space

  Football is about space in a more interesting and fundamental sense, however. Because it takes place within a bounded area, in practice football becomes a contest for the exploitation, control and dominance of space. Just think of all the things we say when we are talking about space in football and consider how metaphorical or literal we are being. We exploit space, we leave space, space is attacked or – defensively – space is covered, watched and marked. It is a failure when space is left because a defender’s job is to close down space. An attacker’s or midfielder’s job is to find it. German international Thomas Müller is known as the Raumdeuter: the space interpreter. Possibly more than any other game, empty space is the thing most sought. It is the key to victory.

  Space is contested because of what it gives you. Space creates the match-winning opportunity. A midfielder wants empty space to dribble into. The most effective pass is not to feet but to an empty space in front of an attacker, onto which they can run. A striker needs space in which to get their shot away. A free header is one where there is no opponent near to you as you rise. If you get one in the penalty area, you are expected to score.

  Space determines the possibilities. If you have space, you can do things that you cannot do without it. If you have space, you have time, since spacetime is a single thing in physical theory. If no defender is near the striker, they are able to steady themselves, pick their spot, and execute it before any opponent can attempt a tackle or block. Since space is such a valuable commodity in the game, hard fought and won, the best strikers are those who can be effective with only a little of it. Only ‘half a yard’ might be needed by the very best.

  Is it any wonder, then, that various systems of tactics have been developed primarily to create exploitable space? This seems the best explanation of changes in formations and styles, for example. Yet, with the increasing fitness and strength of players, such space has become harder and harder to find, making it even more precious. Again, tactics have to evolve and find cleverer ways of creating space.

  Compressed space

  Most football fans will have seen catenaccio, or some variant of it, being played. The simplest way to understand this tactic is that it depends on conceding possession and defending deep. It can be extremely frustrating when it is played against your own team, especially when it is successful. It requires a well-organized defence and also fast and effective strikers. I used to hate seeing teams prosper using this approach. It was mainly an Italian invention, often credited to Nereo Rocco in the 1950s, but used most effectively by Internazionale under Alfredo Foni and then Helenio Herrera in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It seems unjust when one side dominates possession and still loses. It also looks as though one team is making all the running, trying to be adventurous and positive, seeking to win the game, and they then end up losing to negative tactics.

  I’ve come to think, however, that this judgement is superficial. When you see football as a contest for control of space, catenaccio suddenly makes perfect sense as an effective and rational way to play. If you use it, your opponents find there is no space at all in your end of the pitch. If the penalty area is crowded, there’s no free space for a striker to attack and any hopeful cross will be headed clear by a defender. Opponents will be left pointlessly passing the ball from side to side, looking for non-existent openings. However, if the defence do manage to get the ball, a quick long pass can find vast swathes of empty space in the opposing half. Just two or three forwards joining an attack means that they will be able to run or dribble where they please, with few opponents present, and they will find far better goal-scoring opportunities than they have allowed at their own end. It follows from this that possession statistics, which are now regularly given, are fairly meaningless. It might even be that a low percentage of possession increases your chance of success, especially if your defence is solid and you have some fast strikers. Consider Leicester City’s surprise Premier League success of 2015–16, which was achieved with an average of 37% possession in their games. A typical match near the end of the season was away at Sunderland. Leicester won 2–0 and both goals came when the ball was turned over and immediately played long for Jamie Vardy, who had the pace to exploit the empty space and the coolness to beat the goalkeeper. These were both moves of one pass out of Leicester’s own crowded half. There are other innovations that can have a similar effect of closing down space. It is not just a matter of packing the defence. One innovation is the sweeper or libero who plays behind the main defenders. An attacker might beat a defender but then finds that the usual empty space behind is patrolled by an extra player, and it is very hard to beat both in one move.

  It is common to think of a player as finding space, attacking it or closing it down, but in Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid, we also hear more metaphysically abstruse ideas such as ‘controlling space’ (p. 366, from Arrigo Sacchi) and ‘compression and manipulation of space’ (p. 339, from Ciro Blažević). The aim should be to minimize the space when the opponents are in possession and maximize the space when you are in possession. The Dutch side of the early 1970s under Rinus Michels was expert at this. Although Michels was associated with the philosophy of Total Football, in which every player could play in every position such that they were able to be anywhere on the field that was needed, there was a simpler tactic which was just as effective. The Dutch played a high line in defence, keeping their opponents pinned back, while simultaneously playing a pressing game so that no opponent had the space to find a killer pass through the orange lines. This meant that their opponents could do little with the ball, and when the Dutch won it back, they did so in dangerous areas.

  Giving no time on the ball equates to giving no space away. Other managers, such as Sacchi, had success playing what Marcelo Bielsa called a ‘short team’, with play being compressed into a central area as little as 25 yards from front to back. The trend has been towards more ‘diminution of space’ (Wilson, p. 181) through these tactical changes coupled with increasing speed and fitness. Teams aim to ‘strangle the space’ of their opponents. Perhaps the most extreme case of this is ‘parking the bus’, notoriously deployed with success by José Mourinho’s Chelsea in a 2014 win at Liverpool. The metaphor suggests defending so deep and in such numbers that it is almost as if a bus is parked sideways up against the goal and there is no longer any space at all through which even the ball could pass into the net.

  Instability and flux (and Hegel!)

  The battle to control space has resulted in a succession of tactical changes, a very obvious case being the changes to formations. Some formations have come to dominate, as the W–M did for many years: five forwards arranged as the points of a W and five defenders arranged as the points of an M. In numbers, the W–M could be seen as a 3–2–2–3. This held sway over a long period as it seemed the optimal way to cover all the important parts of the field. As happens in football from time to time, however, a change can be tried that proves effective against a standard formation. Brazil played a 4–3–3 to win the 1958 World Cup, with Mario Zagallo given freedom to advance on the left side when Brazil had the ball, converting rapidly to what was effectively a 4–2–4. Now it seemed as if Brazil had four against three in both defence and attack, with the midfield not suffering due to Zagallo’s mobility. Various ways were found to exploit the weakness of W–M, choking the space for its attackers and dominating the space of its defenders. Subsequent changes have seen 4–4–2 having a long period in the ascendancy, followed by 4–5–1, midfielders forming a diamond in the centre. Currently, 3–5–2 is in vogue, played by England in their 2018 World Cup, encouraged by its noteworthy success for two
years at Sheffield United.

  We can interpret these changes as further attempts to exploit and control space, seizing upon the gaps left by opponents’ formations. It might be wondered whether there is an optimum, perfect formation, and perhaps this is what a coach dreams about at night: the magical line-up that will beat any other. There is an obvious flaw in such an idea, however. If a new kind of formation is adopted and it proves successful, it attracts attention. Football matches are open to the public and television cameras record everything, from multiple angles. There is no hiding place for a successful innovation and, pretty quickly, it will be found out. Consequently, either a successful distribution of players over the playing space will be copied by other teams or a way will be found to neutralize it. Change will become the norm, therefore. Indeed, any team or coach who stands still, and does not look for further innovation, will fail. Successful coaches are often lured to bigger clubs in the hope that they can reproduce their success. What made a coach successful five years ago has no guarantee of working now, though. And if a coach only understands and wants to play one way, they will likely flop.