Tectonic Shift in World Football?
By Mark Daniell
11/06/2012
Uh-Oh. Have we just witnessed a shift in global football? It occurred to me during last night’s game that we might just be on the brink of a new era.
Spain 1 Italy 1, and according to the headlines, Spain rescued a point. Spain, of course, blame the pitch. It was too slow, too slimy. It was a cracking encounter though. Italy adopted an old-fashioned sweeper formation, with three at the back and two wingbacks. Classic Italian defence-swamp? Check. Permanent threat of attack down the wings? Check. Spain meanwhile went to the other extreme and played a sort of midfield swamp, no striker but six midfielders. In a nutshell we’ve got De Rossi playing a Beckenbauer, and Fabregas playing a Messi. I can’t think of another occasion when real-life football made me think so much of the all-star feature on Pro Evo (does that date me? Does Pro Evo still exist?), whatever, it was a genuine clash of cultures: Tiki-Taka vs the Catenaccio, and one for purists everywhere to enjoy.
As was to be expected it started cagey, livened up with the goals and ended as a frantically open free-for-all. In other words everything you could want from a game. It even had a patent-pending Balotelli mind blank in front of goal and a Torres display that asked more questions than it answered. Perhaps most impressively it had two outstanding teams playing to win in a way that you rarely see in the knock-out stages. Had this been a knock-out I think the fear of conceding would have overwhelmed the last fifteen minutes and we’d have seen far fewer chances.
So what of the global shift? Well, if you ignore Adrian Chiles, ITV actually sounded intelligent. Gordon Strachan piped up with some genuine insight and most significantly they seemed to analyse, with some degree of accuracy, what was going on. Could it be? Are ITV usurping the Beeb? Again, I admit you have to ignore Adrian Chiles, but there are clues:
I first thought something was up when I noticed ITV had adopted Peter And The Wolf as their theme tune, accompanied by puppet versions of Euro greats. Pretty random right? I thought so: A Russian composed children’s story? A puppet Ruud Gullit? Random. But it turns out Prokofiev was born in the Ukraine (thank you Wikipedia), and that an Anglo-Polish production of Peter And The Wolf was staged at the Albert Hall in 2006, using puppets (thank you Wikipedia). Ukraine? Poland? England? Come on… ITV? Where did that come from? Bear in mind that for their theme tune, the Beeb have adopted a sort of pseudo-Soviet chorus that sounds like it was dropped from Madonna’s Ray of Light album. Then again, just when you thought ITV had it nailed, up pops Jaime Carragher for the Ireland game and normal service is resumed. That guy looks like he’s playing the commentary equivalent of pass the bomb. Anyway, it’s early days, but at the moment, ITV are stomping all over the Beeb, and they’ve pinched tonight’s England game too…
On another note, I’m still undecided about the move to 24 teams for Euro 2016. Is it a good thing, or bad? In my mind the arguments are:
Good: More teams means more football, which means more football, which is good.
Bad: The only crap games in this tournament are the ones involving Ukraine. This suggests even one additional team waters down the quality to an unacceptable standard. I don’t normally predict these days, since I always, always get it wrong, but my prediction is that Sweden Ukraine is going to be a shit 0-0 draw. You wait and see…
With 24 teams would we get groups with Italy and Spain? Probably not. The only time they’d meet would be in the knock-outs when, as I mentioned (not accidentally) I don’t think we’d get the same openness of play.
Then again, without the minnows in the World Cup we wouldn’t have such moments as that crazy Saudi guy, or that Zaire free kick specialist, or dare I say it, Cameroon 1 Argentina 0…