Much of the discussion and debate around football in the present day centers around data analytics. Data after all can undoubtedly help to build a picture of certain aspects of the game but so much of it can also be data for data’s sake. Paralysis by analysis.
As the Kaiser Chiefs told us way back in 2005; ‘This is the modern way’ and now we truly are in the digital age, there’s no going back. Therefore, it would be folly to disregard data entirely, but regardless of what is pushed and how hard it is pushed, data analytics are not the only way to analyse a game of football. It’s never been easier, or more encouraged, to disregard and turn your nose up at the opinions and analysis offered by ex-players and managers or even some current ones. The alternative, propagated by those absolutist prophets of data, is to get lost in a world of graphs and charts but the reality is that football truly is a strange beast which exists entirely alone in its own emotionally overcharged vortex. Seeing is very much still believing in this sport.
Former professionals (sensible ones), should be listened to and respected – incidentally that doesn’t equate to agreeing with them. Those who have lived and breathed experience of life behind the curtain and out on the grass shouldn’t be disregarded or packed off to the retirement home because they don’t go along with the current narrative. Disagreeing doesn’t make you a dinosaur.
At the conclusion of the Aberdeen – Celtic match on the 3rd of February, we witnessed one of the fundamental elements of football that data simply cannot capture or manipulate – the human element. Just how is it that a group of Aberdeen players who have underperformed – often humiliated – under the stewardship of Barry Robson secure a point against Celtic with the odds and form table stacked firmly against them? How is it that the removal of a struggling manager can bring out something positively unexpected, something better, in a group of players?
It’s a story as old as time and often an inexplicable one. The psychological unshackling, be it consciously or otherwise that occurs when one element is removed. How many times have you witnessed a flailing group of players pull one out the bag following the sacking of a manager?
Furthermore, how often have you witnessed a world class player miss a penalty kick? David Beckham, a player quite accustomed to scoring from 30 or 40 yards missed two crucial penalties at Euro 2004. Roberto Baggio, one of the best strikers of the last 40 years ballooned the decisive spot kick from twelve yards in the World Cup Final 1994. Harry Kane, arguably the best striker in the world at present scores goals in his sleep but still managed to miss form the spot against France in the quarter final of the last World Cup.
How often have you seen a good team perennially struggle at a particular ground or on the road? How do some players remain cool under pressure and some buckle under the sheer weight of it? It’s mentality, it’s character, it’s experience, it’s circumstance.
There’s no algorithm anywhere that can legislate for Zinedine Zidane, one of the greatest players in the game’s history, signing his career off with a red card following a headbutt that Francis Begbie would’ve been proud of. This is the psychological fluctuation of the human condition effecting top level footballers and nothing can prepare you for it.
Data can’t prepare you for how a player, or a collection of players reacts to the ever changing variables that go hand in hand with professional football. It can’t provide you the answer or the pattern for everything – it can often tell you a lot without actually telling you much at all. The North Sea wind swirling in your face at Arbroath, a knee high two footed challenge, some disgruntled punter at Villa Park launching a cabbage in your direction – how can data prognosticate your reaction to that?
The advent of data analytics has also been accompanied by an almost entirely new vocabulary for the sport. Think ‘low block’, ‘false nine’, ‘half space’. But here’s the secret; so much that’s new in football is actually old. Football tactics tend to be refined, recalibrated and quite often rediscovered.
Many of these convoluted, overthought concepts and approaches have been concocted by those who hang on the every word of Pep Guardiola. This is other managers involved in the game and many in the media. Guardiola is a coach of the highest standard – of that there can be no doubt. But this is also the most resourced manager of all time. It’s a lot easier to play the role of chin stroking professor reinventing the sport as you go along when your safety net is overflowing with oil money . For the entirety of his career, Guardiola has been turning up for sword fights armed with a bazooka.
Contrary to popular opinion, clarity of message is just as important in football leadership now as it ever has been.
Speaking as a guest writer for The Athletic at the World Cup in 2022, nomadic Spanish coach Juan Manuel Lillo offered a refreshing opposition to the recently updated football glossary: “It’s funny now how everyone talks about high block, low block… the only blocks that I know are apartment blocks. With a garage? Without a garage? This eagerness to find vocabulary that makes football more difficult to understand pisses me off. Whatever block Morocco had, it was a lot of players working in conjunction with each other, paying an incredible desire not to open up spaces.”
And in that very paragraph Lillo sums it all up; “This eagerness to find a vocabulary that makes football more difficult to understand pisses me off.” Now what was it Bill Shankly used to say? “Football’s a simple game complicated by idiots.”
Calum Maltman
