Football focus

If you have no interest in football look away now.

What I didn’t mention in my previous post (Once more unto the Bridge) was the extraordinary performance of Chelsea Woman, in the first half in particular, on Thursday night.

Watching the highlights on YouTube the commentator talks of a “blue wave” of attacks, and that’s how it felt in the stadium as well.

In recent years I have rarely witnessed such a relentless performance that combined high pressing with hard and direct running. It was wonderful to watch.

There were outstanding performances throughout the team but one player who stood out was the 19-year-old Dutch midfielder Wieke Kaptein who ran and ran and tackled all night, while demonstrating a considerable degree of skill and composure on the ball.

I know most of you aren’t interested but the reason I mention this is because I have written before about how boring modern football can be, with the ball frequently passed from side to side, and backwards, often very slowly, in order to keep possession.

A low point was watching England at last year’s Euros but even the best practitioners of the ‘modern’ style of play can be very tedious to watch.

Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather go to the dentist than sit through 90+ minutes of that turgid rubbish.

In 2002, during the women’s Euros, I wrote:

Spain’s first half performance against England was arguably one of the best of the tournament but - and I’m keen to point this out - their clever inter-passing style of play failed to find the net.

Like Barcelona’s men’s team it was also quite boring to watch. Heresy, I know, but possession football for the sake of it can be very tedious.

God knows I have no wish to go back to the old British style of lumping the ball up the park in the hope that some bruiser of a centre-forward will flick it on with his head with the ball spending more time in the air than on the grass.

But there has to be a happy medium and for me the most watchable matches in Euro 2022 were those in which teams tried to push forward with a combination of driving runs and short and longer passes.

Inevitably they will lose possession more often than not but that leads to counter-attacks and the result is goals and entertainment, often at both ends of the pitch.

At Stamford Bridge on Thursday night the football wasn’t perfect, far from it (there were lots of mistakes), but it was exciting and as a spectator that’s what you want, isn’t it?

The first half in particular flew by and I remember thinking I didn’t want it to end because the half-time break is notorious for changing and sometimes killing the momentum of a game.

As it happens the second half wasn’t as good but the reason I was checking the clock was not because I was bored but because, at 3-2 on aggregate, the tie remained on a knife-edge and I wanted the game to end so Chelsea would go through!

Since I was nine or ten I have spent thousands of hours watching football and if you like the game it’s hard to beat the drama of a really good match.

In reality the majority of football matches are neither exciting nor entertaining, which is why the best games or performances stand out and you remember them forever.

(Alternatively the game might be rubbish but there’s an exciting denouement, which is what everyone remembers, not the soporific stuff that came before it.)

Funnily enough, one of the best performances by a team I support was a game they lost.

In November 1981 Dundee United were playing Rangers in the Scottish League Cup final at Hampden in front of 70-80,000 spectators, one of whom was me.

The overwhelming majority (90%) were Rangers’ fans but for 80 minutes United, who were defending the trophy, absolutely battered their opponents. It was thrilling to watch, especially in that context.

Crucially though they missed numerous chances and scored only one goal, and with ten minutes left Rangers got a slightly fortuitous equaliser.

The momentum changed, and with the crowd roaring them on Rangers scored the winning goal in the final minutes.

Crushing though it was at the time, United’s pulsating performance that day is something I will never forget.

I won’t forget Thursday night at the Bridge either. Yes, the women’s game is not on the same level as the men’s (and never will be, physically), but as a sport in its own right it is well worth supporting for games like that.

See also: Once more unto the Bridge and Singing the blues.