A Victory for Anti-Football

So Greece win yet another Euro 2004 game 1-0, scoring a crap goal from a corner as they did against the Czechs, and they win the tournament. All the bookies are jumping up and down as the 150-1 outsider scrapes home, but the world of football will be in mourning. Where Portugal and the Czechs and France all had skill in abundance, inventiveness, imagination, flair, and attacking vision, all the Greeks had, and all they needed, were obduracy, doggedness, defensiveness, and above all organisation, organisation, organisation. Their ball control skills were non-existent, their
attacking play limited to the occasional piss-poor break when the opposition attack broke down and to set pieces, their tactical vision extending no further than midfield. They rarely ventured past their halfway line and always played with at most one up front being supported only on occasional breaks.

But then who needs to be attacking when you can just defend and harry and man-mark artful players out of the game? Every time a Portugal player got the ball in the Greek half he was surrounded by 3 white shirts dispossessing him. Give the Greeks what little due they have due, their tackling and defending was top-notch - efficient, accurate, clean (they committed very few fouls) and lethal in its
destructive power, but that's all their game had. There was never any intent at positive play against either the Czechs or the Portuguese, just a dogged determination to wear down skilful opponents, to frustrate and demoralise them, and they did that to perfection. You just knew, even before the game, that the score would be 1-0 to the Greeks or 4-0 to the Portuguese, nothing in between. Either the
1-dimensional Greek approach would be torn apart by the attacking verve of Figo, Ronaldo, and Deco, or the Greeks would grind their opponents down relentlessly and eke out a victory by a set-piece goal.

Of course, other international sides have tried that in the past, occasionally succeeding but usually failing, because with an approach like that you only have to make one mistake and the skilful side scores, after which you've no other game plan and you likely get hammered. The Greeks were different. They didn't make mistakes. They were frighteningly, ruthlessly, stolidly, efficiently destructive. Wave after wave of attacks broke against their back four, if they made it through the midfield five, without ever seriously threatening a goal. The Portuguese had a few shots from outside the box but never had a chance worthy of the name. At least the Czechs managed to carve out 2 or 3 chances which they foolishly and culpably squandered.

The awful dark beauty of this defensive approach is that it calls for no creativity at all. The coach and the players don't have to come up with inventive tactics, flowing moves, ball skills, imaginative running, fine finishing. No, they just have to frustrate, to block, to spoil. Their only approach is to stop the other team playing, and they did that in Spades.

The Greeks are the Leeds of European football - that is, Leeds from the Don Revie era, with all the Revie machine-like efficiency and Norman Hunter bite but without the attacking flair or the variety. Brians and journalists will laud the Greek achievement as a great giant-killing fairytale, giving heart to small teams everywhere, but that will be a serious mistake. Had the Czechs won then that would have been an inspiration to the international small fry, showing that you can win against more famous, more prestigious, better resourced opponents through skill and invention and enthusiasm. The lesson the Greek victory gives out loud and clear on the TV screens of hundreds of millions across Europe and the world is that the way to win against the Big Boys is to nullify them at every step, to destroy their ability to play, to frustrate them until, out of sheer weariness, they slip up at a set piece and seal their fates. The Greeks have played anti-football, and their victory may take European football back to the Dark Ages of negativity and defensiveness tactical sterility. Their pyrrhic victory leaves a sour memory of Euro 2004 that will be long to dispel.