If you love soccer, or you love sports, or loves someone who loves either (or you just love shirtless pictures of Carlos Bocanegra, manmeat defender for Saint-Etienne and Team USA), do yourself a favor and go pick up Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. The book details how a young Hornby first discovered soccer growing up in England and examines how the game has affected every part of his life. It’s my all-time favorite book, and I have a habit of reading it every summer when the European soccer season is gearing up. I also have a habit of buying used copies and sending them to people, always with the same quote transcribed on the inside cover:
“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”
My soccer love affair also began in England, but in front of two teams much less heralded than Hornby’s beloved Arsenal. I had just arrived in England for a two-week “exchange program” (aka watching a lot of soccer, impressing British girls with my southern drawl, and mostly beer) when my host family decided we should take in a proper footy match. The hometown team, Scunthorpe United, were playing Hartlepool in the Second Division of English soccer. For those of you who may not know, Division Two is the league below Division One, which in turn is the league below the Championship, which is still yet below the Premier League where teams like Arsenal, Manchester United, and Chelsea play. Which is to say this was not soccer at its highest level by any stretch. The recorded attendance that day was 3,241: a number that would be embarrassing for any American professional team except maybe the Florida Marlins. But after 90 minutes of awful, barely-skilled long-ball soccer in a mostly empty stadium, I was hooked.
At the age of 5, my dad enrolled me in our local soccer league. It was a way for me to make friends and get out of the house, and I remember enjoying it. I played soccer for two years before my dad realized that I enjoyed running people over much more than scoring goals. I switched to ourfootball, which I played until college. I barely ever played soccer growing up, and I watched even less. I don’t recall seeing any of the World Cup games in 1994 even though some were played a few hours from where we lived. I vaguely remember watching the US lose three games in 1998 and thinking that if the US were good at soccer I’d watch it. I had always thought that soccer was a boring and sleepy game, something only young kids and old men could really appreciate. It wasn’t until that first match in Scunthorpe – still jet-lagged, sleepy, and slightly hungover – that I had really watched a match. And what I finally saw in person was something I’d never noticed on television.
I had always watched soccer the same way most people watch football or baseball – with two eyes firmly on the ball. I saw every step-over, every headed pass, and every shot as an isolated incident. What I didn’t see was 90% of the action taking place away from the ball. At any point, nineteen outfield (non-goalie) players are on the field without the ball, and all are in constant motion. The teams move fluidly, but never in unison, both with possession and without it. Keeping one eye on the ball and one eye on everything else was a learned skill for me, but it completely changed the way I watch and gave me a whole new appreciation for the game. Where I’d previously seen one guy with the ball and nine guys waiting for it, I now saw a team that moves almost as one organism. For the best teams in the world, the ball is almost secondary to the movement.
FC Barcelona is, without question, the best club team in the world. Their technical skill on the ball is incredible, but it’s their movement off the ball that makes them almost unbeatable. This goal against Malaga in 2010 is a fine example. Xavi Hernandez takes the ball and simply looks up. In the bottom right corner, Dani Alves bombs into space behind the Malaga defense. Just as Xavi releases the direct pass to him, Lionel Messi runs into the middle of the box. From there, Alves plays a simple pass to Messi, who almost passes the ball into the wide open net. The passes and shot leading to the goal are relatively straightforward, but the runs to set them up are spectacular. (1:21 of the video, it should queue there automatically):
As the Malaga defenders were looking at the ball, Dani Alves was simply looking for space. Once he found it, the ball arrived and it was a simple pass and tap-in for a late game-winning goal. There was no bicycle kick, no rocket shot, no otherworldly between the legs strike, but the timing and the movement of the players far off the ball make this one of my favorite goals.
Attackers and defenders are in constant movement, and the best players separate themselves by anticipating without the ball rather than executing with it. For all the technical skill exhibited by the likes of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, their movement before the ball arrives accounts for the far majority of their goals. If you’ve never found soccer particularly interesting, try taking your focus off of the ball and look around. It may unlock soccer the same way for you as it did for me.
