Kyoto Sanga’s goal to beat Kawasaki Frontale at the weekend was scored by Sota Kawasaki. That’s fun, isn’t it?
Let’s go.
Restoring football as a contact sport
It’s easy for football supporters to find things to complain about. A century and a half after the formative years of football as an organised sport, it’s popular enough that it’s impossible for any vague notion of consensus to hold true.
The game has changed. The laws have twisted and turned and twisted again. Governance has followed in the wake of success. Strategy and tactics have taken on historical paths of their own but money rules all, from sovereign wealth funds at the elite level to mismatched playing budgets in non-league.
It’s all but unrecognisable from what football used to be and every shift and shake-up along the way has branched off into a debate. We are but twigs and leaves, no two sets of opinions alike. Consequently, there’s always someone to complain about everything that happens and everything that doesn’t.
Widespread agreement on anything is rare but there are many talking points that seem to gather pace, basic assumptions accepted as public fact regardless of the available evidence or common sense; simple common sense.
One such pseudo truth is that tackling is no longer allowed and defending is dead. We all know it. It used to be an art form, you know. Real defenders used to make real tackles. Spend half an hour in a football stadium concourse or half a nanosecond on Twitter and you’ll hear all about it. But it’s bollocks.
The cult of the Proper Football Man seemed to reach its peak a few years ago, emerging as a social celebration of robust, earthy values in opposition to overthinking and over-complicating a sport whose single biggest selling point is its simplicity. The Proper Football Man was rapidly, roundly and rightly lambasted but his spirit lives on in the same supporters who saw his appeal in the first place. And by god, they love a tackle.
While much of the discussion is asinine, Paddy Power shite – “good tackle play on lol” – the nugget at its heart is true: football is a contact sport. Even those of us who like tactics and statistics and nutritionists and sports psychologists can presumably agree on that, yet this ostensibly straightforward idea is selectively forgotten.
The problem, at least as I see it, is not that tackling isn’t allowed. That’s patently untrue; we still have some artists of the form. No, the issue is in how easily it’s overlooked that football is a contact sport when it comes to awarding fouls. Foul play consists of a complicated set of offences and reductive moaning is unhelpful. Blowing for fouls on the grounds of incidental contact between boots is no better.
In the era of re-refereeing incidents with the help of video – and don’t be fooled into believing that isn’t what video assistant referees are doing – every nick and snick is pored over and analysed to a ludicrous degree in the name of reaching a correct decision that doesn’t even exist. That’s not just a Proper Football Man lament.
The Laws of the Game are open to interpretation by design. Fouls and misconduct are covered by Law 12. A direct free kick, it states, is awarded if a player kicks or attempts to kick an opponent. That can include accidental contact. So can striking or attempting to strike an opponent. So that’s that, then? Not quite.
There’s a very subtle clue in the very next bullet point. A direct free kick is awarded if a player tackles or challenges an opponent. The key qualifier? “In a manner considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force.”
That applies across the board; kicking an opponent is no more an offence than tackling one. Referees (and VAR) are not obliged to award free kicks for incidental contact.
Football is a physical game and that must be protected. Safety developments are undeniably positive but the threshold shouldn’t be too low. The physical tradition of the sport matters. It underpins the competitive spirit of two teams going toe to toe and nose to nose and that doesn’t have to be excessively dangerous.
The beautiful game is so because of its combination of power and skill. If we increasingly outlaw contact then we’re doing ourselves a disservice in that regard and tackling is a big part of that.
It’s as much a skill as shooting or passing. It’s as technical and as tactical as any attacking aspect of the game. It is, lest we forget, one of very few catalysts for a change of possession in a game that lives and dies on its transition phase.
The safety of players is non-negotiable but any further move away from incidental contact in the process of tackles and physical duels should be resisted. How, exactly, do we find the balance between two competing principles?
Football, officiating and punditry would benefit from removing entirely the idea that contact between players has to be a foul (or that any sliver of a touch on the ball negates one). It should be more difficult to give away a foul and that should be the result of the interpretation returning more firmly into the hands of the referee.
All borderline tackles are not created equal. Restoring football as a contact sport is one thing. Allowing deliberate and cynical fouls to continue to proliferate would be quite another. Football is beginning to address those specifically and will continue to do so. Why not release one of the other constraints on highly skilled tackling at the same time as targeting the real scourge?
Perhaps the most unfortunate complication is that football is doing a relatively poor job for a game so fussily protecting its players. Player welfare matters and serious injury to individuals is as significant an influencing factor as anything else mentioned up to that point.
Yet the laser-like precision of refereeing and re-refereeing fouls doesn’t seem to be applied with anything like the same gusto when it comes to actually protecting players. The answer isn’t more fouls awarded on misguided technicalities – it’s more willingness to show red cards.
Football’s law-makers and officials should be working to maintain it as a contact sport but more consistently outlaw the truly dangerous. Hit players where they seek to hurt, not for making genuine attempts to execute one of the game’s core skills. Let’s be honest. Deep down, we can always tell the difference.
If you enjoyed the main piece, please share this week’s newsletter using the button below.
For non-football writing and collage art, visit my website.
“It is getting ridiculous, honestly ridiculous. The amount of decisions that have gone against us is outrageous this season.”
These are the words of Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White. He might be right, to an extent. Maybe it is ridiculous. Maybe there is “an amount” of decisions that have gone against Forest, as if that can be objectively judged by anyone at all, never mind the supposedly put-upon party.
But I’ll tell you something: players and managers publicly using words like “outrageous” in relation to refereeing is deeply unhelpful.
Salty beef extracts
Sorry we’re not dead yet (The Football Fan)
Spurs and Arsenal’s ticket price hikes show what they really think of fans (i)
In an era of bad faith, safety protocols are at obvious risk of exploitation (Unexpected Delirium)
Do Apple’s MLS broadcasts merely exist to promote the league’s agenda? (The Guardian)
Dessert
The new Rush Pack from PUMA caught my eye this week. I am, if nothing else, a sucker for a highlighter pen.
By the way…
High Protein Beef Paste is a free newsletter.
However, if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the years you might consider purchasing a Systematic Decline art print.
I’m open to writing commissions and artistic collaborations. Get in touch if you’d like a chat.
That’s your lot. Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you enjoyed it and haven’t done so yet.
Don’t be shy when it comes to sharing the newsletter. If I can get a decent handful of subscribers I can sack off Twitter and isn’t that the dream for all of us?
Have a week.