While
football’s hottest debate at this point, or rather at any given point is
regarding who’s going to win the coveted Fifa Ballon D’or award, this article
is specifically written tending to ONLY those football fans who consider
football to be larger than just debates about Lionel Messi and Cristiano
Ronaldo. The reason that I felt adressing this issue is important is because of
the simple fact that though it is a tendency that is noticed on a global scale,
yet it has hardly caught enough attention which drives one to write on it.
My basic argument in this piece is on a general trend
in football which seems to place all the attacking and goal-scoring talents
above all other gifted players who possess their abilities in different aspects
of the game. Examples of these reflect on the highest levels, as apart from
Oliver Kahn and Fabio Cannavaro, all those who managed to win the FIFA World
Player Of The Year Award in recent years have all done it by their merit of
scoring and creating goals on numerous occasions. This trend permeates into the
our very basic system and thinking patterns, as we all know that the fattest or
slowest kid is always chosen as the goalkeeper!
One of the most clearly visible examples of this
attack-oriented bias is demonstrated in the price lag between attackers and
defenders. While goal scoring machines such as Bale and Ronaldo, the two most
costliest football signings ever have costed Real Madrid in excess of 90
million euros individually, the worlds costliest defenders including the likes
of Thiago Silva, Rio Ferdinand, Dani Alves among others have not even crossed
the 50 million euros mark yet. If this isn’t enough, a comparison of the wage
distribution pattern in most team is more or less likely to show definite
existence of such a bias. Therefore, despite similiar contributions to the
team, more or less equal amounts of ability and skill, strikers and other
attackers appear to be more crucial to the functioning of any team, which drive
many serious accusations against partiality and favouritism.
Having been a central defender and a defensive
midfielder myself, I personally believe that these two positions are the most
under-rated of all, as they largely form the backbone of any team structure.
While a strong attacking threat is undeniably the basis for winning, which is
essential for any team, a sturdy defence reflects much more about a team. It
represents a disciplined side, a side not plagued by lapses in concentration or
tactical weakness, a side which is physically as well as mentally well
balanced. In one way of interpretation, it can also be said that Defence
embodies football’s very nature, which is not a game of individual brilliance
but rather of perfected coordination and chemistry.
The role of a defender in recent years also seems to
have become more dynamic, simply because of the aerial attacking threat that
they effortlessly seem to provide at set-pieces. Infact, sometimes the managers
tend to play such defenders in games just because of their attacking prowess!
The foremost example of such a player can be found in the Chelsea Defender,
David Luis whose defensive qualities are usually overshadowed by his attacking
and skillful style of play. Therefore, this large-scale rise in multi-faceted
defenders such as Vermaelen, Terry, Lescott, Ivanovic etc. have often lead to
criticisms for tradional shot stoppers such as Jamie Carragher, who despite
offering good tactical defencive qualities often receive bad press for their
lack of goal scoring initiatives. Resultantly, though as ironical as it sounds,
the fever of goal scoring has even reached out within the defensive sphere and
has also become an important paradigm to judge a defender.
Thus, this bias towards the attack minded players seem
to be growing unfavourably, which is not just encouraged by the very institutions
on which football stands, but is also percieved and reinforced by those which
football supports.While I do not have a problem with the strikers taking all
the glory, I do certainly feel that there needs to evolve a better criteria to
judge the ability of a player, one which is relatively more uniform and
standard.
Akhil Goswami
A brilliant piece on the 'strike-centric' nature of football. A hierarchised grading of different aspects of the game is not what a holistic sport like football demands.
ReplyDeleteVery truly written.
ReplyDeleteIts going all towards a "goal scoring - centric" nature of football, where your identity and recognition depends on the goals you score, where as the true values of what a team should be like is overshadowed by the goals they score instead of how they score !