ESPN’s Phil Ball is one of the less-heralded football writers out there, and he ranks among the very best. His column today on the Spanish press’ attempt to stoke flames of unrest at Barcelona in light of footage of an irate Messi calling for a pass that never was from team-mate David Villa is a delight. On Messi, he writes:
Messi does appear to be a fairly calm chap most of the time, and it might be news if he gets cross, but when I played football, I loved it when there was a guy in the team who would shout and complain, just so long as he was fair, and just as long as he was good enough himself. It kept you on your toes. The best teams have always had a shouty guy, one to whom the rest deferred. Football is a canine world – it’s very hierarchical. There’s a certain way of behaving in a dressing-room, a certain way of talking, depending on where you are in the pecking order. If you ignore this, as some over-confident young players sometimes do, they are soon put in their place.
Ball argues this is a particularly Spanish trait, and it reminded me of an old interview with Alfredo di Stefano recounting Real Madrid’s strategy during its European Cup heyday in the late 1950s. This was a team marked more by players than coaches or managers, and the reason in part had to do with how the players regularly berated each other during matches, forcefully pointing to positions not covered and screaming over missed opportunities.
The trick di Stefano said was that off the pitch, everyone was great friends. They knew the difference between game state and real life. It was one of the reasons, as star forward Francisco Gento once remarked, that Madrid was able to break down any and all tactical systems in Europe. Far from a sign of discord, in the right context, players yelling at one another is a sign of health.
