Читать книгу Calcio: A History of Italian Football - John Foot - Страница 76

My sports teacher at school was called Mr Campbell. He was a good teacher, enthusiastic and tireless (although I shall never forgive him for putting me in goal at the age of nine), but he was hardly at the cutting-edge of modern football tactics. The first thing he told us in training was that we should remember this phrase: ‘If in doubt, kick it out’. That was the motto our defence was to live by. Get rid of the ball. Kick it as high and far away from your goal as you can, and quickly. If it goes out, it doesn’t matter – all the better. Now when Italian teams have been accused, ever since the 1950s, of being defensive, this accusation has usually been a false one. Italian teams have not been defensive. They have, quite simply, been much better at defending than other European teams. Italian defenders can all trap the ball, dribble and pass. They anticipate where the ball is going to go and they look up before deciding where to put it. If they are in doubt, they do not ‘kick it out’. Kicking it out is their last option, not their first. Bad clearances are usually whistled by Italian crowds, as are skied passes – known as bell towers, or campanili. Italian defenders are also, usually, faster and more tactically aware than defenders in other countries. Most central defenders in the Italian lower divisions would not be out of place in Premiership teams. Added to these qualities has been the extremely high technical proficiency of Italian goalkeepers. In the 1990s Italian football produced a number of world-class keepers.¹ Any one of these players would have been a fixture for England in the same period.

Italian teams valued possession. They played out of defence, either with care and control (if they were winning) or with devastating speed and accuracy (if they needed a goal). In the highly technical world of Italian youth football, goalkeepers are often banned from kicking the ball out (by their own managers). They must throw or pass it to a nearby player and play out from the back.

Possession football is also not necessarily defensive. The great Brazilian teams have always kept the ball as long as possible. The fastest way towards goalscoring is rarely the fastest way of moving the ball towards the opposite goal – the long ball. Italian teams used the long ball – but usually with accurate passes out to the wings, and rarely through punts down the centre of the pitch. The flick-on was not seen as a key offensive weapon in Italy. Italians attacked less, but they attacked far more effectively – and in greater numbers. There is nothing more beautiful in football than a swift, clinical counter-attack. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal teams of the 1990s – widely praised for their attacking style – were counter-attackers who revelled in any space given to them by the opposition.

Defensive football is not just about technical ability or tactics, or even attitude to the game; it is also about the way football is understood. Ever since football began, followers of the game have sorted themselves into those who are interested in good play, and those who want to win at all costs. Journalist Gianni Brera often argued that the perfect football game would end 0–0. This way of reading the game was light years away from many of his colleagues, and anathema to those who watched or played in the English league. Nobody has ever argued in England that the perfect game would end 0–0. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that one of the key defensive tactics introduced in world football first took root in Italy in the 1940s and was later given an Italian name.