The classic number 10 has been out of fashion for ages. Özil was probably the last one who played at the highest level. Even when a team plays a formation with an attacking midfielder on paper, it’s not a classic number 10 like Zidane, Baggio, Zola, Özil etc.
Which is why football is in general boring as **** these days. Managers care more about players who can run and pass a ball 5 yards so they keep possession instead of play a risky ball or take a player on to create a chance. Apart from watching City and England in tournaments I can’t be bothered with it anymore. Too stat driven by lovers of xg and pass completion. Used to really like watching Grealish take players on then he signed for Man City and he’s lost all his flair now. Yeah he’s won the lot but players who get you off your seat with some skill is what the game should be about.
It’s because approaches to football can be put into two schools of thought: Positionism and Relationism. Positionism is ‘tactics first’. There are specific methods and principles in how a team sets up. Guardiola is the most well-known proponent in modern football and it has trickled down into how most modern coaches set up. Relationism is ‘players first’. A relationist coach changes his system to suit the players he has and is less dogmatic with specific instructions during a game. Ancelotti is the most well-known example in modern football of a relationist coach and he’s considered ‘old school’. The Madrid front three of Vini Jr., Mbappé and Rodrygo don’t have set positions during a game. They’re constantly interchanging. A classic number 10 like Baggio, Zidane, Zola, Özil etc. doesn’t fit in a positionist team, which is the dominant school in football tactics today. They would in a relationist system, which is now the minority. Ancelotti used to play 4-4-2 for years in his early managerial career and he wouldn’t accommodate a classic number 10 so it led to Zola leaving and Baggio rejecting a move to Parma. He later became less rigid and more ‘relationist’ and changed to a diamond or other formations with an attacking midfielder to accommodate Zidane at Juventus and Kaká at Milan. The short version is that positionist coaches shoehorn players into unfamiliar positions or roles for ‘the good of the team’ whereas relationist coaches will change their formations or styles to suit their players. Grealish was a mercurial winger at Villa who was given license to take people on. Guardiola made him into a ‘ball-retention’ winger who was discouraged from dribbling at fullbacks. It’s also why Guardiola pushed the likes of Ronaldinho and Deco out of Barça because they had too much individuality as players.
Don't understand the obsession with him. Clearly wasn't good enough for our league now he's found one where he's more comfortable. Not sure we need constant updates on every game he plays against random Swiss farmers
Just don't think it's relevant and smacks a bit of trying to prove a point that he should have stayed, but if I'm reading too much into it then I apologise.
No one forces you to watch it? I think nostalgia impacts people a lot though. Was Philogene boring to watch last season? Is salah boring for Liverpool?
If you're not a fan of the top trophy winning clubs football is often boring and ****, but now and again it can be fantastic and oh so enjoyable, such as Sheff Utd away and the previous two away games. That's what makes football watchable, plus the perennial hope our best days are yet to come. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
Saw an Athletic journalist post these recently. They're from 1968 and 1971 respectively. Might be that the idea that "flair is being coached out of the game nowadays" is, like so many things, something that every generation complains about. Also suggests that all the complaints about xG and double pivots is just the latest generation of a timeless and inevitable debate.
Bingo. I think a healthy dose of it is men as they get older wishing they could watch football and feel like they did when they were a kid, and looking for reasons to explain it other than just the fact that it's them getting older. As a tangent, it's why, I think, you see so many grown men piss and moan about the latest Marvel or Star Wars or any other franchise offering not being as good as they used to be.
Yet another verbose twaddle thread. There are those who don't have to write it suggesting others don't have to read it Paper doesn't grow on trees, just as time is not infinite to those living through it. Struth !
I do remember there being a fair bit of boring **** football in my youth too. (and I don’t mean games I was playing in!)
Yeah but our better days are 1000000% better than their better days. I bet we get more satisfaction from a 1-0 away win at rushden and diamonds than those plastic turds get watching their chosen ones lift the champions league trophy on the telly.
