Football
Chance ball
Hans Keller
When you write all day and much of the night, as I did on my recent holiday in Lanzarote, the few hours when you don't assume special significance: far from being experienced as a diversion, they transfer Your chronic concentration from work to PlaY, with the result that play becomes overIlfesize—even if you only watch it. The only Waking hours in which I didn't write were the 3 x 90 minutes in which I saw, on Spanish television, Barcelona v Valencia (6-1), Betis Sevilla v Real Madrid (2-0), and Barcelona v Real Sociedad (2-1); and what struck me from the moment go was that the players— the most committed amongst them anyway, such as Cruyff, Neeskens and Clares for Barcelona, or Breitner for Real Madrid— were Playing my game of refusing to wele?rne diversion, which is intellectual passivitY. And the extreme of passivity is hopeful, reliance on chance, fate taking over—the roulette table as opposed to chess. It all came back to me last Saturday, once again in front of the television set, when, in that tedious sensation of the fourth round " the FA Cup, Colchester United drew 1-.1 with Derby, who started off their attacks \yith two successive speculative high crosses, inallelY hoping for the best—than which red or black at the roulette table is far Tricire likely, because there is no defence against either. Later, it was only Hector's silic 9,11tarY through-pass that created a chess danger, but Hales shot wide. Subse,quentlY, he made amends, admittedly, with chance-ridden goal of Fourth ri.vtsion stature. The Fourth Division club, n its turn, lifted itself slightly above its own sctattis with its last-minute equaliser by Garwood (who has now scored 22 Was this season): at least, what led up to it r , a diagonal cross which, though still elYlng on chance, increased it. In between Lanzarote (where I carefully c'ecorded through-passes, other passes, high ar°,,sses, low crosses, diagonal crosses etc) 1::;` last Saturday's television session, I , 'laved scientifically: week in, week out, ace to our own matches, pencil in hand, I)eellinulating a grand statistical comparison n tween English chance ball and Contifootball—not just Spanish: of the aatrorementioned four 'Spanish' players, two °inch and one is German. But when I the added it all up, I realised that I would bore rea. der to distraction rather than stimu Inee 111M towards concentration: the Conti(hntals attempt as many through-passes al° fewer than twelve on Barcelona's part
a against Valencia) as we (even Ipswich
t4in" SPurs the week before last) chance 1crosses, and that's about it. ne difference between the styles, in other words, is total, and does not need statistical clarification—the less so since throughpasses are but the elite amongst the various types of thoughtful and skilful passes; much else happens constructively on a leading Continental football ground, and 'ground' is the word: the thoughtless and unskilled high balls which are our spectators' roulettelike delight are out on the Continent, to the extent of any class player feeling visibly guilty when circumstances compel him to pump the ball into the air. Even what we would regard as a normal clearance is despised: intricate, individualistic passing starts in one's own penalty area.
Years ago, I published a statistical survey of goalkeepers' punts as compared with their aimfully throwing or passing the ball, as a determined first step in a purposive attacking movement. The picture seemed clear: more than half the hopeful punts, however long (Pat Jennings!), resulted in the opposition gaining possession. However, Bill Nicholson, then Spurs' manager, responded: the other side, facing the punt, would often get' hold of the ball in the first place, but his players, facing the facers, were expected to gain possession thereafter. Well, they may have been expected to utilise the hoped-for chance of an aimless head-ball from the opposing defence, but more often than not, they didn't: once the ball is up in the air, there's no telling who is going to be luckier, except that the man in (however fleeting) possession is of course luckier in the first place,
The five Spanish goalkeepers I saw in Lanzarote were not as good as ours when saving the ball, but immeasurably better constructively, when releasing it : they only punted in emergencies. Throughout a toplevel Spanish game there is, in fact, hardly a moment of boredom: you are continually in on the patient and purposeful creation of likelihoods or, at least, desirable possibilities—which we, significantly, call chances: the undesigned occurrence is our favourite opportunity.
The British player is a better header of the ball than the Continental and indeed the South American, partly owing to his height, which makes him explore this natural advantage, and partly owing to our climate,
which produces 'normal' ground conditions regarded as unplayable not only by the Brazilians, Italians or Spaniards, but also
by, say, the Austrians: I well remember being surprised, at the start of my football
watching in this country, that a match had not been cancelled on account of what, in German football language, would have been called 'deep ground' (a soggy pitch), which prevents the ball from bouncing. A frozen pitch, on the other hand, is considered playable in central Europe: the ball bounces.
You have to be an Alan Gilzean in order for your head to be able to master the ball the way a football is supposed to be directed by your feet, or at least one of them. It is the English who invented the laws of the game, including the corner-kick—the time honoured high cross par excellence, which, with the game's increasing inventiveness and skill at the highest level, is becoming an ever more illusory 'advantage.' Many years ago, Jimmy Greaves, a supremely imaginative ground player if ever there was one, described the corner-kick as 'stupid' to me: 'Why, the attacking side is necessarily one player short'. The 'short corner' which has meanwhile established itself, and which, in this country, means passing to the hopeful crosser, makes us two players short.
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