WHEN a football match begins on TV my eyes glaze over. You try and fight it. You even put your mobile phone in a different room to concentrate on tactical formations and how the game might unfold.
But the mind wanders soon after kick-off. It wanders not because you no longer love the Beautiful Game – it wanders because you think of what has happened to it.
There’s a reason why Match of the Day has stood the test of time and still occupies a special place in the collective imagination of football supporters, mainly because the value in watching match highlights of the Premier League has never been more attractive.
It cuts out endless hours of nothingness and teams’ flawed attempts to play out from the back.
Your mind wanders because every game looks and feels the same: patterns of play, central defenders standing on top of their goalkeeper for nervy restarts, the repeated runs and familiar movements of the full-backs, and midfielders and strikers alike.
Change the colour of the jerseys and it’s like watching a re-run. It’s what some observers call the ‘Pepification’ of the modern game.
“Magnolia football” was how Sunday Times Jonathan Northcroft aptly referred to it in a brilliantly constructed piece on the standardisation of the game.
Manchester City are one of the most successful teams in the modern game but try wading through one of their games. Every move must have Pep Guardiola’s consent.
The team must play out from the back. The team must create overloads on either flank, no matter how long it takes.
Pass, pass, pass – back and forward but mostly side-wards.
For long enough, it has been a coaching masterclass in narcissism – until central striker Erling Haaland was signed and rendered a lot of Man City’s laborious passing moves redundant.
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool side couldn’t have been any more different. They played fast, direct and effective football. If they could get the ball into their strikers in two passes, back to front, they would do it.
Klopp’s Liverpool were the most exciting and entertaining team in the English game for the last decade; Man City, the most successful.
And with successful teams, people want to copy them. Coaches at all levels want to copy Pep.
I’m involved in youth football, and you often see young players trying to play out from the back.
At some grassroots levels, the first pass from the goalkeeper is free. Only then can the opposition engage and press the ball. At least in adult football players have the space and luxury of the 18-yard box where the first pass by the defending team is effectively free.
Locally, underage teams aren’t even afforded the same luxury of the space of an 18-yard box and are expected to accept a short pass, get their feet sorted out, look up and pass to a team-mate who will more than likely be under pressure too.
And so, what manifests is a bunch of kids hemmed in their own half of the field because the coaches believe they must play the ‘right way’ - even though they haven’t remotely developed the skill set to play that way.
This is the trickle-down effect of the ‘Pepification’ of football. There are endless examples of top teams trying to play out from the back.
The keeper gives a five-yard pass to the central defender, it is shifted back and forth and when they can’t see any way out of beating the high press, they launch the ball out of play or, worse, they simply cough up possession.
There’s a madness to asking players to play in a way that they are not capable of playing – but these are the trendy coaching norms of the day.
What you also find in the coaching fraternity is intense peer pressure.
If you don’t play out from the back and try and beat the high press, you’re out of touch.
So, rather than try a different way of playing that actually suits the skill sets of players, they persist with doing what everyone else is doing - and not with any great success.
But at least you’re deemed a modern coach. In truth, you’re a dead fish going with the flow, accepting the flawed, conventional wisdom of the day.
So, everything continues to look and feel the same
In Northcroft’s piece, there were some fascinating insights of mass trends occurring in the game.
Shooting from distance on average has steadily declined from 17.9 metres in 2013/14 to 15.9 metres. The game is more data driven than ever as analysts talk about being in the “golden zone” to score.
While teams strive for efficiency in everything they do, maverick footballers are a dying breed. Teams are more risk-averse and systems find it difficult to incorporate the spontaneous footballer who interprets the game differently.
The street footballer is being beaten out of the system. World Cups and European Championships used to leave an indelible mark on football fans but over the last decade memories become blurred, big games instantly forgotten and individual performances few and far between.
And yet, we still remember greats of earlier eras and how there were more leaders because they weren’t strait-jacketed by coaches and systems and had licence to problem-solve.
So many modern-day players are too conditioned, are slaves to systems. Leadership simply cannot flourish.
We’re enduring a bleak period of the cult of the manager, where it must be about them and their systems of play rather than the players who could be something else if they were trusted.
Although Fabio Capello didn’t cover himself in glory during his managerial spell with England, it’s difficult to refute his analysis on, say, Guardiola for example.
“Guardiola is a great coach,” the Italian said, “but... at times he has even lost trophies because he wanted to prove that he as the one winning and not the players, so he dropped key figures in big games... in an attempt to take the spotlight and the credit away from this squad.”
The ‘Pepification’ of football is a scourge on the game at all levels.
How can there be lateral thinking in a sport where everyone thinks the same?