Scissors Kick

“No side, perhaps, is ever so much itself as when it is going out of the World Cup. When teams – or at least those with aspirations to the title – fail, they tend to fail in their own way, and become too much of themselves: self-parody is a perennial danger. And so Spain and Germany went out of the World Cup after anaemic performances in which they seemed to fetishise possession rather than it being a means to an end. That doesn’t mean juego de posicion football is over, as some of the more excitable voices on social media have claimed; it just means that two teams who played football infected by Pep Guardiola had bad tournaments. Sides who play post-Cruyffian football won the league in Spain, England and Germany, while Napoli came second in Serie A.” Guardian – Jonathan Wilson

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2018 at 6:47 pm and is filed under England, Football Manager, Germany, Holland, Jonathan Wilson, Spain, World Cup 2018. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.