In praise of defensive football • Hacker News Board

Re: In praise of defensive football

#51

Post by dekervin » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

shoto_io wrote: post #10

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…

It depends I'd say. Bayern played a lot like this in 2020, which also lead them winning the Champions League. The key difference to what you describe was that they circulated the ball waiting for a chance to play an extremely fast attacking leading to a goal. Like an explosion after a few rounds of slow passing.

I totally disagree, bayern 2020 made every pass and run with the intent to score, almost never to hold the ball. Every pass is intended to open your defense. If you react well they try something else. If you don't well ... sorry for you.

Just look at their chapions league final goal. Or even look at their 2021 first match against PSG. Barcelona was in the strangulating business. Bayern was in the smashing things open business.

Re: In praise of defensive football

#52

Post by partomniscient » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #50

partomniscient wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 vid…

Thanks for the response. I'm more troubled by sport now because I understand it better.

I totally agree with you on the inability to comprehend something, it also means you can shout at the TV because of the commentator rather than the referee.

It applies in all fields of expertise. There are/were perhaps only a few people who can perceive the nuance between a gold plated flute note and a silver plated one.

On the flip side even though there may be somewhat contrived bits, the "Faking It" TV series was also interesting coming from the 'opposite' approach.

It comes down to what you want out of sport/football - some opt for the technicalities and prowess of the game and its players, some opt for the associated drama and emotion.

One of the things that troubles me the most is - why did I entangle my emotional wellbeing with the outcome of a result enabled by a whole bunch of people I have never and am never likely to meet? We outsource our emotional state and join in a group experience of exhileration and despair often based on non-local events.

As someone not entirely suceeding in ignoring football until 2023, I am glad I came across this:

https://twitter.com/footballlforall/status/14218662284869181...

Re: In praise of defensive football

#53

Post by jonwinstanley » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #47

jonwinstanley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hahaha you’re so right, I’d never have mentioned Darwen before I saw that show!