Tactical gurus must keep it simple
Fanother which believes it is pivotal to understanding the sport properly. It is oversimplifying the matter to cite age as the sole criterion for the split in opinions, but it is an obvious starting point. The older generation – those who, thankfully, still buy newspapers, tune into radio and TV sports programmes, and grew up in the preinternet era – still prefer debate based on results and overall performances, while picking over quotes from the leading figures in the game.
It is analysis based on naked-eye intuition. If a player is having a bad game, then the argument is you don’t always need reams of statistics to prove as much. It is an old-school attitude, but one that prevails because it is what comes naturally to many people.
Few folk are in the pub on a Friday night discussing how many kilometres Scott Brown ran in a game, or Rangers’ possession percentage. To the majority, football is a pastime that ought to be enjoyed on a purely visceral, raw level.
Soccer, as a fluid game, hasn’t always loaned itself to the sort of statistical analysis prevalent in set-play US sports such as baseball and gridiron, but that is not to say it can’t yet move more towards that. If the average man on the American street can become familiar with numerical terms such as a player’s on-base percentage or rushing average, then perhaps it will become similarly commonplace among a younger generation of football fans.
Those who have already immersed themselves in that way of thinking metric devotees there would appear to be a hipster-style deliberate overcomplicating of what is meant to be a simple game. If people cannot understand it, then the analysis hasn’t been effective. It is like a doctor giving their diagnosis in complicated medical terms – it might sound impressive but it serves no purpose if the patient departs none the wiser about their condition.
Caixinha’s comments have resulted more in confused looks than enlightened understanding, but it has brought into the open the debate on how we look at and assess our national obsession. The key to it all is clarity. Some online explain their reasoning better than others, using captioned video footage and simple language which is a lot more accessible than screeds of numbers, graphs and spreadsheets.
It remains to be seen whether analysing football in such a fashion eventually takes hold among the wider Scottish populace but Caixinha has at least brought the matter into the mainstream. Others may slowly follow.
How long before we have the first caller into Radio Clyde wanting to talk about Rangers’ expected goals rating?
Few folk are in the pub on a Friday night discussing how many kilometres Scott Brown ran in a game
believe it should be happening already. Some make the argument that the reason behind a perceived reluctance to switch from a “he said, she said” level of analysis stems from the fact that many in the mainstream media simply do not understand a lot of the technical jargon.
While there is certainly some truth in that, it should also be said that among the more strident of those OOTBALL’S modernists and the game’s traditionalists tend to find themselves on diametrically opposite sides of the debate; two diverse, polarising groups with little in common – a bit like the Bloods and the Crips or the Jets and the Sharks only with greater levels of hostility and suspicion.
Pedro Caixinha, though, seems intent on bridging that gap when it comes to the thorny subject of how football is analysed and discussed in this country. In the period since he became Rangers manager, the Portuguese has shown himself to be a willing poster boy for those who believe that issues such as tactics, formations, and statistics ought to be given far greater prominence in the way the game is dissected in the mainstream media, on online platforms, and by fans in general.
Caixinha, like many modern managers, places great stock in the work done on the training field and on the tactics board. Few, though, choose to make their findings known to a wider audience the way Caixinha has done since succeeding Mark Warburton at Ibrox.
His early press conferences were vastly different from those of the majority of his peers as he revealed in great detail how he expected the opposition to line up, while giving insight into his own tactical preferences. There was also his post-match analysis at Hampden following the Scottish Cup semifinal defeat, when he used the glasses on the table in front of him to illustrate his proposed intention to thwart Celtic, while also admitting his game-plan hadn’t been effective on this occasion.
His transparency has made him instantly endearing, although there is a school of thought that repeatedly showing the opposition your hand is a ploy that won’t end well in the long run.
What will be more instructive is whether Caixinha’s matter-of-fact introduction of tactical analysis into the public forum starts to shift stances on this topic. For there is little doubt that there are currently two entrenched camps, one of which has little time for or interest in the nuances of how the game is played, and