Define or Describe 'Beautiful Game'....

[tfsoccer]

Last edited Sun Dec 11, 2011, 10:52 PM - Edit history (1)

..., not in the sense that Football is 'the Beautiful Game', but what is meant by, "to play football/soccer beautifully.'
1. How does it look, sound, feel, etc..
2. Can only teams as good as Brazil and Barcelona play it? Can youth play it?
3. What are key skills and tactics, said in a way that, say 10-16 year olds can emulate?
4. Can capitalist zealots occupied with facebook and video/computer games ever play it?
5. How can I inspire often distracted undisciplined american kids to love and practice it?
6. Can only latino teams have enough 'dance' to play it?

[Lars77]

1. Johann Cruyff

Ive tried to post a video here but it doesent work, even if i only do the end of the URL.
Check out "Johann Cruyff Tribute".

There is actually some scholarly work that relates to this subject.

As someone who studies American and European culture and Transatlantic Culture and relations, i believe this concept of beautiful football comes from a time before we had consumer societies. Soccer dates back to the 1860s onwards, and was extremely popular before world war two, a time when we did not have developed consumer societies yet (The Marshall Plan made sure we got them after WW2, great for communist containment).

The German sociologist Werner Sombart did research on this in the early 1900s and concluded that Americans measure success in money and hard numbers, such as number of farm animals a farmer owns, the size of an estate etc. In Europe, social mobility was still extremely low, so success was measured differently. A beautiful building, a painting etc. Aestethics cannot be measured in hard numbers.

I still believe this is true to some extent even today, as i recently spent time at a University in West Kentucky. People seems to appreciate excess more, where many Europeans (and maybe also many urban americans) find it vulgar.

When it comes to sport, Americans are stat crazy. Baseball especially can be recreated almost perfectly using only statistics, and basketball and football is not far behind. Soccer however is a fluid game, not rigidly timed like football, and many many situations are different. A tackle is not a tackle, it depends on what came before and after. Situations (plays) glide into each other and overlap. One can for example not always point to a single moment when a game was lost or won because of this. I believe that this is why it is not that popular in the US, as Americans like to be able to measure success with tangible numbers still. In football, a 0-0 game can be extremely dramatic and fans can walk away thrilled, while a 1-1 game can be boring most of the time.

This stuff interests me, so forgive my nerdyness.

[tfsoccer]

2. Zidane

Thanks for that back ground and the description of fluidity. I agree a lot, but also am into measuring as at least partial proof of a theory. For example, Brazilians have a much higher number of passes to very open players, waiting for the right moment to penetrate.
So perhaps beautiful football means less 'forcing' and more 'flowing' to borrow your description. Have you read the Brilliant Orange? __several definitions of beautiful soccer, including much about Cruyf.
I posted my own definition in Wikipedia, but someone very bullheaded (and wrong) described it VERY coldly. I'd be tickled if you took a crack at briefly answering my original questions about the BG.

[Lars77]

3. Less forcing and more flowing

sounds maybe right. Do you remember the goal Argentina scored in.. Was it WC06 or 10, where they had something like 24 touches before they scored? That was described as one of the greatest ever.

I guess keeping the ball and outplaying your opponent in a flowing team move is beautiful, while winning a hard header is not.
However, power players such as Roy Keane are often extremely popular amongst hard core fans, whereas maybe more artsy players are popular with fans in general? I am not sure, but there could be something there.

With regards to Brazil, you have to remember that even in the greatest brazil teams there was usually a backbone of a ferocious midfielder. Dunga was one such player, the guy that allows the others to shine and carries the team.

I have read Brilliant Orange. its an interesting book, although i feel maybe he is pushing it when he claims that the Dutch are naturally good on small surfaces because Holland is a small, densly populated country. This does not explain why they have successful players from Suriname for example.

To answer questions one at a time:

1. This is hard. To the layman it probably looks like Barcelona or Brazil when they play well. But when i watch my favourite team, i really love the hard players that give everything in every tackle and inflict pain on the opposing players just as much or maybe even more. I think it could be an emotional thing. Messi and Ronaldinho can be enjoyed by anyone but Roy Keane and Dunga were hated by fans from other teams.

2. I don´t think so. My local team in the Norwegian league have tried to copy that style by visiting Ajax several times and study how they develop players and how they organize their teams. Of course, my team would not be able to outplay Barcelona, but when if your guys have technical skills and "team gel" superior to the opposition i think it can be done regardless. But you probably need a superior team in relation to your opposition.
Youth can probably play it. In Norway a lot of kids now grow up playing soccer on a tiny surface in something we call a "ball bin" which is a small fenced in area with astroturf and a goal on each end. Here they learn dribbling and small surface orientation etc, and it is showing in younger players coming through the ranks. However it probably takes a lot of practice to put it into a system on a larger pitch.

3. Good question, im not a coach But i have noticed that my team practices a LOT in playing triangles. Both with one guy chasing the ball in the middle, and a moving triangle outplaying a set of defenders. If you look at Argentina, Barca etc you will see that a lot of their basic passing play is triangular. And they always keep oriented so that they do not have to pause and look up when they recieve the ball, they play it on immediately because they have learned where the other players will be. This has a lot to do with natural instict i bet, i dont think anyone can do it.

4. I think so. I dont think gaming and facebook and other things modernity brings with it is bad, or at least not a disturbing factor. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is apparently gaming crazy for example. In fact, games are so realistic today they might actually learn a few things by playing in terms of tactics etc. Remember that race car drivers actually practice learning tracks using video games these days.

5. Hmm. Here im at a loss I think its mostly important that they have fun. If kids feel like they dont have fun, they wont play anyway.

6. No! This is stereotyping that sometimes annoy me, just as much as the idea that poverty breeds good football players becuase "rich kids are lazy".
Remember that Uruguay has had some of the most violent teams in World Cup History. Whereas in Europe if you look not only at Holland, but to the Balkans or example you find a football culture where players are natural ball players. Why that is i don´t know, perhaps it has something to do with the way kids play. But it is not a latino thing.