Luis Enrique's band of attacking stars are showing that excitement comes with letting fleet-footed forwards actually take on defenders
English football can't always be fun to watch. Not every match has to be a 'great advert for the Premier League'. Some Sundays just aren't that 'Super' – and that's okay. However, there was something about last week's dreadfully dull Manchester derby that really upset Gary Neville – and it wasn't just the fact that his former club had failed to get one over on their city rivals.
His disappointment ran much deeper than a vested interest in silencing noisy neighbours. As far as Neville was concerned, the dour nature of the draw at Old Trafford was indicative of a more general malaise afflicting the world's most popular championship.
"It really was quite depressing for me because I think we're seeing a lot of these types of games," the former right-back said after making his way from the gantry to the studio. "The Premier League is about thrill, it's about excitement, it's about risk – but there was nothing like that today. It was really disappointing. I apologise even for my commentary; I think it let it get to me. I was boring on there too…
"But this robotic nature of not leaving our positions, of basically being micro-managed to within an inch of our lives, of not having any freedom to take any risks to try to win a football match… It's becoming an illness in the game, it's becoming a disease in the game."
Perhaps Paris Saint-Germain, though, have already discovered the antidote…
AFP'Poor imitations' of Pep
The supposed weakness of this year's Premier League has become a major talking point in recent weeks and months, although the ennui has been primarily caused by a title race and relegation battle both utterly devoid of drama.
In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that the Premier League is actually more competitive than it has been for some time because of the very obvious rise in quality we're seeing among the mid-table teams, which has resulted in the top clubs dropping points on a far more regular basis. The 'Big Six' is certainly no more, with Manchester United and Tottenham both being regularly embarrassed by the likes of Brighton, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Fulham.
What Neville is getting at, then, is not a lack of quality or positive narratives at the top tier of English football (such as Nottingham Forest occupying third spot or Newcastle ending their domestic trophy drought), it's a lack of tactical variety and adventure, a homogenisation of play that he suspects is the unintentional consequence of Pep Guardiola's success with a style of football most commonly referred to as 'tiki-taka'.
"We're seeing poor imitations of that across the board now," Neville claimed – and he's by no means the first to do so.
AdvertisementAFPInter restoring Italy's identity
The idea that 'Guardiolismo', as Giorgio Chiellini christened it, has ruined football is nothing new. It's been a topic of great debate in Italy for some years now, with Fabio Capello a firm believer that the country's core values have been lost or neglected in a desperate rush to embrace the Catalan coach's footballing philosophy. However, not everyone jumped on the Guardiola bandwagon, as so thrillingly underlined by Inter's Champions League win over Bayern Munich last Tuesday.
Simone Inzaghi's side carried out something akin to the ultimate Italian job at the Allianz Arena, evoking memories of the glory days of catenaccio with a wonderfully disciplined defensive display punctuated by top-quality counter-attacks, one of which resulted in a late winner from Davide Frattesi. As a rightly ecstatic Inzaghi said afterwards, Inter won because they kept faith with "our football and our principles, which we've been relying on for almost four years now."
It would be wrong, though, to portray Inter as a defensive team; they're the best side in Serie A, meaning they're effectively forced to play on the front foot against deep-lying opponents almost every single weekend. The Nerazzurri are also one of the few teams in Europe to play with two proper strikers, while they have some serious ballers in midfield and their first-choice wing-backs, Federico Dimarco and Denzel Dumfries, are fantastic in full flight.
However, while width out wide is a key part of Inter's offensive strategy, they don't carry anything like the attacking threat posed by PSG's wonderful array of wingers, who are presently providing a timely and most welcome reminder of the value of dribbling.
AFP'Never see a player like Ronaldinho again'
There is no longer any room in the modern game for the old-school No.10, magical mavericks in the mould of Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio, Zinedine Zidane and Dennis Bergkamp who were effectively allowed to do as they pleased. With the possible exception of Lionel Messi, these free spirits have been shackled within a highly automatised modern game, burdened by the weight of pressing responsibilities.
As Patrice Evra told Rio Ferdinand's podcast, "Everyone wants to play amazingly, but this tiki-taka, only Guardiola can do it. Why does everyone copy him? We have no creativity. We have no geniuses anymore. We've got robots.
"You will never see a player like Ronaldinho again because when he's young, do you know what the coach is going to tell him? 'If you don't pass the ball, I'm going to put you on the bench.' But all football comes from the streets." Nowadays, though, it often looks like it's been formulated in a lab, so sterile has it become.
AFPElimination of unpredictability
For a long time, there was a very real fear that wingers might go the same way as the traditional trequartista, or at least be transformed into something very different from what was originally intended. As football's finest philosopher Jorge Valdano pointed out, these days academies don't merely refine rough diamonds, they wear them down into just another brick in one big defensive wall, resulting in an "overuse of one- and two-touch passing" while eliminating "the feints, dribbling, and those moments of unpredictability that made football so exciting."
Of course, Guardiola should not be held responsible for killing the game – at its best, his style of play was mesmerising, and it's not his fault that it spawned so many copycats. It was Pep, lest anyone forget, who decided to construct an entire attack around Messi, the most devastatingly effective dribbler the game has ever seen.
However, as we've seen with his treatment of Jack Grealish at the Etihad, Guardiola does not afford wingers the freedom to go and attack defenders whenever they want. Luckily, Luis Enrique is different.