Watch Stoke City. I then repeated this three days later when Arsenal played the Midlanders.
Stoke are often pilloried for their style of play and combative approach, though the English media are quick to defend them. But Stoke are an affront not just to English football, but the sport itself. It has been claimed that their style has improved, they can pass and play too. Well, if they can, they have no intention of showing it. Stoke’s play is entirely based around avoiding using their feet as much as possible, aiming for corners and throw ins which utilise Rory Delap’s throwing ability or the likes of Peter Crouch’s heading.
When discussing the teams who are most hated, the likes of Manchester United and Manchester City are regularly mentioned, for their success and wealth respectively. Chelsea come high too. But my response is always the same. As a genuine football romantic, the team I dislike the most is Stoke City. And it is because of the fact that they have no regard for the football fan, the neutral, who wants entertainment. Their players launch into challenges like deranged lunatics, flying into tackles with little intent of winning the ball, but simply intimidating their opponents. This isn’t football, it’s not even rugby. It’s something more sinister than that. Most challenges their players go into they know they will not come out of with the ball, yet they do so anyway. Is this football? Not in a million years.
They are the epitomy of the hard working, long ball team with big men and tough tackling defenders who show no mercy. The classic English stereotype. But in fact, they are the only team in the Premier League who play in such a way, and represent a dying breed. Where once a number of teams adopted such a style, few do these days. Bolton used to, now they try and play expansive football. Blackburn did too in the past, but they sacked Sam Allardyce in pursuit of attacking football. Managers such as Neil Warnock, Mick McCarthy and the like have come to accept that direct football is pointless if you can’t pass the ball, and Wolves for example play great passing football on their day.
Promoted teams generally play good football; Stoke were the last promoted team who didn’t. West Brom, Newcastle, Blackpool, Swansea, Norwich, QPR…all teams who pass and move.
The likes of Blackburn and Bolton have done well over the years, but they went in search of managers who would bring in more entertaining football. When ever did a team who had done well decide that they would rather have a coach who made them more direct, who would play more long balls?
That’s right, it has never happened. Teams don’t go from playing entertaining passing football to trying to be a long ball, physical side. Long ball and physical teams do try to become entertaining and pass though.
But Stoke don’t. Apologists in the media defend them because they represent the last vestige of Englishness; they being the one team who play the traditional style of English football represent its dying days. Since the early 1900s English football has been mocked by more advanced contemporaries, from the Scotland team of those pre-war days, to the Austrians of the inter war years, the Hungarians afterwards, and now the Spaniards.
Yet English football has defiantly held to its principles; the distrust of technique, of skill, of daring to keep the ball and not be rushed into passing forwards. English football fans have forever derided players who pass the ball backwards, and praised those who kick it 50 feet high into the stands. It is the precise opposite to Spain, home of the World and European champions. At both club and international level.
The idea that winning is the be all and end all is a myth. Some say that history doesn’t remember runners up, but if that is the case why are the Dutch side of the 1970s revered? They won nothing. But their passing and movement was so entertaining and beguiling that they are held in the same esteem or even higher than more successful rivals.
Stoke cling to their style, and apologists claim they are trying to play more expansively, but this is nonsense. They are still a long ball team, who make little if no effort to pass the ball expansively or retain possession.
The English are defiant, and so we will forever defend Stoke, representing as they do the dwindling reputation of the traditional physical, committed style of play. But it is a style which is slowly dying. One day, Stoke too will die with it, unless they learn to adapt and pass the ball more than twice in a row. Few should hold their breath.
