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Book: Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics by Jonathan Wilson
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Authors: Jonathan Wilson
Tags: History, Non-Fiction
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Adolfo Bioy Casares, who loved it, collaborated on the short story ‘ Esse est percipi ’, it was football they chose to demonstrate how perceptions of reality could be manipulated, as they imagine a fan’s disillusionment as he learns from a conversation with a club chairman that all football is staged, with results pre-ordained and players played by actors.
The style that had begun to emerge in the twenties developed into something even more spectacular, la nuestra - ‘ours’ or ‘our style of play’ - which was rooted in the criolla viveza - ‘native cunning’. The term itself seems to have been popularised in the aftermath of Argentina’s 3-1 victory over an England XI in 1953: ‘ la nuestra ’, ‘our style’, it had been seen, could beat that of the gringos (although technically that was only a representative game, not a full international). What it describes, though, is the whole early philosophy of Argentinian football, which was founded on the joy of attacking. Between September 1936 and April 1938, there was not a single goalless draw in the Argentinian championship. Yet goals were only part of the story. In a much-cited anecdote from his novel On Heroes and Tombs (annoyingly missing from the English translation), Ernesto Sábato discusses the spirit of la nuestra as the character Julien d’Arcangelo tells the hero, Martín, of an incident involving two Independiente inside-forwards of the twenties, Alberto Lalín and Manuel Seoane (nicknamed both la Chancha and el Negro), who were seen as embodying the two different schools of thought on how football should be played. ‘“To show you what those two modalities were,”’ D’Arcangelo says to Martín, “I am going to share with you an illustrative anecdote. One afternoon, at half-time, la Chancha was saying to Lalín: “Cross it to me, man, and I can go in and score.” The second half starts, Lalín crosses and sure enough el Negro gets to it, goes in and scores. Seoane returns with his arms outstretched, running towards Lalín, shouting: “See, Lalín, see?!” and Lalín answered, “Yes, but I’m not having fun.” There you have, if you like, the whole problem of Argentinian football.’
The tricks, entertainment, came to rival winning in importance. Half a century earlier, Britain had herself had the argument: to keep playing the ‘right way’, to keep dribbling (albeit in a far less flamboyant manner), or to adopt the style that won matches. In its twenty-year cocoon, in a culture obsessed by viveza and with few games against outsiders that might have brought defeat and a tactical rethink, the exuberant style flourished. It might not have been for the long-term good of Argentinian football, but it was fun while it lasted.
Chapter Three
The Third Back
∆∇ Part of football’s enduring fascination is that it is a holistic game, that the slightest change in one part of the pitch can have unexpected and radical effects elsewhere. When the home associations persuaded the international board in 1925 to liberalise the offside law, it was to answer the specific issue of a lack of goals. Notts County had begun the trend, but by then several clubs, most notably Newcastle United with their full-back pairing of Frank Hudspeth and Bill McCracken, had become so adept at setting an offside trap that games would be compressed into a narrow sliver either side of the halfway line. When Newcastle drew 0-0 at Bury in February 1925, it came as the final straw. It was Newcastle’s sixth goalless draw of a season that produced what at the time was an unthinkably low average of 2.58 goals per game. The football was boring, attendances were falling and the FA, for once, not merely recognised that something needed to be done, but set about doing it.
The offside law had remained unchanged since 1866, and demanded that, for a forward to be onside, three opposing players (usually a goalkeeper and two defenders) had to be between him and his opponent’s
The style that had begun to emerge in the twenties developed into something even more spectacular, la nuestra - ‘ours’ or ‘our style of play’ - which was rooted in the criolla viveza - ‘native cunning’. The term itself seems to have been popularised in the aftermath of Argentina’s 3-1 victory over an England XI in 1953: ‘ la nuestra ’, ‘our style’, it had been seen, could beat that of the gringos (although technically that was only a representative game, not a full international). What it describes, though, is the whole early philosophy of Argentinian football, which was founded on the joy of attacking. Between September 1936 and April 1938, there was not a single goalless draw in the Argentinian championship. Yet goals were only part of the story. In a much-cited anecdote from his novel On Heroes and Tombs (annoyingly missing from the English translation), Ernesto Sábato discusses the spirit of la nuestra as the character Julien d’Arcangelo tells the hero, Martín, of an incident involving two Independiente inside-forwards of the twenties, Alberto Lalín and Manuel Seoane (nicknamed both la Chancha and el Negro), who were seen as embodying the two different schools of thought on how football should be played. ‘“To show you what those two modalities were,”’ D’Arcangelo says to Martín, “I am going to share with you an illustrative anecdote. One afternoon, at half-time, la Chancha was saying to Lalín: “Cross it to me, man, and I can go in and score.” The second half starts, Lalín crosses and sure enough el Negro gets to it, goes in and scores. Seoane returns with his arms outstretched, running towards Lalín, shouting: “See, Lalín, see?!” and Lalín answered, “Yes, but I’m not having fun.” There you have, if you like, the whole problem of Argentinian football.’
The tricks, entertainment, came to rival winning in importance. Half a century earlier, Britain had herself had the argument: to keep playing the ‘right way’, to keep dribbling (albeit in a far less flamboyant manner), or to adopt the style that won matches. In its twenty-year cocoon, in a culture obsessed by viveza and with few games against outsiders that might have brought defeat and a tactical rethink, the exuberant style flourished. It might not have been for the long-term good of Argentinian football, but it was fun while it lasted.
Chapter Three
The Third Back
∆∇ Part of football’s enduring fascination is that it is a holistic game, that the slightest change in one part of the pitch can have unexpected and radical effects elsewhere. When the home associations persuaded the international board in 1925 to liberalise the offside law, it was to answer the specific issue of a lack of goals. Notts County had begun the trend, but by then several clubs, most notably Newcastle United with their full-back pairing of Frank Hudspeth and Bill McCracken, had become so adept at setting an offside trap that games would be compressed into a narrow sliver either side of the halfway line. When Newcastle drew 0-0 at Bury in February 1925, it came as the final straw. It was Newcastle’s sixth goalless draw of a season that produced what at the time was an unthinkably low average of 2.58 goals per game. The football was boring, attendances were falling and the FA, for once, not merely recognised that something needed to be done, but set about doing it.
The offside law had remained unchanged since 1866, and demanded that, for a forward to be onside, three opposing players (usually a goalkeeper and two defenders) had to be between him and his opponent’s
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