Larry Ryan: The healing powers of a meaningless match
HOPE LIVES: Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard (right) and Bukayo Saka celebrate their sides second goal, which was scored by Martin Odegaard (not pictured), during the Premier League match against Chelsea. Pic: Adam Davy/PA Wire
It struck me the other day, traipsing around to various local soccer venues with the nippers, that it’s always been my favourite time of the year. It’s not just the stretch in the evening, that releases the squeeze on pitches, though there is something perfect when you can pour out the dregs of a working day into a game.
It’s not the peril of title run-ins and cup finals, though there is excitement in those too. It’s not just that matches pile up and you’re out every couple of days, a lovely rhythm to your week, the last disappointment swiftly overtaken.
It’s mainly that I’ve always found great joy in meaningless matches. In those fixture fulfilling duties long after you have fallen out of contention for everything, when the best-laid plans of the coaches have long gone out the window.
It probably says an awful lot about my suitability for any kind of pressure cooker, but if it’s a game that Roy Keane would have hated, or John Giles — though he’d still take it on its merits, no doubt — I find these are the evenings when you are truly alive.
It should be in the evening, ideally, with a soft warm breeze. Grass cut, somehow, however insignificant the stage. An arrival no earlier than 15 minutes before kick-off. Maybe you finished togging at a traffic lights.
The warm-up is half-hearted, a box ticked. Several arrive, not togged at all, as it finishes up, with no repercussion. The bag of balls is down to the last five — three plainly marked with the names of other clubs — and the auditor among the management team has given up the ghost on that front too.
Coaches are carefree, unburdened by tactical notions. The gaffer has forgotten all about the back three he put in place before Christmas, for the few weeks after he did the PDP3. The wingers are no longer inverted.
For the kids’ coaches, there is no more need for long division, no more calculating minutes and judiciously allocating playing time. All the subs are thrown on at the same time, if there are subs. There is no careful strategy to capsize.
The referees are practically buoyant, relaxed about their administrative duties, and content they are unlikely to see the inside of a car boot this evening.
And the kids, or the youths, or the adults, are truly living. Uncontaminated by the toxicity of hope or fear. Set free, though not instantly. The early knockings are stilted, almost self-conscious. There’s widespread laughter when a fullback allows the first pass from his keeper run under his foot. Everyone is easing themselves into a pool.
But gradually they immerse, and soon remember every reason they love this. Soon they can feel everything that brings them here on these meaningless nights that mean too much. These meaningless games so often bear a gift or two. A perfect contact, a moment of clarity, an instinct rewarded.
It’s probably played without rancour. Though maybe an old feud flares. If you can’t see eye to eye on these nights, it will never happen. Mostly there’s backslapping and bonhomie as if it’s the Premier League and you’ve met your buddy from the Portugal squad.
Importantly, there is the scaffold and structure of competition in place. There’s three points, however precious. It distinguishes this ritual from the humble kickabout or the international friendly. Adds just a dash of meaning, a flavour.
Importantly, there must have been a time when you truly believed. When the gaffer’s new tactics board was wiped religiously. He’ll need methylated spirits now, to scrub the diamond formation he polished after Christmas.
Importantly, you’ll believe again. These aren’t the evenings for dispelling doubt, for regaining hope. But for replanting. Regrowth needs pruning and then nourishment. These nights are spiritual retreats with offside.
The Arsenal probably got as close as pros can to feeling some of this at the Emirates on Tuesday night, against Chelsea. To feeling the breeze in their hair again now their best-laid plans have capsized. They seemed to enjoy it, for an hour or so anyway, without the heavy load of hope to carry. They found themselves again. And maybe it will prove the most important hour of their careers, that they found themselves so soon after failure.
Of course they ruined it for themselves, to some extent, by winning. By keeping some sliver of hope alive. By turning it into a must-win up on Sunday, they have ensured that St James’ Park will not be a spiritual retreat. It might, after all, be a six-pointer in the battle for an asterisk title one day.
Have Arsenal bottled the real title? Have they choked? It seems to be important to people that this can be established. That we can diagnose some psychological failing that can be blanketly applied to more than a dozen individuals.
For the pro, freedom is not enough of course. The pro has long learned to hand in many of their freedoms. To subdue their callower instincts.
So Arsenal may even have painted both sides of a perfect bottle job, as laid out by Malcolm Gladwell in The Art of Failure.
“Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.”
Against West Ham and Southampton, they misplaced instinct, against City they forgot everything as the storm whirled.
But whatever became of them, they lived and lost and before the summer comes, they will probably get another couple of meaningless matches where they can tend again to the process of regrowth.
On some fine evenings that’s enough for anyone.
For some, the football has been ‘a pale shadow’ in recent years. The Best League in The World deprived of Jose Mourinho blowing the lid regularly off the latest global conspiracy against him. Denied those special mind games.
And while we spare a thought for the Italians, still up against it day in day out, Jose has to work a lot harder these days, to get our attention.
But some weeks he manages it. There they were on Sky Sports, those two familiar words: ‘Classic Mourinho’. He ‘wore a wire’ this week to ‘protect himself’ from the referee. In case the referee accused him of saying terrible things.
You would wonder how much worse the accusations might have been, compared to what Mourinho actually did say after the game, in slating “the worst referee I have met in my life”.
Nevertheless, this is a timely intervention from Jose, so soon after the referee Paul Tierney had to rely on his own wire to protect him from Jurgen Klopp suggesting he had said “not okay” things when giving the Liverpool boss a yellow card last Sunday. Kloppo was a quieter boy at the next presser upon learning a recording of the exchange would have been available.
Surely, in this era of fly-on-the-wall addiction, it’s high time now we offer maximum protection to all these sensitive, highly-strung souls and mic them all up for our entertainment.
And while they might have to make it over-18s, and slap on a time delay, and have a team of lawyers on-call round the clock, surely football’s version of The Wire would swiftly become the hottest show around. And make commentators and pundits redundant overnight.
Jeff Stelling is finishing up, definitely this time. And will this stuff ever sound right out of any other mouth?
“Craig Stanley putting the knife into Chester.”
“Herring has been sent off, red Herring.”
“Zander Diamond sent off for violent conduct – a rough diamond.”
"At Wigan, Conor Sammon looked like a fish out of water.”
“Dean Gerken, momentarily in a pickle.”
“Ben Pringle with the crisp finish.”
“Bunney pulls a rabbit out of the hat.”
“Mido has just been sent off and he walks like an Egyptian.”
“Scott Chaplain answering their prayers.”
“Jellyman’s thrown a wobbly.”
