Not pawns — but true kingmakers
Those of us who occasionally express a distaste for the prevailing trends in football like to argue that sport should be about the celebration and not the suppression of creativity and imagination. More of the samba and less of the sabermetric; more magician, less machine.
It is a worthy sentiment but one that conveniently ignores the fact that all successful teams, entertaining or otherwise, are built on the subjugation of the individual to the collective.
