A day later, I’m almost grateful for the conspiracy theories. It’s meaningless, but at least Øvrebø on the grassy knoll gives us something to find our position by. We all know the coordinates of lunacy plus bad refereeing; just about everything else related to this game left us in a murky latitude where the stars and our star-charts don’t match.
What are we supposed to take from this? I’m not even sure on the most obvious and, you’d think, most unmistakable level, the level of visceral emotion. On the one hand, it was thrilling, because it ended with a shocking goal in stoppage time that rewrote the history of the season and led to a mass nervous breakdown on the pitch. On the other hand, the previous 91 minutes had been torture by monotonous design, alleviated only by the random brilliance of the Essien goal and a couple of Chelsea breakaways. One way or another, we wound up with the kind of cataclysmic, camera-shaking drama that nothing seems to produce as reliably as Chelsea’s wounded righteousness: those scenes of Ballack driving himself mad by forcing himself not to kill the referee, and of Drogba melting down directly into the camera, were codas to an awesome tragedy, but it was an explosion of mayhem that seemed to come from somewhere other than the game itself. It was a strange case of the final result obliterating the match that preceded it.
Looking back at that match, at the actual play, I’m tempted to say there was something uninterpretable about it. It was easy enough to describe, but completely ambiguous in its relation to the larger narratives that have been circulating all week. It clearly couldn’t, as Giovanna pointed out in a comment, be seen as a triumph for the Barça approach, or as the statement of transcendent, defense-blinding genius Barcelona’s season had seemed to promise and that I’d said was their angle to paradise. Chelsea dominated the match with an ease that was almost contemptuous: they just did not care if Barça had two-thirds of the possession, because they could contain them so effortlessly and hurt them so consistently on the counter. On the other hand, Barça never changed their approach, built their attacks the way they always do, barely seemed to panic after Abidal was sent off, and got the winning goal through Iniesta, who’d been one of their worst players on the night. (I’m taking Alves for a given, and I’m trying not to say anything about Eto’o and Messi, and I may have been less impressed with Touré as a centerback than anyone else on earth.) So it can’t exactly be seen as a refutation of the Barça style or some kind of vindication for the long-ball game, either.
Someone in the last comments thread challenged the whole discourse of desert that always follows matches like this; but personally, I think the application of that discourse, in its sheer ambivalence, is itself the best way to think about this match. In a clash-of-personalities sense, Chelsea clearly “deserved” to win, because their execution of their game plan gave the match its character and because the balance of the referee’s mistakes favored Barcelona (if not nearly to the extent that the English-speaking media seems to have agreed on). But in a justice-of-causes sense, Barcelona “deserved” to win, because their style meant more to more people and because, unlike Chelsea, they didn’t resort to hacking their opponents down or negating the flow of the match. Chelsea played better, but Barça played better. Like a few other people this morning, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Guus Hiddink not sent out his trillion-pound squad of outrageously gifted superstars to play like Bolton under Sam Allardyce, so that we could have seen what talent and intent might have made of this matchup. (Does Avram Grant deserve an apology now?) But with the unbalanced evidence we have, the whole question of desert seems impossible. The purpose of a football match is to give us access to a certain kind of knowledge, but if anything, this game actually seemed to erase answers rather than offer them.
And yes, the referee was a part of that, but not to the extent of overriding all mythologies and emerging as the only truth. So in a way, I’m grateful for the conspiracy theories, because at least I know for sure that no one should believe Øvrebø rigged the game for Barcelona when he gave one of their players a straight red card for a nonexistent foul while they were trailing deep in the second half. I’m also grateful that this wasn’t the final. The conflict that’s been floating behind this tie from the beginning—the whole layout of the semifinal made it unavoidable—is Barcelona v. England, the most riveting team in Europe v. the world’s dominant league. In that conflict, Chelsea could only be a surrogate for the real incarnation of the Premier League, a pale outrider for the team that runs English football and happens to be the defending champion in this tournament. So now that I know what I don’t know, I’m trying to be hopeful. Maybe in Rome, in a single game, on a neutral pitch, Barcelona and Manchester United will be able to settle some of the questions that this match left in the air.
Read More: Barcelona, Champions League, Chelsea, The Occasional Match Summary
by Brian Phillips · May 7, 2009
Did anyone else think that Ballack bore a passing resemblance to late-stage King Lear?
My comment on “deserving to win” from the last thread for people who didn’t see it:
On “deserving to win”: When people say that one team deserved to win even though they didn’t, it really bugs me. The team that deserve to wins a match, 99.9% of the time (bar atrocious refereeing, worse than in this game), is the team that does win the game. Why? Because that’s the team that did what they needed to do in order to win.
In this game, Chelsea needed to outscore Barca, and they set themselves up for that situations by playing for the 0-0 in the first leg. They clearly were confident being able to do this, but they failed, plain and simple.
Barca, having been scored on, simply needed one goal. That’s the way the Champions League works, there’s no point in arguing that the away goals rule is nonsense, because it’s not going to change anytime soon. Barca were able to accomplish what they needed to do in order to advance to the final, and Chelsea were not. You can overanalyze and criticize the referee, but in the end, one team was able to overcome all obstacles, and the other was not. I’m not going to get into the “victory for beautiful football” point because that is in itself is an entirely separate note, but I do believe in it.
On time: The Champions League is a game of many matches, from group stages to the final. The Champions League semi-final is a game of two legs, and this is what Chelsea had in their minds as they played that monotonous first leg. The sport of football, however, is a game of seconds, and that is what Barca had in mind as they played those final minutes of the second leg.
I said a great deal on the post yesterday, which, i think is somwhat humorous since Brian’s non-blog post ending up being one of the most interactive ive seen.
Some day after thoughts:
1. Why is the english press ignoring the abidal red? For the half-penalty claims(pique’s hand being the only legitimate one in my eyes) Obvrebo took away, they were given several half-chances at least partially due to Barca playing with ten men. Like i said yesterday, not entirely even, but fair within the standard deviations of normal refereeing.
2. You know those super slow motion cameras they video tape bullets going through apples with? I want to watch a full length, 2 hour motion picture of a facial close up of the 10 seconds Ballack is sprinting down the pitch, morphing into a demon-child, and using every ounce of his being not to rip Obvrebo’s still beating heart out of his chest.
Kali Ma Shakti Day!
I’m surprised more fuss isn’t being made about Ballack NOT SEEING RED for visibly stalking the referee and touching him. This in my opinion was worse than Abidal’s light touch on Anelka at the edge of the box – and I’m not convinced Abidal was the last defender. I think Pique would have closed easily, but then again I have azulgrana goggles on…..
Elliot, thats my point. I don’t think the Abidal incident was a foul, much less a red. To me, concerning fairness, playing a man up for 30 minutes is almost equivilent to a few penalty claims.
The conspiracy claims are lunancy, as are the death threats towards Obvrebo (i read he had to be smuggled out of the country), as are Ballack and Drogba.
There is some justice — or at least schadenfreude — in seeing Chelsea and its supporters left complaining about the officiating, because if I recall correctly there was something less than sympathy in those quarters and the English press when Barca and its fans were the ones complaining a week ago.
A penalty almost always equals a goal, while a man advantage only sometimes equals a goal, so I don’t think we can say that Abidal was equivalent to even one penalty claim. What I do think we can say is that Abidal utterly repudiates the claim that the referee was fixing the match for Barcelona.
I agree about Ballack, though honestly, I’m sort of glad the rampage was allowed to continue, as it was the most entertaining part of the match. Also: Didn’t the Big Ø show Drogba a yellow for dissent at the end? What would a red for dissent look like?
My reasoning is simply that a penalty claim is not neccessarily a penalty. The only claim I feel that has any bite is the Pique handball. While I think it might be a little harsh on Chelsea, I am certainly glad (and trying to be as neutral as possible) that the ref did not decide the game on some soft tugging and unintentional ball-to-hand events.
A Champions League semi is much too important for that, and I think if you polled every soccer fan in the world prior to the game, most people (including the Chelsea supporters) would agree.
I agree wholeheartedly about the Abidal red, absolutly no conspiracy, and to even suggest it is ridiculous.
Ballack’s end-game rage was awesome just for the animated GIFs it produced after the match: http://bit.ly/TC2KC
As for the shouts of anti-English conspiracy, I think we should re-introduce the shouters — starting with Jose Bosingwa — to Hanlon’s Razor. The ref was terrible, yes, but the ref didn’t fail to finish in front of an open goal in the 52nd minute, the ref didn’t put Belletti in the game when Kalou was still on the bench, and the ref didn’t get broken down in stoppage time by Messi and Iniesta — stoppage time that was created, BTW, by a certain Ivorian who couldn’t be arsed to pick himself up and get on with the game. Ending a civil war in your homeland does not give you license to be a douchenozzle.
That’s not entirely true Brian. A penalty, at MOST, equals one goal, since you can’t get two goals per penalty. Suppose you score on 90% of penalties; 1 penalty = 0.9 goals. If you score 1 goal every fifteen minutes, on average, whilst being 1 man up, isn’t that 2 goals? A penalty is a one time event; a red card is a permanent advantage.
Was anyone else surprised to learn about John Terry’s post-match visit to the Barcelona dressing room? Perhaps he regarded the gesture as a captain’s duty, but at least he gave the appearance of being the only Chelsea player who did not allow anger to displace his respect for his competitors.
Alex — Is there evidence that teams average a goal every 15 minutes with a man advantage? That seems really high to me, though the only numbers I’ve seen are from MLS last season. I’d be curious to see Europe- and/or Champions League-specific statistics.
I was surprised more by the commentators completely ignoring the effect of Henry’s absence. He was out-for-blood at Madrid and then all I hear is a passing mention of him not playing because of his knee. That player omission alone changed Barca’s game irrevocably.
I just wanted that to be stated somewhere.
That’s a great point. I have a vague sense that English-language commentators think of him as washed up because of the end of his career at Arsenal and his failure to catch fire right away for Barcelona. Obviously everyone knows he’s had a great season this year, but maybe that sense makes it hard for them to believe he really matters.
Oh, that reminds me. As if anyone would be silly enough to contest Messi for Player of the Year…
In that final situation, with three Blues in front of him, he passed the ball.
I would bet all the money I don’t have that Ronaldo would have ripped that ball despite a player in the clear.
I just woke up and I don’t think I’m firing on all cylinders.
While people mention Barca getting the short end in the first leg (rightly so) I believe Øvrebø called this a single match without thought to the first leg.
Chelsea supporters forget many non-fouls in the first half that should have amounted to yellows.
Drogba also should have at least recieved a yellow for “simulation” (after enough of them anyway).
The non-call on Piquet was a makeup for the crap red card plain and simple. Eto’o was not even close to a hand ball. If there were any fouls in the area (and I think maybe there were) when a team’s strategy is to go to ground, people (including refs) stop beliving you.
If you want to know why Chelsea lost it has nothing to do with cattenacio x 100… but everything to do with Drogba.. a physically gifted diver who doesn’t finish his chances.
Sell Drogba, buy some class and we’ll see you next year.
BM wrote:
“Was anyone else surprised to learn about John Terry’s post-match visit to the Barcelona dressing room? Perhaps he regarded the gesture as a captain’s duty, but at least he gave the appearance of being the only Chelsea player who did not allow anger to displace his respect for his competitors.”
I for one was a bit surprised.
i’d ask john terry if a penalty is a sure goal. hypothesizing about potentials when weighing the decisions is fruitless. the odds were undoubtedly against barca to score a man down and they did; why couldn’t chelsea shank a pk? stranger things can (and did) happen.
if you want to compare numbers, how about total blown calls on both sides to breakways Drogba shot right at Valdes?
Well, Brian, I’ll start off by saying that 15 minutes was an arbitrary number I pulled out of midair for argument’s sake, and because it worked well given that Abidal got sent off around the hour, so it gave my argument a clear advantage.
Either way, I think my point still stands – a penalty kick is a one off event that may affect the scoreline, but has no bearing (outside the psychological) on future events in the game. The red card, however, changes the game’s dynamic permanently. After all, working on the assumption that the teams in those red card statistics would experience the stated 1.41 GF and GA when playing at full strength, teams playing a man up get a +0.43 GF and -0.58 GA over the course of 90 minutes. That results in reds equaling roughly a goal advantage over 90 minutes. For Abidal’s case, that gave Barca a about 0.3 of a goal, which I suppose is in fact less than Chelsea’s penalty, which I am counting as 0.9 of a goal. That being said, I feel that the demoralizing effect of the red is greater than that of the penalty, and is something that these statistics do not adequately explore: scoring that one over the hump goal while a man down seems particularly difficult to my mind.
Either way, we can draw two things from this discussion: 1)J is right; each game is unique (isn’t that what makes the beautiful game beautiful blah blah blah), and its foolish to take either a penalty or a red card as a goal for granted in this situation and 2) we really need a soccer version of sabremetrics.
It has occurred to me before yesterday, but my view of history as a helix-shaped compromise between linear, ever-forward progress and circular tail chasing was confirmed by this Chelsea squad.
35 years has progressed since the Leeds squads of Don Revie, Billy Bremner, and Bites yer Legs cheated, gouged, abused referees, and badly outplayed opponents to the brink of footballing immortality. Yet when that squad came to the brink of greatness, they failed. Ostensibly it was because of a referee’s muppetry (some claim conspiracy) and plain bad luck, and a general consensus emerged from friend and foe alike that indeed an injustice occurred. But this nagging sense of karmic justice, however unfounded, gradually formed over time to the point that this would not be a happening that would be widely mourned by the football vox populi.
So much has changed; Brian Clough is now a Portuguese conservative fashion plate who instead of attempting to destroy to rebuild took the pragmatic approach to glory, only to run into loggerheads with the owner and walk away to greener pastures. Norman Hunter is England captain; Billy Bremner is an Ivorian national icon with a bad perm and colossal strength; Don Revie is a likable Dutchman with a grandfatherly gut and bloody-minded Yorkshire industrialists has transmogrified into a singular Russian billionaire morphing into Ahab before our very eyes.
But it feels as if we’ve returned to the same axis in football history; Chelsea is at the end of a line, certainly–but not the end of the line. Whatever follows, it will be a beginning instead of a resolution.
Some of the comments in here are mind-boggling. The blatant bias is incredible. While as a Chelsea fan I have nothing against Barcelona other than being envious at the moment. Full credit to them for pushing on with 10 men and getting the result they so desired and I hope you go on to deflate United’s ego.
But to suggest that you actually deserved to go through when you had ONE shot on target for the entire match is just laughable. Even to suggest that because you play more attractive football is just insulting to me as a Chelsea fan. Football is not all about pretty football, it also encompasses defending, physicality, power, tactics and mental determination.
And GVB to suggest that deciding a match on a blatant handball would be wrong is the most retarded thing I’ve ever read. Not only did Pique have his extended out like an amateur but Anelka had clearly flicked the ball around him and would have been in on goal. At the end of the day Pique prevented a goal scoring opportunity WITH HIS HAND and that’s an indisputable penalty. Btw Lampard does not miss penalties 😉
Also, Abidal came out today and ADMITTED that he fouled Anelka and that it was a justified red card. So that pretty much rules out any argument that the red card was harsh and any subsequent decision made up for that. The guy was in on goal and Abidal took him down. How can you possibly even try and refute that?
Anyway, you are right about Drogba, he blew the chance to put the game beyond doubt and finish off a marvellous performance from us. When he’s bad, he’s really bad. However, I’m proud because we made the so called “best team in the world” look very very ordinary for over 180 minutes. Although I will be cheering your lot on come the end of May, Manchester United are equal to, if not better than us in defence and are far more lethal up front than us so I have no doubt you’re going to be in for a tougher match, especially since your coach has no other plan other than attacking. And I’m sure Ferguson and every other team in Spain will be studying how Hiddink discovered how to nullify you completely.
Best of luck.
P.S. I love Messi, I really do but I was so so disappointed with his performance in both legs. He remained completely anonymous. Terry and Bosingwa/Cole wore him like a glove. And I find it ironic how people give Ronaldo stick for going missing in the big games (which I completely disagree with) but Messi did exactly that… went M.I.A. for 180 minutes in your club’s biggest game of the season to date.
I look forward to seeing Messi vs. Ronaldo in the final but based on big game performances Ronaldo seems to be leading the race, especially after his goals against Porto and Arsenal. What Chelsea showed yesterday is that Messi might run rings around the mediocre defences in Spain but when he’s up against real quality defenders, he barely stands a chance… I think the pairing of Vidic and Rio will shut him down completely.
Oh and I forgot, thanks for taking Alves away from us. What a waste of money. 20 million pounds for him? Is he serious? I counted about 20 crosses into row Z yesterday. I think Bosingwa showed who the better full-back is over the two legs.
haha 😉
“Abidal came out today and ADMITTED that he fouled Anelka and that it was a justified red card. So that pretty much rules out any argument that the red card was harsh and any subsequent decision made up for that. The guy was in on goal and Abidal took him down. How can you possibly even try and refute that?”
Maybe by posting the video, which clearly reveals that Abidal never touched him?
I’m not convinced Abidal actually meant that “confession,” since the only quotes I’ve seen have obviously been translated and taken out of context by the English media. If he did, maybe he was high. It makes no difference, as whatever Abidal says or thinks, there’s obviously no foul here.
People plead guilty all the time because it is a get out of jail free card – could this be a similar way to deflect media pressure for an abject performance?
Of course Abidal had to pinch center all game to cover for Yaya’s chronic lack of pace….
Elliot that is false. Pique was playing LCB not Yaya. Lets not be silly. Abidal covered for Pique because thats Piques side of the field. Yaya’s chronic lack of pace enabled him to make a couple of last ditch tackles against Chelsea?
As Liam said:
“Some of the comments in here are mind-boggling. The blatant bias is incredible. While as a Chelsea fan I have nothing against Barcelona other than being envious at the moment.”
That’s exactly it! That is what we have been talking about over the last few days (weeks).
The whole premise of this philosophical exercise has been exploring how much we love to see FC Barcelona play (or not, in some cases) and if it is possible to win at the highest level, in modern football with this offensive and positive approach.
There has been biased views, from all involved, but the fact that the majority here is willing ignore the law (the penalties calls and the likes), and suport the justice (how positive, technichally evolved football should be rewarded) speaks volumes for the importance that people still give to the ideal of the “Beautiful Game”.
The game itself was, like any other game, a collection of incidents. A fortunate bounce here, or a bad refereeing call there, are, in the greater macrocosmical scheme of things, irrelevant.
I don’t understand why Barcelona fans are so proud of themselves. What was so enjoyable for them for 179 minutes? I would think that Barca fans would be outraged that Ovrebo’s specious officiating turned what should have been an outright victory into a downright controversy. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening, and frankly, I’m surprised:
“…the fact that the majority here is willing ignore the law (the penalties calls and the likes), and suport the justice (how positive, technichally evolved football should be rewarded) speaks volumes for the importance that people still give to the ideal of the ‘Beautiful Game’.”
If Chelsea had gone on to the Champs League final based on nothing but the away-goals rule, and in spite of two, three, or four game-changing penalty claims, I wouldn’t feel entirely good about getting to the biggest match of the season. Even as my boys would take the pitch for a place in history, self-doubt would plague me. Did we really deserve it?
And had that happened, Barcelona fans would be feeling well and truly victimized right now. That’s why I found the game so unsatisfying. It just didn’t settle anything, and everyone came away looking worse than they did going into it.
In the end it was chance that won the result. Barca played to overcome chance, Chelsea to reduce it. Neither succeeded, the wheel was spun, and Barca came out on top.
Still, there were beautiful moments, even if determining the result was not. Also, the supporters of both teams can feel they saw determined and skilled sides doing all they could, more than fans from Munich or Milan can say. I found it more fulfilling, even when it was unsatisfying, than Barca running over Munich in a half.
“Barca played to overcome chance, Chelsea to reduce it. ”
A very good summary of 180 minutes of football…
However, i agree with you brian. It was very frustrating…
This semi-final has confounded attempts to isolate events and arrange them in a way that reflects their influence on the outcome. After emotions have subsided, fans are usually able to make broad, straightforward observations about a game and then focus on a few plays that unfolded in this way or that, until a rough consensus emerges about the facts on the field, if not their meaning. So much happened in London that even carefully developed arguments about which Valdés save negated which non-call, or the relative advantages conferred by penalties and red cards, sound like only partial explanations of a complex phenomenon that science is still exploring. Given the nature of our pattern-seeking brains, it was the kind of game that made me wonder if trying to make sense of football simply leads to grand delusions.
If talking about music is like dancing to architecture, i don’t know how idiotic it can be to try and piece together sense in a “game”, that by definition is a chaotic affair.
It’s just like any philosophical paradox. It is important, not because of the solution, but because of the discussion.
Liam, I never said deciding a match on a blatant (your word not mine) handball would be wrong, I said that I am glad it didn’t happen. But ill leave it to other boards to argue whether the ball striking the hand of Pique was an infraction based on the rules of the game. It has happened before, and will happen again (France v. Switzerland WC06, Holland v. Italy Euro08). Still minutiae.
A very good example of dubious “Handball” interpretations is the Portugal Vs. France euro 2000 semi-final.
That a game was decided over a dubious penalty (more in a “deliberate handball or not” kind of way), in a golden goal moment, was a hugely revolting and frustrating affair.
Joao: I think one of the difficulties here is sustaining a philosophical discussion while allowing it to acknowledge the influence of real events, no matter how small. As you wrote earlier, the second leg “was, like any other game, a collection of incidents. A fortunate bounce here, or a bad refereeing call there, are, in the greater macrocosmical scheme of things, irrelevant.” That is why league titles are decided over months, with the assumption that playing thousands of minutes will reduce the impact of chance in determining qualitative differences among teams.
However, because the Champions League competition is more like traditional playoffs in other sports, details which would otherwise be less consequential can suddenly leap to the fore and threaten theories supported by a season-long narrative. Forgive the American football reference, but the 2007 New England Patriots come readily to mind.
In this case, I worry that some observers exaggerated the threat Chelsea posed to the Barça concept. They insist that Barcelona must win the tournament, or else…what? The format is not especially conducive to identifying the better of two teams with any high degree of confidence. A ball can deflect off a defender onto Essien’s boot, and suddenly Barcelona are playing not just to advance to a Champions League final but also to carry forward an abstraction hoisted onto their shoulders by philosophizing fans.
Some burden to bear.
Amen, BM. I’m highly critical of those pundits, professional or otherwise, who portrayed or want to portray the Chelsea-Barca fixture as the conflict and resolution of the existential crisis of modern football. A Chelsea victory would not have been the death of Barcelona or their style of football. Neither does this Barca victory indicate any trend towards positive tactics.
BM — That’s an important corrective point, but it’s as easy to take that line of thinking too far as it is to take the philosophizing inclination too far, I think. Reducing the game to a computation that simply needs to run long enough for chance to be factored out of it disregards the possibility of the sublime moment or the inspired act, for instance—phemonena that exist outside both chance and the determinism of average talent levels. In some ways, I think it’s the Champions League’s greater likelihood of seeing a moment like that swing the outcome that lends it an air of the mythic and draws out these horribly inaccurate discussions.
Dan — Is that directed at anyone in particular?
@ BP:
I was thinking in particular of a Soccerlens article by Andrew Satori (http://soccerlens.com/an-ode-to-barcelona/28141/), but now that I think about it, my comment encompasses your first leg match review as well (http://www.runofplay.com/2009/04/28/barcelona-0-0-chelsea-doubt-chance-and-mutability/). It was well written, to be sure–I enjoy your writing very much–but I want people to hear me when I say that when we put special emphasis on a fixture like Chelsea-Barcelona to determine abstract, superhuman things like legacy or historical significance, we just end up hurting ourselves. A match is just a match; as much as we fans like to think we can influence or will the outcome, anything can happen.
I dunno. I buy into it too, calling the Champs League final “the most important game of the season” wherein the winner garners a “place in history.” But I want people to realize that this is the kind of attitude which perpetuates pathological fandom– fanaticism in the literal sense.
I don’t think I’m in danger of lapsing into fanaticism or believing that my thoughts control the universe. Anyway, how does saying a match is important make us “end up hurting ourselves”?
The “a match is just a match” attitude seems so dreary to me because it suggests that we have to be cowed by the proportions of things to the point that we can’t even think about our own feelings toward them. Watching a team play, I have an aesthetic response: it makes me feel something. Thinking about that, I realize that the way they play suggests a certain attitude toward life, that it stylizes a range of qualities: joy, arrogance, pessimism, flair, anger, whatever. Obviously this is all more or less confined to a metaphoric plane, but not any more so than the conclusion of the person who looks at Botticelli’s Primavera and decides that it represents a harmonious conception of the universe.
So why can’t I take that side of my brain into my experience of a game? Surely it’s not so difficult to see the difference between saying “Chelsea and Barcelona will settle the existential crisis of modern football” and saying “This match can be seen as important because of the qualities each team represents.” I think it’s pretty much given that the latter is what we mean when we say something like, “This is the biggest match of the year so far”*.
Keeping my mind scrubbed of all this stuff just so I don’t risk making any unwarranted historical claims seems really boring, honestly. Why not risk the occasional unwarranted historical claim and try to see something huge and beautiful in the sport you love?
Don’t get me wrong; I can see that at a far distant point of imagined intensity there’s a certain “strike through the mask” danger in confusing the symbol with the essence it represents. But surely no one really thinks that Captain Ahab is what’s happening here. Or am I totally misunderstanding your point?
* UPDATE: Obviously that’s not what Sky Sports means. But you see my point.
For anyone who’s following this thread, Richard at A More Splendid Life has a defense of Chelsea’s pragmatism that’s well worth your time to read.
Brian: I think your previous comment explains what brings readers to The Run of Play. I’ll always plead for balance, but it’s almost impossible to avoid being caught up in this game, building stories and so forth. I’d also say that, with regard to symbols and representation, we can’t overlook how our perceptions of players affect our aesthetic response to their play, as you put it. A few members of Barça, to me, exude a somewhat cerebral vibe, to the extent that I could see them nodding in agreement if you visited the team during a training session and described your thoughts about their place in contemporary football, even if they don’t use the same language when evaluating themselves. I suppose it’s just the nature of being a fan, but when it comes to football I sometimes embrace absurd notions, such as the idea that players can truly embody the attributes of their play. This sharpens the contrast between certain teams and their opponents, despite the fact that I know little about any footballer beyond what I’ve seen them do on the pitch. Maybe it is possible to watch the game with absolute objectivity, but like you I’m not sure that I ever want to.
I mean, Messi nor Barcelona cried about this handball: http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr106/coolestcule/1.gif
Everyone chose to ignore that as well.
@ Brian:
I can’t refute what you’ve said. I also like to believe that football is similar to great art in that it is capable of producing an aesthetic response and speaking intimately to the human condition in its myriad permutations — flair, anger, shame, pride, etc.
But what I really want to make known is that there is an upside and a downside to placing football on this pedestal. If football speaks to the human condition, and if it does not always speak to it kindly, then it follows that we as football fans have the real potential to hurt ourselves by it. An Arsenal fan hanged himself earlier this week. Ovrebo’s had threats on his life. I wish I could say that these events are unprecedented, but they are not.
The vast majority of fans can, after a given match, redirect the emotions which have arisen and cope with the situation. If an existential crisis has arisen during the game (e.g., “I am a Chelsea fan. Chelsea has lost. Therefore I am a loser for liking Chelsea, and therefore my life has less meaning.”), most fans are capable of resolving it. But what if some fans aren’t? It could happen to anyone, at any given time, if they were unstable enough. No one is exempt, just like no one is immune to cancer or depression. Integrating football and humanity the way we are discussing here can enhance one’s quality of life, sure. But I’m saying that it can also damage it, or even destroy it, as the case may be.
Football is fantastic and I love it to death. But really that’s just a metaphor, and really it’s just football. At the end of the day, we have to be okay with that.
At the end of the day Chelsea isn’t a very well liked club because of their style of football. I can admit that and I can also admit that had it not been Chelsea playing Barcelona, I would have been cheering on Barcelona to get through.
Anyway, my point still stands about Barcelona doing absolutely nothing in the 2nd leg. For the guys above claiming that Chelsea didn’t attack, that’s a load of nonsense, we created more attacking opportunities than Barcelona, you had 1 shot on target for the entire match. You had a load of possession but as I discovered with Scolari, passing the ball from side to side doesn’t really get you anyway unless you’re creating chances on goal.
It was a devastating loss for us. We’ve had so much heartbreak in this competition but I think we’re better for it. Because if we do ever finally win this thing, it will be all the sweeter. I just feel sorry for guys like Ballack and even Drogba (even though he lost the plot) because they knew in the 93rd minute that that was probably the last chance they had to play/win a Champions League final.
And Ballack has to be the unluckiest player ever. Misses the 2002 World Cup because of suspension when he got Germany there on his own boot, loses the Champions league final twice and also loses the European final last year. When he went nuts you could see it was his entire career’s frustrations exploding at once.
One looks at Barcelona, paragon of all that is right with football, flowing forward in triangle-shaped Holy Trinities towards an ideal of the way the game should be played as expounded upon by Cruijff, Wenger, Michels, Clough, et al. “If God wanted us to play football in the clouds, he’d have put grass up there” indeed.
Conversely, the pragmatist views this re-re-incarnation of Mourinho’s Chelsea under Hiddink as a team that, undone by unbalanced expression run amok under Scolari, has returned to an ethos of playing to win. Expression and creativity’s all well and good, but as long as it’s fully compatible with winning–Revie’s rejoinder that “You get nowt for coming in second” rings just as true today as it did 35 years ago.
Yet what amazes me a few days after the fact is that football is such a human, capricious game where foresight, philosophy, and organization can be rendered null through one swing of a boot and simple human error under pressure. We can argue until it’s 2 am and the caffeine buzz from the double espresso at 11 finally dulls our minds into butter knives about footballing philosophies and preferences, and that’s a great part of being a fan of any sport. But what often happens is that these tactical frameworks, instructions, and monotonously practiced passes, shots, and tackles break down into an extremely high-level kickabout that can equally end in either a fair result or a case of highway robbery that is, for the most part, immutable. It’s all so…human.
I return to Shankly’s wisdom, not just as a Liverpool supporter, but as someone who believes he was one of the few figures in the history of the sport who actually represented something more than results on the pitch; an outlook on life that was unadorned but refined and ultimately quite wise: “Football is a simple game made complicated by people who should know better.”
I’m offended you call poor football pragmatism. What’s pragmatic about playing like Bolton for 180 minutes and then losing?
You want to believe playing good football is not pragmatic, as if just by not playing good football you’ll win. A nonsensical idea.
Most of the most successful teams ever have played good attacking football. The confidence to impose oneself on a match is the true mark of superiority.
A team that sets up not to concede and not to lose concedes inferiority.
Playing football does not guarantee you will win games, but Bolton or Stoke never won trebles or finished seasons unbeaten either.
Every season 99% of fans will wait till the last few weeks of the season to find out how successful their teams would have been. Playing well at least makes the passage more passable.