On Monday night, Swansea manager, Garry Monk, spoke about ‘setting up a certain way’ to get a result at Arsenal.
“We could’ve come here and gone toe-to-toe,” he said. “But I think, with the individual quality that Arsenal have, they could’ve hurt us. So we set up very well with a game plan.”
Swansea won 1-0. At the Emirates. Their manager wasn’t ashamed to talk about his tactics. He took kudos for being smart. For being logical. For being a manager.
Arsene Wenger took all the flak.
The Gunners boss had his post match whinge about Swansea’s performance when, for the 11th season in a row, he failed to cope with a side with a bit of discipline. But Wenger was the only one being lambasted in the soccer world on Monday evening. Not Garry Monk. Not Swansea. Not the future of the game. Just a naive man stuck in his ways.
Come Wednesday, the RTÉ panel are dissecting Real Madrid’s exit from the Champions League after what was a stunning defensive display from Juventus. They sidetracked – as they tend to do – and Dunphy and Brady got carried away with themselves – as they tend to do – by almost dismissing Pep Guardiola as a manager.
Why? Because he’s defensively flawed. Apparently.
Their arguments were proven useless as Richie Sadler picked holes in them, but they were ready and willing to write off the Bayern manager’s career to date because he hadn’t shown that he could win in another way – he couldn’t set up and ‘do what he needed to do’ when it was necessary. Against the likes of a Chelsea, for example.
You see, you’re allowed to do these things in other sports. And you’re allowed to analyse those sides of the game and, heck, even hold up qualities like defending every now and again as important.
They show a West Brom clash on TV and, inevitably, it’s a disgusting eyesore because Tony Pulis is involved and, fair enough, they call it as it is. It’s not good to watch. It’s not entertaining. No-one really enjoys the game as a spectacle.
Then, this amazing thing happens. They move on. They talk about the match. They talk about why West Brom wouldn’t try to beat a Manchester United at their own game. They talk about why someone like Diego Simeone is one of the finest managers around for what he’s done at Atletico Madrid. They actually have more to say than ‘this is a load of old bollocks’.
And the sun comes up the next day, the world keeps spinning, and there’s no global crisis declared that soccer is in urgent need of a drastic overhaul.
What happened during The Fight of the Century? Floyd Mayweather let us all down, he destroyed the night as a spectacle for the casual fan because he did this thing they call boxing. He actually boxed his way through a boxing fight instead of presenting his jaw for Pacquiao in a blow-for-blow punch-off.
Some complained about it – for some reason surprised at what unfolded – and they called it the end for boxing. The end. After one of the biggest nights in sporting history.
Bernard Dunne was on Second Captains last week and he described it as a boxing masterclass from Floyd Mayweather.
He didn’t lead calls to change the rules of the sport because Money’s defend-first approach isn’t fair on his opponents. It’s too hard to beat him. Something has to be done to make it easier for other boxers to hit him and all that.
When it comes to the GAA – our precious GAA – nothing’s too irrational. Actually, as it stands, logic is irrational.
A team who wants to set up with a disciplined, conservative approach are lepers. Defending in numbers, being safer in possession, even something as fundamental as a simple hand pass are now the inexplicable cornerstones of all that is wrong with the sport.
And no-one, absolutely no-one, is yet to offer one good explanation as to why. They just know that it is.
Instead, a new RTÉ video features Ciaran Whelan using the most tired word in Gaelic Football: cancer. The blanket defence is the cancer of our game. It is a complete lack of original thinking. This is the trend, this is the bad guy, and this is how you speak about it.
But, finally, amidst all the futile ‘somebody has to do something’ hysteria, Joe Brolly offers a proposal. It just so happens that it was both rubbish and still pointless but it made a refreshing change from the chorus of ‘this is sh*te’.
He suggested a change to the kickout – that every team had to line out with six backs and six forwards inside each 45′ before the ‘keeper’s kick and they couldn’t leave until one of the midfielders touched the ball. So the goalie would be forced to kick beyond the 45’ to one of the midfielders.
Suddenly, winning a breaking ball is no longer an art. Suddenly, high catching is actually no longer necessary.
Imagine the scene: two v two between both 45 metre lines. Do you really think a ‘keeper is going to hoist the ball into the air for the four to compete when they have all that space to run into with just one man to mark them? It would completely redefine the GAA midfielder. The big man would no longer be needed.
It would also stop a quick restart when we’re trying to speed the game up and it would make it much easier to time waste while referees usher men back behind their respective 45’ lines.
What if the ‘keeper can’t kick it that far? How do you even police that? What if there’s a gale force wind? What if he cocks up? Do we take that element out of the sport? That human element.
And, actually, had Joe Brolly’s rule been enforced for last year’s final, Paul Durkan’s miskick wouldn’t have counted, Donaghy’s goal wouldn’t have stood, and Donegal probably would’ve went on to win Sam. And do you know what would’ve happened then? Joe Brolly would’ve cried about the death of Gaelic Football.
The mistake people are making is thinking that someone defending the art of defending actually enjoys a defensive stand-off.
Very few do. They enjoy it aesthetically as much they like watching Mourinho’s teams, or Floyd Mayweather, or even the Irish rugby side.
But it’s completely unfounded to suggest changing the rules of an entire sport because you don’t think it’s fair. Because you think the other team are spoiling the game. Because they have a better chance now.
And it’s even more unfounded in an age where we’ve been witnessing some of the finest games ever played at the top level.
But that point is moot. The only concern here is that this is sport. Not a parade. And people are allowed to play within the rules of a sport in order to compete.
It happens all over the world. We’re the only ones pretending to have a problem with it.
Change it to suit the best teams and, within three years, we’ll be talking about dividing the championship, splitting Dublin in two, or giving weaker teams a better chance – by changing the rules.
Please, just stop trying to fix this game. There is no logical justification for it.
