Why this must be the dream UCL final
By Les Murray | 13 May 2009 | 12:02
Link And, understandably, the deluge will continue.
Fortune this year has brought us rare and treasured ingredients, and therefore prospects, for a fixture we look upon annually as the supposed measure of the game’s modern quality. The UCL’s ultimate and deciding game, given that the tournament engages the world’s richest teams and its best players, surely has to be nothing less than that.
This time it’s between Manchester United and Barcelona, a fixture whose setting is equally apt, la citta eterna, Rome.
One team is, by deed and title, the best in the world. The other, by popular conclusion, is the world’s most watchable.
The match will parade, on opposite sides, the world’s two most admired players, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, both iconic figures of extraordinary creative gifts, which can turn a game and be the difference between winning and not winning such a sought-after trophy.
Both teams, by their own traditions and ideologies, are respected and are expected to play in a way that will please the tumult of billions who live in hope that football, at this apex, will deliver what it is meant to.
But, of course, not all agree with this notion, the notion that two teams who subscribe to a passing game, who believe in technical and cerebral creativity as a route to victory, and who cling to these principles as matters of club identity, are the most appropriate to contest a Champions League final.
For my last column, while exploring the virtues of the FFA’s new national curriculum, we used the heading: ‘And one day we, too, can play like Barcelona,’ arguing that, just maybe, the revolutionary curriculum will take Australia finally to a level of technical competitiveness we have always sought.
As I read the comments readers made in response to the article, one took my breath away: ‘And one day we, too, can play like Barcelona? What? Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass and never shoot? I hope not. Give me the blood, guts and passion of the EPL any day.’
As bizarre as this observation was, given that Barca had scored an astonishing and unrivaled volume of goals this season (including six against Real Madrid a few days before this comment was posted), the reader had a right to make it.
He was only expressing his personal taste, articulating a certain view about what constitutes entertainment in football. He prefers the bruising, physical and incongruous clatter, the fire and brimstone of the EPL, to the way Barcelona pin-ball their way to their victories.
Fine. That is his view. Beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder, even in football. I have, I guess, no more right to declare that Barcelona is the most entertaining football team on the planet at this time than someone else has of saying Stoke City is.
But still there needs to be a reality check.
Those of us whose business involves the promotion of football – and I have been part of that business for three decades – need to draw on and highlight the unique qualities football has which set it apart from other sports, especially in this country, the other so-called football ‘codes’ with which football competes.
There needs to be a historical understanding of why football conquered most of the world in the first place and, for example, rugby did not.
Those differences are many. But first among them is that football is a game in which the ball is manipulated by the feet and which, by extension, means that in football the skill needed to manipulate that ball is paramount.
Indeed that is the very essence of the game.
A major reason why football conquered across the world over a century ago, especially the working classes, is that it’s uniquely accessible to all: poor, rich, skinny, fat, short, tall, man, woman.
This ecumenical virtue nominates pure ability, individual and collective, as the governing factor that determines victory or defeat in a game. Size, physical power, muscle and aggression can play a part in deciding a football game’s outcome. But on their own their role is minor.
Those virtues are determining factors in rugby, AFL and NFL but not in football. In rugby you cannot survive if you are skinny. In AFL you are a loser if you are short and in gridiron you have to be man mountain before you can make a buck.
But this is not the case in football.
What is the virtue that links Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Tevez, Kaká, Torres and Fabregas, whose physical attributes are utterly disparate? It is their skill and creative ability, and ultimately their capacity to manipulate the sphere, of course.
It is this that sets football apart. If we were to admire footballers and football teams only or primarily for their power, physique and capacity to mix it, we may as well be talking about rugby. And then, you may well ask, why are we being football fans at all?
In the Australian context, and in the context of the mission to entice our countrymen to appreciate and value the distinctive beauties of the beautiful game, this Champions League final is magnificently opportune.
If the pairing’s virtues live up to their prescriptions, if the ingredients are indeed right, if the coaches don’t corrupt the glorious opportunity with regressive tactics, this fixture will be a monument to the efforts of those who have long talked in hope of vindication that football is beautiful.
It is important, very important, that this final lives up to its billing.
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