What will happen to football in the future?

Text/Wang Qinbo

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What will football look like in the future? It’s heart-wrenching to discuss this topic after the 2018 World Cup.

Neither Pele of Brazil nor Cruyff of the Netherlands left much video material in their careers, and text carried most of the functions of describing their lives. We can vaguely feel that writing is also an extremely picky way of recording. Only players who are wonderful enough can be told and remembered for a long time.

Words and today's football world are completely different. In the digital age, television broadcast technology has become extremely advanced, and there are hundreds of cameras inside and outside the stadium. A mediocre football game can also become extraordinary at the output terminal. The live audience and the TV audience are like two worlds.

This is my experience of watching football live for many years. It doesn’t matter if the game itself is not exciting. All it takes is a good professional director. He can do close-ups of characters, focus on the flight path of the ball, local scrambles, and slow-motion replays. Frequent switching between broadcasts makes a boring game exciting and ups and downs in front of the TV screen, becoming a qualified visual consumer product.

Through live broadcasts, the exciting moments of the game can always be captured more clearly

This may be a literary topic, like how we should look at those contemporary novels that only have details and techniques. , are they active or passive choices of the writer? In the stadium stands, as a witness to the truth, I often fall into utter despair, but for the normal operation of consumerism - or this is the only truth in today's world - I must consider the issue from the perspective of the imaginary audience.

I spent most of the 2018 World Cup switching between the truth under my nose and the illusion on the small screen in front of me. Ultimately, I chose to flee Russia after France’s 1:0 victory over Belgium in the semifinals. I can't stand this dull and boring football truth. Both sides put themselves in a box and wait for a small mistake from the opponent to determine the result - such as a set kick/header - without slow-motion replay, this progress will be impossible. The moment of the ball has neither beauty nor truth.

In the 2018 World Cup semi-finals, France defeated Belgium 1:0

As soon as the game ended, the screen immediately switched to a football song loved by Croatians, and the football match instantly became a song sung by thousands of people. rock concert. Among the Croatians, I actually gained a sense of excitement and satisfaction that I couldn't get at the Russian competition - Italian adult film actress Caponegre once said, "If you want to be cheap, you have to be happy" - Since you must consume illusions, I also want to have the best vacation possible.

In this sense, those who are still determined to pursue the results of the game while providing visual enjoyment for the spectators watching the game are already a few individuals on the verge of extinction in our world. Guardiola is undoubtedly that rare individual and 2018 marks his 10th anniversary at the top level.

10 years ago, Guardiola took over the coaching of Barcelona's first team. The "dream team" that won 3 La Liga championships and 2 Champions Leagues in 4 years was replaced by Lippi and other football players. Famed players regard it as the "best team in history." Former Italian star Zola said, "Watching Guardiola's Barcelona play, I can't help laughing happily from beginning to end."

I have encountered that Barcelona team many times on the scene , indeed, Guardiola’s Barcelona can frequently make you get rid of the anxiety about gains and losses over the results. They can always provide a series of wonderful clips of playing with their opponents, making you scream for improvement and laugh out loud. , let you understand that human beings are both a hopeless realistic animal and therefore an animal that needs to escape from reality.

Josep Guardiola

The worry caused by the 2018 World Cup also lies in the writing of football itself. When the relationship between football and the public has been completely concentrated on the output terminal controlled by professional broadcasters, the relationship between the audience and football is inevitably based on the illusion provided by the TV screen. There are also a few football writers who condemn the World Cup in Russia as boring and uninteresting, but the intensity of the condemnation cannot be compared with the sinfulness of the truth.

More writers stand overwhelmingly behind the winners of utilitarian football, condemning "pass and control football", deriding beautiful football as outdated, and adding various terms with political connotations to the discussion. , for example, accused Loew, who insists on passing and controlling the German team, as "too sissy". Victory is destined to belong to the utilitarian and macho side.

It is a pity that the French team that won the championship only played utilitarian football, which was almost obscene. If this is "not a woman" and a "real man", then there is really no hope for the world and mankind.

As writers, we are all powerless and shameful in the face of the truth - I often think this way - in order to regain a little bit of strength, I need to always go back to Brazil. Brazil is not only the kingdom of football, but also the undisputed number one in the world in terms of football writing. However, the language barrier prevents people from seeing the original Brazilian football writing.

The Brazilian teenager’s obsession and love for football

On the 10th anniversary of the birth of football, Guardiola is in the UK coaching Manchester City. On that island, no one has ever written anything worthy of Gua's football. In my extensive reading, the best piece in “10 Years of Gua’s Football” is written by Tost?o, a player on the 1970 World Cup-winning team and Pelé’s teammate. The former genius player who devoted himself to writing football columns after retiring wrote in Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo:

"Guardiola has been teaching for 10 years, and it feels like a century has passed. His changes in Barcelona In football, he is a persistent innovator, a modern man who loves the past. He emphasizes possession and passing, and likes exciting scenes, just like Santos in Pele's era. Guardiola promoted a high-pressure style of play, like 1974. The Dutch team in the 2016 World Cup. He influenced goalkeepers all over the world to learn to play football with their feet. He always asked players to play wonderful football and provide quality scenes. Without the vision of utopia, the world would not be possible. There is no sex..."

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Today, 20 years later, who mentioned the French team in the 1998 World Cup and still looked like they were intoxicated with it?

In 2018, we are worried about the future of football, but we can find that football is at least one thing more reassuring than human history - the logic of success and failure does not fully hold true for the memory of football. Football can be the honor roll, or it can be the history of art. Football, which inspires universal reverence and recognition, is more about the latter.

In the 1998 World Cup final, France defeated Brazil 3:0

In the history of football, there are too many loser stories that we will mention again and again in later generations, and even those who have never been able to see them in person. The descendants who saw it also passed it down orally. For example, the Hungarian team lost the World Cup final in 1954, the Dutch team lost two consecutive World Cup finals in 1974 and 1978, and the "artistic football" Brazilian team in 1982 and 1984.

Only Barcelona from 2008 to 2012 combined victory, honors and art, and the one that can be compared may be Sao Paulo, Brazil, which won two consecutive Toyota Cups in 1992 and 1993. But the two "artistic football" teams also ended in failure: in 1994, Sao Paulo lost to Argentina Sarsfield on penalties in the Libertadores final; in the 2011-2012 season, Barcelona lost to the Champions League semi-finals Chelsea with the bus.

When Guardiola was still coaching Barcelona, ??there were many comments that asserted that the era of football history will be distinguished by "previous melons" and "poster melons".

Guardiola created retro conditions and achieved the most modern football. In terms of regional impact, his Barcelona was also the first European team in history to truly conquer South America. In the past, it was difficult for European teams to sufficiently and sustainably arouse the love of South Americans, because South Americans value talent more, care more about the enjoyment of the game, and emphasize players' improvisation and creativity, which are relatively lacking in European football.

But the South Americans regarded Guardiola as one of their own from the beginning, and there were calls in Argentina and Brazil to invite Guardiola to serve as the national team coach. Guardiola has never denied his passion for South American football. His football is a product of the fusion of Europe and South America.

Guardiola watching the game

Guardiola’s coaching experience began at the home of Argentine football coach Bielsa. Like Guardiola, Bielsa loves attacking football and literature. Accompanying Guardiola on the visit was Spanish director and writer Trueba. The conversation, which involved football, literature and film, lasted for 11 hours. A few years later, when the successful Guardiola returned to Argentina, he publicly stated that "I tried to steal as much as possible from football here."

If we use the history of European literature as a reference to discuss Guardiola's achievements, I would like to compare Guardiola to Proust in the football world. He created a kind of "stream of consciousness" football - - "Stream of consciousness" is not about looking around and doing whatever you want, but an independent time and space that transcends the "linear time cage" - If the technical and creative football playing methods of Brazil and Argentina have subverted the straightforward British originator, Guardiola's Barcelona has even allowed football matches to break away from the "established time and space" of stipulated game time and stipulated length and width of the field.

The artistic realm created by Barcelona can be named "Pep Time and Space". Barcelona from 2008 to 2012 was the "Reminiscences of Lost Time" on the football field. The whole thing is exquisite and outstanding. Each fragment can exist independently. Every attack points in many directions. Every cooperation is like a child happily playing with a ball, but full of adult wisdom. Even if Barcelona loses, it still retains its beauty. , and it is precisely when losing that the true meaning of art is demonstrated: art is not a way of living, it is a way of dying. Life must die, and art is born toward death, a free encounter between life and death in the purest form.

Barcelona's glorious moment

The significance of "Pep time and space" is that it negates the utilitarian trend that deepened in European football in the second half of the 20th century, spontaneity and improvisation on the pitch Less and less, more is the strict implementation of the various routines formulated by the coach in advance. Football is almost going to fall on the road of patterning and robotization-Guardiola has his own pattern, but the purpose of his pattern is to protect the players. Spontaneity and improvisational instinct.

"Pep Time and Space" is such an existence. With the good cooperation of the whole team, talented players such as Messi, Iniesta and Xavi have the possibility of continuous improvisation. If Breaking down the many technical pieces of Messi, Iniesta and others, you will find that they do not look like playing professional football, but like children playing wild football.

Messi often performed in Barcelona, ??which was rare in world football after Maradona, with multiple goalscoring performances. This made the Argentine people feel sad for a long time because Messi was playing with the national team. It is difficult to make the same level of contribution. For South Americans who like artistic football, this is really hard to accept.

It was Guardiola who told the truth, "Drobbing is a key part of a football match. If there are no conditions for passing, we will create such conditions through patience and search."

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(3)

When I opened "In Search of Lost Time" for the first time, I was simply shocked. I was surprised that the author exhausted all the beauty of French almost immediately. He later What should French authors do?

This is indeed the case. No French writer after Proust can escape from this work, not even Proust himself.

Marcel Proust, French writer, is famous for his masterpiece "In Search of Lost Time"

When discussing the future of football in 2018, we may regard the present as The difficult period of the "post-Guardiola era". Guardiola once said in the Barcelona locker room, "I feel extremely lucky to be the same generation as you." As soon as these words came out, the post-Guardiola era began. After leaving Barcelona in 2012, Guardiola played both Bayern and Manchester City. Won championship honors, but never showed the same football that his Barcelona always wanted to announce that it will never be forgotten.

In the end, art is an encounter in life, and it is the same for artists. Guardiola is a once-in-a-decade genius among football coaches, just like Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. One of the fears that the 2018 World Cup has brought to the world is that what follows may be an era of football lacking peerless talent.

Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are aging rapidly, and the ten-year struggle between Melo and Ronaldo in La Liga is a thing of the past. Even if Neymar is placed in the history of Brazilian football, he cannot stand in the ranks of peerless talents such as Pele, Zico, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldinho. There is also the young Mbappe who is regarded as a combination of body, speed and technology. He is not a little bit worse than Pele, Ronaldo and Messi of the same age. If he can match the achievements of his predecessor Henry, he will be invincible. Regret this life.

The anxiety of lack of talent will permeate the football world in the next few years, but we may not necessarily see this anxiety in football writing often. Just like in daily life, when faced with the anxiety caused by scarcity, the public tends to deepen their denigration of beauty.

Even in Guardiola's Barcelona era, there were a large number of writers who used concepts such as "aesthetic fatigue" and "glamour over effectiveness" to denigrate the team that had a huge psychological impact on the real world. Football has entered the Hougua era, and this kind of writing has seriously gained the upper hand.

Messi

The "anti-Melon" writers did not hesitate to praise "pragmatic", "down-to-earth" and "efficient" football. For writers, this is a more practical writing technique than practical football. It can cover up the anxiety of the era that lacks peerless geniuses and great art, and it can also make their interpretation of football and all the humble and boring things in the world seem more logical. and persuasiveness.

Football is undoubtedly a mirror of today's society. Just like today's European and American politics, so-called "pragmatists" are launching aggressive attacks on "idealism" and "romanticism" that are rich in social care, humanitarianism and international spirit in various fields. It seems that the existence of ideals is the solution to world problems. source.

The player composition of the two-time world champion French team in 1998 and 2018 is "Black-Blanc-Beur", which refers to the African, white and North African players in the team. American players. The difference is that the French team that won the championship in 1998 was once regarded as a beautiful symbol of a diverse society and multi-racial existence. However, the French team that won the championship in 2018 has lost the same symbolic meaning in French society. In other words, the French have taken the initiative To avoid talking about its symbolic meaning.

Far-right politicians represented by Le Pen particularly hate football. "I cannot accept that children from slums become criminals if they cannot become professional players."

However, isn’t it that the lack of social care and the right-wing policies of invisible discrimination against immigrants decades ago led to the serious racial segregation in French cities for nearly half a century?

Brazilian best-selling author Paulo Coelho said in a recent interview with Spanish media, "Although modern people have more communication on the surface, this is not the truth: people only communicate with people who have similar ideas. Communication, the lack of the value of taking the initiative to step out of one's comfort zone. If we continue on this path of fundamentalism, radicalism and lack of dialogue, there will be no turning back in 2 or 3 years. ”

Marine Le Pen, the former leader of the French far-right party "National Front" (now renamed "National Rally")

The ugly scenes of the 2018 World Cup did not show a "lack of dialogue" world? Too many teams have completely closed themselves off. Victory is only due to an accidental mistake by the opponent. Open awareness is an unforgivable capital sin, and the pursuit of beauty is even more unrealistic.

Do people want to see a complete confirmation of the rules of the real world from football, or do they want to find some escape, improvement and rebellion from reality? Everyone's purpose and way of treating football is different, but in the end, those who remain in our memory with beautiful images are always those who try to change everything on their own, such as player Messi, such as coach Pep Guardiola. Deora.

Guardiola and Messi

In August 2018, the Italian "Corriere della Sera" interviewed "Open Arms", a non-governmental organization that rescues refugees in the Mediterranean, hoping to learn about their funding Where does it come from, and who are the top private funders?

"Guardiola is the one who has invested the most. There are also Xavi, Gasol, other players from Manchester City and Barcelona..."

Regarding the future of the world and football, there are actually only A different question: hope, or despair? In despair, many people will choose to collectively kill hope, thinking that this can buy them the conditions to survive. There are also a few people who are making desperate efforts to preserve a glimmer of hope.

Editor 丨 Bad Bad

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