Jose Mourinho once said, “In England, you teach children to win. In Spain, they teach them to play football.” Whilst a large number of Barcelona’s current stars are not Spanish, the fact remains that nothing has changed.
It is hard to try to prove that analogy with Manchester City’s emphatic 1-0 defeat at the hands of Barca last night, given that only two of City’s players were English. Luckily for them, the goalkeeper was one of them and he gave one of the greatest exhibitions of the art form seen in the modern age. The rest we can forget.
In England, you would never see three players coming through the ranks at the same time but being around 5’7″ tall. I have seen it through decades of close association with youth football. Still, to this day, in a culture of win at all costs, the youth team coach will prefer a particular type of player. He will be tall, powerful, he can run all day (have a good engine, as they say), he will have pace and he can tackle. His name will probably be Carlton Palmer, the template for the standard English footballer. His name will certainly not be Messi, Xavi or Iniesta, in my opinion three of the greatest players I have ever seen. Whilst Xavi rarely starts for Barca these days, the other two remain at the height of their powers, their supreme skills and balance helping them rise above the rest. Manchester City couldn’t get the ball of them for most of the game last night.
We want the ball launched forward, rather than to retain possession via that wretched tiki-taka where Barca and Spain retain the ball before trying to walk the ball into the net. Put that another way: launch the ball into the penalty area to a behemoth of a centre forward and hope we can create a chance from the ensuing chaos rather than to build patiently and create a genuine chance. The criticism of tiki taka is laughable. It is not the possession football some imagine, where defenders pass the ball, unchallenged, in their own half before lumping the ball forward. It’s possession in the opposition half and lots of it. Have you ever played football and tried to pass the ball quickly and accurately in the opposition half or regularly seen an English team do it? Very, very rarely because it’s almost impossible.
So why were Manchester City, whose side was stuffed with expensive foreign players, so hugely inferior to Barcelona? Perhaps it was mainly down to the simple reality that Barcelona players were better than City’s? Of last night’s starting eleven, only Hart would get in the Barcelona’s team. The lumbering, semi-interested Toure could not get near the little men, but he wasn’t alone. The sad thing is there are no English players knocking on the door of the team.
At some clubs, there are signs of change. Young home grown players are beginning to thrive at Liverpool, Spurs and Southampton and Mourinho proclaims some young players who he predicts will all play for England, always assuming they can even get on the bench at Stamford Bridge.
I have seen little evidence from the youth football I have seen in recent years that anything is changing. Coaches still want to get rid of the ball and hit the channels, the big lad is still the first name on the team sheet, hysterical parents still roar in support and it’s still all about winning at all costs.
By the time you reach grown up football, it’s not all about win at all costs because the players aren’t good enough to win and they are playing against grown ups who were first taught to play. The winning mentality follows.
I would love to see English players playing like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi and I would love to see English teams playing like Barcelona and Spain. But we won’t because we can’t. And the saddest thing is many people don’t want to.
