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In praise of defensive football

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Re: In praise of defensive football

#41

Post by notahacker »

bachmeier wrote: post #25
dkarl wrote: post #5

Ironically, the most unrelentingly boring and defensive style of soccer is to be on offense most of the game, by maintaining possession and doing nothing with it. I say "ironically" because teams that maintain possession and "build slowly" usually receive credit for aspiring to play beautiful attacking football. When it works, and the offense circulates the ball around in nimble interchanges until they pounce on an a…

> This is how Barcelona played some of the most beautiful football of all time. I'm going to go out on a limb and say having way more money than almost all of your opponents had something to do with it too. Oh, and having Messi might have been of some importance as well. I'd like to see some data that shows I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything to suggest it's helpful to possess the ball at midfield. If anything, yo…

Possessing the ball in midfield means you have an opportunity to move the ball closer to the opponents' goalkeeper, or the option of keeping it safe so that the opposition don't possess it near your goalkeeper.

Having the ball in midfield over a period might only give you a very marginal chance of scoring at the end of it, but not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent that needs to score.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#42

Post by heyheyhey »

bodyfour wrote: post #22
nemo44x wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, it's a part of the game due to football's insistence on using a running clock, which makes zero sense from a competitive aspect and needs to be changed Can anyone explain why this is, either than historic reasons like "it's the way it has always been done."? It seems a bit odd in today's world that they don't have a clock that everyone can see and the ref having the ability to signal to stop and star…

From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#Duration_... > Added time was introduced because of an incident which happened in 1891 during a match between Stoke and Aston Villa. Trailing 1–0 and with just two minutes remaining, Stoke were awarded a penalty. Villa's goalkeeper kicked the ball out of the ground, and by the time the ball had been recovered, the 90 minutes had elapsed and the game w…

> At least now if a team is adjudged to be taking the piss with the timewasting the ref can just mentally tack another minute or two onto the game.

But anyone who regularly watches football knows that stoppage time is ridiculously inconsistent. A half can have 3 goals and VAR reviews and only have 4 minutes of stoppage time. Then within those 4 minutes, the winning team will take 30 seconds per goal kick and then the ref will blow time at 4 minutes on the dot.

Again, it makes zero sense from a competitive aspect.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#43

Post by heyheyhey »

bodyfour wrote: post #24
nemo44x wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but what I’m saying is why can’t the ref just stop the clock with a hand signal when the ball isn’t in play and restart it when it is? Every other sport with a clock that I’m aware of does this.

Well I guess my question would be are those sports really better for it? Anyone who has watched the fourth quarter of an American football game will know how paramount clock management is to that sport. Even more infuriating (for me) is basketball where the losing team is constantly stopping the clock with fouls to prevent the winning team from running down the final seconds... the last "minute" of the game can feel…

> Well I guess my question would be are those sports really better for it?

Depends on your definition of better. Better for simplicity? I suppose. Better for entertainment? Arguable. Better for competition? No.

Right now, the rules incentivize time wasting. If you're up goal in the 85th minute, you should fake an injury or take 30 seconds for a goal kick because it improves your chances of winning. Other sports have solved this decades ago because of how flawed it is. Hell, even tennis, a sport that doesn't utilize a clock, added a serve clock due to players attempting to waste time to their benefit.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#44

Post by partomniscient »

Someone wrote: post #28
dkarl wrote: post #5

Ironically, the most unrelentingly boring and defensive style of soccer is to be on offense most of the game, by maintaining possession and doing nothing with it. I say "ironically" because teams that maintain possession and "build slowly" usually receive credit for aspiring to play beautiful attacking football. When it works, and the offense circulates the ball around in nimble interchanges until they pounce on an a…

I don’t see the continuous probing of a defense as “doing nothing”. A boxer will feint a zillion attacks, too, before going for the real one. That’s not “doing nothing”. It only becomes sterile if the team in possession of the ball plays the ball around without doing real probing. On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it.

>On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it.

But it underwhelms the fans, and bores the team-neutral audience, because unless they read the game at that level of nuance - that the team is just passing it around the box.

I think maybe Cruyff had a point when the article mentions:

Unfortunately, I abandoned the book after a long paragraph on page 89 in which Cruyff explains why, in his opinion, the most important thing in football is not victory, but entertaining the crowd.

My personal opinion that the refereeing has been woefully inadequate and getting worse, and VAR which was an attempt to improve things has actually made things worse. Does the sport even matter when one mistake by an official drastically changes the outcome. High scoring sports like basketball mitigate this issue most of the time because the better team is likely to win by more than 1 or 2 points.

I'm boycotting football until after the next World Cup, but it was nice to hear that the Euro finals was one of the best refereed matches in a long time. Pity the ref. himself retired afterwards.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#45

Post by bachmeier »

notahacker wrote: post #41
bachmeier wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is how Barcelona played some of the most beautiful football of all time. I'm going to go out on a limb and say having way more money than almost all of your opponents had something to do with it too. Oh, and having Messi might have been of some importance as well. I'd like to see some data that shows I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything to suggest it's helpful to possess the ball at midfield. If anything, yo…

Possessing the ball in midfield means you have an opportunity to move the ball closer to the opponents' goalkeeper, or the option of keeping it safe so that the opposition don't possess it near your goalkeeper. Having the ball in midfield over a period might only give you a very marginal chance of scoring at the end of it, but not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent t…

> not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent that needs to score

That depends heavily on who you're playing. There's no such thing as possessing the ball for the entire game. A team with a strong counterattack only needs one pass to be off the mark to score.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#46

Post by nemo44x »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #30
nemo44x wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, it's a part of the game due to football's insistence on using a running clock, which makes zero sense from a competitive aspect and needs to be changed Can anyone explain why this is, either than historic reasons like "it's the way it has always been done."? It seems a bit odd in today's world that they don't have a clock that everyone can see and the ref having the ability to signal to stop and star…

It’s definitely been considered but football has some entrenched traditions and this change would be hard to get through. I don’t think fans would want it. The rules state that the referee should add on any wasted time at the end, but it rarely seems to happen particularly accurately.

Agreed but VAR is a thing abd I don’t hear too much griping over it. Then again it is used sparingly.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#47

Post by phamilton »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #31
phamilton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more fun is the theory that "football" is not about how one contacts the ball but more about how one plays on foot rather than on a horse. The term "football" was derisive towards the games peasants play vs nobility playing games like polo.

I like this theory but in England, the standardised game was played mostly by the wealthy nobility around the years 1850-1880. Working class people, such as in the teams from mill towns like Preston, Darwin and Blackburn joined the FA cup later on.

I too have seen The English Game :)

Competitive play may have started with the wealthy, but football had been played in various forms as early as the 15th century.

Wikipedia has a lot of good citations on the topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)

As with most organically adopted words, nothing is clear cut, but there's quite a lot of evidence that the foot in football is about being on foot rather than on a horse.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#49

Post by kamarg »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #30
nemo44x wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, it's a part of the game due to football's insistence on using a running clock, which makes zero sense from a competitive aspect and needs to be changed Can anyone explain why this is, either than historic reasons like "it's the way it has always been done."? It seems a bit odd in today's world that they don't have a clock that everyone can see and the ref having the ability to signal to stop and star…

It’s definitely been considered but football has some entrenched traditions and this change would be hard to get through. I don’t think fans would want it. The rules state that the referee should add on any wasted time at the end, but it rarely seems to happen particularly accurately.

FIFA is currently trialing a 30:00 half with a countdown clock that stops when play is interrupted. Along with that throwins would become kickins, teams have unlimited substitutions, a yellow card would result in a five minute penalty similar to hockey, and the ability to self-kick (dribble) on set pieces.

The trials took place at the end of July this year at a youth tournament.

You can read a bit more about it at https://theathletic.com/2730341/2021/07/27/the-future-of-foo... if you have a subscription.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#50

Post by Someone »

partomniscient wrote: post #44
Someone wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see the continuous probing of a defense as “doing nothing”. A boxer will feint a zillion attacks, too, before going for the real one. That’s not “doing nothing”. It only becomes sterile if the team in possession of the ball plays the ball around without doing real probing. On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it.

>On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it. But it underwhelms the fans, and bores the team-neutral audience, because unless they read the game at that level of nuance - that the team is just passing it around the box. I think maybe Cruyff had a point when the article mentions: Unfortunately, I abandoned the book after a long paragraph on page 89 in which Cruyff explains why,…

I think the goal of any sport should more be engagement than entertainment. For entertainment, go to a circus, movie, or theater.

Also, any sport at top level suffers from common people not being able to see what’s happening. That’s unavoidable. For example, at Olympic level, a hurdler having to shorten a pace by a few cm at one hurdle can make a decisive difference. In gymnastics, I doubt any layman can, given a video stream, rank the top competitors the way the jury does (would be an interesting experiment to do)

Also IMO, rules that more reliably let the better team win work against engaging the crowd.

Nothing better for user engagement than that ‘goal’ in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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