Futebol Explanatório 102

Barcelona 2 – Real Madrid 2, Spanish SuperCopa. 

In Europe generally and Spain more specifically, the previous season’s winners of the national cup competition (Real Madrid and the King’s Cup in this case) play the winners of the national league (Barcelona) in a one off game, in the Spanish case, home and away. This is the SuperCupa, good for filling the trophy case and for rubbing it in the face of the Madristas.

Messi playing for Barcelona is the best player in the world. Messi playing for Argentina is not Maradona. Club teams are forced to release players who are called up for national team duty. Botafogo’s porteiro, Jefferson, is the third string keeper for Brazil. He’ll never see the field, yet he gets called up for every friendly and qualifying match and Botafogo have some mão de alface (lettuce hands, one of my favorite Brazilian football expressions) minding the net.

The clubs are not compensated for giving away their best players for days, weeks, or months at a time, nor are they compensated if the player returns injured, crippled, or drunk (as has recently been the case with Fred at Fluminense, not to mention Adriano, coitado). FIFA determines the days set aside for international matches (friendlies or qualifiers) and tournaments. The clubs are told by national federations which players they “have” to release and the players trundle off to do their duty. The players get paid by the national federation for international appearances and there are likely some tidy bonuses thrown about when medals get hung around sweaty necks.

FIFA controls this from their buzzard’s perch in Switzerland. If you’re reading this blog I’m going to assume that you know about FIFA. National Football Federations or Associations are given membership in FIFA based on a two year affiliation with a regional confederation (FIFA divides the world into six regions, Europe - UEFA, Asia - AFA , Oceania - BOTO, Africa - CAF, South America- CONMEBOL, North and Central America + Caribbean - CONCACAF). Then they have to write a letter to the Secretary General of FIFA who decides, alone, if a country’s association is worthy of FIFA membership. There are 207 current members, with one vote each, organized and orchestrated through FIFA’s regional divisions. This very structure is a machine that generates corruption.

There are 32 spots available for the Men’s World Cup, unevenly distributed. FIFA allots 13 World Cup berths for European nations. 53 teams are sorted into 9 qualifying groups, the winners of which qualify directly for the World Cup while the 8 best second place teams will play a home and away series with the aggregate winners coming to Brazil. Africa will have 5 teams for the 2014 Cup following two rounds of qualifying. The 24 lowest ranked teams will play each other in a group round robin format before being placed in five qualifying groups that the highest ranked teams will join in. South America and Asia receive 4.5 berths each. This means that the fifth placed teams in each region will play each other for the right to go to Brazil. The same hold true of North and Central America and the Caribbean which has 3.5 berths to Oceania’s .5. Since Australia defied geology by leaving Oceania and heading  to Asia, FIFA took away the automatic qualifying from that region putting the winner of qualifying in a playoff against Honduras or Costa Rica (perpetual 3^rd or 4^th placers in the CONCACAF region).  Boring if you already know it.

The Draw that took place in Rio on the 30^th of July, which met with a very healthy protest led by the Comitê Popular da Copa and the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores, defined the qualifying groups for the World Cup. But now, the European national leagues are starting up again while the Brazilian and North American leagues (among others) are in mid-season.

This of course, is only dealing with men’s football. Women’s football is similar, though on a much smaller scale. Brazil has no functional women’s league, though many women play and there are nascent professional structures. The USA has a women’s league that appears to be healthy, though limited in geographic reach. There are no doubt fine places to read about that and I welcome any sugestõezinhas.

Right, that’s it for the football. Here’s a list of some good books:

Brilliant Orange, David Winner

The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt

Inventing the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson

Foul!, Andrew Jennings

Would welcome additions for a reader bibliography that could be posted and shared on Zotero.com

BARMAN*

* full credit to Douglas Engle for the title

BAR (3) MAN (1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRKIa-a-Ows

Not since the Dutch-inspired spatial revolution in the 1970s has there been a team that has so challenged and changed the geometry of football. Barcelona’s players not only think ahead in time, they also anticipate the shape of the immediate future. For instance, Xavi’s pass to Pedro in the 27^th minute split two defenders whose very movements were creating the space for that pass to occur. You see Xavi moving, waiting, procuring, probing, identifying and liberating. Pedro had the relatively banal task of a sublime first touch and side-footed finish.

Xavi is clearly a master of his world, but his dismantling of Euclid’s hegemonic spatiality is fostered by the silky technicality and tactical brilliance of his comrades. Iniesta hides the ball and darts through thick legs, leaping from trouble to glory as he both conducts and misdirects.  He knows instinctively where pressure is coming from and finds the release valves through he becomes a blur of thought and action. Midway through the second half, I remember a ball coming at him in midfield, with a defender coming in hard for a challenge. Pressure in the front, big hard man, space behind. If he turned away from pressure, he risked a nasty challenge, there was no time for a touch to the side and the ball had to be won. With a flick of his left foot, the ball rode up his left thigh which he swiveled to nudge the ball to his right thigh, which dropped it to his right foot. The defender flew by, the midfield opened like a can of tuna, and he splayed the ball to…Messi.

@ Camp Nou, May 2008

The second goal showed the danger of not effectively controlling and compacting defensive space around the box. Messi received the ball from Xavi 35 yards from goal. Park had come too high to defend and left space for Messi to run. He accelerated into the gap between the midfield and central defense and blasted a low shot that curved away from a partially blocked Van der Sar. 2-1.

Messi  started the third goal on the right flank by schooling a world-class defender and cutting into the box. This dragged the United defense goal-ward and as the ball popped around the box, Villa stepped into the void at the top of the box, measured his angle as he set himself and curled, around the lunging defender, an inch perfect shot past 6 foot 6 fingertips into the top corner. 3-1. Champions of Europe.

(United’s goal was excellent if slightly more pedestrian. Rooney paired 1-2s through midfield with Carrick, and into the box with Giggs, slotting home the neat return pass from the greybeard. After their goal, however, it is difficult to remember United doing anything other than chasing the ball. (For fuller tactical analysis click here.) To Manchester’s credit, they are all acknowledging that they were very well beaten).

The players that come through Barcelona’s youth academy are trained from a very young age to think about time, space, and movement in a very particular way. Their collective spatial-ability is changing something about the way football is conceived and played. I see the Barcelona players as constructing new ways of movement and spatial consciousness that are only possible with extreme technical competence. It appears to be unbeatable, with the exception of the occasional team (Inter Milan, Real Madrid) expert in the art of matching Barças non-linear, shifting constellations with the spatial dynamics of a Rubik’s Cube.

How these elements come together to put a smile on my face, I don’t know. But they did. I even managed to forget that all of the candidates in the FIFA elections scheduled for June 1 are under ethics investigations. Thankfully, there’s the Copa do Brasil final on Wednesday to get my mind off of that. 

O Terceiro Clássico, uma saida preconceituosa

The Third Clássico, a biased departure

At home, watching my third of four Barça-Madrid clashes. At half time, it looks as if Mourinho has solved the Barça puzzle with his particularly dark set of keys. Fine. Barcelona’s dominance in ball posession alone must rank upon the top teams of all time. If Barcelona lose this tie, they will claim ( as the loser always does) that they lost beautifully. The depths of my pessimism are such that even after Pepe’s expulsion in the 62^nd minute I am not convinced that the basic pattern of the game will change. The first 5 halves of football these teams have played in the last ten days produced one goal. Would the second half of the third game be any different? I  questioned my motivations. Mouriho’s pragmatism would have us believe that RMadrid have to score one goal over two legs and that could just as easily happen at the Camp Nou as in the Santiago Bernabéu. Mourinho wants us to believe that the forces are aligned against him, and he may be right. At least I hope so. Regarding Pepe’s summary dismissal, the Brazilian commentators tell us that o arbitro é muito pequeno por um jogo muito grande. Mourinho scribbles furiously, Guardiola gesticulates to his assistants. The signal on the web is choppy, giving me an even more fragmented experience of the game. I want to know what Mourinho is writing, what Guardiola is saying. If Mourinho is given credit for creating a system of play that is so disciplined, so perfectly coordinated to limit and condense space, how does he go about training his players to move in the sequence, rhythm and form that he demands? The impression is that the only unbalancing factors are Messi and RM freekicks. The depth of the event, the magnitude of connections, expressions, and experiences begins to overwhelm, again. Fouls are becoming rougher and more frequent as the game grinds on. RM will stop any and all attacks through violence. Then, as I just finished writing…Messi in the 77^th minute. The man is a genius and brings joy to my heart. Now I'm stuck into the game, and when you think Barcelona should sit back and defend, Messi takes the ball of Busquet's foot, surges forward, dribbles two, three, skips past Marcelo, outwits Casillas and kills the game. Mourinho expulso, Madrid’s anti-football reaps its just rewards.