Perfection personified - http://www.footyplace.com/featured-football-news/blog-the-antithesis-to-anti-football/ Footyplace new boy Michael Graham explains why he is one football fan that won’t be complaining about Stoke’s tactics this season. Lets be honest – modern football is ripe with pretension. The spate of exotically named foreign coaches and players brought it into the English game, and the media and technological age bringing us football from every corner of the globe have perpetuated it. But perhaps the most unsettling aspect of it all is how readily and steadfastly the fans have embraced it. If a bottom half team goes to the Emirites and decides, just for giggles, that they fancy trying to get some points after identifying their best chance of achieving it is through rigid and disciplined defensive football, there is an outcry. If someone even tackles a Barcelona player they get vilified by a watching audience disgruntled at having to endure an interruption in the mesmeric rhythmic tempo of Catalan possession. I remember once being told by a live TV analyst that a last-minute deflected winner for Manchester United at Old Trafford to deny a team the point their superbly committed defensive performance deserved was not only a victory for the Red Devils, but also ‘a victory for football’. Sadly, we never seem to be short of a smug nobody, seemingly high on copious and ill-justified levels of self-satisfaction, telling us – usually definitively – what football ‘is’, and how football ‘was meant to be played’. But these people seem completely oblivious to the fundamental basis of the game’s world popularity – its diversity. Modern football theology will try to tell you that football is a ‘an art form’, or ‘entertainment’. It isn’t. It is sport. It always has been sport and no matter how much Sky Sports try and glam it up or how much marketing executives try and brand it, football will always have sport at its core. With the media seemingly intent on reducing the game to a pantomime, there will inevitably be those cast in the role of the pantomime villain. The mass vitriol laid down upon Real Madrid for their largely successful stifling of Barcelona in last season’s Champions League suggests that no one is safe from it. The perennial pantomime villains of the English game seem to be Stoke City. The Potters are, of course, an easy target with their physical approach, long throws, potent set pieces, and seemingly endless precession of giants. It certainly doesn’t take much scouring of blogs, message boards, or Twitter to see Stoke being referred to as advocates of ‘anti-football’. But the last time I checked, tackles and throw-ins were just as much a part of football as trequartistas. Quality defending is as much a part of it as quality attacking play. Do Stoke ask unfair questions of their opposition? Of course not. They ask perfectly fair and reasonable sporting ones. They are nothing more than a club doing what they feel they must to level the unfair financial playing field by identifying an area they can dominate within the rules of the game. Should they not be praised for their resourcefulness in finding a way which bridges the chasm that exists between football’s chosen few clubs and the rest. I am not a Stoke fan, but I am pretty sure that if you were to ask any of their fans they would tell you they find the football at the Britannia Stadium perfectly entertaining. Certainly more entertaining, I’d say, than trying to play the games on the visiting teams terms and struggling to compete. As a neutral, I often look forward to Stoke games for the simple reason that they provide something different. The Premier League is so predictable. I suspect that we could all correctly name the teams to finish in the top six this season before a ball has even been kicked. Whenever we settle down to watch one of the top teams play a ‘lesser’ club on television, the process is generally reduced to sitting on our backsides waiting for the rich club to win. That isn’t the case with Stoke, though. You wonder how the pampered prima donnas used to playing the game on their terms and in first gear will cope with the long throw or aerial bombardment. You wonder how their world class midfield players will find and create space against a rigid and disciplined Stoke system and deal with the frustration if they can’t. You wonder how full backs used to being granted the freedom of pitch and camping in the oppositions half will deal with being asked to defend against proper, old school, wingers. Is seeing those sporting sub-plots unravel not entertaining to you? If the answer is no, then you should probably start asking yourself whether you follow football out of passion, or just fashion. The truth is, though, that the very last thing that Stoke and Tony Pulis want is popularity. It is a club that thrives upon the siege mentality that universal unpopularity brings. And whilst other clubs are more pre-occupied with being a ‘brand’, Stoke is very much still a football club. There is perhaps a more tangible connection between their players and their supporters than at any other club in the Premier League because for any player to succeed there, he must fully and unconditionally embrace the club’s identity. Revisionist history from the football snobs will tell you that Tuncay and Gudjohnson failed at Stoke because they were too good, or too creative, to succeed there. Nonsense. They failed because they weren’t willing to embrace the football they were being paid to produce, not because they were unable to. Matthew Etherington, Jermaine Pennant, and Ricardo Fuller never had such problems. So while many seem to want to label Stoke City as party-pooping destroyers of football, I would suggest they are actually one of the last true advocates of the sporting essence of football. A club with little interest in making friends and building a brand, but openly defying convention to find a way to compete on a football pitch. To me, that is the very antithesis to anti-football.
I follow this guy on Twitter, as he is often on the Oatcake and he is very fair about Stoke as is shown in this article.
Superb. That's made me actually feel a whole lot better about my team and the way we are vilified by the prima donnas ( supporters players and managers) of other BIG clubs. Thanks for that Waddo.
Brilliant waddo, fantastic article! Just go back to yesterday and the last 10 minutes of the match, as we the fans raised the roof to will our team to hang on. Magical. Proud yes, passionate yes, loud.....very!!! Then consider the subs Chelsea brought on to try and take the point we had fought tooth and nail for away from us. (Yes they have done this in the past in the dying moments of the game, but not this time Mr Lampard, Terry, Cole and co!!!). When you look at the resources we have available to us compared with the 'big' clubs with anonymous well heeled foreign owners, ask me what I would rather do. Be a Glory Hunter or support my local side, the side from my birthplace? No contest!!!! We all sing it loud boys don't we? City till I die!!!!!! KTF and UTP!!!!!
Great article ,it puts into words what most of us feel.We DO play a different game to the rest of the teams in the prem. and it`s now starting to be appreciated!(by some anyway).:
Yes terrific article, thanks for sharing it. Well Sunday I felt it was really a point won. One I did not expect, the way we were battered in the second half! Begovic was just terrific as were most of the team. For me the stars were: Begovic- The super saves he made Huth - The way in which he curbed Maluda and stood no nonsense from any other Chelsea posers Jones - Upfront he fought tirelessly and the defensive work he put in was so good in teh second half. All in all a great day but worried about the injury to Matty. Roll on those new signings!!! PTO - I did not hear the chant City till I die on Sunday.
Morning Cris, good point, we don't sing it that often, but we should state the faith every game imo! After your success with 'Swing Low' do you think you could do the same with CTID? ;-) No doubt like the rest of us, I am getting fairly restless now as the transfer window winds up to its inevitable conclusion......bitten fingernails, sleepless nights, endless dips into the Oatcake rumour mill......two weeks to go and counting!!! UTP!!! ps thanks for the programmes, brilliant stuff, have sat with Nath and taken a trip way back down memory lane....love the 1971 Man City programme where the news on our Dennis is yet another fracture, increasing his total to 4 broken legs, 2 toes, 2 noses, 1 hand and 1 finger he he what a hero. Plus in the same programme against Huddersfield in the FA Cup it says 'Smith had to be massaged to stop cramp in the second half. Once his legs gave way he used his head and had part of his ear torn off'.... and all for £20 a week no doubt!!!
A very good read but I have 1 thing I need to ask from it Stoke is a club that thrives upon the siege mentality that universal unpopularity brings Really? I have never thought of Stoke having anything even near a siege mentality.
Sorry to throw a spanner in the works, but those who said great article, are only agreeing with the guy because he is defending SCFC. But many on here rubbish Pulis & how he sets up his team to defend, defend, defend especially away from home. This guy has basically said that the art of defending, is not appreciated as much as silky smooth passing football, we defend our bollocks off nearly every game, but Pulis gets slated for it. Now a Poster states that the art of defending is losing it's worth in football, & you all agree, but what does Pulis do? Defend from the back, build a strong team, do not concede. Seems like a bit of contradiction on this site, no i am not picking on posters, just seems like when a blog is written in Stokes favour allmost all agree. Just my opinion Huth
Huth I don't think he was defending Stoke City, just putting his "own views on how he see's the way we (Stoke) go about gaining pts, results and he's obviously intellegent enough to make "his own mind up and say it how he see's it" That, is what this board is about. Points of view. I happend to agree that it's well written and whilst I will NEVER agree with T.P.s away approach to some away games. That, as YOU pointed out to me a while back. Is MY problem no one else's. T.P. is the manager and he knows how to get it done better than I ever would. He's also saying that the fans as a whole are with the team. I ALWAYS thought we all were? Nice to see a post without the eff word too!
I think we all get annoyed with our approach away from home Potts- it really needs to improve this year. what makes it all the more frustrating is when we see how well the team plays when we're at home.
Pulis builds up in the media how much we're despised in the general media (especially Mick Dennis and TalkSport), and some managers, although it's a bit less than it was during our 1st and 2nd seasons in the Prem. For example after our first Premier League game, which we lost 3-1 at Bolton, PaddyPower paid out bets on our relegation, which really started the so called "siege mentality" that we have now.
No hypocrisy from me if that's who the under hand comment was aimed at as he speaks of my team which is Stoke City and a team that I have supported for over 40 years and will do till I die. Just because a journalist for once sings our praises it does not change my view on Pulis whatsoever. Until Tone sets his side up to have a go away from home I will still think he is a bottle merchant!
