THE DIFFERENT ROADS TO FANTASY: Grealish, Guardiola and Individualism in Football
Football is meant to transport fans from reality into fantasy, but what is that fantasy? How should it manifest itself? orangesaint. dives into the eternal battle between individual genius and collective spectacle.
In the introduction to his 2003 photo-memoir, Once Upon a Time, Slim Aarons writes of his career and his art as someone perched on an embankment halfway between truth and wit: “I have concentrated on photographing attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places.” He recognised that the reality of the chosen few he captured was the fantasy of the multitude, for is this not what fantasy will always be? Tanned bodies. Pools. The whiff of cigarettes and hedonism. The alluring pleasure of danger. Attractive people. Attractive things. Attractive places.
Football is fantastical too. The foundations of the game lie in the drunken cheeriness of the working class, congregating for ninety minutes to forget work and class. A Cruyff turn; a bicycle kick; a gladiatorial clearance -- these are the acts of a chosen few that yank the multitude into fantasy.
Euro 2020, however, has accentuated the great contradiction in footballing fantasy. It is already a spectacular event, no doubt; Bocelli’s rendition of Nessun Dorma reminded us that, intrinsically, everything that arouses a riotous rampage of emotion is art. As is song, so is football. It is a massive relief also that Christian Eriksen is recovering well but the camera coverage consumerism surrounding the event showed the ugly side of spectacle too. Football should drag us into a fantasy that is better than reality, not terrifyingly worse. Thankfully, the alacrity of thought and courage on the pitch in the immediate aftermath raced to the rescue.
But the contradiction pervading football, and perhaps inherent to it because of its fantastical origins, is what fantasy means to football. How should fantasy manifest itself on the pitch? Should a player bring bums to seats and make them soar in delight, like an ethereal conductor guiding his orchestra? Or should applause admire a team in tandem?
Jack Grealish is a fantasy. He just plays wonderfully, doesn’t he? As if performing a ballet on grass, Grealish twirls where others twist, he triumphs where others turn. He is as stable as a resplendent oak tied forever to the grass that birthed him but as nimble as the capricious butterfly, forever evading the hungry net. His ability to thread assists through achingly small holes and draw fouls within them are priceless. His ability to lift the fraternity that supports him, team and fan, like a 21st century Atlas with a sharpish Brummie accent, is precious. That he does so in those shin pads just adds to the rakish fantasy. Grealish is Gazza in sweatpants -- he is the danseur seducing the watcher, the violinist the listener.
This is all Pep Guardiola’s fault, of course. His Barcelona were the most golden of dusts -- a diminutive collective that caressed and seduced the ball into snaking past, between and around opposition legs, almost as if the goal was the hearth and the ball a familial fire. But the big failing of tiki-taka was and is the lack of the individual. Lionel Messi is otherworldly but the Argentine’s fantastical brushstrokes will always garner the most successful marriage with Barcelona’s uniquely crafted canvas. Similarly, for all their ethereal elegance, the singular quality of Xavi and Iniesta was their metronomic control over the ball. The same could be said, now, of the fantastic Phil Foden, who for all his individual brilliance is clearly a product of the Manchester City of Guardiola’s pristine pass-and-move philosophy. Less individual carrying the team and more team birthing the individual.
It is not the tactical outlook but rather the psychological one we must critique. Guardiola, like Southgate, refuses to allow the system to bend to the tragedies and talents of the fantasy of the singular. Eto’o, Ibrahimovic and Aguero all stand testament to differing spectacle being shunned by the spectacle of the collective.
Both Grealish and Guardiola are rightful claimants to the fantastical of football, proponents of the theory that football is a balletic battle to be fought and won in fantastical style. What that is is open to rigid subscription to differing interpretations. True fantasy comes when the fantastical make fantasy their reality, and when the reality of the multitude becomes a silenced spoilsport in the face of a cacophony of gasped breaths and hushed awe.
It is up to the spectator to choose the spectacle, and Southgate has chosen the team’s fantasy over the individual’s. But we give the last word to Menotti:
“I maintain that a team is above all an idea, and more than an idea it is a commitment, and more than a commitment it is the clear convictions that a coach must transmit to his players to defend that idea. So my concern is that we coaches don’t arrogate to ourselves the right to remove from the spectacle the synonym of festival, in favour of a philosophical reading that cannot be sustained, which is to avoid taking risks. And in football there are risks because the only way you can avoid taking risks in any game is by not playing.”
Attractive people. Attractive things. Attractive places. Such is life.