Commentary
New FA Chairman, same old stuck-in mentality
- by Paul Gardner , Oct 14, 2013
LONDON -- A couple of days after writing my previous column -- in which I expressed strong dislike of British attitudes to the nature of soccer and how it should be played -- I went along to the "Leaders in Football" conference at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium.
Here “the world’s most important football leaders” were gathered, though the schedule of events certainly had the air of a world dominated by Brits and the English Premier League. So be it -- that was a bias that afforded another glimpse of the Brit soccer mentality.
Not encouraging. Right from the start, from almost the very first words of Greg Dyke’s opening address, we got the usual crudities. Dyke is the newly appointed Chairman of the English Football Association. Certainly a world football leader, though his main experience has been in journalism, with governorship of the BBC (from 2000 to 2004) as his crowning achievement. He has had some soccer experience as a non-executive director with both Brentford and Manchester United.
But Dyke was evidently keen to impress the assembled attendees that he knew a thing or two about soccer. He chose to do it in a way that was so typically English that it was appalling in its naivete. Oh yes, said Dyke, I used to come to games here many years ago -- I remember seeing George Best sent off in a game, “after he’d been kicked all over the park by Chopper Harris ...”
Eh? Best, one of the most skillful British players of all time, gets a mention -- but only because he was repeatedly kicked by the infamous Chopper Harris. Dyke continued in the same vein. He had also seen Manchester United’s “Nicky Butt sent off for chinning [Chelsea’s] Dennis Wise who had grabbed him by the testicles when the referee wasn’t watching.”
Those were the incidents that Dyke considered worth mentioning. Two cases in which the victim of violent play was ejected. Who needs skill when it can be wiped out by Chopper’s thuggery or Wise’s knavery?
If you’re thinking I exaggerate in drawing attention to Dyke’s emphasis on physicality, consider this: one of the rooms in which the Conference took place was named The Harris Suite, a tribute to the lovely Chopper.
You could, I suppose, dismiss Dyke’s memorable moments as merely one man’s distorted view of English soccer. But that won’t do. Not only is Dyke now one of the most important men in the English game, but he has just announced the formation of an FA Commission whose task will be to make recommendations about the best way to develop young English talent.
Announcing some of the members of the Commission, Dyke began with “There’s myself, obviously ...” Maybe it shouldn’t be so obvious that a man with Dyke’s grotesquely selective memories of English soccer should be influential in its future.
Dyke’s rustic views could be dismissed as those of an old-timer. The new generation will think differently. Really? Try this: “We are English and we tackle hard, and we are tough on the pitch and are hard to beat. We have great characters. You think of Spain and you think technical, but you think of England and you think they are brave and they tackle hard. We have to remember that.”
It’s all there. From the chest-thumping machismo to the snide dismissal of Spain and all that technical stuff. But this is not an elderly veteran speaking. This is Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere, at 21 years of age, one of England’s future stars.
It’s worth pondering where Wilshere’s deeply traditionalist views come from. Because Wilshere has had what surely ought to have been the ideal background for quashing those attitudes and replacing them with something more enlightened.
At age 9 Wilshere joined the Arsenal academy. Meaning that he has spent -- so far -- 12 years under the influence of Arsene Wenger. Most of Wilshere’s vital formative years have been spent with Wenger as his mentor.
That’s Wenger as in Wenger the Premier League’s most ardent proponent of the Beautiful Game. The man who has resolutely defied repeated attacks on his style as not being “hard” enough and has stuck to his conviction that Arsenal must play skillful soccer -- that is, soccer with a great deal of that Spanish commodity, technique.
What has gone wrong here? Is Wenger not the master teacher that he has always appeared to be? Has Wilshere not been listening for 12 years? Neither, I’d say. What we have here is something that exposes, yet again, just how deeply rooted is the English preference for the physical game.
Wilshere is predominantly a skillful player. You can see why Wenger would like him. But Wilshere evidently feels the atavistic rumblings of the get-stuck-in culture and evidently feels he can obey its call while still being faithful to the Wenger formula.
It’s a nice idea -- but one that has never yet been known to work in practice. If there has to be a battle between skill on one side and muscularity on the other, I think the verdict came in long ago. Skill, technique -- the truly difficult part of the game, the truly soccer part of the game -- must come first.
8 comments about "New FA Chairman, same old stuck-in mentality".
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You're absolutely right. You wouldn't catch the Italians or the south Americans handing out cheap off the ball fouls....just ask Tab Ramos.
Wilshere wasn't snidely dismissing Spain. He was just saying that they have a certain style of play ("technical") while England have another ("brave and tackle hard"). The great thing about soccer is that there are so many different ways to play the game, and as a fan I love to see the different approaches come into conflict. I love to watch a hard-tackling side play a technical side. I love to see park-the-bus vs. high possession attacking, etc. It lets you see whose ideas and style will win on the day. When two sides with the same style play, that can be interesting too, but the usual result is that the side with the best players will win. But when styles clash, the "best" side won't necessarily win and as a fan of the game I love that unpredictability.
I should add that Mr. Gardner, for reasons I've never understood, is on a desperate quest to force the entire world to play the same way (basically the way Spain does). This absolutely boggles me -- I can't imagine how boring the game would be if everyone played it the same way.
Being skillful and technical does not preclude you from being brave, honest, hard-working and willing to tackle hard. While I admit some players favor one type or another, PG should not buy into that false dichotomy. I'd suggest that Paul Wilshire is an example of a skillful player with many of the good characteristics of the traditional English steroetype. Likewise, while Messi (who has a bit of skill as well) does not throw his body weight around (since there isn't enough of it), he is a tenacious tackler, never gives up, and is as honest a player as you'll see.
Not quite sure what Wilshere is getting at most of the time, but he should learn to tackle properly. I imagine Wenger has told him repeatedly not to make stupid challenges that put him at risk. No real surprise that he is injured half the season.
Paul Gardner also publishes in World Soccer magazine. Although I frequently disagree with him, I enjoy PG's writing & topic choices. My sense (for better or worse) is that most soccer fans in the US are more interested in EPL than they are in MLS. Personally I could sit in the pub and happily argue whether England (or the USA or anyone else) should change their style of play all night long.
How do I stop receiving hate mail from PG regarding English soccer? His articles are often full of absolute drizzle. I find it hard to believe that he is actually given his own column, let alone having it forced upon us in our inbox on a weekly basis. We get that you don't like English football or the more aggressive side of our game. However you write like somebody who has played very little competitive sport, it's not all pretty patterns and world class players in a every team. English football is exciting, fast and unpredictable, everything your NOT Paul.
Wilshere is going to be an old man by 24. I fear he will end up like Stuart Holden, unable to pull back on the tackling part of the game in order to preserve the skillful playmaker within.