'FOOTBALL HAS BECOME ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE'

🚨🗣️ 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Ruud Gullit is RIPPING into the current game of football!

"I have decided to STOP watching football. I don't enjoy our sport anymore. I watched Arsenal vs Chelsea, what an absolute GARBAGE match of football!"

"I see players trying to create corner kicks, trying to create throw-ins, I see ball boys ready to give towels to the players. Football has become absolutely HORRIBLE. I hope that this is not the path we are heading at."

"I am waiting for players who will take on defenders again, someone like Lamine Yamal. I am missing the joy! I just don't enjoy football anymore."

"Everyone is executing tasks on the pitch. Where are the players dribbling? Where are the players with b*lls? WHY IS EVERYONE PASSING?! PASSING! PASSING! PASSING!"

MY RESPONSE

The major creator of Modern football is the boss Johan Cruyff. But Mr Cruyff was Gullit's teammate at Feyenoord at a time.

Cruyff was older, and was actually a player/coach then. Gullit said about Cruyff that he was a crucial influence on his career. On the pitch Gullit said, Cruyff operated like a "director of an orchestra".

That's was the spirit of MODERN FOOTBALL in it's embryonic stage. In an orchestra, everyone plays according to a script, no one is left out. Follow your director STRICTLY.

So the person Gullit admired, mentored what Gullit now hates.🙂

Anyways, Cruyff spent only one year in Feyenoord and retired from football immediately after, whilst the very young Gullit spent 3 years and was never coached by Cruyff again, formally.

NOW TO TIE UP THINGS

Another name for Modern football is TOTAL FOOTBALL and that's what the footballing statesman, Cryuff, shortly after retiring from playing, pioneered in Holland(Ajax) and after that Spain(Barca) as a coach, where he built the famous "Dream Team".

Total football, indeed as Gullit says, sees football like an orchestra, everyone having a task as part of a whole. Football became more analytic, less spontaneous, everything well planned.

Like as it is in all life, as a thing grows it gives birth to many offsprings.

Initially TOTAL FOOTBALL was possession based, the use of the brain, the use of space. It deemphasized the use of brute force, like just running and running. Infact the very last words Cryuff will tell his team as they go out for a match was "Salid y disfrutad"( Spanish for "Go out and enjoy it")

Then years later, a certain brand of TOTAL FOOTBALL also grew out of this parent stock of Cryuff's system. This one is still an orchestra, but it had a lot to do with defending and counter attacking AS A TEAM. Call it the Mourinho version. People like Antonio Conte also adopted this version.

Bootomline is, everything was so full of analysis, unlike before Cryuff. That's the spirit of Modern football.

Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola(a direct student of Mr Cryuff) moved to England and influenced things a lot. Modern football was adopted within the English context– the EPL retained their old physicality, but eliminated their old kick-and-follow football( or long ball football). It is also why you have very few English coaches in the EPL now. That wasn't the case before the influx of Modern football, especially by Mou and Pep. Credit to Mr Arsene Wenger too.

Already from history, the EPL loved and celebrated set-pieces more than other leagues, so years after the coming of Pep, folks like Arsenal have begun to succesfully apply intense analytics there.

So it's all the coming of TOTAL FOOTBALL, with it's key vision.

1. Playing as one, no lone ranger
2. Control
3. Heavy analytics
4. A certain beauty.

These 4 have been used in various ways to produce various styles. The Godfather of it all remains Mr Johan Cryuff, who dared to make football more analytic and make players almost like robots.

Mr Gullit is more or less biting the fingers that fed him.

Cheers