After hearing Lionel Messi recently take a swipe at teams who play ‘football for statistics’ (instead of for the entertainment of fans), my high school PE teacher came to mind. You see my PE teacher would always have us do PE in the playground come rain, shine, and on a few occassions even thunder! The point I’m getting at here is that while she had the luxury of being able to wear a coat, the rest of us weren’t allowed and she would never appreciate that we were freezing our arses off!
‘Ms Brown it’s freezing! Can’t we just do PE inside the hall?’ We would all cry, as we shivered while running on the spot in a often fruitless attempt to keep warm. ‘It’s not that cold’ she would always reply smugly, wearing a Puffa Jacket to accompany whatever warm beverage she had chosen to tease us with by consuming it front of us as we turned into glaciers.
Of course as teenagers, we wouldn’t take the hypocrisy from our teacher and demanded that if we were to do our lessons in sub-zero conditions, the least she could do is wear the same kit as us (usually shorts and a polo shirt). Inevitably, being a teacher, she made up a patronising excuse to make it seem like she was on our side ‘The cold will help you push yourselves to become better athletes’ she would always say. Was she right? Perhaps. But what did we care? We froze our arses for two hours a week and we weren’t going to take any more of it, vowing to bypass the school rule of wearing shorts for PE and instead wearing tracksuits and hoodies. For some reason, this wasn’t allowed either and we all landed ourselves in detention.
Anecdotes aside, the reason for that flashback was because, like Ms Brown in her warm coat, Messi is only complaining about teams like Stoke and, in his own league, Osasuna, because he has never had to experience being inferior. He’s been at Barca for his entire career and thus he has never been in a situation where he is facing a team significantly better than his own that Barca would have to resort to more industrial means to achieve victory.
Everybody wants to see beautiful football, Lionel, but you have to play within your means and to your strengths if you want to get anywhere; Last season, Stoke were playing Europa League football, having got to the FA Cup final the season before as well as finishing in a respectable midtable position in the league. As is well documented, they achieved this feat using a combination of long ball tactics, sheer brute force and more controversially, the hulk-like throwing power of Rory Delap.
For a club like Stoke, who only joined the top tier of English football in 2008, that was an outstanding achievement beyond their wildest dreams. Could they have reached the same level by playing Barca-esque tika-taka? Probably not. Do the Stoke fans care that their team play the way they do? NOT A CHANCE!
In a way I see where Messi is coming from, fewer teams like Stoke would mean less of the tackles that put Aaron Ramsey out of action for a year and more edge-of-your-seat football. Unfortunately football is a world where £40m isn’t immediately available to buy David Villa, Cesc Fábregas and Alexis Sánchez every season and not every academy spawns players like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi. Sometimes it’s best to play to your strengths. After all, Stoke have become a national point of reference. What’s that saying again? ‘He’s good, but could they do it on a cold Wednesday night at Stoke?’
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