No one has quite understood how an inflated ball kicked around the field can evoke such passionate reactions from adolescent men, who would scream , cry ,fondle and jump with gay disdain for it.
Philosophers and scientists have tried, with no great success, to decipher human affection for a ball.
The English , for example , who are, for most part, so infamously Cold blooded and devoid of any expressions, transform into churlish excitable kids displaying a wide range of emotions ranging from hooliganism to shedding copious tears when thier Beloved England performs badly, something that is very frequent these days.Ditto with stiff upper lipped French, the italians,spanish and heck even the Germans.
Perhaps it is our caveman instincts which drive our behaviours, albiet at a lesser lethal level.
Some have concluded the roundness of the ball epitomizes the universe itself and therefore life itself, in a rubber shell, though that would be , a rather large stretch of imagination.
Whatever the underlying reason may be, the power and evocative spirit of football is unmistakeable. It has stopped(Nigeria) and started wars(El salvador and honduras), triggered civil unrest and stopped it(Ivory coast), drowned nations into palpable gloom and similiarly provided them with hope in times of national calamities(Argentina-78').
In this blog , i try to throw light on some of the football styles of the greatest playing nations in the world.
Footballing style is the basic policy, the edifice underlying a nation's footballing character to which it tries to conform to and is thus judged by its fans and neutral observers alike.
Footballing styles are usually , but not always, dictated by the culture and the basic norms of its society and is thus a mirror onto how the nation views sport and in larger sense, life itself.
Dutch/Holland/Netherlands :
TOTAL FOOTBALL.
Dutch have always revelled in bending the rules. They have thier peculiar ways of dealing with most crooked situations in life. A visit to amsterdam and you will find all the repulsive vices such as prostitution and sales of drugs done quite publicly and with state oversight. It is legal , but highly monitored. Walk into any "coffee" shop and you can have generous doses of weed, hash etc, which are illegal elsewhere.
Prostitues and call girls are almost synonymous with with amsterdam and its night life.
This aura of Liberal and hippie mindset has lent itself onto the Oranje team and it has produced the most eclectic mix of soccer ever seen.
Enter TOTAL football.
Made famous by the famous rinnus michels, the former manager of AJAX team, it is pure poetry in action.
Based on the radical and outrageous idea that football should be played with a broad mindset and with total use of "SPACE", it envisaged maximum flexibility of players in thier positions. Any player, forward or back , took upon places and played best fit to the situation at hand and made sure it was an OPTIMUM move.
The visual treat of this kind of football was enchanting.
However, the attitude of players beyond the game itself made for more intersting narrative and not to mention, better headlines.
Dutch players of that age resembled Goan Hippes with long hair, notions of "one love", "peace" and free sex.
If rinus michels invented it, the famous trio of rijkard, van basten and Cryuff perfected it.
The result : By 1974 world cup , the dutch team was the most sucessfull and the most entertaining team in the world. It had won the european championshiops and were favored to win world cup.
The world Cup of 1974 was perhaps the most memorable ever.
No one can forget the sweeping hordes of oranje playing this radical yet attractive football and winning all the matches , finally making it to the finals.
Dutch players were superstars, almost rockstar like, with news reels choked with news of thier girlfriends, fiesty sex orgies and strip club visits.
Its rather an anticlimax that they met the boring and stiff upper lipped germans whose onus was on Discipline and order rather than chaotic art that dutch epitomized.
The infamous penalty and the rash game that germans displayed in finals did get them the cup, but the Dutch and thier display of beautiful football would remain etched in the memories of its fans and players alike.
Even today, as the dutch march into quarters, its Oranje army(fans) demand a revisit to its basic Total football philosophy rather than just mundane winning.
Italy : Catenaccio.
Italy is a very interesting country. At sometime in history ,its empire,Rome, was the light of the world, ruling most of the known western world. But surely its past its prime.
Consider this : Italy has had more than 60 goverments in just as many years. Italian politics is a suedonym for corruption, backstabbing and psycophancy.
Italy is also infamous for its Mafia. The word Don, which is so readily borrowed around the world, is basically a family name in sicily.
But italians are good in certain things. For one, they are the best Designers in most of europe, be it clothes or machines. Who hasnt heard of a armani , a lamborghini or even a scooter.
Italian culture, neverthless, believes the ends justify the means and the emphasis is on cleverness and adaptation.
The result : Catenaccio.
Perhaps the most despised form of football world over, catenaccio literally means Door-bolt. Emphasising Tight defence and frugality in terms of forward movement, it paid rich dividends for the italians.
Having won them world cup in 82, it would again help them in 2006 germany.
Needless to say, it is the least attractive type of football, with scorelines resembling binary formats and usually ending up with penalties. Catenaccio also meant that italians were masters of "Simulation" and theatrics, with a slight touch by an opposition player sending them flying through the air, ostensibly to gain a penalty.
It also emphasized good goal keeping skills , for catenaccio usually ended up in penalties. No wonder, the best goal keepers have traditionally been Italian. (Buffon for eg.). However it ended disastrously if players taking penalties made mistakes(Remember baggio in 94'?)
Catenaccio was largely forgettable and unattractive for hordes of fans around the world, and playing aganist italy was a dreaded bore for sometime.
However, in a culture where ends justify anything, it was and remains one of the greatest tactical strategies in football ever.
Brazil : Samba or the Beautiful game.
Football was introduced to the newly colonized brazil by the English in the 1870's whereupon it quickly became a rage. By 1914, brazil had its own national football association overseeing national and regional championships.
But Football is truely more than just a game in brazil.
Its life itself.
If you reckon that National elections in brazil are held in the same year as the world cup, ostensibly to ride on the swing of its teams performance, you get the picture.
Reflecting its amazingly multicultural, multiracial and multietnic society, brazilian football epitomizes the beautiful game. Brazilians are taught to love the ball and its an exception to see anyone working during football matches in cities like sao paulo and rio.
Drawing inspiration from samba, an exotic dance to the beats of african drums, brazilian football emphasises creativity, ball play, individualism , possession, delicious passes and slow , almost seductive play.
Agression and attack is the key in brazilian football and defence if not always, is just a standby for more counter attack.
Midfielders( usually no 10) is always the best player in team, with exquisite ball skills, orchestrating and enabling the story, which no one, not even the players know how would turn out.
Samba play was characterized by geniuses like pele, garrincha, socrates etc. It reached the pinnacle in 60's where the magic worked by these players in thier famous yellow jerseys, now immortalized in hazy video tapes, remains the most wonderful nuances of the beautiful game.
Sadly, this style of play has all been abandoned by the brazilians these days, with the current coach Dunga favoring "Pragmatic" play interspersed with European ethics like more pace , physical contact and opportunism.
Nevertheless, samba remains the unimaginably beautiful example of what the beautiful game can be.
Argentina : Tango
Argentina is a south american country below brazil and is distinctly spanish in descent as aganist Portugese brazil.
Argentina, for a while now, was synonomous for Dicatorships, puppet regimes, inflation , human rights violations and terrible economic crisises.
It had a most terrible decade in 70's when Augusto pinochet, a dictator, took over its governance and let a reign of terror. He had thousands of students, protesters, political opponents and even regular folk arrested, illegally tortured and even executed. It remains the darkest hour in argentian history.
It was in in this era that argentian football came to fore on world stage.
Tradtionally rivals of its neighbours, brazil, it is famous for its domestic leagues, the most famous team among them being the River plate. Regional titles are keenly fought, with rioting and hooliganism being a norm and even referees are not spared a good spanking if results go aganist the majority.
It was in 1978'-Argentina that argentina managed to win its first world cup, with its star player mario kempes outwitting the Dutch, who were at thier prime then, to win the finals.
Its 1 lac crowd cheering on as ticker tape filled the stadium is one of the most unforgettable moments in football history.
Now argentinians have a culture which favours cunningness, cleverness and adaptibility. They like innovation, cheekishness and smartness which they beleive is dervied from the values of thier national dance "Tango".
Tango is a dance where dancers forsee and prempt opponents dance moves, making for an interesting duet.
It was into this culture that argubly the greatest player ever was born, Diego armando Maradona.
In earliest of videos , he was spotted kicking a can in the slums of buenos aires where he goes on to say,rather prophetically,that he wanted to play for argentina someday.
Notoriously talented , almost divinley gifted with ball, he didnt have to wait long when he was in argentian squad for 82 world cup at age sixteen.
He later would join Napoli, a non descript local club in italy, turn it around and win consecetive Scudettos and even an european championship single handedly.
It remains one of the greatest romances of italian soccer history, so much so, it placed italian fans in dilemma as to whom to support in event of argentina vs italy clashes.
Howver, it was in 86 where he reached pinnacle. Single handedly orchestrating his team performance, he enabled his team barge in to finals where he demolished west germany. Howver, he was to create history before that with england, scoring the most conterversial goal in history, clearing shoving ball with hand onto goal.
He followed it up with greatest goal in history, running half the length of pitch and leaving 5 englishmen for dead.
He would later say it was "Hand of God" which shoved the ball for revenge against english's victory over recently concluded "Falklands war" against his country.
Despite his subsequent fall into disrepute for usage of drugs, he remains a god in the eyes of his fans, and has a church with his shrine in Argentina.
His style of Outrageousness, boldness , short delectable passes, cleverness and cheekishness have remained the hallmarks of Argentinan football to this day.
Germany: Clock Work.
German football in way epitomizes and representes european as a whole, though it does have some unique characteristics of its own.
Thorougly groomed and trained in thier highly competitive "Bundes Liga", the german team has come to have these values.
Highly physical :
German physique is the most endowed amongst all the europeans with most of them sturdily built and towering over 6 2'. Germans have traditionally emphasised strong physical culture caring, if ever, little for weaker things in life. Hitler , for example, dreamed of an Aryan "Master Race" consisting of Ideal german men who were Tall, Strongly built, healthy, blonde and with blue eyes. He made sure that his Nazi policy was one of Permeating such values and supression of Inferior genes. He called all other men "UnterMensch" or inferior men, and adopted a policy of ethinic cleansing towards them. Naturally Germans have retained some of those values even today and they place heavy emphasis of using physical stature towards ones' advantage.
Disciplined : Germans are perhaps the most disciplined of all races on earth and thier discipline and orderliness has been acknowledged through theier feats in engineering and military gains. Who can match a Benz or BMW in quality engineering?
Its this orderliness and Clockwork style which permeates thier football even today.
Resiliant : If there is a team which can be expected to bounce back from 2 goals down and win a match, even finals, it is Germans.(90'-Italy). Germans have built in toughness as part of thier culture, which can be observed in the manner which they rebuilt theier country from ruins after 2 devestating world wars.
Brutal Tactics : Germans,usually, if not always, resort to highly brutal and physical tactics to advance thier aims in any football match. Shoving, Fouling, pushing and aggressive 50-50 Ball play is characteristic of Germany. This tactic is very effective against physically less endowed teams from Asia or even south america, but fails to show dividends against similiary poised opponents.
Match against serbia where they lost 1-0 in SA-2010 is a case in point.
Therefore , german football can be surmised as Hard, involving lots of Free kicks, Towering headers by tall players, Hard tackling, Long ball play requiring incredible stamina , fitness and Training.
Perhaps Germany is the most despised team in world, with them playing spoilsport and cutting short runs of more attractive teams, but it remains the most consistent team in the world.
