November 30, 2021

The Football Masterclass

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As a former soccer mom in Italy, I retain a passing interest in European football. Thus, a recent news item reporting that an elite English team was in serious trouble, piqued my curiosity. Since early October this team had started losing game after game in embarrassing fashion. The manager, a beloved former player, was reluctantly let go. Ten days later, after three grueling games in quick succession, the team had miraculously stopped losing and begun to regain its confidence. How did this happen? Intrigued, I started a casual Google search and soon found the explanation on THE FOOTBALL MASTERCLASS, a You-Tube channel devoted entirely to technical analyses of the football played by the team in question. Here’s what I learned, together with a reflection on its wider applicability.

 

Playing Positional Football 

Soccer (European football) is played with 11-person teams. At the start of each game, the players take up specific positions on the field, according to the formation the coach has selected for that particular game. Each position has defined functions and tasks which the player is expected to execute. The problems of the English arose because, although the former manager had assembled a team comprised of first-class talents for each position, he chose a formation and strategic approach that maximized reliance on their individual skills and minimized teamwork.

 

When the assistant took charge, he made only slight changes to the formation, but he made an important change in the instructions which he gave the team. Instead of encouraging them to focus on using their individual skills to best advantage, he asked them to take responsibility for seeing and executing what the game required from a positional perspective. The task of each player was the same— to follow the movement of the ball on the field, and do the job the position called for.

 

If each team member plays his position correctly, said the Football Masterclass commentator, the team will function as a unit,. An opponent will find if difficult to challenge such a team. Between the two, it is mediocre players playing good positional football who win games. not talented players playing their positions inattentively,

 

Flourishes of individual talent make games more interesting, but they should only be displayed after playing positional football has become automatic for the entire team. Flashy displays of exceptional skill in football are like frosting on a cake. You only apply it after the cake has been baked.

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Playing a Position in Life

We all occupy multiple positions in life – some from birth, others by choice. Each position has roles and responsibilities which define how we relate to others in a group. Sometimes these rules and codes of behavior are explicit and strictly enforced. Sometimes the rules are loosely defined and enforcement is lax.

  

The French political scientist, Olivier Roy, (Is Europe Christian? Oxford University Press, 2020), argues that, with the disappearance of religion as the focus of social and cultural life, Western society is now ordered on new values, according to which individualism, personal freedom and the satisfaction of desires prevail over all transcendent standards. This is the vision of the football manager whose strategy was to organize team play so as to display the unique talents and skill of each individual player with minimal attention to the positional requirements of the team’s formation on the field. But in the end, his was a losing strategy.

 

As the Japanese Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, says in the chapter on Control in his collected teachings, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Weatherhill, 1970), Perfect freedom is not found without some rules. This does not mean always to be controlled. But only as long as you have rules, do you have a chance for freedom. This is the vision of the football manager who insisted that the talented players at his disposal first learn to play according to the requirements of their positions, and only after that begin to exercise their freedom and show off individual skills.

 

A friend of mine, reacting to my excited exposition of these new insights, thought long and hard about how she would define her own position in life. Finally, she announced her conclusion: “My position in life is that of a rebel,” she said. It was the perfect response. She is a rebel within social structures which include the position of ‘rebel’ as an acceptable way to define oneself.

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