Phenomenology Viewing: Madrid Barcelona

There are different styles of football journalists. Michael Cox reduces players to particles of physical laws and studies the emergent systems that interact. Jonathon Wilson contextualizes these systems in the broader forces of history and geography. Sid Lowe takes the unit of analysis to be the club as a social institution, interacting with its fans, legacy, and role in collective emotion. I can’t think of articles taking the player as the basic unit of analysis and developing a narrative of psychology. Any glimpse we get into a player’s inner space is rife with cliche, Benzema was described last night as ‘lacking confidence’ because he side-footed a volley instead of putting his boot through it, a situation where he would have been described as ‘overzealous’ had he put his boot through it instead of the more measured approach of side-footing it. Player psychology is couched in terms of motivation (he’s looking to prove himself, he’s low on confidence, he’s over confident, pumped for the occasion, his heart isn’t in it, he’s motivated by self achievement over the team). Now obviously it’s one thing to consider them professionals and treat them the way all employees are treated in the context of the workplace, that psychology is restricted to that which is directly connected to the job, i.e motivation. It’s another thing however to still be really impressed if they actually pull this off and keep the psychological responses trimmed to those of motivation.

Take for instance interpersonal conflict. It is strange that for our pessimistic drama-phyllic gossipy brains, I’ve only ever focused on pairs of players who have a particularly great relationship and understanding, like Messi-Alves/Alba/Suarez, Xavi-Iniesta. Their interplay is a joy to watch and raises the level of the entire viewing experience. But well-rounded entertainment would have both no? What’s a good way to identify interpersonal conflict within football teams? I tried hard to identify any possible drama-duos and found nothing. Either I am not intuitive enough, or the camera movements not detailed enough to facilitate such an identification, or drama-duos don’t exist at this very highest level? I’ll continue trying to falsify this claim, but prime facie it’s a very exciting proposition that there are conditions under which you can transcend petty rivalries and interpersonal conflict. More exciting if it’s actually just ‘condition’ singular. Mastery. Consider the obvious signs of interpersonal conflict in my football games, none of these were too evident last night

1. A never passes to B though often the best option: Vidal was frequently overlooked by everybody, Isco perhaps doesn’t prioritize Kroos when he’s open. Otherwise it seems like the best pass is taken.
2. A never makes a run when B is on the ball: Noone is particularly making ambitious runs when defenders are on the ball with space and time to look up, and there are always runs when certain players like Messi, Arthur, Modric are on the ball. But nothing I saw cannot be chalked down to objective quality.
3. A expresses negativity when B screws up: This is the no.1 sign in my football games, the most annoying guys are those who cannot hide their exasperation when things go wrong. No one ever looks frustrated if Messi loses the ball even if it’s in a dangerous position and leaves everyone else high and dry, but noone was singled out either for specific derision or conflict. After conceding, Ter Stegen and Pique share an almost mutual-solidarity look of frustration.

Assorted Thoughts:

Ronaldo watches his first Clasico as a pure spectator? If not first, the first in over a decade? Is it fun? He doesn’t have the pressure, but he doesn’t have the attention either. Is he forced to show agony if they lose, despite no longer having any stakes?

Marcelo doesn’t receive a pass, he attacks it: He has a huge advantage in space because he aggressively runs towards his passes and then rolls his foot over it to control it and bring it to his velocity all in one action. Everyone else lets the ball come to them, changing their own velocities accordingly, Marcelo won’t let his movements be dictated by some stupid ball and the idiot who probably passed it inefficiently to the wrong foot, or towards pressure, or away from goal. Marcelo don’t care.

Commentary 2nd mover pressure: Commentators never fight one another. Usually they’re different enough that one is informative and from the South of England accent-wise and the other is passionate, interesting and non-South-English. Sometimes the passionate one is partisan, like the annoying Real Madrid fan they had in the box. Which is fine, except the prim commentator is in a position where a 50/50 challenge (or a fully fair one) is being denounced as ‘clear red card’ or something ludicrously overblown like that by the passionate partisan. The die has been cast, now the prim cannot risk conflict during commentary so he lamely assents that it was indeed a very lucky break for the non redcarded player. Similarly for positives, with ‘the greatest goalkeeping save of all time’ having been merely pretty good and leaving prim in an awkward position of acknowledging its quality.