Snobbery against 4-4-2 and long balls is PC gone mad…

Does a kind of political correctness exist in football?

Today, PC is almost always used as a negative (in contrast to when I first heard it in the late 80s, when it was marker for being progressive and thoughtful). Those who complain about ‘PC culture’ have many different grievances, but largely seem to feel bullied into speaking and behaving in a certain way – dictated by some sort of cultural elite – under pain of being labelled as sexist, racist, fascist or one of the many sorts of phobe now available to name-callers.

When I was writing my book Can We Have Our Football Back?, I spoke to someone who has worked in football for 40 years in many different capacities who thinks that in recent years it has developed its own kind of precious, self-conscious, political correctness and anyone who doesn’t conform to it is widely held in disregard from the boardroom to the fans.

He believes there is a lexicon of expressions and tactics that you almost always have to conform to in order to be thought of as modern, progressive, intelligent even. And if you don’t, you’ll find getting work in management and coaching hard to come by and respect in very short supply. Does what he has to say ring true? I’ll let you be the judge.

“Owners or CEOs or whoever makes the hiring decisions…if you don’t use the fashionable football jargon they use, or they think you should use, even though they only use it as a substitute for actual knowledge, they’ll think I’m one of your PFMs who thinks a white board is high tech, eating pasta is modern and I’ll play old school long ball kick and rush 4-4-2. Seriously. If I went for a job and said the squad is too old to play a high pressing game, they’ll be dead on their feet after half an hour, so we’ll play a defensive 4-4-2 while we rebuild and bring some academy players through, these planks would just think you’re a neanderthal. 4-4-2, just those three numbers, the phrase if you like, is like a toxic brand to these people. It’s like it’s Greenwoods compared to Armani, you get me? Does Greenwoods still exist? [laughs].

“And that has seeped right through the game to the fans. You absolutely have to play it out from the back now; if you don’t then you’ll be considered unsophisticated and basically stupid, especially in the top flight. This is why we keep seeing teams who try and do it but can’t, cock it up and concede goals they needn’t have conceded. You see it time and again. Because Pep does it, we’re all supposed to do it now. It’s like a form of political correctness for managers and coaches to conform to and if you don’t, then get out of the way, granddad.”

There’s a much longer interview with him in the book, but I spoke to him again last week to elaborate more on this PC idea. Was he sure it was an active, real thing and not just his own unique perception?

“Oh it definitely exists, John. The evidence is everywhere. I just saw Arsenal against Watford. The lad Sokratis passing it out of his own box to Guendouzi, or trying to. That’s what I call a classic football PC error. There’s nothing wrong with just putting your foot through it and that’s what he should’ve done, but you can’t do that now. It’s gotten so embedded that you build up from the back and play it out at all costs that it probably didn’t even occur to him to not to. He was operating to a default and not actually thinking. That’s the irony of it for me. It’s not more sophisticated, as often claimed, it’s actually more stupid because you’re not using your brain to read the game and make the best decision.

“John Stones drives me bloody crazy doing this. As everyone knows, he’s potentially a really excellent ball-playing centre-half but he has no consistent sense of when it’s right to play it and when it’s right to get rid of it ASAP. And unless he learns that, he’ll not be trusted at the highest level, long term. I don’t know him at all but I have a feeling that he thinks he’s smart and too classy to just redistribute the ball promptly when under pressure. Okay, he wants to do a Cruyff turn in his own six-yard box and I’m not against that at all, if – and it’s a big if – you can do it successfully nine times out of ten. If you can only do it four times, don’t bloody do it. That’s his problem. It’s a shame because the lad is so talented. He just needs to match his in-game decisions to his real skill level, not the skill level he thinks he’s at. Guardiola hasn’t binned the kid off in the last few months for no reason. Keane giving the ball away against Kosovo: same thing. Every week there’s usually a couple of examples of defenders being sloppy with a pass or being robbed of the ball 18 yards from goal, due to not being able to make the crisp, quick passes under pressure that the likes of City and Liverpool can.

“Right now, everyone has got to have a high press or be able to ‘break’ a press. They’re buzz words. You even hear it yelled in park games now. That’s another example of PC football, believe it or not, you don’t HAVE to play a pressing game. There are other ways to play but there are these tactical fashions which you’re looked down upon if you don’t buy into. I know of at least two managers that have told me under no circumstances would they play 4-4-2 because if they lose, it’ll be seriously held against them in a way that if they play 4-3-3 it won’t. That is just mad. But it is where we are.

“Listen to how commentators refer to 4-4-2 as ‘old school’ or ‘traditional’. No-one wants to be tarred with those brushes. Football is a simple game sometimes made to appear to be complex by people who want to make themselves look clever. That’s my view on what is going on right now. People make their living out of tactical analysis and stats inside and outside clubs, so they need it to look deep and intellectual to justify their job and their money.

“You know what a lot of top-flight defenders hate in 2019? A long ball dropping out of the sky when there’s a big physical sod in their face. Why? Because most of them have literally never had to defend against it in their career, because so few play that way. Obviously, the best lads can deal with anything you throw at them, but many can’t. In football it’s always worth trying to the thing least tried. But again, if anyone comes out and says that, plenty will call them a dinosaur. Long ball and a physical striker is a crime against PC football. So much so that actually, far from being ‘old school’ it is new, radical and rebellious! [laughs] But when you see it done well, in phases within a game, not for the whole game, fans love it. But it’s like you have to conform to that which is fashionable, as though there’s a right way and a wrong way to play football. But there isn’t.”

Fascinating. I wonder how many managers feel certain types of play is simply off-limits and they end up playing a way that doesn’t really suit the team, just for the sake of not looking behind the times? We know that Sean Dyche, a few seasons ago, was paranoid about being thought a dinosaur for his methods, and that Tony Pulis is very defensive about being very defensive. Jose Mourinho spent many a press conference justifying how he’d organised his teams, and Sam Allardyce does almost nothing else but protest how he didn’t play long ball football. So the awareness of how your side is perceived to play must always be a big consideration for managers. It is after all, their calling card and part of their brand.

There are obviously fashions which come and go in the game, usually rooted in who has recently been very successful, but it seems a peculiar sort of madness to hold a whole sport to that specific mode when there are so many variables in skills, talent and intellect among players.

The best sides are created to play to their strengths and they can’t all be the same strengths for every side and every player. Put simply, if you don’t have the players to play it out from the back successfully when under pressure, don’t do it. Yet when you see mistakes like the one Sokratis made, it does look as though rather than thinking about the best thing to do in the moment, the player has been pre-programmed to do just one thing, appropriate or not.

No-one wants to be thought of as long ball merchants, no-one wants to be someone who just knocks it into the channels, no-one wants to be thought of as a centre-half who just clears his lines, or a centre-forward who just uses his physical presence to bully defenders. These things do not look good on your CV in 2019. But why?

Is such paranoia is a consequence of social media, and a massively expanded commentariat, all of whom have to find something to hate and admire, something that is uncool and something that is cool?

If so, that really is football political correctness gone mad.

John Nicholson