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Are the preachers who tell us there’s only one way to play football, that it should be with the ball, possession based and all that, revelling in Leicester’s fairytale Premier League success?
It is one of the greatest sports stories of all time, of course.
But for these people who speak from above, telling us that sacrificing ‘beautiful football’ (whatever that is) in the pursuit of winning is crime, to also be lapping up Leicester’s story is completely hypocritical.
The same naysayers who call Jose Mourinho’s relentless pursuit of winning ‘boring’ and ‘dull’ while still praising Arsene Wenger and his long-running spell of mediocrity at Arsenal simply because it looks nice, are now jumping on Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester bandwagon.
Well, I’ve got news for you. It’s about winning, and nobody in Leicester, or in any team that wins anything, cares how it looks.
In fact, Ranieri made winning ugly, a certain type of thrilling.
What’s not exciting about two banks of four defending the penalty area, only to see Danny Drinkwater nick possession and rake a 60-yard pass into the path of Jamie Vardy?
Or seeing the ball go from Kasper Schmeichel’s hands to the back of the net via Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kante and Vardy, in a matter of seconds?
The same goes for Atletico Madrid, fresh from vanquishing the grand-daddy of possession-based football, Bayern Munich under Pep Guardiola.
How did Diego Simeone do it? Directly, that’s how.
Two banks of four in front of the penalty area, a few quick passes into the born-again Fernando Torres, who sends the wonderfully clinical Antoine Griezmann on his way.
Where have we seen this before?
At Leicester. Or maybe they saw it at Atletico. Who cares – it works, it wins games and it proves there is more than one way to skin a cat.
And isn’t that really the joy of football?
Mourinho once said that one day, there may be a game without goals, where the team that has the most possession wins the game.
But until then, he will continue doing what he does best, and that’s winning games and trophies.
Thankfully the less polemic figure of Ranieri has brought it to our attention that sure, you can win ‘ugly’, and we can all go and enjoy it, unashamedly, until the cows come home.
Dilly ding, dilly dong!
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