Football Evolving

Football has changed throughout the years. It started as a hobby and became a profession. It evolved to become a means of expression for a group of people. It grew larger to become an expression of a whole country. Today, football is as commercialized as no other sport globally. Typical example of that is the recent transfer of David Beckham to L.A. Galaxy. In spite of the relatively low popularity of the sport in the States, Europe is on a constant update of the Englishman's status. Is he injured? Did he score? How was his training?

Europe is the land of promise for football today. The Champions League, the Premiership, La Liga - they're all markets with a lot of profit margin, something that has led a lot of businesses to hugely invest in European markets. This has both helped football evolve and not. It has helped it evolve by allowing clubs invest in their youth academies, build beautiful stadiums and improve hugely the experience of watching a football match. However, due to the amount of money at stake, there are a lot of cases where games become boring. Teams tend to follow more the Italian model of football: Score a goal and then just defend. Many people have condemned this, but my opinion is that there's nothing you can do, so just enjoy what you get.


But what happens when this attitude moves to areas and competitions that have always been about performance rather than result?

I recently watched the Copa America. A competition where the latin style of play is adopted by all participating teams resulting in beautiful spectacle. To be honest I was surprised by the teams' open style of playing and every game I was was exciting. All but the final.

Being a game between Brazil and Argentina, two nations whose rivalry has lived throughout the years, I expected to see something at least equivalent to (if not even better than) the games I had watched so far. I was wrong.

Brazil was missing their two great stars (Ronaldinho and Kaka') so some young players were brought in the pitch. Simply thinking, youngsters playing in a Copa America final would normally help the spectacle since they all would want to prove themselves in the typical Brazilian type of playing. Again I was wrong.

Brazil came in the pitch in a fully-defensive formation. They were marking as good as Italians and just relied on counter attacks to score. The game ended 3-0 for Brazil and all 3 goals came from counter attacks. Needless to say, only Argentina was trying to play creatively, but they were being blocked by the double layer of Brazilian defense. If that was a European Cup final, I would not complain. That's a style that Europeans tend to play. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. However, it was Brazil who was playing. A country notorious about its creative style and exciting dribbling.

Now, two days later, I watched an under-19 game between Greece and Spain. The group standings were such that if they drew, both teams progressed to the next round regardless of what happened in the other game of the group. In spite of their young age, the game's second half must have been less exciting than an accountant's daily schedule. Needless to say, the game ended 0-0.

If football has come to a point where the result is everything and everything else is sacrificed in favor of the final result, even in competitions of lower standards, then we are walking down a strange road. I do not know whether this will be very good for both the winning teams or the sport itself. Unless something is done, the next evolution of football will not be very popular...