Ban the brutal but let’s teach players how to tackle hard & fair
JASON PUNCHEON’S tackle on Kevin De Bruyne was a poor one.
And I don’t want to see the Belgian or any other player injured by a bad challenge.
But if we want to help players avoid being crocked by opponents then we need to relax the rules on tackling, rather than making them more stringent, and bring
back some physicality to the game. Great tackling is an art and seeing one timed properly is every bit as enjoyable as seeing a superb piece of skill from Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. The trouble is that the rule changes brought in by FIFA to encourage more attacking football and stamp out the old notion that a forward gets a whack from a defender after 30 seconds to let him know he is there, have come at a cost.
And the cost is that no one really knows how to tackle any more because it is not taught properly at any level.
It has softened our game and eroded the physicality of it and that leads to more problems for players such as De Bruyne.
These days, people automatically equate physicality with hurt and pain, but I used to get tackled every game and it isn’t the case.
I’d be running with the ball and all of a sudden Rio Ferdinand (below), Sol Campbell, Steve Bruce or Gary Pallister would stick out a leg and time a tackle perfectly.
I’d go over them and be on my knees, but I wouldn’t be feeling pain or anger.
I’d be thinking, ‘Blimey, he has done well there. A, to catch me in full flight. And, B, because he’s come away with the ball as well’.
I don’t see much of that any more because all the rule changes have done is translate FIFA from a PlayStation on to pitches for real.
And that outlawing of tackling has created football’s perfect storm – that every team has to play the same way. It means the teams who are able to buy the best technical players are wiping the floor with teams who aren’t. So we don’t really get situations now where a great technical team can be ironed out by a very physical team. Did I particularly like watching Wimbledon play back in the 80s? Not really. But I was more likely to switch on my television and watch a battle of styles with say the Liverpool of John Barnes, John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley, who I loved, than I am now to watch a team at the top of the Premier League.
No one can lay a glove on them because their managers moan their players aren’t protected, playing against a team who are two-thirds down the division and trying to play the same way.
Football should always be a contrast of styles, mentality and physicality and the great teams are those who can do all three.
Physicality served us well for 100-odd years – let’s bring some back and teach it properly because our game would be more competitive and our players better protected too.