Inverting the Pyramid

Modric and Niko Kranjcar represent the new style of playmakers - fantasistas with a certain rubustness, and also a sense of tactical discipline. "Nobody wants playmakers, nobody buys them." Asch wrote, "Why? Do they hate poetry, do they hate colour?" It comes back, it would seem, to Thomas Peterson's point about a second order of complexity. Once the system are understood, once football has lost its naivety, it is no longer simply enough to be beautiful; it must be beautiful within the system. "It happens that nobody in the world plays with a playmaker anymore," Asch went on, "Midfielders are multi-function and forwards are a blend of tanks and Formula One cars." Maybe so, and the playmaker will be missed, but just as the traditional winger was superseded and phased out by evolution, so too will be the traditional playmaker. Riquelme is a wonderful player. He may prosper at Boca, to whom he returned at the beginning of 2008. He may even prosper for Argentina, for international defences are not so well drilled as those at club level, but he is the last of a dying breed, a glorious anachronism..

看完chapman這章真是無盡唏噓……

And there,in a moment, was laid bare the prime deficiency of the English game. Football is not about players, or at least not just about players; it is about shape and about space, about the intelligent deployment of players, and their movement within that deployment.The Argentinian was, I hope, exaggerating for effect, for heart, soul, effort, desire, strength, power, speed, passion and skill all play their parts, but, for all that, there is also a theoretical dimension, and, as in other disciplines, the English have, on the whole, proved themselves unwilling to grapple with the abstract.今天看了比赛，很难再抑制对英格兰足球的反感，而且这种反感由来已久。为了保持阵形站桩防守，从不敢轻易出脚就站在你身边恶心人，一旦失位就拉人。在禁区前摆大巴，封堵射门后伺机拿到球权，利用对手的急躁和失误得分。这场比赛的最佳是睡觉的大叔。真想看德国，西班牙，意大利，巴西，阿根廷随便一个把这支英格兰打个七零八落。