Without human intensity, elite football would be robotic and boring
The best footballers are where they are because of focus and discipline. Thank god they play under pressure too.
I spent part of my weekend representing Coventry Sphinx at the Northern Premier League’s Annual General Meeting, our first in the fourth tier of non-league football.
It’s plainly obvious that the higher level comes with slicker presentation – although our interactions with the Midland Football League and latterly the United Counties League have been wonderful too – and higher expectations of the clubs.
Our new league appears from what I saw and heard (and overheard) on Saturday to be a pretty impressive outfit. But what struck me most, really, were the delegates, mostly secretaries, from the other clubs.
Non-league football is full of people who put in the hours on a voluntary basis and really, really know their shit.
In all honesty I had no business being there.
Without human intensity, elite football would be robotic and boring
The image of Zinedine Zidane sticking the nut on Marco Materazzi is a football icon. Zidane was one of the game’s true greats, revered far beyond France and Madrid for his flair, his flaws and his fire.
On 9th July 2006 he put them all on display and walked away from his playing career, passing the sport’s ultimate prize on the way. Zidane had already won the World Cup in 1998 and was recognised at that time as the best footballer in the world. But 2006 was Italy’s summer and it was Zidane, in part, who made sure of it.
He and Materazzi were protagonist and antagonist in that World Cup final in Berlin. Materazzi gave away an early penalty; Zidane clipped an extraordinary Panenka in off the crossbar. Materazzi bundled in the equaliser. Then, more than a hundred minutes after his goal, Zidane was sent off in the second period of extra time for headhadoukening Materazzi and that was that.
Zidane’s fourteenth and final red card was a specific case but by no means unique. Materazzi earned the sweaty bald head that was planted between his pectorals that night and Zidane’s demeanour throughout his career was such that few were surprised to learn after the event that he’d reacted with force to the Italian’s insults.
But the violent indiscretions of elite footballers are ten a penny and I’m fascinated by these incidents. Notwithstanding the frankly delicious dramatic grandeur of his final act as a football player, how does someone like Zidane work so hard to get to the top, to be so focused, and yet suffer from such a lapse of discipline on the biggest stage?
What is it that dragged Aleksandar Mitrović to his status as a feared Premier League striker but still makes him sabotage himself in the spotlight? Wayne Rooney was another. There have been many, many more besides.
Somehow, pre-Zidane punchers and kickers and butters don’t seem so surprising. They played in football’s imperfect age, when being a little rough around the edges was normal and mistakes – in terms of football, temperament and lifestyle – happened all the time.
That’s different now. Perfection is the standard. How is it possible to operate in that world, to thrive even, and still be tempted to stand on Cristiano Ronaldo’s bollocks?
Don’t answer that.
I’m no psychologist so the best explanation I can muster is that top-level competitive athletes who expect perfection of themselves and have perfection expected of them play in a persistent state of being completely wired.
In the full glare of the world they consistently exceed normal human performance. They know that eleven opposition players are doing the same, willing and able to capitalise on the slightest mistake. The margin for error at the pinnacle nowadays is microscopically narrow.
Even for these dedicated and determined professionals, who play not only to a freakish physical standard but with a psychological robustness that’s bewildering to the rest of us, that heightened sense of focus must put a strain on the psyche.
Fiery footballers, god love ‘em, are tightly coiled springs. They’re elastic bands stretched to the limit and beyond. Maybe when they finally snap the question shouldn’t be how a finely tuned pro lost their temper in the great amphitheatre of televised football, but how on earth they managed to remain composed under such tension, despite their nature, for so long.
High-performance sport without the flip side would be boring. As errors become more infrequent and are generally swiftly punished, football risks losing the addicting chaos that makes it what it is. It needs mistakes – ideally in series – in order to be unpredictable. Unpredictability is the essence of the game no matter the barely baked opinions of Extremely Online over-compensators.
Without it, football is nothing but an endless chain of dull matches. Pass after pass, win after win, week after week, the best get better and their numbers go through the roof, yet they offer precious little reason to keep watching them.
Spice is football’s secret ingredient and I don’t mean synthetic weed. It’s the difference between fleshy androids and humans. Cut open Zidane or Mitrović or Rooney and you’ll find no wires and cables. More to the point, he’ll probably smack you one.
Outright violence isn’t to be celebrated but temper tantrums and flashpoints are necessary and desirable because the game itself, above a certain level, would otherwise just be a stultifying procession. It’s too precise, too quick, too polished for its own good.
The human intensity required to make it so might just be the very thing that keeps it essential. Footballers will never be flawless. Competition is a drug and competitors will crawl over one another to win.
Baffling rage isn’t going away. The dark arts are here to stay. These aren’t merely part of the game; they are as much the stuff of top-flight football as excellence. It wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful without them.
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“There is no ‘conspiracy’ against Manchester City, and the extent to which a very vocal proportion of the club’s support has embraced borderline conspiracy theorising has really put them at the vanguard of one of the most unappealing aspects of modern football.”
Ian King, to whose new Substack you should subscribe, on you-know-who doing the you-know-what. Amen brother.
Salty beef extracts
Disappearing Hands (Terrace Edition)
Unai Emery: An adult enters the room (7500 to Holte)
Manchester City’s European ascent is a total victory for politics in football (The Guardian)
The tyranny of the box goal (Unexpected Delirium)
Dessert
Nike Flight Premier League official match ball 2023/24. Nice.
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