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Date: 10th July 2024
Did you fall asleep during the Euros? I’m not talking about Scotland, obviously (although falling asleep during the Germany match might have been a blessing in disguise), but rather the whole tournament. Until last night’s cracker between Spain and France, there had been about two really good games, and that’s it.
Instead, as a friend said, you could leave the room, go and make a cup of tea, take the dog for a walk and when you returned to take your seat in front of the telly the ball was still being passed about the six-yard box.
Occasionally, the players fail to find a way to work the ball forward, or, under pressure from an opponent on their own goal-line, they hump it forward. When they do manage to work it from the back, they move up the pitch in stages, stopping, going back and recirculating the ball in an attempt to find a chink in the opposition defence. The ball is moved wide, then back, then wide again, then into the middle, then back wide, before being crossed in (with all the defenders taking up the ‘natural’ position of putting their hands behind their backs) and then cleared… only for the entire process to start again.
In case you think this is just me, it’s not. This article was inspired by an exchange on Twitter, featuring former Scottish striker Steve Archibald (how we could have done with him this summer) and well-known Dundonian journalist Jim Spence. I took a screen-grab, as shown here.
The problem, in my view, is that the way the game is being played is not decided by those who watch it and pay (in Scotland at least) for much of the players’ wages. It’s those clowns at IFAB and FIFA who think they know best and who are ruining what was the simplest, most exciting sport in the world.
The change in the law that previously insisted the ball had to clear the penalty area from a goal-kick is one of the main reasons that coaches now try and get their teams to play the ball out from the back. Unfortunately, only a very few teams (the best international sides and some of the top flight in England) are capable of doing this without cocking it up and having to resort to hoofing the ball up the park, or alternatively, as we’ve seen with monotonous regularity, giving away possession and then conceding a goal.
Where coaches are responsible though is for the cautious, fearful, slow and methodical build-up: the recycling of the ball, moving it around and keeping possession. Of course, while this is going on, the opposition have at least ten (and often 11) players in defensive lines across the pitch, meaning the ‘attacking’ side have to continue to play backwards and sideways while waiting for their opportunity. Meanwhile, in the stands, the fans are shouting ‘get it up the park!’ Believe it or not, we want excitement and entertainment.
Jimmy Johnstone statue in Viewpark
In older, more entertaining times, wingers used to take on the man in front of them, trading on the knowledge that, as the more skilful of the two, they would get past him several times in a match and would then be able to put in a cross that might lead to a goal. It was exciting. Back then, every team had at least one, usually two wingers and we all looked forward to them testing themselves against the less able, but no less committed, full-backs assigned to mark them. Lord knows what the likes of Jimmy Johnstone, Willie Henderson, Willie Ormond, Davie Cooper, John Robertson et al would make of today’s tedious football. Telling Johnstone to play the ball back and retain possession rather than risk taking on his man? I suspect his answer would be the well-known one involving sex and travel.
Then there’s the change in the handball law. I don’t really need to add much more other than to say that if you can explain the oxymoron that says a player’s arms/hands are in an unnatural position when waved about to perform the body’s normal actions involved in keeping balance, jumping, running and moving about, but not when they in clasped together behind the player’s back (because, of course, that’s the natural way to run about and kick a ball), then you are a better man than I am. It’s madness. Please can we go back to the ‘deliberate or not deliberate.’ I know that was subjective, but so are many of today’s ridiculous ‘handball’ decisions: the difference now is that we have no idea what is happening.
Another thing: yellow cards are now dished out for someone breathing too hard on their opponent. Referees are frequently blamed, but they are only obeying orders. At times during the Euros it’s seemed like a non-contact sport.
Then there’s VAR… but enough said about that already. As with all the other changes, the fans, the people who make the game the international No. 1 sport in the world were not consulted.
Those who have introduced the changes in tactics and the laws that have resulted in the game being turned into what is far too often a bore-fest need to come into the real world. Any business that loses its customers, especially the younger ones whom it wants to consume its product in the future (what the late, great Bob Crampsey called the ‘seed corn,’) risks not having a future.
Sterile, that’s the word Jim Spence used. And, as we all know, sterility means no future generations, or rather, in this case, fewer people with an interest in watching a tactical game of chess masquerading as a football match.
Alastair Blair, Director of Operations, SFSA
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