Football
Changing ethics
Hans Keller
Encouragingly, the appointment of Ron Greenwood as England manager, which should have taken place about fifteen years ago when he was in the running, has had an almost immediate effect on our views of the game. The full physical effect, to be sure, will have to wait until another football generation has grown up whose leading talents have learnt to be selfish, to consider egoism altruistic in proportion to their talent, rather than hide their lack of self-assurance behind the professional lay-off, the safe-playing wall-pass, and the safely speculative high cross — a chronic variation, this, on the largely ineffective corner-kick. Meanwhile, almost overnight, Greenwood has made individualism respectable again — not by what he has said, nor by what he has so far been able to do, but because people remember his individual and individualistic approach to the game: 'unprofessional' West Ham had been a heart-and-brain-warming joke for many years — and now, his stress on the primacy of talent has suddenly been legitimised, over the level-heads of the mindless.
Brian Clough's coincidental success at Nottingham is powerfully contributing to the changing world-view, for while, admittedly, he is the rich man's Ramsey, wallowing as he does in work-rate, he does let Tony Woodcock (honoured the other week, let it be said in their favour, by the Professional Footballers' Association) have his game, his own way of playing, which renders conventional one-twos superfluous because he is capable of retaining possession in the first place. If there aren't a lot of Woodcocks around, that isn't dough's fault, and until there are, the rich man's Ramsey seems the only solution — temporary for a long time. Fifteen years ago, our philosophy did not keep step with our talent, and Jimmy Greaves was turned from a solution into a problem. Now, at the beginning of the Greenwood era, our talent cannot keep step with our new philosophy, because our old philosophy has, meanwhile, tried its successful best to drive any talent and concomitant individual responsibility out of the players. Of course, the failure of an inspired, but risky through-pass is there for all to see, though few see what it could have meant — while a high cross has to, be quite exceptionally rotten in order for its failure to be subjected to criticism: bad luck, good defence, or bad attack (especially heading ability) are the usual extenuating reactions on the part of safe-players on as well as off the field of play.
How well I remember my successful method of coping with my own lack of football genius — and I still see it all around me, except that nowadays, people get plenty of money for it, and I have to pay to see it. I was in my mid-teens when I was picked for the grown-up reserves and placed at outside left, where I had never played in the youth team. My pride, however, was quickly muted when I caught sight of the opposing right fullback, whose aggressive bulk would figure in my nightmares to this day if they weren't confined to the effects of collective stupidity and individual cowardice, in no particular order. My strategic decision was instantaneous: I would run, as fast as possible, towards the corner-flag, and cross before he could tackle me. `Good cross!' shouted the trainer from the bench after the first one. It was nothing of the sort: I had crossed any-old-where, and the ball happened to hit the head of our centreforward, because he was tall and could jump a bit `Greaveseyr murmured the man who bought Greaves, Bill Nicholson, when Peter Kitchen scored, with supreme individualism, for Orient at Chelsea. What had enabled Kitchen to escape the net of our collective debasement of talent? Why had nobody developed his sense of collective responsibility — the duty to grow into a child and pass the buck together with the ball? Brian Glanville, consistently adult throughout these regressive years, has found the factual answer: Kitchen did not turn professional with Doncaster Rovers till he was eighteen. So three years in which he might well have found himself being shouted at to square it . . . saw him playing football as he pleased for Yorkshire schools. Moreover, when he did turn pro, he was lucky enough to find at Doncaster a manager in Stan Anderson, once Sunderland's clever right-half, a trainer in Johnny Quigley, once Forest's polished inside-right, who actually encouraged him to beat people.
Glen Hoddle, another highly gifted youngster honoured by the PFA, plays in the middle of our leading high-crossing team — Tottenham. He has been compared to Trevor Brooking, even Johnny White, and (by myself) to Charlie George: there's his shot. Without our changing ethics, he would, reliably, go under. With their help, he is developing into one of the first of what, to begin with, will be the few, but what ought to
become the many: where talent i5 allowed to grow, it is far less exceptioattlo than the few untalented people aroull would make us believe — and that goes for life as well as games.
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