Some End-ish of Season Thoughts on Football

Atlético Madrid 0-1 FC Barcelona

This weekend, I learned the Barça-Real Madrid rivalry has its own, equally foul-mouthed, version of "Go to Hell, Carolina":



Having the benefit of almost a season's worth of Premier League and Barcelona games, the differences are obvious. Premier League games frequently descend into slog--the best teams, like the worst, seem content with a slog. There are moments of individual skill, and the occasional person who rises to the occasion. But most matches are mostly one team passing the ball around in a semi-circle, far outside the 18-yard box, while the other packs between eight and ten players into said box. Players keep waiting for something to happen, and uncertain what to do if that something does not happen.

As a Spurs fan, this general problem has been made worse by an emphasis on transition play and a lack of quality defensive options: the team is good at getting advantages, but seem unclear on what to do once they have them; the forwards and midfielders are too easily dispossessed, and the defense unable to cope with the exact same tactics their forwards are supposed to be managing. Some of this is on the poor mix of players Pottechino inherited at the beginning of the year; some of it's the youth of the team; some of it is the difficulty in training Premier League footballers to play at full intensity throughout the game. In any event, the time I devote to watching the Prem has been ever decreasing.

That time is now given to Barça, who seem to have accidentally rounded into one of the better sides in memory--or as accidentally as can happen when you have a functionally unlimited budget. They are--and this is key--fun to watch. Messi, Neymar and Suárez might be faking their mutual enthusiasm, but it's a convincing show: each one gets a clearly defined role that allows them to combine the glory of occasionally being the goal-scorer with teammates who allow them to show off their other skills (somewhere on youtube there's a 15-minute video of Messi doing all sorts of things other than scoring goals, and it is mesmerizing) and be selfless for the team's sake. If they have any sort of problem, it's being too considerate of their teammates. Rakitic and Iniesta and Xavi will pull out their magic from time to time, and one can count on Piqué or Mascherano for an excellent dispossession.

And one has to enjoy it now because it is, alas, fleeting. Being a superclub means never being satisfied, which means continually bringing in new signings to displace old players. I almost did not want Luis Enrique to win the treble this year. If he does, then every subsequent year will see people asking why he can't replicate this quite unusual feat, and this means he'll be gone within five years. But, realistically, he will be gone in five years regardless of how well his team plays this year or any other year: that's the game now. Might as well enjoy it while we can.

Figuring Out the Premier League, An Ongoing Series

QPR 0-2 Manchester United

Man U won, but unconvincingly. One of the interesting things about picking up a new sport is attempting to sort out the phenomena other people take for granted. United looked terrible; City lost to Arsenal; I've watched Chelsea and Tottenham and City all drop points to teams that are in danger of relegation. Why?

United kept losing the ball in midfield; QPR seemed to particularly enjoy messing with Wayne Rooney (an old man at 29! There's sports for you). This appears to be the key: the Premier League is mostly about 'parking the bus,' putting 8-10 men in and around the penalty area in an attempt to stop goals. The primary offensive strategy, such as it is, is the quick counter-attack after a missed chance on the defensive end. No one has much talent in creating shots from midfield (aside from Karim Benzema, but that's why he's great); if there's no score on a break, you end up watching highly-paid strikers stand around waiting for someone to miss a shot so that they can scramble. That's the Plan B for most teams. It makes sense, in a way: if you have a massive, or substantial, talent gap, passing the ball around waiting for the other team to make a defensive mistake is a solid strategy. Man U won, after all.

But it's not a great strategy. Because these teams are lazy in the middle third, any team committed to high pressing has a good chance to score on their own break: QPR had three or four good chances go wasted. Combine that with a natural inclination towards conservatism on the road, and it only takes a lucky chance or two to lose. Talent will out, but it looks like a poor tactical decision.

Jim Harbaugh to Michigan

Fulfilling Michigan's own most inflated conception of itself: an alumnus who has enjoyed incredible professional success leaves what is widely considered to be the peak of his field to return to his alma mater for less money than he would have gotten elsewhere. The hiring rather changes the narrative about Michigan and its success in creating football coaches: there is every reason to believe that Harbaugh and LSU's Les Miles would have accepted any serious offer from Michigan to return home, possibly any offer, period.
The hiring also exposed (again) the significant different between college sports fans, professional sports fans, and those uninterested in sports. Michigan creates tremendous alumni loyalty by making itself into a distinct identity in spite of the large number of students, and the football team is one of the most important parts of that identity. I love living in North Carolina, and cannot really picture leaving, but for a good job offer in Ann Arbor, I might well do so.

FC Barcelona 0-1 Real Sociedad

I watched through the Jordi Alba own goal, and then realized the same thing all the other Barça fans had realized: this team is a mess, and it's the manager's fault. Desperation is built in to football: all the games count and all the goals count because one can never quite predict what the rest of the league will do, and this accounts for the tension that ratchets itself up throughout every game that's not Brazil-Germany at the past World Cup. Desperation that shows up earlier than that, earlier than, say, the 60th minute, is bad. Luis Enrique put out a bad starting XI, mismatched in such a way that all the needed players could not be added later, they made one mistake early on, and every move after that reeked of panic. Add to this the increasingly loud reports that Enrique is fighting with Messi and Neymar--and that their benching was a punishment for questioning his authority--and everything looks a mess.

Tottenham Hotspur 5-3 Chelsea

The flip side of Barça is Spurs, who are coming together at the right moment. Sports is about schadenfreude as much as loyalty to one's team, and in the Premier League there is no joy to be had that surpasses Chelsea losing, except perhaps the attendant thrill of Jose Mourinho losing. When it's your team that does it, it's even better. Spurs always lose to Chelsea, pulling a win in four or five of the last 40 meetings. Nor was it a fluke: Spurs were the better team, building the attack through strong midfield play (I even saw some tiki-taka make an appearance as they drew Chelsea out of defensive shape), and Harry Kane continued to prove that he can do whatever he wants. There's a plan, the team is excited, and they're rounding into form at just the right time.

Decline of an Empire

Getafe 0-0 FC Barcelona

The thing about great teams, much like great writers, is that it can be hard to learn from them because they are not making the mistakes that allow for learning. It's quite possible to read something great and learn no lessons about how it was successfully constructed; it's just as possible that the personal creative processes hit a peak for that author in that one period of composition, and will never be matched. When you read something that goes wrong in a noticeable but minor way, it's much easier to see the flaw and imagine how one might go about fixing it.

I am still only learning how to watch football: the moments of chaos give way to patches where I am able to understand and follow both what is happening and why. This is good for increasing my technical vocabulary and very bad for being a fan; I can read the tactical review of a match and its impressions now sync with mine. Barcelona now features weird tactical decisions so notable that even I can recognize the flaws: "why are they only attacking on the left, even though the starting striker on that side is out?" "why is Messi playing like a midfielder?" "why is it the backs are the only ones who ever have the ball in possession?" "why does Rakitic only ever get the ball in the defensive half of the field? Isn't he an attacking mid?" "why does everyone just stand around in the box waiting for someone to do something?" All of this seems emblematic of a club that is something less than the sum of its parts, largely because no one ever seems to have a plan; everyone knows what to do when there's a rebound off a shot, but that's it. The solution is to get more creative with who plays, and tactics in games--the 3-4-3 for Champions League was risky, but effective--but Luis Enrique is beginning to get that siege mentality look that doomed Michigan football this year.

Fandom is dumb because you pick sides for, ultimately, arbitrary reasons, and then ride or die with those decisions.

FC Barcelona 3-1 Paris St. Germain

Rooting for Barça over Real Madrid allows for a level of moral satisfaction, but it's important to remember that they're the second biggest bully in the room. Real Madrid will always spend more, and do so because winning is the only thing that matters. Madrid, all too happy to wrap itself in the mantle of Spanishness and Catholicness, will remove the cross from its logo to appease Middle Eastern sponsors, and no one has to act surprised that whatever slight values the team nominally holds get compromised in the name of more money. But Barcelona's problems are of a similar nature.

On offense, the relevant questions are: "Should the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team get most of the shots? Or the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team? Or the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team to the final, scored half of its goals, and is generally considered one of the best players of his generation/ever?" and the answer is "Why not all of them?" This game also featured a goal by another former Barça player who scored for PSG, dumped by Barcelona after one season--despite also being a world-class striker--because the manager did not particularly like him. They may be mes que un club, but that means sometimes they are just like un club--playing people with big contracts rather than promising youngsters, paying to buy good players and fix mistakes in talent development and planning, and all the rest.

It's a breath of fresh air after the environment of American sports, where each team does its best to play perpetually aggrieved, with a small loyal cadre of followers who are surrounded by 'haters' who Just Don't Get It, a role both trite and obvious that is, nevertheless, the default script for almost every team in almost every sport, amateur and professional. They Don't Believe In Us is maintained even by the teams everyone expects to win, i.e. the ones people believe in whether they want to or not, which suggests that coaching and motivation remains primitive. The only alternative script is The Team Is Bigger Than Any of Its Members, which is marginally better but just as reductive and simplistic.

I think Messi's "Derek Jeter, but better, of a sport people around the world actually follow" act is at least partly a calculation, if a smart one*, and I don't have any illusions that the seeming compatibility of Neymar, Suárez and Messi is based on the fact that they all realize they must get along with each other whether they like it or not. If things go south, it won't last. But I'll enjoy it while they do.


*And actually a brilliant bit of personality management, fulfilling two basic needs: crafting a personal narrative that allows him a maximum of space and freedom to live as much of a private life as possible, and driving people who don't like you crazy. As Jeter showed, there is nothing a lot of people hate more than a very good professional who keeps his head down and refuses to say anything shocking. How anyone can think Maradona better than Messi I will never understand, except that people seem to think that appearing emotionally unstable and volatile in all situations is a sign of genius.

Inverting the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson
Fear and Loathing in La Liga, Sid Lowe

After this year's World Cup, I decided to make a serious effort to follow soccer. I attempted something similar after the 2010 World Cup, but gave up when it proved difficult or impossible to find matches on tv, or find sources that wrote about soccer with regularity. In 2014, the Premier League has at least three games on tv every week, and while Spain's La Liga is currently broadcast on a channel I could not get even if I wanted to, the options for creative workarounds are much better. So I pick Tottenham Hotspur and Barcelona to follow, and engage in that ultimate sign of seriousness, reading my way through the literature on the subject.

Spurs and Barça were chosen for reasons of politics. Tottenham was, for most of its existence, a Jewish enclave in north London. British attitudes towards such people being what they are, the team and its supporters came in for a lot of abuse. The non-Jewish Tottenham supporters turned this around in 'Yankee Doodle' fashion and re-christened themselves as a "Jew Army"; if there's one thing guaranteed to win my heart over, it's the eagerness to stand and take it on behalf of someone else. (I first learned about this years ago at Normblog--here's a representative post) Barcelona was a similar matter: I've read enough about Spain in the Civil War years to know that a positive association with Franco was a non-starter, which ruled out Real Madrid and, as I discovered, Atlético Madrid, who were once sponsored by the Air Force. Barcelona made itself into the home of Catalan resistance to Franco, embraced its identity as mes que un club, and spurned putting any sponsorship on their kits for the longest time (the first sponsor was Unicef, in order to raise money for them). From Wilson's book I also learned that the two clubs were linked: Spurs developed the passing, attacking, pressing style of play that, through the Dutch, came to be associated with Barcelona.

Wilson's book occasionally overwhelms with technical detail: it explains a number of concepts easily enough, but many others require watching enough football to know what he's talking about. It's in this manner that detailed technical knowledge arises, though: one must learn and put learning into the service of observing reality. The book comes alive most when talking about English soccer, which is not surprising: Wilson demolishes the poor arguments put in favor of doing things the traditional way with a passion and intensity that simply does not exist elsewhere in the book.

Lowe is a superior theorist, though more journalistic of a writer. He grasps that the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry is not as either club would have it, that neither coalesced into what it claims for its identity until the 80s--or later. Real Madrid's anti-fascist credentials during the Civil War were as good as Barça's; after, for a brief period, they were better. But Real Madrid has consciously and repeatedly chosen to walk away from that legacy while Barcelona have embraced it. It's a silly rivalry, in a way, because these are two of the teams who have the money to get literally any player they want; they are two of perhaps half a dozen who are always buyers. Barcelona has just been cannier with its identity. Real Madrid is a club for fans who just want to say their team won something each year.

Tottenham Hotspur 0-3 Chelsea

I gave up after ten minutes, when it became clear this would not be much of a game. As a longstanding fan of Michigan sports, I have developed the acute awareness of when a game is over. My team might be ahead, there might be a long time left to play, but there are some times when it's obvious. Being a sensible fellow, I have no interest in continuing to watch and confirming the accuracy of my intuition, and the tv goes off quickly. My intuitions have been wrong before, but less often than you might think.

Ten minutes was enough for Harry Kane to almost score twice, and Chelsea to actually score twice (and enough time to make it clear that Chelsea could score as many times as it wanted to). No need to keep subjecting yourself to that, not on a Wednesday afternoon.