Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Tackling is NOT violence. It’s an art & we’ve got to preserve it
SAVE the tackle – it has been part of the game since the dawn of football, but now it’s in danger of extinction.
I despair for the art when Eric Dier and Harry Maguire are booked for robust but perfectly-timed and fair challenges in Spain on Monday night.
We need to have an urgent debate about whether we want football to be a contact sport, with great tackles as part of the spectacle, or a diluted contest where honest, combative players are outlawed.
Dier and Maguire were penalised for two of the best tackles you will ever see.
We should celebrate their commitment and endeavour, not pull them up for immaculate execution of what seems to be a dying art.
Tackling is one of the most instinctive things in sport.
But unless you have been there, it’s not easy to lay down the law.
Referees would benefit from practical experience, or going on a course, to learn more about it.
If I’d tried to play the game applying the laws by today’s values, I probably wouldn’t have been a footballer.
To be clear, I am not trying to champion a charter for cloggers here. I do not want flair and skill to be suppressed by roughshod challenges.
But I am fed up with hearing righteous pundits and experts using super slo-mo replays to deliver lectures about intent or the dangers of the “trailing leg” in 50-50 challenges.
Please tell me: What on earth is a player supposed to do with his trailing leg when he makes a tackle? Where is he supposed to put it?
Momentum dictates that, at some point, it will probably make contact with the opponent.
And as for intent: Of the thousands of players who have turned out in every division of English football over the years, how many have ever said they went into a tackle intending to hurt an opponent?
A fair tackle can get 50,000 people out of their seats, or even change the course of a match. As a player, when you commit to a fullblooded 50-50 challenge, your heart is racing, your eyes light up and it gets the juices flowing like nothing else.
One of England World Cupwinning captain Bobby Moore’s most celebrated performances was against Brazil in 1970, where his sliding tackle on Pele was held up as perfect example of the art. However, Italy legend Paolo Maldini (left) said: “If I have to make a tackle, I’ve already made a mistake.”
And Rio Ferdinand has always advocated staying on your feet – because once you have gone to ground, you have no hope of recovery.
Much as I hate to argue with two of Europe’s all-time great defenders, I have to disagree. The sliding tackle is an art. They were exceptional players – most footballers are mere mortals by comparison.
Unlike shooting, defending set-pieces and tactical organisation, tackling is one aspect of football that isn’t coached. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola famously admitted he doesn’t spend any time teaching his players how to tackle.
You learn how to do it down the local park with your mates, and you develop an instinct for what is controlled aggression or what is beyond acceptable limits. I just hope challenges like Dier’s and Maguire’s in Seville are not going to be punished every week in the Premier League, Championship and lower down the scale.
If that happens, the game has gone.
Tackling is not violence – it’s an art, and we should preserve it – or football will just become a non-contact sport barely recognisable from the game I set out in 25 years ago.
Catch the big debate today on BT Sport 1’s Saturday Morning Savage (#Saturdaysav) from 11.30am.