Why Do They Play That Way?

One of the joys of watching the World Cup is seeing teams from different parts of the globe play each other. The styles they employ are often a study in contrasts. Any time England plays Argentina, it is a battle of grit and determination versus technique and guile (there’s also the wee matter of the Falklands / Malvinas that provides the political backstory to such matches). But how did teams come to play they way they do? The answers offered to this question are as varied as the styles themselves.

Peter Lupson’s book Thank God for Football! explores the religious backgrounds of many top English club teams (of the 38 teams that have played in the Premier League since its inception in 1992, 12 have their origins in churches). Churches that founded teams often did so for reasons other than pure love of soccer. David Goldblatt, in his history of world soccer called The Ball is Round, has written of the importance of so-called muscular Christianity in shaping early English football. He writes that “the Victorians were quite convinced of the relationship between physical, mental, and moral health” (27).

Drawings of the first international between England and Scotland in 1872 show some of the virtues of the burgeoning British style (photo: Wikipedia)

Lupson told the EPL Talk podcast last year that churches sought to instill 4 elements of character into their football-playing parishioners: courage, fair play, team spirit, and self-control (20:50). Such qualities are still seen today in the English game. Post-game press conferences with English managers almost always focus on at least one of these elements (Stuart Pearce is my personal favorite, rattling on and on about team spirit but with seemingly little concern for tactics and the like).

As soccer spread around the world, diverse styles of play developed that barely resembled the game played in England. In South America, short passing replaced the long ball made popular in England. In Argentina, this style was offered referred to as criollo. David Goldblatt writes that “criollo football and masculinity came to be defined in opposition to the English” who had brought the game to Argentina, and whose economic system was fundamental in shaping the country’s style of play.

The English were focused and disciplined, combining collective organization and physical force – the prerequisites of an industrial labour force turning out an industrial product. On the Rio de la Plata where industrialization had yet to completely stamp its imprint on the economy, landscape or rhythms of life, masculinity was more restless, impetuous and individualistic, spurning crude force in favor of virtuoso agility (204).

This “virtuoso agility” is still seen today in Argentine soccer. Marcela Mora y Araujo has written of the gambeta, which 1986 World Cup winner Jorge Valdano told her has two elements: “The first is ability: to show that I, with my foot, have the skill to do anything; the second is feinting, I have to deceive my opponent, make him believe exactly the opposite of what I’m going to do. This is also very Argentinian, the taste for deceit.”

Maradona gets his gambeta on in 1986 against England (photo: Telegraph)

Not surprisingly, given its proximity, Brazil developed a style in many ways similar to that of the Argentines, complete with intricate short passing and elaborate dribbling. Tim Vickery, South American correspondent for BBC, The World Game, Sports Illustrated, and World Soccer magazine, told me that “[soccer] was reinterpreted by the South American masses from a game of straight running, muscular Christianity to a much more balletic thing full of twists and turns.”

Alex Bellos, author of Futebol: Soccer the Brazilian Way, offers several suggestions as to how the “Brazilian” style has developed. The incredible technique that typifies Brazilian players may have come from the “informal kickabouts” in which a bundle of socks often substitutes for a ball would lead “their ball skills to be more highly developed and inventive” (34).

“Alternatively,” writes Bellos, “one could explain the flashy individualism by pointing to the national trait of showing off in public.” Tim Vickery concurs with this explanation. He offered me an example: “Say I’ve got the ball and you come and tackle me and I do a little shimmy and you fall on your backside. Even if that move serves no objective purpose and you’re on your feet instantly, I’ve made you look ridiculous, for that one little instant I have humiliated you. And that is the moment that will most get the Brazilian public up.”

Alex Bellos offers a couple of other possible explanations for how the Brazilian style has developed. It may have had to do with race relations, he writes.

Some historians have suggested that reliance on the dribble evolved because of the racism of the game’s formative years. They say that the style was created by black players who improvised artfulness as a way of self-protection against whites. If you were a black, you would not want to have physical contact with a white player, since this could end in retaliation. Blacks had to use guile rather than force to keep the ball. (35)

Or perhaps, Bellos suggests, the Brazilian martial art of capoeira played a part in developed the country’s soccer style. He suggests that the “hip-swinging body language used by a capoeirista is very similar to samba dancers and Brazilian dribblers” (35).

The Netherlands is another country with a unique style of play. The Total Football style of the 1970s, in particular, was unlike anything ever seen (and though not explicitly employed today, remnants of its influence remain). David Winner, in his book Brilliant Orange, claims that this style has much to do with Dutch conceptions of space.

Space is the unique defining element of Dutch football. Other nations and football cultures may have produced greater goalscorers, more dazzling individual ball-artists, and more dependable and efficient tournament-winning teams. But no one has ever imagined or structured their play as abstractly, as architecturally, in such a measured fashion as the Dutch. (44)

Winner claims that Total Football exemplifies the Dutch conception of space. It was “a conceptual revolution based on the idea that the size of any football field was flexible and could be altered by the team playing on it” (44).

Of course, the size of a football field is not flexible, Winner attributes this mentality to the land the Dutch have been given. A small, low-lying country with a long sea coast and a relatively large population, the Dutch have in fact expanded their land through the use of polders and other elaborate water control measures. Winner sees spillover of Dutch attitudes toward land into Dutch soccer. He calls the Dutch “spatial neurotics” and says that “the Dutch think innovatively, creatively and abstractly about space in their football because for centuries they have had to think innovatively about space in every other area of their lives” (47).

A Dutch goalkeeper ponders his country’s water reclamation projects (photo: Roberta on the Arts)

In 2000, I studied in Japan. At the time, Frenchman (and recent convert to Islam) Phillipe Troussier was coach of that country’s national team. The team had long used an all-action, team game (like that of the Koreans in the 2002 World Cup).

A constant refrain from Troussier, though, was that his team was too nice, too polite, too afraid to really mix it up. Japan’s style of play was too team-oriented, as were his individual players, and he told the BBC that “the Japanese are very organised.”

Even in their free time they need organisation. I gave them a day off and they all want to do the same thing. They take the same photographs, eat in the same restaurant. I had to close the hotel restaurant and told them to go out and do different things.

Troussier’s attempts to change the Japanese style of play ran up against the deeply-held value of group unity.

Troussier also constantly railed that his players weren’t tough enough. Again, what Troussier saw as a lack of toughness may have been a manifestation of the value Japanese place on harmony. Being tough is not encouraged in Japanese society the way it is in Europe, and Troussier saw his role as imposing this toughness on his players. In 2000, he told Sebastian Moffett of the International Herald Tribune that “the younger Japanese players are maybe better than Europeans in technical areas. My challenge is to prepare the players for world football — to play against aggressive foreign sides.”

Phillipe Troussier works on scaring his players into being tougher (photo: BBC)

If this last example is staring to sound like national stereotypes transformed into ideas about styles of play, it’s because it is just that. And it’s far from the only such example. One hears constantly about Germany’s Teutonic efficiency, Italian players’ sneakiness and diving, and many other examples that are nothing more than simple stereotypes put in the context of soccer. These stereotypes can at times come across negatively, especially when reference is made to African teams’ lack of discipline. Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated has written: “[I]t sometimes strikes me as a veiled form of racism (especially when a European journalist asks an African coach if his team’s “lack of discipline is a reflection of the national character,” which actually happened during the 1996 Olympics.)”

Today, the traditional styles of play that have typified footballing nations for years are less pronounced than in the past. With more and more players and coaches crossing borders and games being broadcast across the globe, it’s often hard to pinpoint a style as coming from one country. David Winner wrote in March of last year that Arsenal – a team based in London but coached by a Frenchman and who rarely feature an Englishman in their lineup – are the only team that best typify Total Football today. But Arsenal are different, a team that actually seeks to play with style. Most are content to play with whatever style (or lack thereof) will win them the next match.

As an American, I have often thought about whether there is an “American style.” As a country of immigrants, it would make sense for our style to reflect the people who have come to the United States. But for most of our soccer history, I don’t think this has been the case. The historical soccer connections between the US and the UK have meant that American soccer has often been more British in its style than anything else. That may be changing today, though, especially with the influx of immigrants from Latin America.

Jay Martin, longtime men’s soccer coach of Ohio Wesleyan University, laments the fact that for too long American soccer has not had its own identity, but has simply sought to replicate that of other countries. He hopes to see the development of an American style, as he wrote in an article for the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) in 2006.

The fact is we are Americans. We are not Brazilians, Germans, Dutch or French. We cannot play the style of those countries. It is simply not possible. We cannot replicate the Brazilian culture and society. These factors influence — no, dictate — how the Brazilians play. Social, economic, political and cultural forces directly impact how any national team plays. Nor can we replicate the club systems of England and Germany or the youth system of France and Holland.

American soccer is unique. America is unique. We can and should learn from other soccer nations, but we should develop and play an American style. There is no question that there is a great deal to learn from other soccer-playing nations. We should, however, take these lessons and use them in the context of an American style.

So, my fellow gringos (and others), what do you think? Is there an American style of play? If so, what is it? Because frankly, I don’t have an answer to that question.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 7:32 am and is filed under Africa, Asia, Ethnicity/Race, Europe, History, Latin America, North America, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.