Larry Ryan: Football will always retain the capacity to surprise
END OF THE WORLD: Neymar is consoled by Raphinha after Brazil lost Friday’s World Cup quarter-final against Croatia on penalties at the Education City Stadium. Pic: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Can Ronaldo do sheepish? Is it in his locker of facial manoeuvres? Was there just a hint of embarrassment as he took the biggest acclaim of the night in the Lusail Stadium, on his arrival as sub against a Switzerland team already sunk by his young replacement?
You could almost picture Tiger Woods wearing the same expression down his local post office, lodging his $15m winner’s cheque from the PGA, based on topping the Player Impact Program again this season, for his performance on search engines.
Is the excessive veneration of the modern superstar, long after powers have faded, some reflection on the rest of the sporting cast? Is it something to do with the homogenisation of talent, how brilliance is now so neatly packaged on a development pathway? When everybody can overpower the fairways and take it on the back foot in midfield, are we even more beguiled by the superheroes that have defied norms?
And should Roy Keane still be the Premier League’s highest-paid player, for his cut-through on social?
I’m pondering these things because two very influential football men have shared similar reservations about the ongoing World Cup. The great Argentinian World Cup winner Jorge Valdano, writing in , fretted that we “are falling into a bureaucratic football”.
“Technically neat and of a high average level, but in which little by little the sense of adventure that characterised different players is disappearing.”
While Spanish coach Juanma Lillo, former assistant to Pep at Manchester City was even more cheesed off in a piece for .
“I wouldn’t dare to say which team has been the best because they are all so similar and the players are so identical.
“Everything is globalised now. At club level, if you go to a training session in Norway and one in South Africa, they’ll be the same. ‘Look inside to find spaces outside’, ‘pass here, pass there’. The good dribblers are over, my friend. Where can you find them? I can’t see any.
“It’s true now that there aren’t bad players any more. But there are no exceptional players either. In trying to kill the bad guys, we’ve killed the good guys, too.”
“Now you can argue there are hundreds of ‘me’,” Joe Cole said a few months ago, marvelling at England’s technical riches these days. There’s a Coles to Newcastle joke there, for better comedy minds.
We shouldn’t take the technically neat for granted, of course. There are sports after all, where they will loudly acclaim any kind of capacity to put boot to ball. But as we write, during the first half of Croatia-Brazil, it’s possible to admire the high level of technical ability on show and appreciate that there are no bad guys out there. But it was hard enough to pick out the good guys too, other than Luka Modric.
It was certainly possible, while watching Spain pass in perpetuity, to wonder what sort of bureaucracy has taken hold, in the academies of Madrid and Barcelona and so on, that when their need is greatest, they only have Alvaro Morata to send for. Does reluctance to give the ball away extend to kicking it into the goal?
At times in this tournament, we could wonder too what has become of the thunderbastard. Is it another casualty of possession? And if you were looking for the spirit of adventure, it appears to have been applied most readily in devising elaborate new ways to miss a penalty.
Maybe some people are just weary because we know now we have seen it all. A beautiful tribute video of Pele did the rounds again last couple of weeks and proved that the great man did everything first. The Cruyff turn, the Zizou roulette, La Croqueta of Iniesta and so on, footage shows Pele had them all in his locker.
Just like all the great songs have already been written. And maybe all the bad songs too. So we stop listening to new stuff at all, at a certain age, and start complaining instead. And tut-tutting at dance moves. And going to Elton John concerts.
“With footballers it’s just the same,” carried on Lillo. “Everyone has been there and seen them all. It’s difficult to find a mushroom that someone has not already picked.”
But maybe even the weariest, most grizzled football man would enjoy the World Cup a little bit more if they lived their lives like the great Dave Fanning. Dave has surely heard all the songs by now. He introduced many thousands of them to us over the years. And yet he is still out there, hearing every chord fresh, revelling in the spirit of adventure. Picking mushrooms like it was the heyday of the Cork hurlers.
I tuned into Dave’s new Virgin Media series, Fanning at Whelan’s, last weekend, so I spent the week listening to Dark Tropics, the fine young band from Belfast he introduced us to. It was nice to bring things into the current century, for a change. And another blast of their new single at half time set the stall out to appreciate better the treats the rest of Friday evening would bring us.
When Neymar produced that audacious, adventurous, run and dribble to put Brazil in front, it seemed the most fitting way possible that he should catch up with Pele’s international goalscoring record.
And in a way it was even better that it should come during a performance of such technical incompetence, by his standards, because it was a reminder football will always retain the capacity to surprise.
Perhaps it was right too that it wasn’t enough in the finish and that Modric should get his reward for remaining one of the good guys right to the bitter end.
As we sign off, Messi has just angled a beautiful assist and maybe that won’t be enough in the end either.
But it was another reminder that when the sad day comes and Pele leaves us, he won't take it all with him, but instead leave behind a scale of grace notes that can be played into eternity.
That, I suppose, is why the superheroes deserve all their veneration.
