IAN LADYMAN: Football can touch you in so many ways
IAN LADYMAN: Football can touch you in so many ways – as fans finally and gloriously returned to produce the hum of full stadiums once again, we now appreciate football is so much more than what happens on the pitch
- Football is very much about connections, shared experience and communities
- The Kepa sub in the Super Cup victory for Chelsea was no tactical masterstroke
- Sergio Ramos, not Lionel Messi, could be the key signing for PSG this summer
- David Luiz’ claim he was the first to play out from the back in England is wild
After Sheffield United’s first game of the Championship season eight days ago, a regular posted this moving message on Twitter.
‘I’ve sat on the same row of the Kop for 25 years. Three seats to my left, an old boy has always sat there. Every match he’d shuffle down to me before KO & ask: ”What do you know then?”. We’d chat & he’d tell me about his dog etc. He died during lockdown & it’s made me irrationally sad.’
Social media can be a dismal place but this post prompted a thread as informative as anything I have read during the days of what we may describe as pandemic football.
The return of fans to stadiums has provided us with a welcome return to some old experiences
Football is very much about connections, shared experience and communities
Many who replied offered similar experiences. Others offered sympathy. More than 35,000 people ‘liked’ the post. Before long, someone else appeared in the conversation.
‘Thanks mate that was my dad,’ posted @missonlink. ‘Don’t be sad. He crammed 150 years of life into 93, died suddenly (not COVID), loved talking to everyone and loved being one of the boys at the match.’
So out of sadness and loss, new friendships were formed. New conversations took place. Maybe @SpellStef and @missonlink will never meet but it doesn’t really matter. They have already done something important for each other.
And this, at the dawn of a new domestic season, remains one of our sport’s most fundamental foundations. Yes, it’s about goals and glory, wins and losses, success and failure. More than that it’s about people and relationships; about connections, shared experience and communities.
Yes, even now. Even when so much of what happens around the game remains as nakedly undignified as pigs fighting to get their noses in a trough of potatoes, this is what football is about.
The world in which we live continues to breed isolation and loneliness. The post-Covid society threatens to be even more disparate than the one that existed before.
But football — and sport — does not change much in its rawest form. This is what some of our big clubs don’t understand. It is also alien to the ticketless morons who smashed their way into Wembley on the night of the England-Italy Euro final at Wembley.
Fans who caused trouble at the Euro 2020 final don’t understand the true meaning of football
All the thugs wanted that night was a view of the pitch on a big night, and they didn’t care how they got it or who suffered as a consequence. But this is not a sport for them. Not really. They may attach themselves to it but they will never really understand the breadth or depth of it. They will never comprehend its true worth.
As we glory in the hum of full stadiums once again, what we know and appreciate now more than ever is that football is not just about the pitch.
It’s all the stuff around it that really matters and maybe what @SpellStef has shown us this past week is that football can touch you in ways you maybe don’t even realise until something changes. As he hopefully knows by now, there was absolutely nothing irrational about his sense of sadness and loss.
KEPA SUB WAS NO MASTERSTROKE
Back in the summer of 2014, I was lucky enough to be in Salvador, Brazil, to watch Holland beat Costa Rica on penalties in a World Cup quarter-final.
That game was notable for the fact goalkeeper Tim Krul was sent on by Louis van Gaal just for the shootout. Krul saved twice and Van Gaal was hailed as a visionary.
In conversation with Krul — now of Norwich — last week, he revealed that the Dutch were going to throw him on again had any of their games reached a shootout in this summer’s Euros.
The substitution of Kepa Arrizabalaga (R) during Chelsea’s Super Cup win was no masterstroke
Then, in Belfast on Wednesday, Chelsea’s Kepa Arrizabalaga replaced Edouard Mendy in the final seconds of extra-time to subsequently win the Super Cup with a pair of handy penalty saves.
In the wake of that one, even the normally reserved Reuters service described Tuchel’s decision as a ‘tactical masterstroke’. But saving penalties is a specialist task. Some goalkeepers excel at it while others don’t. Horses for courses and all that.
So in this age of endless substitute options, it is surprising we don’t see more of this. It’s not rocket science. It’s really rather obvious.
SERGIO RAMOS IS PSG’S BEST BUY
A decent rule of thumb is never to leave a job unless you’ve got somewhere better to go. With this in mind, it’s hard not to wonder how things will turn out for Lionel Messi at Paris Saint-Germain.
More widely, despite the dazzling array of attacking riches on the playing roster at Parc des Princes, a simple truth remains: PSG can’t defend. They showed us that in last season’s Champions League.
Not only in games they lost against Manchester City but also in ones they somehow managed to win against Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
Given this, it may just be that the French club’s game-changing signing of the summer transpires not to be Messi from Barcelona but Sergio Ramos from Real Madrid.
Sergio Ramos (left), not Lionel Messi (right), could be Paris Saint-Germain’s best summer buy
LUIZ WIDE OF THE MARK
During his time in the Premier League it was always easier to watch David Luiz control and distribute the ball than it was to watch him defend. He probably could have played anywhere on the field.
However, his claim in Friday’s Sportsmail interview that he was the first defender in England to play out from the back was as wild as his hair.
He may not be aware of the work of Roy McFarland, Alan Hansen or Mark Lawrenson. But he may have heard of Rio Ferdinand.
David Luiz’s claim he was the first to play out from the back in England is very wide of the mark
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