Football
is the most popular sport in the world and played in almost all countries
because it needs least infrastructure and gives most joy, excitement and
satisfaction. Though England is the commercial capital of this game with the
richest football league, the EPL being played there, Brazil remains the
aesthetic capital of the beautiful game. Every time there is a FIFA World Cup
though your head may tell you that Germany is the strongest contender, your
heart will always want Brazil to win! Have you ever wondered why this is so?
Football
is played in two styles - the passing game and the dribbling game. The passing
game was about possession. Circulate the ball with easy passes, control the
game and make the last pass into the back of the net. Many coaches focused on
the passing game. Maybe because it was easy to coach or it was proven to work.
Barcelona plays possession, after all. Then there was the dribbling game, for
players with fancy footwork. Teams with stellar dribblers scored when a player
would make a great run with the ball passed the keeper and into the goal. The
Brazilians are masters of both the styles. Not only do they pass well and
dribble every defender, they also made it look easy and fun.
Brazil
is a team which plays with spontaneity, irreverence and pure joy and it is this
joy that connects them to the football fans across the globe! They have that
air of unpredictable brilliance, an artistry bordering the realm of wizardry
that makes football fans impatient to see them once again. Such is their
reputation for aesthetic elegance and mystique that if Spain or Chile plays to
their fullest potential or Pep Guardiola's Barcelona are mesmerizing the fans,
the people gush that they are playing Brazilian football!
Cricket
fans are fiercely patriotic and look down upon rival players almost
instinctively. Yet there have been players whose batting elegance transcends
all national and league biases. Zaheer Abbas scored heavily against India and
Sachin Tendulkar had a special affinity for Pakistani bowlers right from his
first test innings but these two players have no dearth of supporters who love
them in their rival countries. Batsmen like Don Bradman, Vivian Richards and
Virat Kohli are phenomenal and will be respected through ages for their
consistency, efficiency and prowess but batsmen like David Gower, Gundappa
Vishwanath and Saurabh Ganguli are loved because they are easy to the eye and
their batting is poetry in motion!
Unscripted
brilliance and flair in a player or a team leads to an everlasting romance with
their fans. In a highly competitive sporting world with so much of money at
stake, winning has become the most important thing and winning ugly is far more
respected than losing beautifully. Pep Guardiola's Barcelona cannot survive by
just playing beautifully, they have to win consistently too. And it is this
amalgamation of beauty and efficiency which is most challenging. Brazil is not
winning and that is a concern, because if for the sake of winning they have to
adapt a mechanically efficient German style, football will be the biggest
loser.
In
sports today success is first, consistency is second and aesthetics is third.
This is a very rare sequence which comes once in a while in the history of
sports. The Brazilian football team of Pele and later Socrates, Zico, Falcao
and Cerezo, and still later Ronaldo and Ronaldinho fitted in this sequence. So
do Nadia Comaneci, Roger Federer, Usain Bolt and Barcelona Football Club.
Contrast this to Novak Djokovic, Real Madrid and Lewis Hamilton; they are real
embodiment of consistency and efficiency and have a fan following too but that
romance with the fans is missing. The head has accepted them as the king but
the heart simply refuses to do so. They are respected and admired but the
adulation and affection which is showered upon Federer and Tendulkar is simply
missing.
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