In 'Essentially Contested Concepts,' W. B. Gallie imagines a championship contest where "each team specializes in a distinctive method, strategy and style of play" (p. 170) and there is no agreed scoring system, with each team competing to be acknowledged the best players of the game.
Of course, football isn't quite like this. There is an agreed method for determining who wins each match (who scores most goals) and the league championship (most points from all the games). But still, I'm sometimes reminded of Gallie when people debate how the game should be played.
Today, I see a bit of a discussion about importance of set pieces. This seems to be a current talking point on the BBC at least. Pundit Chris Sutton describes Arsenal as potentially "the ugliest Premier League-winning team in history". And Arne Slot says he doesn't like the emphasis on set pieces. It seems some don't like Arsenal winning the way they do, even if they are top of the table.
However, I was particularly struck by contrasting comments from Chelsea manager, Liam Rosenior, who is quoted as saying:
"I think that is the beauty of football, you can do it in so many different ways. There's no right or wrong way to play football for me. I'm sure when we scored from a corner yesterday, our fans didn't care what the goal looked like. I'm sure Arsenal's fans didn't care what their goals looked like either. The game is about winning."
It looks like the debate will continue...
No comments:
Post a Comment