The Chelsea-Valencia game was fascinating on many levels, a team as English as they come, against a team as Spanish as they come, and a result as expected as they come especially since I'd already used "as they come" phrasing twice and am as slavish to the dictates of symmetry in composition as they come. More fascinating to see this as-comely Spanish team resort to a disproportional number of speculative lobs into the box from Tino and Feghouli (who made it all too easy to reference the Ghoul part of his name, by only ever showing up when the ball was dead) in response to the English blockade (no I don't mean they stopped import export relations, fiscal aid, and pegging the exchan....not that I would know) perfected over so many years of getting mauled by the Luftwaffe (inappropriate Nazi salute FTW). Fascinating (as opposed to wide eyed horrorating) because it suddenly threw up the possibility that I've been doggedly haranguing the crossing play of the English as the single plasmodium responsible for the rampant malaria plaguing world football today, unjustly, given it might just be the natural response to the initial stimulus of big burly Stokish defenders and MFs populating the box and refusing to budge.
Obviously there is a gulf in quality between the Banega-Canales partnership and the Tino-Ghoul that eventually played, enough to claim the former would have unlocked the phalanx without resorting to aerial combat, but Tino is no slouch and to see even him have to thump a few upstairs invited a thought about the evolution of crossing play in England. Whether it is how 4-3-3's evolved against fullbacks, or how 3-4-3's evolved around the classic Drogba heading it on to partner kind of nonsense forward strategy, we've been lucky enough to see indelible changes in Football strategy clearly evolve over the last 7-8 years (or as I'd maintain "devolve", I still cant believe they just extincted MF diamonds and trequartistas so coldly!!!). But unfortunately, like the big amorphous slime bug from "Evolution" proved the ultimate species of survival depends solely on simplicity of purpose and function, it might just be probable that the English Crossing Chicken and Egg with English defensive manoeuvres become irrelevant with eventual reality of twin efficacy of said duo. Especially since not every team can have a Banega to overcome padlocks without hammers rather than dainty hairpins and hence would rather buy a hammer everyone can use. Usefulness aside (on this blog?? what am i saying!!!), I'm quite curious to see the origins of crossing play, they don't seem to have played this way 20-30 years back, my bet is on the year the goals/game ratio suddenly dwindled to its nadir betraying a shift to some serious Spartan defending.
Obviously there is a gulf in quality between the Banega-Canales partnership and the Tino-Ghoul that eventually played, enough to claim the former would have unlocked the phalanx without resorting to aerial combat, but Tino is no slouch and to see even him have to thump a few upstairs invited a thought about the evolution of crossing play in England. Whether it is how 4-3-3's evolved against fullbacks, or how 3-4-3's evolved around the classic Drogba heading it on to partner kind of nonsense forward strategy, we've been lucky enough to see indelible changes in Football strategy clearly evolve over the last 7-8 years (or as I'd maintain "devolve", I still cant believe they just extincted MF diamonds and trequartistas so coldly!!!). But unfortunately, like the big amorphous slime bug from "Evolution" proved the ultimate species of survival depends solely on simplicity of purpose and function, it might just be probable that the English Crossing Chicken and Egg with English defensive manoeuvres become irrelevant with eventual reality of twin efficacy of said duo. Especially since not every team can have a Banega to overcome padlocks without hammers rather than dainty hairpins and hence would rather buy a hammer everyone can use. Usefulness aside (on this blog?? what am i saying!!!), I'm quite curious to see the origins of crossing play, they don't seem to have played this way 20-30 years back, my bet is on the year the goals/game ratio suddenly dwindled to its nadir betraying a shift to some serious Spartan defending.
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