Play hard. Get into every tackle. Pull their shirts. Make them scream. This is today’s 'lesser' sides' approach to a game against The Big 4. If you cannot match them on quality, you certainly have a chance at physicality. So push them off the pitch and break their superior style of play. Let them keep possession...but make them pay for it.
Now the question is...."Is this fair"?
Of course it is.
Now the question is...."Is this fair"?
Of course it is.
Arsene Wenger will most certainly beg to differ, but that is the modern game! English football as compared to the other leagues of Europe does allow that little extra sense of physicality. So if you don't have the quality, bulk up your quantity. Now by no means am I defending Shawcross for his tackle on Ramsey. That was a one-off (well, for the league) and although it is more likely to happen in the Premiership (with flying tackles and kung-fu bouts), it is not something that is really well endorsed.
British Football has and always will be about playing hard. The Spaniards are well known for their silky smooth style, and in Spain, the referees are a lot stricter when it comes to physicality. Shirt pulling – a norm in the Premiership usually ignored by referees, is a ‘serious crime’ according to their Spanish counterparts who do not hesitate in pointing to the spot for even the slightest of tugs. Most Spaniards who come to England to play are the biggest victims of crass English defending. In the United Liverpool game last Sunday, Maxi Rodriguez looked like he had been put through three stages of hell by Gary Neville. Every time he would touch the ball, Neville’s man-marking instincts would take over and he would immediately go right through the Spaniard. Eventually Maxi was taken off, bruised, battered and bandaged!
THIS Is the main reason why “Diving” is so common in the premiership now. A phenomenon that I believe is a foreign import has come up as a sly counter to hard tackles and challenges. Although it may be an immoral and cowardly act, ‘Diving’ according to me is an art.
An art of deception, that takes a magician to master. The rewards are excellent and the punishment is just. Either you get booked, abused and left there lying to incur your own abhorrence, or you are perceived to have been ‘brought down’ by the defender who is duly sent off just before you score that ‘well earned’ winning penalty. It’s a gamble that most strikers today are willing to take.
My favorite example is Didier Drogba. Undoubtedly one of the best strikers in the world, in every game that he plays, he is easily the biggest man on the pitch. Yet, at the slightest tug, pull or tackle, this giant of a man comes crashing to the ground as though he was steamrolled by a twenty tonne engine and lays there simulating a pain sequence that would easily be deserving of an Oscar.
But that is what the modern game has evolved to. With results becoming a matter of life and death – “if that’s what you gotta do, then just do it”. (Nike would endorse that!).
One might wonder where the morals have gone, but the stark truth is, they were thrown out the window the day sliding tackles came into effect. ‘Diving’ is just a reminder that Football’s underbelly can get very ugly and yet remain seductive.
Its a classic case of Big vs. Small and Right vs. Wrong. It may not always work. And only makes things worse.
But when it is your only tactic, go ahead, create magic.
