What is football for? I mean that existentially: what is it for? The ex-pro pundit would no doubt sit on a sofa, often a colourless bore, with legs wide apart and say “at the end of the day, Gary, it’s all about results”, because they always, always do.
But it’s simply not true, is it? Because if it was, almost no one would play because they’d know they were not good enough to win anything. In case our pundits have forgotten, or have never realised, almost no club wins anything almost all the time, and relegated teams get thousands to see them. So whatever ‘it’ is, it isn’t all about results.
If it’s about results, it’d be a pretty miserable procession every season and I can’t see it lasting 150 years on the meagre rations of a win every now and again. If you think that then you undervalue the football experience.
So when they spout such nonsense, ignore this brain-in-neutral garbage.
Obviously, the point of football is to have fun, though increasingly that is being forgotten or crushed. Football is driven towards pragmatism for fear of harsh judgement by social media and a lobotomised press who report social media comments as if it’s actual news, consistently soiling itself in creating every journalist’s eight ‘stories’ each day.
Most teams play a similar brand of football, most players are trying or are playing in a similar fashion. If you’re not and are a maverick, you’ll soon have all your interesting bits ground off by the millstone of pragmatism.
Pleasure…that’s what keeps us coming back for more. We’re often told grinding out a 1-0 win is the sign of title winners, but so what? If it’s boring, who wants to watch other than the glory hunters who always want to be on the winning side?
Look at how many managers are criticised for playing defensive, negative, cautious football. Gareth Southgate, largely inaccurately, couldn’t move for the ‘never mind just winning, win with more style and flair’ shouters. David Moyes deployed football as a form of euthanasia and got the sack, despite winning a European trophy (with the biggest budget by far to help him, of course). Still believe it’s all about results?
Which brings us to Tottenham. Some fans criticised previous managers for perceived negativity. “Play the Spurs way,” said the protectors of the White Hart Lane flame. But look at what Danny Blanchflower said: “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”
He’d have loved Ange. But it is a philosophy that is now anathema to most and certainly to the overly solemn pundits for whom it’s always “a results-based game”. Bollocks to that.
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So they got in a manager whose main driving force is free-wheeling entertainment. Loved at all-conquering Celtic, this achievement was ignored by the wearers of the impenetrable Our League blinkers who are also often notorious Scotia-phobes, born out of sheer ignorance. Criticism is inconsistent, accusing a losing team of basic flaws but quietly ignoring the same things when they win. Because the truth is that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s fine.
Nobody could have been in any doubt that Ange would bring a dynamic, unconservative, attacking game to Spurs. And so he has. There’s been ups and downs, but as the song goes, if you lose all the highs and lows, it’s funny how the feeling goes away.
As of Saturday, they had won seven league games, none by a single goal and only one by two goals. All seven of their league defeats had been by a single goal and there had been only two draws. They have eviscerated and been eviscerated as on Sunday. Perhaps beating City 4-0 isn’t the stellar achievement we thought initially, given City’s crapulence, but it’s still huge. You want to ditch this in favour of a side that’ll bring on an extra defender and close the game down for the last 20 minutes? No, you can’t have both, it doesn’t work like that. You have to choose.
And now here come the critics and chin-strokers, taking it all so seriously, wearing the neutral clothing of conservatism. The anti-football mob who now don’t want the exciting stuff just because it means they lose sometimes. It’s like cutting off your cock because you might get syphilis.
These joyless creatures still believe that “it’s all about results” sh*te and talk about Ange’s unwillingness to change as a weakness, or stubbornness. But they are the most glorious team we’ve seen since mid-90’s Newcastle. Do you want to be remembered for generationally great moments, or do you want a trophy? Bland or spicy? Corporate or maverick?
The irony of complaining about him after all the negative managers seems lost on them. The rest of us, those who know football is fun, see only the positives. Not shutting games down pays the greatest compliment of seeking to entertain us. I find it incredible that anyone would criticise that.
The critics who say he should ‘tweak’ his style in-game are missing the whole point. Always with the ‘tweaking’. Mostly this sage advice is ‘please don’t do that thing that you did to make you lose’. Duh. But nobody says that when they win so spectacularly, even though they’re playing the same way.
This is sport, not an A-level examination. Having a good time is the whole point. And Spurs entertain and crucially allow their opponents, like Liverpool on Sunday, to entertain too. Only Spurs would lose 6-3 after being 5-1 down. They don’t give up, or get any tighter, the crowd still roaring in anticipation with every attack; this should be what football is all about, not some efficient soulless grind or airless pragmatism.
It’s not surprising he gets frustrated and annoyed at the same criticism time and again from the same stupids. Some of the criticism is unfair and doesn’t understand what he’s trying to achieve and it comes from a place that doesn’t interest him. These people who call for pragmatism are anathema to him. He is rightly contemptuous of their attitude.
Has everything got to be calculated and methodical as if football is a scientific experiment? Football is already more like accountancy than rock ‘n’ roll, thank God there’s someone with the courage to put the pedal to the metal and ignore the brainwashing.
Inevitably, somewhere in the mix, is a certain anti-Antipodean hostility and mouth-breathers in the press who have already proven ignorant enough to think he’s achieved nothing, are trying to rough him up with their stupidity, still gravely saying ‘don’t you have to change?’ and calling for more sense. But many of us know sense is the death of excitement and creativity.
Ignore the stupids Ange. Whatever your league position, you regularly have one of the most attractive teams to watch and that has to be worth something. It’s all about enjoyment and you’ve got Tottenham sometimes playing and allowing the finest football for a generation and if football isn’t about fun and excitement then it’s about nothing. Keep fighting against the low drone of mediocrity.
