Latin America’s Futebol Arte vs Futebol Força dichotomy at the 2014 World Cup

For the first time in World Cup history a European side triumphed on Latin American soil ending an 84 year record. The Latin Americans had survived the Czech’s taking a surprise lead in the Santiago final of 1962, a nerve-jangling moment for Argentina (and its junta) as Rob Rensenbrink’s late effort rebounded off the post at River Plate’s Estadio Monumental in the 1978 final, a late German rally in the Estadio Azteca in the 1986 showdown and a shootout of 4 misses often only remembered for Roberto Baggio’s wayward penalty at Los Angeles’ Pasadena Rose Bowl in 1994.

The record had to go at some stage but perhaps more telling is the fact that German victory meant the third successive European World Cup triumph, leaving the Europeans with a two-World Cup advantage at 11-9, a lead which could conceivably widen further given the ideological malaise amongst the elite nations of South America.

Given, if Gonzalo Higuaín had slotted away the sitter he was gifted in the first half, or if Lionel Messi had taken full advantage of the half chances he carved out for himself in the way we are accustomed to seeing him do in Barcelona shirt, then we may be talking about the two continents being deadlocked at 10-10, but the consensus among neutral observers was that football was the winner with a superior technical side winning out.

Once again there were positives for South America as all but Ecuador made the 2^nd round, meaning that in the last three World Cups only they and Paraguay in 2006 have failed to make the second round from the CONMEBOL section. Had one side of the draw not developed into a mini-Copa America it would have been very interesting indeed to see how the CONMEBOL sides would have fared against sides from other regions, particularly Europe. Uruguay displayed characteristic garra charrúa to defeat two ex-World Cup winners and emerge from the (or a) supposed ‘group of death’. Chile bowed out for the third consecutive time at the last sixteen stage (following 1998 and 2010) again at the hands of their bête-noire in Brazil, but the statistics and final result tell very little of the story. The strongest Chile side in their history overran defending champions Spain with their high-tempo pressing game, winning huge credit from neutrals. Similarly Colombia finally did themselves justice on the biggest stage sweeping all before them at the group stage before dispatching Uruguay efficiently and only succumbing to Brazil in a highly controversial stop-start kicking contest in Fortaleza.

The idea of a South American World Cup was always likely to capture the imagination of football fans across the globe, particularly one in a country responsible for so many of the World Cup’s most emblematic moments: the tragedy of the Maracanazo in 1950, the Brazilian side carrying the Swedish flag after their glorious triumph in 1958, and perhaps their most famous conquest as television coverage went global at Mexico 1970. The ensuing exoticisation of Brazilian football has glossed over some of the less creditable episodes in Brazilian football history like the Battle of Berne, or the nation’s record number of red cards at World Cup tournaments. A glut of clichés romanticising the samba nation and its carefree flamboyant interpretation of the beautiful game has contributed greatly to the polarisation of Brazilian football into two distinct camps.

Brazil and to a lesser extent Argentina resorted to an at times crude interpretation of futebol forςa, relying heavily upon set pieces, tactical fouling and the individual brilliance of one star player. If the pragmatism of the big two echoed the pragmatism of Bilardismo in the 1986 World Cup, where a well drilled team left the lion’s share of the creative work to Diego Maradona in his pomp, then it is certainly fair to say that the artistic team ethic of Colombia and Chile shone as an antidote, with both sides not only winning friends across the world but achieving excellent results using aesthetically pleasing attacking football. A middle ground between the two styles came in the form of CONCACAF’s two most impressive sides, fellow Latin Americans Mexico and Costa Rica. Indeed ex-Costa Rica coach, the Colombian Jorge Luis Pinto, vastly experienced in both club and international football, keeps an excellent website dedicated to tactics. Pinto, who has also managed the Colombian national side along with a number of Colombia’s biggest clubs, is an extremely well-read student of the game, who seems able to rise above the polarised debate on the continent to make functional choices for his side. His Costa Rican side finished 3rd in both the yellow-card count and the foul count, committing 14 more fouls than Argentina in two less matches. However it is fair to say that Costa Rica and Mexico had a lot more to offer than merely an attritional approach. In the group phase Costa Rica penned Uruguay back with a pressing style which appeared more like the brainchild of attacking coaches like Bielsa or Guardiola. Similarly Mexico dominated their group game against a hapless Cameroon.

For anyone even briefly acquainted with South American football the relentless romanticisation of Brazil on the basis of their golden generation falls a long way short of explaining a complex panorama closely tied to the national identify of each of the nations. A previous article on this site, Futebol Arte vs Futebol Forςa, traces the dichotomy which so often provides an all too similar (and perhaps unproductive) frame often used for debate in many Latin American countries. With a wearyingly simplistic reductionism that echoes the polarised uncompromising nature political life on the continent, the game’s elements are compressed into jogo bonito or jogo feio, futebol arte or futebol forςa, tending to push the continent’s sides towards stylistic extremes which are utterly dismissive of the ideology of the supposed enemy, rendering serious debate almost impossible.

Indeed, even the reproach of an outsider Johan Cruyff, who speaks generously of the great traditions of Brazilian football, but has become a high profile sceptic of what he calls the anti-football of the current Brazil, seems to make little or no impression on the nationalistic Brazilian mindset which uncharitably dismisses the Dutchman’s arguments on the grounds that Brazil has five World Cups to Cruyff and Holland’s zero. This kind of primary school level debate typifies the malady of the ‘football nation’ and is repeated ad nauseum in the comments section of almost any article in which he is mentioned in.

The 2014 World Cup consolidated an unpalatable truth for Latin American countries: that at the highest level of the game the European sides are clearly in the ascendancy. Tending to be more malleable and receptive to the tactical innovation of others and guided more than ever by the collective innovations of totalvoetbal in the 1970s, the likes of Barcelona and Spain and now Bayern Munich and Germany have melded together disparate elements of world football onto their own identities to produce a style that has so lucidly laid bare the antiquated, dogmatic and restrictive interpretations of how the game should be played from teams which refuse to modernise.

In the wake of the catastrophic organisation of the event which saw numerous plans for transport infrastructure improvements shelved, a glut of white elephant stadiums built across the country at outrageously high cost to the Brazilian taxpayer and the final indignity of the privatisation of the Maracanã (meaning Brazilians will now have to pay elevated costs to enter the stadium that was built using their own public money) it is unsurprising that in order to save some face for the nation the team would be implored to ‘win at all costs’. If anyone was the man to do this, it appeared to be Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazil’s winning coach from 2002.

Whilst distancing Brazil from the image that had made them the de-facto ‘second favourite team’ for a generation of football fans across the globe Scolari appeared to be a safe pair of hands, exemplified by the way he galvanised a demoralised team struggling to qualify for Japan/Korea 2002 and went on to harness the not inconsiderable talents of Ronaldinho, Rivaldo and Ronaldo to produce a surprise victory to the delight of the watching millions at home.

In more recent times he oversaw the efficient dismantling of World Champions Spain at the Confederations Cup a year before. After that victory, such was the confidence Scolari instilled in his charges that his Confederations Cup ‘golden glove’ winning goalkeeper Júlio César (3^rd choice at Queens Park Rangers), felt suitably patriotic to remind the world with outlandish hubris that ‘o futebol tem uma hierarquia, e o Brasil é cinco vezes campeão do mundo (football has a hierarchy and Brazil is a five times World Champion), lest the European continent start to believe that a third consecutive World Cup victory was on the cards. The Confederations Cup, it seemed, had rapidly morphed from a friendly competition arranged by the King of Saudi Arabia into a wholly appropriate gauge from which to make bold assertions. In fairness to César, a number of neutral pundits on the European continent joined in, installing Brazil as tournament favourites, again heaping more pressure on the host nation.

On a more important level in the context of the 2014 tournament, Scolari’s 2002 victory gave him the credibility and licence to portray himself as a pragmatic winner in contrast to glorious losers in the opposing stylistic camp to himself, like the swashbuckling Brazil of 1982. In a continent where winning is infinitely more important than Sócrates idealistic notion of ‘A beleza vem primeiro, a vitória é secundária. O que importa é a alegria’ (beauty comes first victory is secondary, the important thing is happiness) suggests, it is quite easy to see how this desperately reductionist mode of thinking took hold. Sócrates may well have been genuine in what he said, but framing the argument in the idealistic manner he did, meant that the message almost always falls on deaf ears in South America. Winning is hugely important on the South American continent, almost to the point of obsession, especially to Brazilians, Argentinians and Uruguayans who see football as a huge part of the country’s identity. From the early days when British expats introduced the game to the continent, the idea of ‘getting one over the (de-facto) colonisers’ has always provided strong motivation to be winners. A more practical way to frame the discussion within South America is to ask whether attractive attacking football is a more efficient way to win games. A question to which the greatly influential Marcelo Bielsa and one of his most prominent disciples, the current Chilean coach Jorge Sampaoli would almost certainly emphatically answer in the affirmative.

Dunga, meanwhile dismisses the class of 1982 (including Sócrates, Zico and Falcão) as ‘losers’, seeing them as a model to avoid at all costs. The continual insistence upon comparing Brazil’s pragmatic tactical fouling set-piece based approach to a team from 30 years ago is absurd given the immense change in tempo of the game and distance covered by players during play between then and now.

A more sensible point of reference for jogo bonito or futebol arte may well be the Spain team of 2010 or the Germany of 2014. This, of course, does not suit the Scolari/Dunga narrative as both insist that aesthetically pleasing attacking football, being reckless in nature, will ultimately lose out. Allied to that, in an increasingly nationalistic environment the mere idea of crediting the loathsome Europeans with outmanoeuvring Brazil with tactical innovation also remains anathema, hence the overly aggressive and rather childish responses to the likes of Cruyff.

The appointment of Dunga, wrongly named after Dopey rather than the infinitely more appropriate Grumpy, appears at face value to be a clearly regressive step that will see the Brazilian side go further into its shell, rather than facing up to its inadequacies in the same way that German football did at the turn of the millennium.

Predictably, Brazil and Argentina taunted each other throughout the tournament arguing that the other was a ‘one man team’, ludicrous and unworthy of analysis in one sense, given the number of players performing at the very highest level in each side but also insightful in terms of it betraying the individualist outlook on the continent, deeply rooted in early descriptions of national identity from the likes of Gilberto Freyre and Mario Filho, which maintains that one inspired player resolves matches, rather than a group of collective ethic players, which is more akin to those who have lifted the trophy on the previous three occasions. The absence of a Brazilian or Argentinian Pirlo, Xavi, Iniesta, Kroos or Schweinsteiger is glaring. The type of selfless player who keeps the midfield ticking with a sophisticated and team-oriented passing range and matches the work rate of a Fernandinho or Mascherano may be the key to progress.

Brazil were not alone in not being able to turn a strong squad of individuals into a fully functional unit. In a similar spirit of pragmatism to their neighbours, Argentina and their army of travelling fans saw a side that were very difficult to beat but somehow uninspiring creatively. Given the names on the teamsheet, the opposite had been predicted by most pundits, as the attack looked likely to blow other teams out of the water, while their defence looked, at first glance to be shaky.

Indeed the largely unfancied Argentine defence surely had a case for being the most (or at least second most) impressive defence of the tournament, going beyond the 7 hour mark without conceding a goal in the knockout phase against some of the world’s most feared forward players. Ezequiel Garay and Pablo Zabaleta were easily among the most industrious players in the tournament, and their positional discipline was instrumental in only shipping one goal in the knockout phase to Brazil’s twelve. The fact that Brazilian newspaper Globo’s teams of the tournament accommodated the insatiable wanderlust of David Luiz ahead of the aforementioned Argentine defenders says more about nationalism in its crudest and most blinkered form than it does about the beautiful game.

The centrality of Javier Mascherano, whose colossal displays greatly aided Argentina’s run to the final embodied the work rate and organisation of the Argentines. Were it not for the long-held tradition of choosing a creative player rather than a destructive player as player of the tournament, surely Mascherano would have been a strong contender.

The official winner of the award, Messi scored four and twice came close in the final. Returning to the theme of slim margins, had Messi finished one of the chances he had in the final to secure an Argentine triumph, surely the award would have seemed considerably less embarrassing than it eventually seemed for the diminutive Argentine.

As Messi’s vociferous compatriot Diego Maradona pointed out, however, the most logical choice for the award was surely James Rodriguez of Colombia, whose passing range, close control and creativity lit up the tournament. The antidote to Argentina and Brazil’s cagey approach in this World Cup was the cavalier swagger of both Colombia and Chile.

Both continue to benefit from the vision of outside coaches, who have put in place a clear style and identity. Ex-Chile coach Marcelo Bielsa famously said that ‘si los jugadores fueranrobots, nunca perderìa un partido’ (if the players were robots I’d never lose a game). Playing with a clear imprint of Bielsismo Chile achieved a wonderful victory over Spain and came so close to an historic victory over the hosts. The host’s insistence on ‘tactical fouling’ crucially went largely unpunished by the ridiculously lenient officials, meaning that a side that depends on rhythm and flow was largely neutralised. As many cynically pointed out at the time, ultimate responsibility lies with the referee. The blatant targeting of Vidal and Alexis Sanchez were a depressing precursor to the systematic hounding of James Rodriguez and Juan Cuadrado in the quarter final which indirectly ended in a premature end to Neymar’s tournament.

The uncompromising style of Bielsa and latterly Sampaoli has drawn as much criticism as it has praise, but surely in light of the players available, it would be nigh on impossible to achieve better results with a more hard-headed and cynical approach. Given their performances at this year’s World Cup they will surely be contenders to win their first ever Copa America title on home soil next year.

Along similar lines to Chile, but with more strength in depth and slightly more pragmatic in terms of system by necessity, Colombia delighted neutrals with a series of uninhibited displays of fine attacking football, finally achieving the finish the great side of the early 90s should have delivered. Playing without the internal strife that left their predecessors paralysed with fear at USA ’94, the Colombians shone with James Rodriguez and Juan Cuadrado’s unselfish brilliance looking like the closest juxtaposition of the best elements of Latin American individualism and the collective ethic which has been so instrumental in winning the last three World Cups.

Colombia were unable to play the same high-pressing game that Chile played due to the inclusion of classy veteran centre half Mario Yepes. His lack of pace meant a deeper defensive line, but crucially added maturity to a young side experiencing the biggest stage for the first time. Colombia compensated for the deep defensive line by allowing Armero and Zuñiga to maraud forward protected ably by two very effective deep-lying midfielders. Colombia gave multiple problems to each defence they faced.

In a similar way to Chile the presence of Pékerman inspired the team, offering outside knowledge to hone the considerable qualities the country has into an efficient and organised unit. Indeed Colombian football owes the basis for its style to an invasion of Argentine players who led Millionarios of Bogotá to worldwide notoriety in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Players like Adolfo Pedernera, Alfredo di Stefano, Nestor ‘Pipo’ Rossi and Julio Cozzi lit up the Colombian League for a fleeting period. From that period on, the best Colombian football has always been infused with the short passing game of el ballet azul.

Such is the strength in depth in the Colombian squad, the dilemma moving forward will be how to accommodate the return of Radamel Falcao, arguably the best ‘fox in the box’ in the modern game. The retirement of stalwart Mario Yepes may open the door for the likes of Éder Álvarez Balanta, another Colombian making his name at River Plate, and surely bound for a large European club in the not too distant future.

Looking at the past three World Cup winning teams it is notable that the 2010 Spain line up and the 2014 Germany line up both contained a strong nucleus, or more than half a team, from just one club: Barcelona and Bayern respectively. The globalisation of football has meant that South American nations can no longer put out squads of domestic-based players. The Brazilian squad of 1970 was entirely domestic-based and Argentina’s 1978 squad had only Mario Kempes based outside Argentina. Even as late as 1986 only star players like Maradona, Passarella and Valdano were based abroad and the nucleus was Argentine based.

With this in mind South American national sides must find a way to counteract the clear advantage gained from playing club football together week to week. In the case of Colombia, the spirit was present in the collective will to right the wrongs of 1994. This created a bond every bit as strong as that of Croatia in 1998, who were clearly strongly motivated by representing their newly independent nation. Playing together week to week, however, produces more than just spirit, it produces team fluency and an understanding between team mates. CONMEBOL has the double-edged sword of an arduous qualification period. Perhaps this in some way helps the teams to gel.

Overall, the continent once again fared well at the World Cup without ever looking like landing the sucker punch. An overreliance on individualism was a standout Achilles Heel, proving to be the demise of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, the latter two as their star players succumbed to injury and controversy respectively. More balanced squads like Germany’s (or Spain’s in their pomp) would have been better equipped to manage with key injuries, replacing the collective qualities of missing players with greater ease.

All but the most nationalistic Brazilians would admit to a severe lack of modern coaching talent adding to the nation’s woes, triggering the brief mention of the possibility of a foreign coach. Perhaps the best placed Brazilian to make progressive changes was Corinthians manager Tite, but the impulsive nationalistic regression was always on the cards given the myopic leadership of Brazilian football.

The dearth of Brazilian managerial talent must be particularly galling in the light of the number of Argentine coaches coaching at top clubs. The likes of Diego Simeone, Mauricio Pochettino and Eduardo Berizzo not to mention the don himself Marcelo Bielsa all seem to have a bright future ahead of them at club level. Jorge Sampaoli and Jose Pékerman , arguably two of the most successful managers of the World Cup, hail from Argentina. In fairness Alejandro Sabella at least maintained a semblance of discipline to his side, though he must regret the exclusion of Carlos Tevez, who despite being a nightmare to manage would surely have added some much needed incisiveness upfront. Amongst those managers there is a clear propensity for innovation in an attempt to exploit fully the pace of the modern game, often by pressing the opponent heavily and trying to dominate games.

Tactical fouling, which it is widely suggested has its roots in Zubeldia’s Estudiantes of the late 60s, has become a fairly accepted concept taken from futebol forςa and incorporated into the parlance of the game In phrases like ‘taking a yellow for the side’ among other expressions. Allied to this the pragmatists would be quick to point out to the considerable number of key goals which come from set pieces. This was clear to see in the Quarter Finals particularly, where Colombia were undone too easily on a set piece for the first goal and then beaten by a magical free kick for the second (interspersed by a fair kicking contest). Germany only needed a set piece to dispose of France.

Clearly there are elements of futebol forςa which merit serious attention, but to base an entire strategy around the game’s less aesthetic elements seems not only stubborn but unimaginative. We remember not only the glorious losers (Hungary ’54, Holland ’74, Brazil 82) but also the most successful aesthetically pleasing sides (Brazil 58-70, Guardiola’s Barcelona and the current Germany to name three pertinent examples).

In South America Colombia and Chile appear the most progressive sides, as we may well see at next year’s Copa America. Were one of those two attacking sides to win, surely it would trigger the reflection and soul-searching required to make Argentina, Brazil and maybe even Uruguay the great sides we once knew.