The fan of international ball that reads this site is familiar with Fabio Cappello, recently chosen to lead England’s national team. How familiar are you with his previous position as head of Real Madrid? Goal.com looks at the beautiful game as it’s played in Spain and compares and contrasts the approaches being taken by Real, Barcelona and the others…
Sexy football. A Liga manager will usually need to at least pay lip-service to the idea, while those higher up the table may need to put it into practice.
Spanish Debate: Does Pretty Football Matter?
Hat tip to Bob.
2 Comments
I know it does not matter in the amount of points a team gets for a win, but the prettier football a team plays, the more respect i have for them. Don’t get me wrong, i may not like the team, but i do respect them for keeping the beautiful game just that, beautiful. I do get frustrated though when a scrappy team pulls out a draw by just sitting back and defending, especially against my Arsenal, but thats how some clubs and some coaches do it, but i know one of the reasons why i like Arsenal is that they play great, attractive football, which looks to be paying off sofar this season. I think the managers have a lot to do with the style, like Arsene Wenger, Frank Rijkaard, and Fabio Capello, and they can influence any team they are with to play this way. I know the players have to want to play the way the managers wants to, but he always will have some influence. With this said, i hope the Three Lions can switch their style up a bit, not just for their success, but for the good of the game, and having an influence on the Prem as a whole, thus helping the numerous Americans in the top flight, as well as the few in the lower leagues.
Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder! A…..l is held up as the paragon of football in the UK but I for one think that they have an undercurrent of ruthlessness in their game as does Manchester United. While these two teams do play attractive football they do also grind out results. Playing away at Middlesborough in the rain (sorry to any Teesiders out there) isn’t conducive to free flowing football (FFF?) From the pragmatic standpoint, Wenger and Ferguson would not long be in their jobs if they lost every other week but were “nice to watch”. There is certainly a school of thought that winning ugly has to be learned and can, in some ways be just as satisfying, for a player as spraying the ball about and making the other team search for the ball all day. The beautiful game to me comes in all sorts of packages. I can still remember (even in my advanced age) nice tackles I have made and of course good balls (all too few) played to team members. The most successful teams have steel and style and in the end results matter!
What about goals? For what it is worth if you want to see goals in London games you would pick Spurs games over A…..l games any time (80 v 58), but ask any Spurs fan if they would swap league positions and I think I know the answer.
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