Succinct Backstory
As a person who started playing cricket when I was in 4rth grade and then represented my school, F. G. Boys Public School, Jhelum Cantonment, twice in regional tournaments, even after leaving college, I kept watching as many tournaments as I possibly could. However, by the year 2005–2006, my workload had started to increase dramatically, and I had to reign in the desire to watch live matches. Consequently, I started watching sports news on BBC to get all of the information concerning that day’s matches. During that period, I stumbled upon the existence of a spectacularly naughty BBC presenter Amanda Davies — it dawned on me probably 3 or 4 years after first discovering her that she is a spectacularly naughty one, too. I have been following her coverage of the sports since 2007–2008. Although, she covers at least a few different sports, however, she spends most of her time covering football, and just yesterady, she posted a link to her latest article written after she had finished interviewing England’s manager Gareth Southgate. Although I have close to zero interest in football, however, because of this fandom, I continue to read some of her articles and the last one on Gareth Southgate’s performances and dilemmas was no exception.
My Source Of Involvement
Despite not having any real interest in football, as a daily visitor of BBC.com website since 2004 — I visit the website at least a few times per day — I simlpy could not evade football-specific news and remain unaware of the developments and results in the footballing world as the Brits passionately follow football. Their passion for football perfectly reflects in their coverage of the news on all of their websites, as well. Consequently, despite a lack of interest in the game, I have been reading at least most of the big stories in the footballing world. Having read all of these stories, I can only say that I just do not comprehend the game these European nations so passionately follow and their websites so ardently cover. According to Amanda’s article, Gareth Southgate now has such an abundance of spectacularly talented players that no previous British nation had ever seen that many talented players in the same era or in the same team. Almost identical stories got written about José Mourinho’s Chelsea when he was in charge of Chelsea. Nobody prior to Roman Abramovich had probably spent as much money in the Premier League to bring together all of the best players playing at various positions.
Profusion Of Talent And Boredom
Despite this abundance of talent in the teams, the two managers have followed the same script: they have been playing a defensive game. When José Mourino was in charge of Chelsea, he got labelled a boring manager playing an utterly boring game, and same now holds true for Gareth Southgate, as spectators and pundits alike have started to call him a defensive manager failing to entertain the crowds. The situation begs the question that what exactly is the point of having so very many talented players if you have zero desire to entertain the crowd and play an attacking game? If your players cannot score and the team is mostly moving forward in the tournament based on 1–0 or 0–0 results, then the situation, at least for me, becomes utterly incomprehensible. The goal of a talented sporting team and event organizers, especially good ones, should be to entertain the crowd; give them moments they would cherish for years to come, for example, Javed Miandad’s 6 on the last ball against India in Sharjah, Inzamam’s spectacular innings in the Auckland semi final, Curtly Ambrose’s 7 wickets for 1 runs, Brian Charles Lara’s 5 fours in an over against Pat Simcocks, Shane Warne’s magical spell against Pakistan in the World Cup final in Oval.
If these top tier footbaal teams with players that charge tens of thousands of pounds per week cannot do it, cannot create magical moments on the field, and they can only move forward by playing a defensive game, then I would consider them neither good enough players nor good enough teams. Spectators want entertainment, and they spend their money to watch truly entertaining matches. They want to be truly enthralled. Major stakeholders in the footballing world, who are of course the spectators who buy tickets to watch matches, should demand a rule change: at least 5 goals per game or no result with 0 points for both teams. Teams should be forced, by the regulating body and rules governing the point scoring system, to play an aggressive game. If they are good enough, if their defensive players are competent enough, they should be able to withstand the onslaught even if they are playing an aggressive game.
Sports Have Evolved. Why Not Football?
When I was in my early teens, people here in Pakistan used to verily ridicule the Mohammed brothers — Hanif Mohammad, Mushtaq Mohammad, and Sadiq Mohammad — for the style of cricket they introduced. Some people even used to say that one of them is going to occupy the crease for two long days and would at max score 50 runs. When Hanif Mohammad scored a century in each innings against England it took 893 minutes, at a scoring-rate of less than 15 runs an hour. Cricket has evolved to become much more entertaining for the spectators, so why cannot the football managers and FIFA think on these lines? In the 1992 world cup, the tournament witnessed only two 300+ scores and not a single 320+ score. Now teams rarely score fewer than 320 runs as 335—360 have become the norm. That’s called changing the style of the game to make it more entertaining. FIFA should take measures to make football more interesting for people watching football and reading about it. If I had to draw a conclusion based on the footballing pundits and spectators’ statement regarding some of the best managers, then I would only be able to say that they are playing some truly boring football in Europe and England. Soccer, as they call it in America, became a target of jokes even in an episode of Simpsons; the sheer absence of entertainment factor has become so widely known that people even in America and the sub-continent are busy talking about it.
Comments
Post a Comment